Human Oriented Content

All the cosmic wonders, “the beauty of the Divine awe”, the ultimate images of space, have been made accessible by NASA. But, still why man is disparate to find life else where also even in the tiniest of planet?
Media/tourism has made it possible to enjoy the depths of the oceans and the heights of the mountains, and the beauty of Pyramids to Taj-Mahal. Do we enjoy these without our being human-self?
Today the connoisseur is aptly able to enjoy the works of Lascaux and biennales and triennials simultaneously, as those of Chaplin and Avatar. Music of the medieaval choirs and the Emmys are equally the part of the listening rapture. Do we not try to find a human-content there in order to get related?
From the literature of the Ancients to that of the latest Pulitzer winners are enjoyed only because we find our lives attuned to them.
Why I always enjoy the “child-innocence” along with the wonder of the
beautiful butterfly?
So on and so forth.
Today the creative sole is striving to put that human-content in a language that reaches the zeitgeist, not only in creating the wonder and “newness” of wording.

Reflection on Stephen Hawking’s Latest Book

In this blog I feel like musing over the latest standing by Stephen Hawking about “Why God Did Not Create the Universe” (The Grand Design, excerpt published in The Wall Street Journal, Sept.4 5. 2010), contrasting it with the human creations in Humanities. The first speaks of the standing of Science, and the latter is represented by four modern paintings—self-portraits, to verify the human nature and efforts to face the predicament. This desire to show case these works also sprang up watching the highest prices paid for such works at Christe’s and Sotheby’s recent art sales. Doesn’t that mean that human aesthetic-psyche has started introspection on facing the no-returning endings reached by human doings?

Hawking’s standing on universe being nothing more than ‘physical theories and laws’ sounds like Abstract Constructivists’ approach to creation of art, which modern critics categorize as “default painting.” But, what about that almost
all the great artists, from Vinci, Michelangelo and Rembrandt to Van Gogh, Picasso and Warhol, have painted human predicament through their own self-portraits,
expressing introspection on the human nature betiding woes of inevitable old age?

Of these four such works, the first I take is Van Gogh’s “Self Portrait with Banded Ear.’ The volumes are expressed through guilt fully saddened and penetrating gaze becoming aware of artistic and masterful handling of the medium and the canvas to create a masterpiece of art—expressing the human nature to face the catastrophe befallen.

This work was Picasso’s one of the darlings. ‘Musketeer with a Pipe’ is a work in which Picasso has put culmination of artistic oeuvre using styles as his painterly expressions. And, the mask and virile bravura of musketeer became the hide for his diminishing physicality to fulfill sensual desires.

The third masterpiece is Edward Munch’s ‘Between Clock and Bed.’ Munch with his expressionistic brushing and spontaneity speaks of entering from light of youth into the shade of old age ‘naturally’ accepting the predicament. In this shade the harsh strokes of the bed cover and bigger-than-himself size of the clock delineate the
woes of old age.

The fourth and the last one is the ‘Self Portrait’ done in 1986 by Warhole. This portrait powerfully expresses the current human psyche ‘lost’ in the want of a faith in human Endeavour.

and the link to.. Jain Miniatures

A universal motif behind Matisse’s works and the Jain miniatures is the Creeper Motif. Matisse decoded it with his space and graphic solutions to combine the different planes with rhythmic linearity. Jain miniaturists wove the planes with grid and rhythms of arabesque linearity.

In classical Greek architectural orders the harmony was achieved with a thorough decoding of the creeper motif, The Doric harmony is achieved through the sheer proportion of pure shapes and convolute-shape solutions. In Ionic, different geometric shapes are united with volutes and scrolls. And, in Corinthian order, the geometry is harmonized with acanthus leaves and scrolls.

In India, Ajanta’s every element is harmonized with the creeper motif. Be it the projections and recessions of planes or dvipakshiya-tribhung (two aspectual tri-fold, taking care of tri-fold in roundness and frontal plane), whole of Ajanta speak of coding and decoding of creeper motif.

