{"id":5881,"date":"2024-06-28T10:28:56","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T10:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/khabarok.com\/entertainment\/portrait-of-an-artist-in-the-rains-indian-artists-on-monsoon-inspirations\/"},"modified":"2024-06-28T10:28:56","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T10:28:56","slug":"portrait-of-an-artist-in-the-rains-indian-artists-on-monsoon-inspirations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/khabarok.com\/?p=5881","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of an artist in the rains | Indian artists on monsoon inspirations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Rains have always sparked artistic imagination. Vincent Van Gogh\u2019s rain lashed over empty farmland in intense, slanted lines; miniature artists in the Mughal and Rajput traditions drew dark clouds over lush green fields in which Krishna and his gopis<\/i> danced; and in a meta commentary on individuality, Ren\u00e9 Magritte poured his own bowler-hatted self from the sky in Golconda<\/i>. <\/p>\n

The arrival of the monsoon can turn us all into pluviophiles, but perhaps it affects artists more than the rest of us. We asked five artists from across India what the season means to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Garima Gupta<\/h4>\n

Artist and researcher, Mumbai<\/i><\/p>\n

I moved to Bombay late September of 2012 and everyone warned me of the awful October heat. I braced myself for the worst. But October decided to spare me that year; it rained every evening! Tucked in the lane flanked by a Portuguese church on one end and Siddhivinayak on the other, I watched people walk in either direction to their place of worship in pouring rain. Older couples hand in hand, wet crows that hung upside down from electric cables, lush green rain trees. Had it not been for that monsoon, I may have never learnt to love Bombay.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Garima<\/div>\n

\nGarima Gupta\n<\/p>\n

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Good and bad: <\/b>I am an August born and the memory of the monsoon starting with a roar around my birthday is deeply embedded. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that untimely rains are wrecking standing crops and causing damage. But then we as a people have also abolished all possibilities of joy because guilt and shame are dominating our thoughts. We don\u2019t pull up our authorities when things fall apart, but will learn to kill our only chance of joy.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

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\"From<\/div>\n

\nFrom Our Conspiring Hosts<\/i>, a series of paintings inspired by the Amazon rainforest after a storm\n<\/p>\n

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\"From<\/div>\n

\nFrom 2023\u2019s Our Conspiring Hosts<\/i><\/p>\n

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Rainy day favourites: <\/b>I love the Bollywood songs from the 1970s and 80s, where the protagonists are enjoying the rains. There\u2019s something about that simple joy that gets me every time.<\/p>\n

Orijit Sen<\/h4>\n

Artist and graphic designer, Goa<\/i><\/p>\n

One of my most vivid memories is travelling on the now defunct metre-gauge train that used to run between Vasco da Gama station and Miraj Junction during the height of the monsoons. I stood at the doorway of my carriage as it crossed a bridge halfway up the swollen Dudhsagar Falls. Even at a distance, I could feel the fine spray flying off the roaring body. In the time it took us to cross the bridge, I was drenched from head to toe!<\/p>\n

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\"Orijit<\/div>\n

\nOrijit Sen, walking in the rain\n<\/p>\n

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Fresh eyes: <\/b>As an artist, I experience the monsoons as a transformative season. The colours of landscape change dramatically from shades of ochre, olive and brown, to deep, saturated greens. The quality of the light is indescribable, as it comes reflected off water bodies or refracted through millions of water droplets hanging off the foliage. I find the colour palette in my work is always influenced by these dramatic seasonal changes.<\/p>\n

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\"Part<\/div>\n

\nPart of Sen\u2019s Hyderabad series, The Kite-Eating Tree<\/i> is a cropped detail of a street in Shah Ali Banda in the Old City after a shower of rain.\n<\/p>\n

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Works that inspire:<\/b> One of my favourite painters is Nainsukh of Guler, a master who lived in the 18th century. One of his paintings shows a woman in a bright orange odhni<\/i> running towards shelter as a dark cloud gathers overhead. Her clothes are billowing in the breeze as lightning flashes in the sky. The entire composition is so full of energy, motion and drama. I used to have a print of this artwork on my pin up board.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Debashish Paul<\/h4>\n

Performance artist, Varanasi<\/i><\/p>\n

In Banaras, when the water climbs, we head to the Nepali mandir<\/i> on Tulsi Ghat, which is located at a height. You can see the whole valley move. When I came to Banaras for my Masters in 2019, the monsoon had just begun. On my first evening here, I found two young boys conducting the aarti<\/i> at Tulsi Ghat, and I was infatuated with one of them. I\u2019d visit daily for six months just to see him; I\u2019d watch the way his body moved and transformed. That became the inspiration for my first performance work, Beyond the Body and Gender<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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\"Debashish<\/div>\n

