Title: | Yoga: The Art of Transformation |
---|---|
Author List: | Debra Diamond |
Publisher: | Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery |
Publication Date: | 2013 |
Publication Type: | book |
Format: | print (hardcover) |
Pages: | 328 |
ISBN: | 9781588344595 |
Collection Area(s): | South Asian and Himalayan Art |
Yoga: The Art of Transformation
![](https://asia.si.edu/wp-content/themes/custom/nmaa/nmaa-frontend/public/images/hero-bkgrnd-desktop.jpg)
![Yoga book cover. God figure with blue skin decorated with small royal figures.](https://asia.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2013-Yoga_cover-853x1024.jpg)
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.
FRONT MATTER (PDF, 4.2MB)
ESSAYS
Yoga: The Art of Transformation (PDF, 5.2MB)
Debra Diamond
Yoga in Transformation
David Gordon White
From Guru to God: Yogic Prowess and Places of Practice in Early-Medieval India (PDF, 3.1MB)
Tamara I. Sears
Muslim Interpreters of Yoga
Carl W. Ernst
Yogis in Mughal India
James Mallinson
Yoga, Bodybuilding, and Wrestling: Metaphysical Fitness
Joseph S. Alter
Globalized Modern Yoga
Mark Singleton
CATALOGUE
The Path of Yoga (PDF, 36.7MB)
Landscapes of Yoga (PDF, 5.2MB)
Yoga in the Indian Imagination, 16th–19th Century (PDF, 9.4MB)
Yoga in the Transnational Imagination, 18th–20th Century (PDF, 6.3MB)
Modern Transformations (PDF, 3.1MB)
REFERENCE MATERIAL (PDF, 2.1MB)
Locate this Title
Related Exhibition
-
Yoga: The Art of Transformation
View ExhibitionOctober 19, 2013–January 26, 2014
Through masterpieces of Indian sculpture and painting, Yoga: The Art of Transformation explores yoga’s rich diversity and historical transformations, including its philosophies, transformational goals, and importance within multiple religions. The exhibition borrows from twenty-five museums and private collections in India, Europe, and the United States.