Category: Culture

Two of Tagore’s numerous endorsements. Rabindranath was not just pen and ink, but as Sayandeb Chowdhury finds out from a set of new exhibitions, a regular endorser of indigenous enterprise and a great believer in the potential of the moving images One problem with the traditional appraisal of Rabindranath Tagore, in which the Bengali community, the chief benefactor of the great man’s infinite genius, has usually regaled, is that such a disposition obliterates larger spheres of reception and cognition. Tagore,…

Students surround writer Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941) at his university, Visva Bharati, in Santineketan, West Bengal, India, 1929. Photo by E. O. Hoppe/Getty Images (Under copyright). Munich born Emil Otto Hoppé (1978-1972), German photo-portraitist, had by the second decade of the last century established himself as a photographer of repute. Having learnt painting under Hans von Bartels, Hoppé travelled to Paris and Vienna in the last years of the 19th century before he settled as a banker in London.

One recurring motif of European high art in the twentieth century is to see that it is never ‘too high’. The pulls at the core identity of European modernity came from a variety of sources – the Word Wars, Marxism-Leninism and its various mutations in Stalinism-Communism, the rise of America, the passing away of an old European power elite in the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire inside Europe and the decimation of the British Empire outside, the breakdown of a…

Poster of the long-running play While watching Hamlet, the Clown Prince at GD Birla Sabhaghar, a member of the audience was going to pick up a call on his mobile. His seat was far into the auditorium, away from the stage and he must have thought that a quick word on his mobile would not harm the proceedings! But to his complete dismay, someone in the dark rushed forward and pleaded with him to please forgo the call. The man found that…

Abhimanyu by Ganesh Pyne. Mahabharata is not just full of both heroic as well as cowardly narratives but also possibilities. Incidences. Psychologies. Archetypes. Totems. Guilt. And of course tragedy. And for an artist, poet, author, the beauty of Mahabharata lies in its complexity, in its secret histories, it’s annals of beginnings and ends, of trials and dénouement, and an incessant preoccupation with death.  Ganesh Pyne — perhaps the last of the earlier generation of greats from this part of the globe who is…

Sayandeb Chowdhury spends a day with maestro Nikita Koshkin. Calcutta, in more agreeable times, hosted global superstars and their work with abandon and discerning deliverance. From Marlon Brando to Loise Malle, from Marcel Marceau to Pete Seeger, from Pele to Maradona, from Che Guevara to Fidel Castro, this city has been the unlikely host of some the planet’s biggest names in arts, politics and sports. The city’s legendary enthusiasm, more than made up for its lack of cosmopolitan niceties.  But…

Debshankar Halder in and as Oedipus Even in the dedicated community that makes up Bengali group theatre, he stands out. The director of his latest play calls him a miniature wonder. He is the only actor in recent memory who has had a festival dedicated to him. He is also perhaps the only actor whose name alone draws audiences to the theatre in a culture whose appeal historically has been the group, the play or the director. Currently, he is…

Story Tellers’ 221B Baker Street, which debuted at the recent Airtel Lifestage Theatre fest is as much an engaging bit of slice-of-life play as it is a constant literary excavation.  The play is set in the house of noted economist Ankan Mitra, who has returned to Calcutta after a prolonged stint abroad to teach at a university. A pedantic, scholar and a proud man to boot, Mitra is as easily admired and admirable as he is easy to be disliked and…