A group show, mounted by four painters at the Academy of Fine Arts (May 9-15), contained stylistically diverse attempts at capturing the enigma of abstractionism. They have succeeded in their endeavour only in patches, although their aesthetic groping for a relevant personal idiom seemed quite sincere. Three of the artists have used acrylic as their medium. Mention may be made of the abstract piece Supercyclone by Sib-G and Swapan Sarkar’s untitled series which are directly communicative in terms of the imagery implanted on the pictorial space. By contrast, Bhabatosh Sutar’s semi-realistic, fantasy-laden creations in mixed media were well-executed. His piece captioned The Wings-2 and Partha Biswas’s drawings (showing their generic link with the realistic tradition) were lacking in anatomical proportions and certainly weren’t an artistic distortion.
Samir Dasgupta
Is Deepak an ominously potent raga? Why is it not commonly heard any more, or, worse still, why are there so many varieties to confuse even a musicologist? Poet and scientist Debabrata Mukhopadhyay tried his best to unravel the mysteries of this most mythical of all ragas now lost in the darkness of history. His collection of audio-tapes of the greats like Abdul Karim, Faiyaz Khan, Nissar Hussain, Ali Akbar Khan, Ravi Shankar, K.L. Saigal, Subinoy Roy and other maestros got entangled in the controversies related to this raga’s origin, thaats (Bilawal, Kalyan Poorvi or Marwa) and time. Yet the dusk of May 12 saw the listeners’ forum of Srijan enjoying a musical oeuvre based on raga Deepak.
Meena Banerjee
With the participation of about 200 child artists in a sit-and-draw contest, the body of their exhibits looked a trifle cramped inside the closed auditorium of the Nehru Children’s Museum (May 7-9). Their expressions as pictorial renderings of themes contained in various popular poems and stories written by Rabindranath (such as Birpurush, Ora Kaaj Kore, Kabuliwallah and Rajar Bari), were a feast for the eye. Children normally overenjoy translating written compositions that are descriptive and picturesque. The more gifted occasionally show an ability to look through the surface reality and touch the aesthetic core. The exhibition did not include specimens of such innovativeness, but served to stir them into further creative excursions.
SDG
