Art and Life in Bangladesh - Hardcover

Glassie, Henry

4.6

5 ratings by Goodreads

9780253332912: Art and Life in Bangladesh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253332915 ISBN 13: 9780253332912

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1997

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Art and Life in Bangladesh presents the country, its landscape and history, its artists and their work. Glassie arrays the potter's works - from useful pots to radiant images of the Hindi deities - and brings us into the company of potters who are poets, historians, and philosophers. The book ascends to the splendid spiritual explanation of art provided by the sculptor Haripada Pal. In conversation with the artists who work the clay, Glassie learned their idea of art, and he applies it to other media, to weaving and shipbuilding, to painting, engraving, and brass casting. The book expands into a comprehensive view of creation in Bangladesh, and it forms an elegant meditation on life and work and the importance of art.

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Review:

It's unfortunate that most people associate Bangladesh with starvation, natural disasters, and political turmoil, as if this region of the world existed in a perpetual state of emergency. It is true that life in Bangladesh is not easy--there are crop failures, typhoons, and political unrest--but there is also a long and rich tradition of art, ranging from the potter's craft to amazing works of painting, engraving, weaving, sculpture, metalwork, and more. In Art and Life in Bangladesh, Henry Glassie, a professor of folklore at Indiana University, introduces readers to the people of Bangladesh through their artwork. But Glassie's book is not a coffee-table volume filled with gorgeous images and a thin trickle of print; rather, art is simply the medium by which he guides the reader through the history, culture, and community of this small land situated on the world's widest delta.

Glassie is not content merely to survey Bangladeshi art; instead, he introduces readers to individual artists, allowing each of them to speak at length about his or her work and motivation. It soon becomes clear that in Bangladesh, art and everyday life are inextricably linked. Photographs are liberally sprinkled throughout the text--if only some of them were in color. Perhaps with Art and Life in Bangladesh, Glassie, who has performed similar ethnographic marvels in books about Irish and Turkish art, will help promote a more positive image of this ancient land.

From Library Journal:

The premier English-language academic folklorist of our time, Glassie (Indiana Univ.) is a world figure, having written magisterially on American, Irish, and Turkish folklore. Now he writes on yet another part of the world. Typically, he constructs a composite portrait of a land, its resources, and, most important to him, its artists. He introduces individual folk artists, universalizing them beyond their particular environment. Though Bangladesh may seem remote to most Americans, Glassie's gift is his ability to demonstrate to the reader how the interplay of traditional aesthetics and creativity is comprehensible to an outsider. His exquisite prose style in combination with hundreds of his own photographs combine to make this book accessible to academic and general audiences. Highly recommended.?David S. Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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