The Grace of Four Moons: Dress, Adornment, and the Art of the Body in Modern India
Pravina Shukla
Because clothing, food, and shelter are basic human needs, they provide excellent entries to cultural values and individual aesthetics. Everyone gets dressed every day, but body art has not received the attention it deserves as the most common and universal of material expressions of culture. The Grace of Four Moons aims to document the clothing decisions made by ordinary people in their everyday lives. Based on fieldwork conducted primarily in the city of Banaras, India, Pravina Shukla conceptualizes and realizes a total model for the study of body art—understood as all aesthetic modifications and supplementations to the body. Shukla urges the study of the entire process of body art, from the assembly of raw materials and the manufacture of objects, through their sale and the interactions between merchants and consumers, to the consumer's use of objects in creating personal decoration.
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About Pravina Shukla
Reviews for The Grace of Four Moons: Dress, Adornment, and the Art of the Body in Modern India
Choice
Well-researched and well-produced, The Grace of Four Moons is a welcome addition to the scholarly canon for a wide range of academic as well as more popular objectives. 69.1, 2010
Western Folklore
For folklorists and cultural anthropologists, this is a treasure trove of information. For students of religion, it provides the material reference to the system of beliefs. . . . Highly recommended.September 2008
Choice
The Grace of Four Moons provides a wealth of information about clothing and jewelry as an outlet for women seeking freedom of expression in India, while staying with a traditional framework.June 18, 2008
India Currents Magazine
The book is skillfully organized, written in a clear, jargon-free, unpretentious style . . . and it is an outstanding first work by a most promising young scholar. October 15, 2008
Charles G Zug III
Journal of Folklore Research