The famous Bedroom in Arles by Van Gogh(third version).I love this painting for its vivid colors and the “lived-in” feeling that arouses – as though the sleeper has just got up and gone out of the room.
Caitlin Karolczac’s paintings have the dominant theme of how affliction and disease affect the human being This particular painting entitled “Gangrene” has a rare beauty which touches you in the heart. The colours used are are bright and vibrant -hardly suggestive of the underlying suffering.Perhaps the pain gets accentuated by the surrounding celebration .
Links:
studiosilenti.com
http://www.asianartresources.com/painting.asp?acode=315&no=7&headerval=Artist&from=painting
The water colour painting here has a very pretty theme which is a typical motif in the coastal areas of India. The fishermen leave their houses at dawn for the high seas and the wife and the children wait anxiously sometimes till late into the night for the boat to bob up on the horizon. Especially on those days when the seas become choppy and a storm is brewing on the horizon. It is a beautiful painting executed with consummate skill and the colours used are closer to life,more particularly the Southern India coastal life. Both the boy and the woman have an exquisite beauty in the way they their body postures are captured-taut and anxious.
(“Artist’s name withheld
Untitled, 1994
Oil on artist’s board 50.5cm x 40.5cm
This work is by a girl who died by suicide at the age of 16. In the preceding two years her angry outbursts and moodiness were thought to be ‘typical adolescent behaviour’. Three weeks before her death she was diagnosed by her General Practitioner as suffering from depression. She was studying art at school and had an extensive folio of works. These works initially showed a preoccupation with depressive themes, however several of her works such as this one suggest the possibility of an underlying psychosis. One wonders if she was painting a visual hallucination of eyes. The artist’s name has been withheld at the request of her family, however they are happy for the Collection to display and publish her work for educational purposes.”)
http://www.daxcollection.org.au/selectedworks.html
What is striking is the eyes that surround the figure.It may perhaps have to do with the hallucinations which the girl has experienced .It is more likely that the representations within the figure are in some way related to the eyes that surround the face. That is ,the extremely perturbed states within the girl’s mind are symbolically represented by the whirls of brush-strokes and are organically connected in some way to the several “eyes” that surround the face. Perhaps the “eyes” denote social scrutiny , the swirls within the face happening whenever such a scrutiny of the girl’s actions takes place.
Sanjay Bhattacharyya’s paintings reflect a realism of a rare kind ,a realism which amounts to the capturing of details as in photography. A photographic reproduction of details such as one will find in this painting belies the usual expectations about a painting which is usually more abstract ,touching on symbolism at some level.Actually one would think Bhattacharyya has first captured the scene on a camera and then converted it into a painting .This impression one gets because the play of light and shade such as one would find in this painting seems virtually impossible to be achieved on a canvas .It is almost like Van Gogh but then Van Gogh’s work happened at a time when there was no photography .To achieve a realism of this kind in painting is highly admirable .In this age of digital photography where even an inexperienced cameraman can achieve surprisingly good results through good editing, a painting of the above type indicates consummate skill in handling the way light falls on objects. It is as though the painter’s mind has worked like a high quality camera ,a lens eye ,par excellence.
Apart from the realism what strikes one is that the painter captures Kolkata’s unique cityscape so beautifully. The scene is so typical if you enter any of the old residential areas of Kolkata .I particularly like the faded gray of the stair case ,the saffron texture of the walls of the right side building and the yellow paint of the left side building, the beautiful play of light on the clothes drying on the clothesline,the paint chipping off at some places and above all the shadows that the left side building casts on itself .
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.
“They are rattling breakfast plates” reminds you Eliot’s rattling bones references in The Waste Land .Eliot’s walkers have a unique way .They trample the edges of the street. And housemaids with “damp” souls suddenly sprout at the area gates .Their souls are damp and they sprout probably like lilacs April is breeding out of the dead land .And what does the brown fog ,again as in The Waste Land ,toss up to the poet looking through the window ? Only twisted faces from the bottom of the street and an aimless smile which hovers in the air and stops along the level of roofs.
The typical Eliot despondency comes through and the imagery remains much the same as in the Waste Land where the theme is dealt with in much more detail.
Important words are“rattling”,”trampled”,”sprouting” ,”twisted”,”aimless”,”hovers”-all these words contain evocative imagery.
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A lovely painting by the American painter Kitaz who has celebrated Jewish culture and Jewish identity in his art has recently passed away.The theme “Breaking open The Jews’ Door” is poignantly represented using vibrant colours and expressive lines.
Talk in the Mountains
By Li Po
You ask me, `Why dwell among green mountains?’
I laugh in silence; my soul is quiet.
Peach blossom follows the moving water;
Here is a heaven and earth, beyond the world of men.
(Old Poetry)
Beyond the world of men,that is. A pretty nature poem.
Magical ! Check out the entire portfolio of Ramaiah Gidda .The grainy photographs ,in black and white, are sheer poetry ! The wistfulness seen in most of the photos does not appear to be merely a product of technical manipulation but a candid shot with a realism close to my own experiences of the rural living. Much of the poetry of the photos stems from the exoticism of such themes to a Western reader not familiar with the Indian milieu but to us who are brought upon such experiences the poetry still exists in the form of a nostalgic return to our childhood in rural India , more particularly in the villages of Andhra pradesh which form the backdrop of these pictures
A Critic at Large: Candid Camera: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
“When I spoke to his widow, Martine Franck—the president of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, in Paris, and herself a distinguished photographer—she said that her husband in action with his Leica “was like a dancer.” This feline unobtrusiveness led him all over the world and made him seem at home wherever he paused; one trip to Asia lasted three years, ending in 1950, and produced eight hundred and fifty rolls of film. His breakthrough collection, published two years later, was called “The Decisive Moment,” and he sought endless analogies for the sensation that was engendered by the press of a shutter. The most common of these was hunting: “The photographer must lie in wait, watching out for his prey, and have a presentiment of what is about to happen.”
Amusing but looks like the real thing behind Cartier-Bresson’s technique of catching photographable objects. His wife was talking about his most graceful dancer-like movements in the way he moved forward in a crowd and positioned himself and the camera .It was as though he was a hunter chasing a game .