Thus it becomes evident that the seriousness of the quest in artistic intent decodes the universal creeper motif.

An Analysis of Jain Paintings

Jain Painting

Talking of honing conventions and artistic intentions, the struggle of Gujarat’s Jain manuscript painters of the early fifteenth century comes to my mind. Their struggle equates to the struggle of Matisse for combining cubistic space with his discovered flat tectonic levels of flat colors.

An example is a page from ‘Kalakacarya Katha’ painted around the second decade of the fifteenth century. The story is about the abduction and avenging of the sister of saint Kalaka by the King of Ujjain. A sahi (scythian) King avenges and is being sermon by the saint in this page. The narrative is depicted in rectangles and horizontals. The rectangle occupied by the saint and the royal personage has a very similar artistic intention with that of Matisse. The background is crimson and the napels-yellow face of saint is in profile with the second eye projecting in the background. The bluish-pink face of the royal personage is presented in a three-forth view with full mouth and in the split representational concept. This face would have been projected much more forward than the face of the saint had it been made lighter. Since the total figure of the saint is projected much more forward, but for the overlapping figure of royal personage which,above all these layers locking, has the design over the garment which pushes back the brightness of the accouterment. The three fourths face with its projecting forth frontality is subdued by the tone and color of the body. In the left, the dominance of projection of the royal seat with the Sahi king is on the left, subdued by the breaking of the surface with the patterns and designs. Thus, the figure of the Kalakacarya becomes monumental and center of interest. Now the verticals and horizontal lines become the cardinals to give relevance to the proper surface in relation with the figure of Kalakacarya. The flat red background grips the sharp projection of the figure of Kalakacarya and secures it to the coordinates. It preserves the narrative grid.

This is how the Gujarati Jain Miniature painters play “Matisse-que” knitting of levels and facets.

‘D’Avingnon’ and Film

Picasso's Cubism

My musings over:
Cubism as Film Adaption – Anne S. Lewis, Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2010. A slide show is given in the online version.

“Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies”. a film recently opened in New York is directed by Arne Glimcher. It explores the influence of early film on the Cubism of Picasso and Baroque. The film explains the relationships between the simultaneous angles edited in films and the fragmented forms and multifaceted perspectives of cubism. To the plausible evidence, the musings of a former curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Bernice Rose, are quoted finding relationship between the ‘Serpentine Dance’ transformed by a complex manipulation of light and color (a spectacle of billowing clothes, at the Universal Exposition,1900, Paris) and curtains in “D’Avingnon” (1907) of Picasso. Anne S. Lewis, the writer of this article quotes that it was the influence in the sense of “permissions given—old restrictions removed.”

It was Braque who around 1912-1913, systematically explored the principles of inverse perspective, disorientation and fragmentation, and split representation learnt through exposure to primitive art, and the art of Ancients. Cézanne’s experiments were the motivational force. On the
other hand, Picasso’s ‘D Avingnon’, is at once an intrusion upon and revealing of the sensuality of young flash with the use of styles, symbols and stage-drama.

Picasso’s classical cubism speaks the artistic intent and struggle to keep the flatness of the surface with coordinates. It was more clearly the Italian Futurists (around 1910) efforts to use the filmstrips imagery of stroboscopic images of motion, and strive to keep the flat surface. But, still the use of time factor in film to unveil the various facets seems to be beyond these flat canvases—although the gradual emphasis could create a rhythm of time. Secondly, in film the transitions used to relate the fragments is unthinkable without involving time factor—a limitation of the canvas. For that reason, in Indian Art treatises ‘painting’ is considered ‘ardha chitra’—partial painting in contrast to sculpture, ‘chitra’. Striving to create a ‘full-faceted imagery,’ Picasso tried cubistic sculptures, but without capturing the time factor.

An open minded study of Ancient and Primitive art could open the way. South Indian bronze sculptures (i.e. Shiva Cosmic Dance) are the examples of a further dimension where the ‘fertile moment’ denotes past and future movement in time through the ‘projections and recessions’ of the limbs.

