lust for life

lust for life

a day in life of varanasi

the agony & the ecstacy

Anant is an old friend. Ashok Swaroop had introduced Anant to me. Those days he was teaching print making to BFA students in Allahabad University. J. Swaminathan was a common thread between us. I’m a fan of Swaminathan’s palette, flying rocks & MiG like bird in his canvas and the subject of Anant’s research was Swaminathan’s paintings.

Pass out of Khairagarh University, Anant is of a genre of artists who believe in not only practicing but living art. This is why he is still a wanderer. One may try to get him in some studio at Ahmedabad but by that time he may be working in studio at Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal or in the fields at his native village where he may be drawing in sketch book or sculpting a piece of wood. I really appreciate his spirit.    

He had gifted me a painting of sky full of colorful kites, when I was leaving Allahabad. Next, he visited me at Aligarh. This time he did six small paintings during his stay and left it in an envelope without a word about it.

He is in Chandigarh these days with two of his prints & works of 18 other fellow artists for an exhibition `the agony and the ecstasy’ mounted in the government museum and art gallery. All the participants are from his university and majority of them settled as practitioners or teachers. They have spent a good sum on catalogues and decent invitation cards. Chandigarh is 4^th destination of this exhibition & they still hope to get a buyer for their beautiful works.

Recession is a common thread of discussion. Even artists are scared of it. This is how art correlates itself with the market-ART MARKET. After all you need money to buy canvas, colors and brush. You need money to get them framed, to mount them on gallery walls and to buy a ticket to travel with big boxes. Meanwhile he got a call from his friend to do a painting of 5x5 feet. Size is decided by the buyer & thank god decision of subject still lies with him. 

There seems no scope of old theory of art for the sake of art. For many it has become art for the sake of survival. 

the agony & the ecstasy

Anant is an old friend. Ashok Swaroop had introduced Anant to me. Those days he was teaching print making to BFA students in Allahabad University. J. Swaminathan was a common thread between us. I’m a fan of Swaminathan’s palette, flying rocks & MiG like bird in his canvas and the subject of Anant’s research was Swaminathan’s paintings.

Pass out of Khairagarh University, Anant is of a genre of artists who believe in not only practicing but living art. This is why he is still a wanderer. One may try to get him in some studio at Ahmedabad but by that time he may be working in studio at Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal or in the fields at his native village where he may be drawing in sketch book or sculpting a piece of wood. I really appreciate his spirit.    

He had gifted me a painting of sky full of colorful kites, when I was leaving Allahabad. Next, he visited me at Aligarh. This time he did six small paintings during his stay and left it in an envelope without a word about it.

He is in Chandigarh these days with two of his prints & works of 18 other fellow artists for an exhibition `the agony and the ecstasy’ mounted in the government museum and art gallery. All the participants are from his university and majority of them settled as practitioners or teachers. They have spent a good sum on catalogues and decent invitation cards. Chandigarh is 4^th destination of this exhibition & they still hope to get a buyer for their beautiful works. 

Recession is a common thread of discussion. Even artists are scared of it. This is how art correlates itself with the market-ART MARKET. After all you need money to buy canvas, colors and brush. You need money to get them framed, to mount them on gallery walls and to buy a ticket to travel with big boxes. Meanwhile he got a call from his friend to do a painting of 5x5 feet. Size is decided by the buyer & thank god decision of subject still lies with him. 

 There seems no scope of old theory of art for the sake of art. For many it has become art for the sake of survival.

fresh colors on city canvas

city beautiful, as they proudly call the city of chandigarh, has fresh coats of colors these days. red, yellow, violet, magenta, green-you name a color & it is in the palette of nature for this city. all these are in contrast with yellow-brown leaves being blown away by winds but the wind blows flowers too. it carries a mild sweet fragrance of flowers-may be of mango, may be something else but it is too good to resist (even then one can't behave like young ladies in axe promos).

 it was the jan marg which first caught my senses for the first time in last march when i use to drive from ut guest house to my office in sector 25. what a contrast of colors- burning colors of bougenvillea on road dividers & trees with deep brown or pastel green leaves & blowing yellow or violet flowers. this was lasting impression and this is what i narrated to stephane when i asked him to visit chandigarh in last week of february. leisure valley is all same.

   

who is immortal

The top image is of a clown in Kiev, who is wearing a mask of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, entertaining people on Independence Square on April Fools Day.  
In the night of 31st Mar, a blast hit the towering statue of Lenin in the square outside Finland Station in St. Petersburg. This bronze statue, portraying Lenin with his arm raised, commemorates a speech he gave outside the station when he returned to Russia from exile in April 1917, a few months before the Bolshevik Revolution. This is one of the last Soviet-era monuments in Russia's former imperial capital.

Looking at these AFP images, I recalled the image of Stalin's statue wearing red blindfold & sitting in a Moscow Park. The images of Saddam's toppling statue flashes & fades. 

These were the luminaries praised by their people but today people can't live even with their statues around.  If it is so then why our people desire for their statues, probably for immortality. But how lasting it is, in the form of a statue-it's yet to be decided.