Art and Technology of South Indian bronzes and the Chola Nataraja

Illustrated lecture by Prof. Sharada Srinivasan, Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, IISc Campus, Bengaluru, and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and World Academy of Arts and Science

sharasri@gmail.com, sharadasrini@gmail.com

Early medieval Chola statuary bronzes from Tamil Nadu represent a remarkable synthesis of arts and technology, evoking aspects of devotional poetry, dance and philosophy. The talk sketches approaches in technical art history in exploring the stylistic and provenance attributions of south Indian bronzes over different periods. The implications for the artistic trajectory of the celebrated Nataraja icon, often described as the ‘Cosmic Dance of Siva’, are explored

Early medieval Chola statuary bronzes from Tamil Nadu represent a remarkable synthesis of art and technology, evoking aspects of devotional poetry, dance and philosophy. The talk sketches approaches in technical art history in exploring the stylistic and provenance attributions of south Indian bronzes over different periods (from the author’s archaeometallurgical researches over the past three decades). The legacy of image casting in Thanjavur district and the insights into the background of mining,  metallurgy, wider cultural interactions and exchanges are touched upon.  The implications for the artistic trajectory of the celebrated Nataraja icon, often described as the ‘Cosmic Dance of Siva’, are explored; as well as the questions of the icon’s intriguing appeal to scientific sensibilities and probable celestial inspiration in ritual or iconographic aspects. 
Prof Sharada Srinivasan, Padmashri Awardee, is Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, IISc Campus, Bangalore/Bengaluru, and is Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and World Academy of Arts and Science.  Her multi-disciplinary publications have ranged from Journal of Metals and Archaeometry to works as author, editor or contributor as in ‘Ecstasy of Classical Art’ (National Museum),  Digital Hampi (Springer) and Cosmology and Nataraja (IGNCA). She has a Phd from Institute of Archaeology, UCL, London and BTech. from IIT-B and she has also been an exponent of Bharata Natyam dance.