Garden & Cosmos

Beyond the scenes of musical merriment in the maharajahs' zenanas (or harems of women), and away from the lavish ceremonies held around their golden jamas (or thrones), this exhibition opens out to explore aspects of spirituality and landscape that far transcend such ostentatious trappings of our earthly plain. The artisans of Jodhpur in royal Rajasthan worked tirelessly on these large, almost European-scale pictures from the 1640s to the 1780s, although any similarities with the art of the West end right there, as their multiple, collapsing perspectives of aerial and side views produced much wilder compositions and their detail has much finer, more hypnotic and damn near hallucinogenic results. (OW)