\nDebashish Paul\n<\/p>\n

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\"Beyond<\/div>\n

Beyond the Body and Gender<\/i><\/p>\n

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Rainy day favourites:<\/b> I have a deep appreciation for Rabindra Sangeet. In Tagore\u2019s songs, such as \u2018Aaji jhorer raate\u2019, \u2018Megher Pore Megh Jomechhe\u2019, and others, I can vividly see my village, in the Nadiya district of West Bengal, where we\u2019d make boats out of banana leaves and fish in the streets when the rains came. In the monsoon songs, you feel as if you\u2019re soaring in the sky and smelling the rain.<\/p>\n

Sheetal Mallar<\/h4>\n

Photographer and artist, Mumbai<\/i><\/p>\n

After these brutal summers, I find the monsoon really romantic. The city is so chaotic, and this season is cleansing in so many ways. We have a lack of public spaces, we don\u2019t have much of a park culture. So places like Carter Road, Bandstand, and Worli Seaface are really nice now.<\/p>\n

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\"Sheetal<\/div>\n

\nSheetal Mallar\n<\/p>\n

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For photography, the monsoon helps you create a mood. The light is more beautiful, the colour palette of the sky and the trees changes. Moody, stormy, melancholy feelings \u2014 the season\u2019s really emotive. But I also find myself doing a lot of my drawings and paintings in the monsoon, for which, unlike when taking pictures, I feel I need to go more inwards.<\/p>\n

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Rainy day favourites:<\/b> I love to swim in the rain, and go for long walks \u2014 I own two pairs of gum boots. Songs like Shubha Mudgal\u2019s \u2018Ab Ke Saavan\u2019 and Billie Holiday\u2019s \u2018Stormy Weather\u2019 sound sweeter. And it\u2019s the time to feast on plates of bhajiya<\/i> and samosas<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Gaurav Ogale<\/b><\/p>\n

Multi-disciplinary artist, Mumbai<\/i><\/p>\n

My monsoon memories are a montage: standing drenched outside Sassanian Bakery in Mumbai, enveloped by the smell of freshly baked khari;<\/i> experiencing the first showers on our barsaati<\/i> in my hometown Pune; the smell of the ironed rasai <\/i>(quilt) at my grandparents home. I love visiting Panchgani during the rains, and the monsoon in Berlin.<\/p>\n

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\"Gaurav<\/div>\n

Gaurav Ogale<\/b><\/p>\n

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\"Dusk<\/div>\n

Dusk Lake<\/i><\/p>\n

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Rainy day favourites: <\/b>I love the way Orhan Pamuk captures h\u00fcz\u00fcn<\/i> (melancholy), especially the way he talks about the winters in his book Istanbul: Memories of a City<\/i>. It\u2019s a lot like what the monsoons mean to us in this part of the world. I find similar connotations between the monsoon and life \u2014 longing, memory, seasons, love, identity \u2014 in the works of artists such as Anju Dodiya, Arshi Ahmadzai, Hashim Badani; in films like Water<\/i> by Deepa Mehta, Wong kar-wai\u2019s In the Mood for Love<\/i>, Mira Nair\u2019s Monsoon Wedding<\/i>, the underlying melancholy in Sergei Parajanov\u2019s The Color of Pomegranates<\/i>, and in the music of Kumar Gandharva, Blaze Foley, Anika Pyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The writer is an independent journalist based in Mumbai, writing on culture, lifestyle and technology.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rains have always sparked artistic imagination. Vincent Van Gogh\u2019s rain lashed over empty farmland in intense, slanted lines; miniature artists in the Mughal and Rajput […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[12299,9885,12297,12289,12288,12292,2654,12294,12295,12296,12301,2261,12290,12298,12293,12300,12291],"class_list":["post-5881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-artist","tag-artists","tag-artists-and-monsoons","tag-debashish-paul","tag-garima-gupta","tag-gaurav-ogale","tag-indian","tag-indian-artists-on-monsoon-inspirations","tag-indian-monsoon-diaries","tag-indian-monsoon-diaries-2024","tag-inspirations","tag-monsoon","tag-orijit-sen","tag-portrait","tag-portrait-of-an-artist-in-the-rains","tag-rains","tag-sheetal-mallar"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t