Tag: Art

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.

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…

One of Samir Chanda’s last projects in Hindi before his untimely death was Delhi 6, 2009. He is just not the most well-known art turned production designer in Bollywood but is on the wishlist of Bollywood’s biggest makers. He is on first-name basis with Shyam Benegal, Mani Rathnam and most in between. There is hardly a filmmaker he has not worked with and not one Indian award that he has not won. He is a Calcutta boy, who passed from…

A review of the exhibition This is Unreal by RAQS Media Collective, Susanta Mandal and Yamini Nair at Experimenter, Calcutta  Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective was formed in 1992 by media practitioners Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. In their own declaration, their work engages with urban spaces and global circuits in their enquiry into the ways in which meaning is made. At their ongoing exhibition at Experimenter in Kolkata, Raqs has teamed up with Susanta Mandal and Yamini Nair…

Once the Bengali bands made a splash with new albums and signature shows but now it’s all whispers with no new bands making any impact. Is this about the short shelf life endemic to bands globally or have Bangla bands lost their way? Mohiner Ghoraguli was the Frantz Kafka of Bengali rock scene — avant-garde and discovered to high critical acclaim only much after its death in 1981. Kafka’s literary executor Max Brod brought Kafka to the world. In case…

Lion in the making. Kumortuli, Calcutta. Autumn of 2009. Photo by author. Kumortuli’s fame is in its transience. Like the Spring Flower, it bursts into activity, fame and business for no more than three months in a year. Only that it does so during autumn and not spring. But in that short span, it enjoys a lot of attention. Or so has been the case for the last two centuries or so. So much so that over the years, Kumortuli…

Nemai Ghosh has been capturing well-known Indian artists at work for years now. But his favourite time was spent with Satyajit Ray, he tells Sayandeb Chowdhury It was in late 1967 or early 1968. Nemai Ghosh was deeply involved in theatre. He was also an observer of endless card playing sessions at his south Kolkata apartment. Ghosh was not a photographer by any stretch of imagination. Then one day, purely by chance, he acquired a fixed-lens QL 17 Canonette. And…

Henry Fuseli, Titania Caresses Bottom with the Donkey’s Head, 1793-94, oil on canvas.  Kunsthaus, Zurich. On a trip to Switzerland, organized by Pro Helvetia, Sayandeb Chowdhury finds that the Alpine country is not just about clocks, wine and chocolate. But also art, music, dance, theatre and cinema. And finds them anything but neutral. Renzo Piano is not a musician. But he plays music in glass and steel, brick and mortar. As I stood in front of the Zentrum Paul Klee,…

Photo by Karim Ben Van on Unsplash Switzerland, for Indians, is a vintage picture postcard–the splendour of the Swiss Alps lording over designer villages with pretty houses that stand in sunny glory watching glass-topped trains passing by in silent admiration. So when most Indians visit this small central west European country they are invariably reminded of Yash Chopra couples in shawls and striped sweaters drooling at each other and at nature beyond. But there is more to this…

He won the Sahitya Akademi award way back in 1991 and is the author of novels such as Hero, The Brainfever Bird, Trotternama, which won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, and The Everest Hotel, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Irwin Allan Sealy speaks to Sayandeb Chowdhury about his latest novel, Red, which was launched in Mumbai last week.   You once wanted to be a painter. And finally, there is a book about Matisse.  Oh yes. I wanted to be very early in my life. But I…