Yoga: The Art of Transformation

Description:

All over the world, millions of people—including twenty million Americans—practice yoga for health benefits and to find spiritual calm. Practitioners and non-practitioners alike are aware of yoga’s origins in India. But very few know of yoga’s rich visual history, which reveals its profound philosophical underpinnings, its goals of transforming both body and consciousness, the diverse social roles yogic practitioners have played, and its transformations over time and across communities.

Yoga: The Art of Transformation, the world’s first examination of yoga’s visual history, explores:

• yoga’s meanings and transformations over time, including its entry into the global arena
• yoga’s goals of spiritual enlightenment, worldly power, and health and wellbeing
• the beauty and profundity of Indian art

The book features sculptural masterpieces of historical and divine yogis, exquisite Mughal paintings of militant yogis and romantic heroes, illustrated manuscripts of Hindu philosophy and Islamic divination, monumental images of the chakras (energy centers of the body), and 19th-century photography.

Related Exhibition