Rabindranath Tagore - Indian Art News https://indianartnews.visionsarts.com News on Modern and Contemporary Indian Art presented by Visions Art Fri, 29 Sep 2017 12:34:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://i0.wp.com/indianartnews.visionsarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/cropped-Visions-Art.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Rabindranath Tagore - Indian Art News https://indianartnews.visionsarts.com 32 32 136536861 Artist Manu Parekh on the art market, Rabindranath Tagore, and pop culture https://indianartnews.visionsarts.com/artist-manu-parekh-on-the-art-market-rabindranath-tagore-and-pop-culture/ https://indianartnews.visionsarts.com/artist-manu-parekh-on-the-art-market-rabindranath-tagore-and-pop-culture/#respond Sat, 23 Sep 2017 05:30:00 +0000 Portrait of Gandhi | Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company. Annapurna Garimella: What does it mean to be an artist working …

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Portrait of Gandhi | Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Annapurna Garimella: What does it mean to be an artist working in his seventies? You started painting when you were sixteen and have been making art for seven decades. What does making art mean to you today?

Manu Parekh: My first reaction to your question is that I still feel excited. I feel – I can see – that there is space to create many things. As an Indian, in this kind of an environment, there is a great deal of possibilities, a lot of inspiration, as well as a lot of issues.

What do you mean by ‘as an Indian’?
In India, the most interesting thing for me is the Indian mind. If I am a Gujarati, then I will look at things from a Gujarati angle, and so on. But I also feel that I am a popular culture man, influenced especially by the world of Hindi films, from which a person of one culture can learn about other cultures. Moreover, because of my involvement with craft and theatre, I learned about other [Indian] cultures, so I never fully feel that I am only from Gujarat and can only enjoy that. I have been fascinated by people of other states and cultures, and have been fortunate to travel all over India. That is why I used the words ‘as an Indian’.
The other thing, which is a treasure chest, is what is in the rural areas. The sensitivity that is there, even the problems that are there, the ways of making them better, their way of understanding, the relationship between men and women, especially between women; in urban India, there is not much knowledge about this. Interestingly, the popular film feels rich to me – because of the way it has absorbed various influences (especially those from vernacular cultures and rural milieus) – this is the real India [the rural areas]…if one wants to enjoy India.
Portrait of Souza. Credit: Manu Parekh
Portrait of Souza. Credit: Manu Parekh
Perhaps right from your childhood, from the beginning of your interest in art, these things must have felt interesting…but the perspectives or directions that you saw, the fascination you had for village life, for instance, must be different now. You are talking about village life and the fascination it has for you, but that world does not exist anymore. Yes, a village is still a village, but the village has changed. So, what do you think about this? The shifts that happen in an artist’s life, the way Rabindranath Tagore saw a zamindari world and over time his thoughts changed, and then he chose not to participate in Congress-style nationalism but instead he began to bring something of the Santhals who lived in the villages around him into the institution he founded in Santiniketan, and at the same time he was also aiming for and desiring a universal humanism, a very Modernist way of thinking. Souza too started in Mumbai and then went to London and left that and went to New York, then kept returning to a transforming India (Goa too had changed in this time). What has happened to you between age sixteen and the present that has impacted your art and your thinking?

