Authors Archive - Page 11 of 18

Essay

Many Tints of Red: Colour, Aesthetics, Bengali Cinema

In Kanchenjunga, moreover, the landscape that is produced is not merely a generic visualscape; rather, it attains autonomy and becomes an integral aspect of the narrative. The film became a yardstick of uses of colour in cinema, as cinematographer Subrata Mitra’s wellknown greyscale was transformed into natural tones, and to a colour palette which explored hues such as Ochre, Siena, Umber, Scarlet, etc.

Essay

The Jesuits, the Leftists, and the Genre of Documentary Photography in Late-Twentieth Century Calcutta

By Ranu Roychoudhuri

Working with the Jesuit social communication organization Chitrabani in Calcutta, a group of Bengali-leftist photographers aimed at positive social change by photographically documenting the everyday drudgery of the poor and the middle-class Calcuttans from the late-1970s through the early 1990s.

Essay

Indigo: The Colour of Liberation

By Bappaditya Biswas

The Indigo Revolt or the nil vidroh was a peasant movement and a subsequent uprising of the indigo farmers against the British indigo planters, originated in a village of Nadia in Bengal in 1859 and was led by the Biswas Brothers. The scar left of the revolt was so deep that not a seed was ever sown in the soil of Bengal after that.

Interview

Interview With David Davidar on Bengali literature

By Arunava Sinha

David Davidar is a pioneer of modern English language publishing in India, who has not only published many of the finest Indian writers in English, but also opened the doors to the publication of literature in other Indian languages in English translation on an industrial scale. What is his relationship with books from Bengal?

Essay

Ritwik Ghatak and an Indian Project of Modernism

By Moinak Biswas

Emotionally intense experience that Ghatak’s films are they are also a reflection on consciousness, nature, and human destiny. They invite us to make connections with cultural pasts and political landscapes, and open up a space for thinking the history of the present. Cinema rarely affords us this adventure of ideation.

Essay

Chapal Rani

By Naveen Kishore

I’m no longer in Jatra because the Jatra no longer has any use for me. Now I perform two or three shows a year at Sitaramdas Onkarnath Thakur’s ashram, where it is against the custom for women to perform. He has written some good plays. There, I do the direction, supervise the stage, mike, lighting arrangements the setting of the mikes, everyone’s makeup, do my own makeup and then play the main part. I really have to slog. But still, being in the midst of my work makes me happy.

Review

‘Manisha Parekh: A River Inside’

By Ramya Sarma

A River Inside, Manisha Parekh's latest show in Mumbai at the Jhaveri Contemporary gallery, was rooted in the line in its various forms. It showed off various shapes and forms, most notable being the layered perforated stories she created with handmade paper.

Essay

Indian Artist: Handmade Paper as an Artistic Means of Expression

By Anne Vilsboll

Visiting the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and the India Art Fair 2019, I noticed a growing interest in using handmade paper as an artistic means of expression among the exhibiting Indian artists. Here I’m not talking about artists buying handmade paper to draw and paint on, but artists who use pulp, their own produced paper or manipulate pulp and paper in untraditional ways as an artistic statement.

Review

‘The Listening Eye: Retrospective Show of Gopi Gajwani’

By Rahul Kumar

Can a painting be ‘heard’? When one encounters the works of the artist Gopi Gajwani, it is not difficult to experience the whispering strokes of charcoal and paint. The confidant vibrancy conveys the assuredness of their being, yet there is a sense of contradicting fragility, a layer of calm and subtle seduction.

Editor’s Note

TAKE Bengal: Editor’s Note

By Bhavna Kakar

This issue of TAKE on Art tries to re-explore the history and the contemporary situations in Bengal in order to regenerate an alternate form of history-writing. Situating the narrative within the framework of a number of iconic images that define art in Bengal, spanning across different historical periods, the idea is to delineate a history in parts to create a whole through a visual narrative.

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