Search results for: 'spiritual medium'

The exhibition Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations and Experiments in Twentieth Century Indian Art is a pioneering attempt to gather together works of sixteen prominent Indian artists under the single thematic rubric of the transient but least definable phases of contemporary art in the last century. The exhibition features the artworks, inspirations, and experiments, of artists that had a sustained relationship with tantra philosophy, its vivid, abstract, sacred symbols, or their personal spiritual illuminations. Biren De G. R. Santosh Gogi Saroj Pal J. Swaminathan Jyoti Bhatt K. C. S. Paniker Manu Parekh P. T. Reddy Prabhakar Barwe R. B. Bhaskaran S. H. Raza Satish Gujral Shobha Broota Sohan Qadri Sunil Das V. Viswanadhan

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The art of the twentieth century may be too recent for us to judge it from the viewpoint of longevity, but if the past is any criterion, art is set to outlive us by far—a reason why its documentation is one of the more important tasks before us. This is where the Manifestations series is so important. It encourages discussion and debates around the selection of unique works by seventy-five acknowledged artists spanning a century (or more) of Indian modernism across a range of variously permutable combinations: periods, movements, mediums, materials, regions.  Raiba Ambadas Arpana Caur Arun Bose Asit Kumar Haldar Avinash Chandra Bal Chhabda Bikash Bhattacharjee Bimal Dasgupta Biren De Bireswar Sen C. Douglas Chittaprosad Devayani Krishna Dhanraj Bhagat Dharamnarayan Dasgupta Early Bengal (Anonymous) F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Pyne Gogi Saroj Pal Himmat Shah Indra Dugar J. C. Seal J. Sultan Ali J. Swaminathan Gaganendranath Tagore Raja Ravi Varma Jamini Roy Jeram Patel Jyoti Bhatt K. Adimoolam K. C. S. Paniker K. G. Subramanyan K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud K. S. Radhakrishnan Kalighat Pat (Anonymous) Khagen Roy Krishen Khanna L. Munuswamy Laxman Pai Laxman Shrestha M. F. Husain M. Senathipathi M. V. Dhurandhar N. S. Bendre Nandalal Bose Navjot Nemai Ghosh Nikhil Biswas P. Khemraj P. T. Reddy Paritosh Sen Partha Pratim Deb Prokash Karmakar Prosanto Roy Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Radha Charan Bagchi Ram Kumar Ranbir S. Kaleka Robert Ker Porter S. H. Raza Sakti Burman Satish Gujral Shanti Dave Shyamal Dutta Ray Gopal Ghose Sohan Qadri Sunil Das Sunil Madhav Sen Thota Vaikuntam Ved Nayar

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Indian modernism is rich in diversity with a dizzying succession of artists who have each carved a niche for themselves in the rich firmament of art practice in the country. Open to influences from the West, reaching deep into the roots of their own culture, exploring and experimenting across mediums, absorbing ideas, reinterpreting established norms, Indian art defies any easily tailored silos to carve for itself a confident assertion of its own identity within a global context, while being a part of its larger assimilative journey.

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The fifth edition in the Manifestations series continues the tradition of showcasing the very best of Indian modern art. Seventy-five artists feature in Manifestations 5, bringing together the country’s best known and most established modern artists. To reduce the work of one whole century (give or take a few decades more or less) could be flawed, for this most dynamic period in Indian art history covers many genres, styles, mediums, and influences, and is difficult to paraphrase, especially in the absence of a theme for the collection. It is for this reason that the selection has to be incisive, open to change till the very end, where the addition, or deletion, can change the contextual bird’s eye-view we hope to provide in every series. The exhibition is accompanied by our traditional publication that helps to create a comprehensive understanding about the exhibition’s curatorial decisions. A. H. Muller Altaf Ambadas Amit Ambalal Amitava Arpita Singh Avinash Chandra Badri Narayan Bhupen Khakhar Bikash Bhattacharjee Bimal Dasgupta Biren De Bireswar Sen C. Douglas Chintamani Kar Chittaprosad D. P. Roy Chowdhury Dhanraj Bhagat Dharamnarayan Dasgupta F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Haloi Ganesh Pyne Gogi Saroj Pal Gopal Ghose Himmat Shah Indra Dugar J. C. Seal J. Sultan Ali J. Swaminathan Jamini Roy Jeram Patel Jogen Chowdhury Jyoti Bhatt K. C. S. Panicker K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud K. S. Kulkarni Krishen Khanna Kshitindranath Majumdar L. Munuswamy Lalu Prasad Shaw Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. V. Dhurandhar Nandalal Bose Navjot Nikhil Biswas P. Khemraj Paritosh Sen Partha Pratim Deb Prabhakar Barwe Prodosh Das Gupta Prokash Karmakar Prosanto Roy Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Rameshwar Broota Ramkinkar Baij Rekha Rodwittiya S. H. Raza S. L. Haldankar Satish Gujral Shobha Broota Sohan Qadri Sunil Das Sunil Madhav Sen Surendran Nair V. S. Gaitonde Vasudha Thozhur Ved Nayar Viswanadhan Vivan Sundaram Zarina Hashmi

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Curator Jesal Thacker and art writer Meera Menezes speak about Shanti Dave’s art practice and choice of medium that allowed several elements to come together in his encaustic paintings and layered watercolours.