First of all, I am not from a village. I am from Ahmedabad. My connection to the village is through my grandmother who lived near Nadiad, where we went during our summer holidays and through Madhvi, my wife, who is from a village as well.
My father was a barber. The way his hands moved was miraculous, it was craft. He was a great film and theatre buff – he gave this to me as my inheritance. From about age eight, I began to go to the movies with him.
We always bought the lowest priced ticket. Once we went to see Dilip Kumar’s film ‘Shaheed’ and when we reached the window after being in line, it was sold out. My father asked, ‘Shall we sit in line for the next show?’ That was his nature, he was passionate.
When I got the Padma Shri, Dilip Kumar was sitting in front of me in the Durbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. When we came out, and a crowd surrounded him, I stood apart, lost in thought. I was back at Kishan Cinema on the footpath and was thinking about that day with my father. Both he and Madhvi’s father, a Gandhian, whom I knew since I was twelve, have been such big influences in my life. In the days when I went to J. J. [School of Art], there were only two places that attracted me – Paris and Kolkata. I had a huge attraction to these cities; Kolkata because of painting, theatre and Rabindranath Tagore, who I already felt was a great painter. When I reached Kolkata in 1965, and would argue the case for Rabindranath as a great painter, very few would agree or accept – there was a doubt about his status as an artist. Today he is accepted.
Jaswant Thakkar, the great theatre actor, introduced me to Tagore’s Muktadhara, which we staged in Gujarati for Tagore’s birth centenary (I was twenty-five and played the role of eighty-year-old Viswajit). Because of Jaswant Thakkar’s involvement with the Indian People’s Theatre Association, many of its members were very friendly with us; whenever Prithviraj Kapoor or Balraj Sahni came to town, they came to meet us and I have rehearsed in front of both of them. IPTA and its members had a great impact during that period, the Communist Party was not divided and socialist thinking inspired work like Balraj Sahni’s Do Bigha Zameen and the works of Shailendra, Sahir Ludhianvi and Inder Raj Anand (the screenwriter for many of Raj Kapoor’s films).
The dancer. Credit: Manu Parekh
The dancer. Credit: Manu Parekh
What was the impact of IPTA on your art?
In 1963, I joined the Weavers Service Centre, an initiative of the All-India Handloom Board, under the leadership of Pupul Jayakar. To leave the theatre world and then take up the job – I only ever had one – in craft was the impact of both Gandhian thinking as well as IPTA. To understand the problems of village people…
Are you bothered by the changes in Indian art?
No. When I started making money from painting, people criticized me a great deal. I appreciated that and I used that criticism. Many people never could do substantial work because of which they struggled financially all the time. Because of the changes, I was able to paint full-time.
Excerpted with permission from Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, by Manu Parekh, Aleph Book Company.
The forest. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
The forest. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Portrait of landscape. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Portrait of landscape. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
The family. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
The family. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Graffiti of Goddess in wood. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Graffiti of Goddess in wood. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Flower vase in the landscape. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Flower vase in the landscape. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Movement of spirit. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Movement of spirit. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
The family IV. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
The family IV. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Banares landscape. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Banares landscape. Credit: Manu Parekh. Courtesy: Manu Parekh: Sixty Years of Selected Works, Aleph Book Company.
Credits : Scroll.in
https://scroll.in/magazine/851409/artist-manu-parekh-on-the-art-market-rabindranath-tagore-and-pop-culture

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Tagore’s art remembered in distant Slovenia https://indianartnews.visionsarts.com/tagores-art-remembered-in-distant-slovenia/ https://indianartnews.visionsarts.com/tagores-art-remembered-in-distant-slovenia/#respond Fri, 08 Aug 2014 11:02:00 +0000 http://indianartnews.info/tagores-art-remembered-in-distant-slovenia/ An exhibition of prints of selected paintings by Tagore and his contemporaries begins on Thursday, his death anniversary, in Slovenia. The anniversary of the passing away of Indian Nobel …

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This June 4, 2011 file photo depicts 'Peacock', ink and water colour on paper, by Rabindranath Tagore displayed at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. Photo: Shanker Chakravarty
An exhibition of prints of selected paintings by Tagore and his contemporaries begins on Thursday, his death anniversary, in Slovenia.
The anniversary of the passing away of Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore will be remembered in Slovenia from August 7, his death anniversary, to Sep 4, with a unique exhibition of prints of selected paintings by Tagore and his contemporaries —— provided by the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.
The exhibition displays representative works of Rabindranath, Abanindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore, along with those of Abdur Rahman Chughtai, Jamini Roy and Amrita Sher—Gil.
The uniquely curated exhibition will be on display at the house of culture in the world heritage village of Smartno in the municipality of Goriska Brda on the western border of Slovenia with Italy, according to a statement issued by the Indian embassy in Slovenia.
The village of Medana in the municipality of Goriska Brda was the natal home of poet and jurist Alojz Gradnik, who was the most prominent translator of Tagore’s works into the Slovenian language from 1917 onwards.
Gradnik’s translation of “Gitanjali” into Slovenian was published from Ljubljana in 1924. The memory of Gradnik is kept alive by the international festival of poetry and wine at Medana every August and by the “Gradnik evenings” in November each year.
This is the first time that the memory of Tagore is being so honoured in the birthplace of his major Slovenian translator after Tagore visited Yugoslavia in 1926. Slovenia, a country of two million people in Central Europe, is one of the breakaway countries of the original Yugoslavia.
By 1926, the Indian Nobel laureate’s works, translated by Gradnik and others, had generated an unprecedented response in Slovenia. Slovenian identification with Tagore and his people derived from a perceived common goal of striving for political and cultural independence.
“One of Tagore’s aphoristic poems has been carved into a signpost in the mountains above the town of Polhov Gradec. Maribor city has installed a bust of Tagore in a central park,” said Sarvajit Chakravarti, the Indian ambassador to Slovenia, and the brain behind the exhibition.
The Slovenian ministry of education, science and sports hosted the first commemorative concert of Rabindra Sangeet in Ljubljana on Tagore’s birth anniversary May 7 this year. The municipality of Maribor also hosted an exhibition of prints of paintings by the three Tagores.
Following the widespread influence of Indian spiritual ideas in the West, British art teacher Ernest Binfield Havell attempted to reform the teaching methods at the Calcutta School of Art by encouraging students to imitate Mughal miniatures. Havell was supported by Abanindranath Tagore, a nephew of Rabindranath Tagore. Abanindranath painted a number of works influenced by Mughal art, a style that he and Havell believed to be expressive of India’s distinct spiritual qualities, as opposed to the “materialism” of the West.
The mantle of the Bengal school was taken up by Santiniketan, a university focused on the preservation and uplift of Indian culture, values and heritage, which Rabindranath Tagore established. It included the art school Kala Bhavan, founded in 1920—21.