Critique of Bathers by the River

Matisse: Radical Inventions, 1913 – 17.
Exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago

This writing is about the artistic intensions, propositions, and the results or solutions achieved by Matisse during the said period. Summation of these inventions are best presented in the painting titled ‘Bathers by River,” a 12 feet wide 1916 canvas.

Bathers by the River

Matisse’s artistic intensions in this canvas seems to achieve an integration of:

His hitherto discovered pictorial space consisting of projections and recessions of the flat surfaces, especially through colors.

His love for the arabesque of free yet knitted rhythms on the flat surface.

Cubists’ representation of dimensions integrated with the flat surface by means of split representation and disorientation of planes, the lessons learned from African Primitive art.

In fact, he was striving to achieve a visual diction through integrating styles of expressions (as words), what he termed as ‘methods of modern constructions,’ a clue which was fully exploited by Picasso in paintings around “Guernica.”

Coming to the canvas, Matisse divided it in vertical bands with the stark braking of the canvas in two halves with central line. This stark division is melted down with a rhythm of subtle proportions of bands, controlled tensions of tones and colors, and, arabesque of foliage lines that is covering the frontal plane. The black right band controls the recession of the viridian colored left band. The mysterious hook like shape hooks the right halve with the left one. The head of the hook, which is a repetition of the foliage shape, is read as ’snake’ too, giving the canvas an archaic aroma. The four figures presented in canvas in a rhythm across, are modulated on cubistic aesthetics. More than half of the canvas has Matisse-gray with the streaks of light pink creates a languorous mood of the lonely riverbank and the eerie- sensuality of the nude figures.

Anish Kapoor vies with Zaha Hadid at the Maxxi

Maxxi, Rome’s new National Museum of 21st Century Art is due opening on Friday, May 20th, 2010.
It is a building designed by today’s most sought-after architect/designer, Zaha Hadid who creates ‘architecture as landscape.’
The Maxxi building looks like a functional machine to be inhabited by humans. Whereas, the museum plaza has structures
lived by humans, and ‘grew on its users.’There in are to be exhibited some of the representative 21st century space artists.
Our Anish Kapoor is represented with his 2004 sculpture, Widow, a 49 feet long tube that is suspended in the air and is
culminating in a wide spout ‘shaped like a gramophone.’
Three reactions come to my mind seeing Kapoor’s sculpture:
• that it is functionless well wrought artifact trying to vie with the architecture.
• It is an exaggerated exhibitionism of Surrealists’ ‘found object,’ a cold
passive statement.
• its ambiguity generates responses according to the onlooker’s ideas, so,
the ‘presence’ and ‘ambiguity’ create forced responses.
Ruminating on all this, the current disaster of oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico comes to my mind seeing the area of the spill
through the air photos. The whole patch of oil looks like an artifact created by Nature creating awe of the sublime, as Kant would have put it.

Explore it here.

Musings on the initial set

This set represents a visual idiom of spontaneous and emotive responses to two basic natural riches of Rajasthan, India—the mountainous terrain of Aravali, and the sandy dunes of Thar desert. A feeling of ragged edges merging into crystal reflections of lakes dotted with palaces and aged townships, that is the Aravalis. The Thar arouse a feeling of soft pastels accented with stark shadows contoured with dilapidated mural-embedded-havelis and splotched with neem and khejari trees.

Creative inspiration emerges in finding a harmony in these contrasts brought by rhythm and fragrance of extreme weather, soprano of folk songs with beats of dhols, nagaras and ensemble of ambaaaas of rambling cows and knaoooos of shrilling peacocks. Representing the above are two places Udaipur– the city of lakes, and village Churi Ajitgarh in the heart of Shekhawati. Om lived and experienced both creating emotive reflections for over thirty years. With spontaneous execution in one setting, these works flow with creative energy of the ‘inner light’. Though surface filling starts at one corner and finishes at the other, the pictorial surface expands beyond with ‘continuous creativity’. The medium of soft oil pastels and gouache potentially help in creating this flow. The paper surface reaffirms the mood of writing pages after pages.

