Master Painters of India at Met Traces Tolerance & Conflict through Art

THE STAR LEDGER
By Dave Bischoff

A page from the â Hamzanama,â which was commissioned by Akbar the Great.

NEW YORK - ‘Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India 1100-1900,” which just opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and tells an 800-year-long story in 200 paintings — all of them watercolors and almost none larger than a full sheet of this newspaper — is a spectacular show. Indian painting is a distinct world all its own, in this telling an ancient argument between Hindu color and patterning and Persian storytelling and neoclassical portraiture. Over the course of Indian history we see these two visions of painting intersect, pull apart, clash and reform several times, no one style ever achieving complete dominance. [link]