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Work of an Indian master is on exhibit PMA https://indianartnews.visionsarts.com/work-of-an-indian-master-is-on-exhibit-pma/ https://indianartnews.visionsarts.com/work-of-an-indian-master-is-on-exhibit-pma/#comments Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:28:00 +0000 http://indianartnews.info/work-of-an-indian-master-is-on-exhibit-pma/ By Marie Fowler Independence Day is at hand, and next month, India, too, will celebrate throwing off British rule. Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose, on view …

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By Marie Fowler
Independence Day is at hand, and next month, India, too, will celebrate throwing off British rule. Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose, on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through the end of August, is a splendid retrospective of the work of the “Father of Modern Indian Art.”Bose (1882-1966) headed the art school at a university founded by Nobel laureate and poet Rabindranath Tagore, where he participated in Tagore’s mission to revive traditional Indian arts. British cultural standards then in vogue among the elite viewed European realist oil painting as superior to anything produced during India’s own rich
As a young man, Bose was enlisted to copy the fifth century Buddhist murals that had recently been uncovered in Ajanta. The modeling and tones of that art found its way into his work.

Bose was central to India’s drive to independence. He was the only artist enlisted by Mahatma Gandhi because both believed that India’s soul was revealed in her villages and among her common folk. Adamant about using local pigments and materials, Bose treats fisherman with the same dignity and thought as the greatest of the gods. A spirituality underlies his work – whether the subject matter is Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or Christian.

During a Pan-Asian movement, Bose incorporated Japanese painting techniques into his oeuvre.He sketched and painted on everything from postcards to walls. Ethereal, otherworldly watercolors of Siva contrast with simple black-and-white linocuts for a children’s reader. A life-size ink-and-tempera on silk of the great hero Arjuna captivates with its sensuous line. Annapurna and the Slaying of the Buffalo Demon are incredibly intricate, rhythmic works. The Sun Temple at Konarak vibrates in an almost cubist style. Bamboo and lotuses are brushed with all the sensibility of the most accomplished Japanese aesthetic, complete with vermil-lion chop and a Bengali signature rendered vertically like Chinese calligraphy.

Regardless of technique, the sights and sounds and the life rhythms of nature in his beloved India are always at the heart of Bose’s art.

Supratik Bose, the artist’s grandson and Harvard urban planner, arrived for the Philadelphia opening, as Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art Curator Darielle Mason pointed out, “with something under his arm.” In memory of the late Museum Director Anne d’Harnoncourt and her devotion to seeing these Indian national treasures shown in Philadelphia, Bose presented the museum with a sumi-e painting of a cuckoo in banana trees, done by his grandfather in 1959. It was Supratik Bose, with the help of scholars and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (a former student of Bose herself), who had the foresight to place Bose’s work in the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.

The late, legendary PMA Curator Kramrisch, a native of Moravia, also taught at Tagore’s university. Kramrisch, who did so much to shape the museum’s collection into the premier status it enjoys today, spent the first three months of her stay living in Nandalal Bose’s house.

Upstairs, in the museum’s William Wood Gallery, Multiple Modernities, a selection of Indian art from 1905 until 2005, puts Bose’s influence further into context. The museum’s most recent acquisition, a lithograph of Sabari with Her Birds by Atul Dodiya (b. 1959), is directly influenced by Bose’s renderings of the same subject in the current exhibition.

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