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Art Lab by DAG’s Museums Programme is a pop-up art exhibition of facsimiles of works from the DAG Museum Collection that travels to schools and introduces students to modes of visual learning. After two successful iterations in CBSE and ICSE schools in Kolkata, Art Lab travelled to its first Bengali medium West Bengal Board school—Barisha Janakalyan Vidyapith for Girls. Through three days of workshops spread across two weeks, the students interacted with the artworks, learnt the basics of research, delved into historical material, and developed their own creative projects. Take a peek at some of the wonderful projects they curated as they took over the exhibition and made it their own.

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India’s foremost printmaker, Anupam Sud is perhaps also the country’s most well-known. What has tethered her to the democratic medium of printmaking—against all odds, needless to say—is a reason worth discovering in this short video in which the artist muses over her motivations and practice. Learn More

The Devi or the female power in Hindu mythology appears in various avatars in our everyday lives—as idols during the puja, on covers of magazines, product labels, calendars and posters. The modern history of visualising the Devi goes back to naturalistic depictions in oil paintings by the Early Bengal artists, which were surpassed in popularity and fame by Raja Ravi Varma and his studio. His representation, however, was regarded as too human-like by artists of the Bengal School in the early twentieth century, who created idealised forms based on a synthesis of classical visual traditions. In the twentieth century, we find artists responding to distinctive traits of the goddess to portray specific aspects of her power, or to convey the artist's own relationship with divinity. Few artists who have turned to Hindu myths have been able to escape the temptation to interpret the female power in their own way, and the diversity in style, medium, and mood is a testament to that.

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A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography, a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer A. A. Raiba Abalall Rahiman Abanindranath Tagore Akbar Padamsee Alagiri Naidu Alphonso Doss Ambika Dhurandhar Anjolie Ela Menon Anonymous (Bengal Lithographs) Anonymous (Ladies and Gentlemen) Anonymous (Painted Photographs) Anonymous (Parsi Eminences) 90 Anonymous (Raja Ravi Varma School) Anonymous (Royal Personages) Anonymous (Spiritual) Anonymous (Studio Photographs) Ardeshir Duishajee Tavaria Asit Kumar Haldar B. Paul Baburao Sadwelkar Badri Narayan Benjamin Hudson Bhunath Mukherjee Bhupen Khakhar Bikash Bhattacharjee Bipin Behari Goswami Biswanath Mukerji C. N. Kistnasawmy Naidu Cecil Burns Chintamoni Kar Chittaprosad D. L. N. Reddy D. P. Roy Chowdhury Devyani Krishna F. N. Souza Fatima Ahmed Frank Brooks G. Kamble G. N. Jadhav G. R. Santosh Gaganendranath Tagore George Keyt Gobardhan Ash Gogi Saroj Pal Gopal Deuskar Gopal Ghose Gopal Sanyal H. Hormusji Deboo Himmat Shah Hiranmoy Roychaudhuri J. A. Lalkaka J. Barton J. D. Dalvi J. D. Gondhalekar J. P. Gonsalves J. P. Gangooly J. Sultan Ali Jacob Epstein Jai Zharotia Jamini Roy Jogen Chowdhury Jyoti Bhatt K. C. Pyne K. K. Hebbar K. Lall K. Laxma Goud K. S. Kulkarni Kanwal Krishna Keshavrao Sadashiv Kisory Roy Koulji Ardeshir Tachakra Krishen Khanna L. M. Sen L. Munuswamy L. N. Taskar L. P. Shaw Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. F. Pithawalla M. K. Parandekar M. R. Acharekar M. V. Dhurandhar Mukul Dey Muni Singh N. R. Sardesai Nemai Ghosh Nirode Majumdar Olinto Ghilardi P. T. Reddy Paritosh Sen Partha Pratim Deb Pestonji E. Bomanji Pradip Maitra Prahlad Karmakar Prokash Karmakar R. D. Panvalkar R. S. Bisht Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Raja Ravi Varma Rama Lal Ramendranath Chakravorty S. A. Meerza S. Dhanapal S. G. Thakar Singh S. L. Haldankar Sankho Choudhuri Satish Sinha Savi Savarkar Shanti Dave Sudhir Khastgir Suhas Roy Sunil Das Sunil Kumar Paul Sunil Madhav Sen Sunqua Surendran Nair Sushil Chandra Sen Tarak Garai V. A. Mali V. B. Pathare V. M. Oke V. Nageshkar Ved Nayar Vivan Sundaram Wasim Kapoor

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This is the first-ever retrospective of the Indian modern artist Avinash Chandra who lived most of his life in the West, in London and New York. The artist, who had trained in New Delhi, left soon after for London, and most of his practice was limited to London and New York, the two cities he called his home till his unfortunately early death in 1991. In the roughly three-and-a-half decades of his career, Avinash’s work changed amazingly, reflecting his environment and milieu as he grew and adapted to cities vastly different from their Indian counterparts, with their own sub-cultures. That this happily coincided with a discovery of India, however superfluously, as a land of spirituality and sexuality, seemed to serve him well as his muse.

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Sohan Qadri was born in a wealthy farming family in Punjab’s Chachoki village on 2 November 1932. When he was seven, he came across two spiritualists living on the family farm—Bikham Giri, a Bengali Tantric-Vajrayan Yogi, and Ahmed Ali Shah Qadri, a Sufi. Both gurus had a tremendous impact on young Qadri and taught him spiritual ideals through meditation, dance, and music. His association with them heralded a lifelong commitment to spirituality and art. Learn More

A participatory reading and activity session with researcher Shreya Mukherjee to explore analogue photography of the 19th and early 20th century and the revival or adaptation of the medium in contemporary art.

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