Tu˜rkmenistan

Turkmenistan: Arts from the Land of Magtymguly is designed to introduce the traditional and contemporary arts of Turkmenistan to a broad public. The authors, who are researchers within the Smithsonian's Asian cultural history program, describe recent reinterpretations of traditional themes and motifs from Turkmenistan's past within artworks of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These transformations include the incorporation of distinctive tribal or regional elements into a national narrative of a unified Turkmenistan, corresponding to the "dream" so frequently expressed in the poetry of the 18th-century poet Magtymguly - who is now celebrated as the national poet of Turkmenistan. This survey is amply illustrated with many previously unpublished examples of traditional textiles and craftwork from the State Museum of the State Cultural Center of Turkmenistan; paintings, gobelins, and other contemporary artworks from Turkmenistan's Museum of Fine Arts; and musical adaptions and interpretations of Magtymguly's verses performed by bagshy (folk musicians who sing the verses while playing their two-stringed dutar) from the archives of Turkmenistan's National Conservatory. --From back cover.