Published by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DCĬopyright © 2013, Smithsonian Institution. Goswamy Navina Haidar Amy Landau Holly Shaffer Tom VickĪrthur M. Molly Emma Aitken Christopher Key Chapple Robert DeCaroli Jessica Farquhar B.

Alter Mark Singleton Sita Reddy WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY The Art of Transformation David Gordon White Tamara I. Goddesses to militant ascetics and romantic heroes. T h e s m i t h so n i a n ’s m us eu m s o f as i a n a rt Main size: 19-103 pt white Sackler Gallery Smithsonian Institution Printed in Milan, Italy With 200 color and black-and-white illustrations Published by the Arthur M. Unique among scholarly art catalogues in that it speaks to the international yoga community, Yoga: The Art of Transformation will delight both yogic practitioners and lovers of Indian art. Together these texts demonstrate the potential of visual culture to illuminate yoga’s profound and unexpected manifestations in culture, art, and history. Following the essays, thematically grouped catalogue entries explore key yogic practices, identities, and cultural perceptions within the visual record. Two essays focus on yoga’s more recent evolution into the discourses of spirituality, fitness, and medicine in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India, which helped shape today’s global yoga boom.

Five essays act as a chronology, tracing the practice from its ancient roots to early modern manifestations. Written for diverse audiences by scholars of art history, philology, religion, and sociology, the catalogue provides deeper contexts for key artworks and objects that convey yoga’s transformations over time. Photographs, postcards, early films, and other materials shed light on the enormous shifts in yoga’s reception in the nineteenth century, as well as on the creation of modern yoga. While many objects emerged out of Hindu contexts or depict Hindu practitioners, others reveal that yoga was never the domain of any single religion, and indeed yogic identity crossed “sacred” and “secular” boundaries. Yoga: The Art of Transformation, the first publication of its kind, invites readers to explore 2,000 years of yoga’s visual record, from depictions of beneficent deities and Tantric yogini works of art-including temple sculptures, masterpieces of Mughal painting, and the first illustrated asana treatise-depict the aesthetic aspects of a practice that has transformed over time and across communities. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Many of us today practice yoga for spiritual insight and better health, but few know of yoga’s extraordinary visual history. Edited by Debra Diamond Associate Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M.

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