K.G. Subramanyan
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'A sketch...record something that happens between the artist and the object. Now closer to the artist, now closer to the object, but still hanging in the tension in between. Or the memory or recall of that tension. A composite of line, scratches, smears, swabs and dots that recreates an object, it learns its rhythm in the process. And becomes an object by itself. The artist sometimes keeps it to the essentials; at other times he dresses it up and makes it ...
The series of five lectures revolves around certain issues relating to modern art, particularly modern Indian art. The attempt is to open up the issues and see them in a broader perspective, hoping that any discussion this may elicit will enlarge our understanding of the modern art situation—such as modernity, eclecticism, nostalgia—which have entered our vocabulary, and which lends themselves to reinterpretation today. Some of the questions addressed are as ...
'The fulfilment of a modern Indian artist's wish to be a part of a living tradition, i.e. to be individual and innovative, without being an outsider in his own culture, will not come of itself, it calls for concerted effort.' K. G. Subramanyan, the eminent Indian artist , offers a theoretical groundwork for that effort in his critical study of modern Indian art as it has evolved through continuous interaction with several traditions, foreign and ...
The eminent artist K. G. Subramanyan offers this wisely satirical reading of democracy gone wrong, and of the princess whose autocratic rule brought nothing but suffering to the people, despite her ambition of progress for the nation: important moral lessons simply and imaginatively told. In the mode of this graphic fables series, which treat important issues tellingly through a combination of fable, allegory and bold imagery, this book is as much a visual treat ...
In this collection of essays, written over the last 25 years, veteran artist K.G. Subramanyan express his concerns with a wide range of issues--art, aesthetics, visual perception and creativity; the importance of craft practice and its nurturing; the role and future of old traditions and cultural institutions in the contemporary world; the detrimental effects of the industrial revolution and high-technology societies; the constant depletion of the environment; ...
This volume is a collection of articles and talks spread over fifteen years. They are mostly, as the title itself suggests, round the focal changes as have taken place, or are still taking place in the art situation of our time and attempt to get it into a kind of perspective in their light. As each of these have been written for a different occasion certain points have been made over and over, though in the editing an effort has been made to avoid very obvious ...
When three of the four pieces by Benodebehari Mukherjee (1904-1980) that go into his book Chitrakar first appeared in a well-known Bengali literary journal, they took the reading public by storm. Everyone wanted to see them published together as a book. And when such a book did appear it was sold out in no time. Expressing his philosophy and approach to art and the work of the artist, it was praised by both critic and layman. It also received two important ...
Written between the early sixties and the mid-seventies, these collected articles and lectures reflect on some of the major concerns of the practising artist and scholar of modern Indian art: tradition and modernism, the question of the image, the use of art criticism. There are also essays on the work of Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Binodebehari Mukherjee, Ramkinker Baij and Amrita Sher-Gil. Together, they deal with the focal changes taking place ...
'I lie and lay my head upon the grass and unwind the body hardened stiff like glass. But the tiny blades tickle the lower ear making me ask myself, why do I bear this crass impertinence and sink my head still further down its bed of prickly green?'. So asks the poet, his ears pressed against the earth as he maps the world around him in a new geography of sound. Places-photographs-books-neighbours-afternoons-love-loss-and-longing are sketched into word-pictures by ...