The first rainfall of the season…

Rainfall in the Desert

The field and the cloud are lovers
And between them I am a messenger of mercy.
I quench the thirst of one;
I cure the ailment of the other.

I emerge from the heart of the sea
Soar with the breeze. When I see a field in
Need, I descend and embrace the flowers and
The trees in a million little ways.

–Khalil Gibran, from the Song of the Rain (1883-1931)

The first rains of the Indian monsoon are magnificent, even operatic events. As clouds begin to gather, people’s spirits also soar in anticipation; of welcome relief from the heat and dry season. Then the rain bursts. Skies light up as the clouds shed their burden. The sun-baked earth celebrates meeting the first monsoon drops by emitting a heady aroma. Smiles light up the faces of farmers who awaited rain, ready to begin the new growing season. As the rain embraces the earth, a new season of hope and renewal begins. The desert comes alive with the first monsoon in the season. With the showers, shoots will burst forth in the desert and soon flowers will bloom.

Om draws upon his emotions and imagination to record this heady celebration in a vivid and wonderful oil pastel creation. It is not merely the rain and its immediate impact that we can observe in this painting. The artist compels us to see the earth coming alive with the first monsoon. In this sense, the painting brings to life the glorious experience of the first monsoon and the new growing season in one frame – as if he has superimposed a series of time lapse photos to provide a vivid and exuberant picture of what happens to the desert once the first monsoons arrive.

To provide a scale to nature’s drama, and to add a human touch to this celebration of nature, a woman stands to a side, covering her head with a veil to shelter from the rain and the wind. Om compares the first rains of the season to the veil of a new bride – full of expectation, a gateway to realizing dreams and releasing new energy. They both make way to renewal and rejuvenation of life and its limitless possibilities.
This vibrant Giclee print (24″ X 30″) of an oil pastel creation is sure to add positive energy and light to any room it will adorn.

A peacock’s mating dance..

Dance of the Peacock

“My heart, like a peacock on a rainy
day, spreads its plumes tinged with
rapturous colours of thoughts,
and its ecstasy seeks some
vision in the sky,–with a
longing for one whom it
does not know.
My heart dances.

The clouds rumble from sky
to sky–the shower seeps
horizons, the doves shiver
in silence in their nests,
the frogs croak in the
flooded fields–and the
clouds rumble.”

–Rabindranath Tagore, (1861-1941)

The peacock dance by Om evokes the image of a strutting male peacock in its prime, showing off his proud plumes to its mate. Anyone who has seen a peacock dance can instantly read the poet’s meaning distilled in words and the artist’s emotions frozen in time as strokes of color on the canvas. Those flashes of the peacock “eyes” that shimmer, shine and wink in the morning sun or even in the gloom through sheets of rain are unforgettable. No one can ignore a peacock dance, even though some pea hens seem to, they too eventually capitulate to the glorious display, danced effortlessly to how nature dictates. And then, life is renewed for yet another generation.

Even if one has not seen a peacock dance, its rhythmic motions full of desire, radiating life energy and flashes of color that it employs to entice a mate can be easily imagined by the beholder of this painting.

Om, an artist hailing from Rajasthan, brings to the palette not just his observations and artistic skill. He is also an educator who has researched into the role played by the creator in art through an in-depth study of artistic motivation and uniqueness of creativity in the development of artistic talent.

Thus, beyond contemplating the visual image of the peacock in its natural environs, and what the artist tries to convey through his vibrantly executed pastel strokes, we are given the option to explore further. How did each stroke come into being? What did Om see that we did not see, while growing up as a Rajasthani child in the early 20th century. As with most of his paintings, the far away Indian childhood and youth of the artist still inspires and illuminates his creations.

With its dynamic and colorful depiction of the joyousness of being alive right here and now, Peacock Dance, in oil pastel by Om would be an inspiring addition to any connoisseur’s collection.