Transcript
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
1/29
- Over 1,000 poems; nearly 2 dozen plays and play-lets;
8 novels; 8 or more volumes of short stories; more than
2000 songs, mass of prose , his English translations; his
paintings; his travels and lecture-tours; his activities as
educationist, as social and religious reformer, andpolitician.
- His life's work is the accomplishment of a titan.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
2/29
RABINDRANATH TAGORE.
Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore
mystic, visionary, painter and Nobel laureate for
literature- was India's grand old man of letters.
Tagore has been immortalised not only by his poetry
but also by his paintings and his importantcontribution to Indian Art through Viswa-Bharati.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
3/29
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Jorasanko on 7th May 1861
seventh in a family of fourteen.
The Tagores were a cultured and wealthy family.
The poet's early life was spent in an atmosphere of
religion and arts, principally literature, music and
painting
Tagore died in Calcutta on August 7, 1941.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
4/29
BIOGRAPHY-EARLY LIFE
Rabindranath learnt drawing in his childhood
At the age of seventeen, his first book of poems was
published.
In 1878, he went to England for further studies but
returned back in just seventeen months as he was
disappointed with the studies.
Training in classical Indian music.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
5/29
EARLY WORKS
the English Gitanjali, was published in 1912.
Gitanjali saw him winning, in 1913, at the age of 52,
the Nobel Prize for literature.
The first Nobel prize ever awarded to an Asiatic,
made him world-famous.
knighted by the British in 1915.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
6/29
EARLY LIFE
In 1917, Tagore founded the innovative 'Viswa-
Bharati' university in the rural settings of
Shantiniketan, thus realizing a life-long dream- to
create a context for a genuine all-round developmentof human faculties.
Far from the neurosis of the city life, this was not to
be a degree-oriented establishment, but an attempt,
in his own words "to study the mind of Man in it's
realization of different aspects of truth from diverse
points of view."
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
7/29
TRYST WITH PAINTING
Egged on by an insatiable urge for creativity, Tagorebegan wielding the brush at the age of 67.
In 1924, while writing "Purabi" he started doodling onthe pages of his manuscript
Rabindranath transformed his lack of formal training ofart into an advantage and opened new horizons in theuse of line and colour.
He was prolific in his paintings and sketches as he was inhis writing, producing over 2500 of these within a
decade. Over 1500 of them are preserved in Viswa-Bharati,
Santiniketan.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
8/29
COMPARISON OF HIS LITERARY WORKS
AND ART
It is evident that in his search of newer form of
expression in line and colour Rabindranath wastrying to express something different from what he
did in his poetry and songs.
If he sought peace and enlightenment in his songs,
he seems to explore darkness and mystery in hisdrawings.
Dark creatures and haunting landscapes of another,primordial and marvelous world, which constituted
Tagore's works puzzle and delight the world.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
9/29
HIS SAY
"People often ask me about the meaning of my
pictures. I remain silent even as my pictures are. It is
for them to express and not to explain. They have
nothing ulterior behind their own appearance for thethoughts to explore and words to describe, and that
appearance carries its ultimate worth. Then they
remain, otherwise they are rejected and forgotten
even though they may have some scientific truth orethical justification.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
10/29
SHOWS AND EXHIBITIONS
He held the first public and international exhibitionof his paintings in Paris in May 1930, at the GalleriePigalle.
The exhibition was later held in different countries in
Europe in the same year. But India and his home town Calcutta had the
honour of hosting it only in 1931
Duchess Anna de Noailles, in her introductory
remarks in the catalogue of the exhibition of Tagore'spaintings "To me it is like climbing a staircase ofdreamland"
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
11/29
STYLE: SELF PORTRAITS
His self portraits are true representation of style.
According to the scholars his self-portraits reflect a
deeper psychological need - that of a creative person
always in search of self. His self portrait stands as anart of sheer excellence.
His painting style was very individual, characterised
by simple bold forms and a rhythmic quality, and
later served to inspire many modern Indian artists.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
12/29
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
13/29
STYLE: PRIMITIVE ART
He was immensely attracted to primitive art.Distortion of form and the aberrant use of colourcharacterized his paintings.
Theories of colour, mysticism and contemporary
speculations are likely to have interested him andthis has found expressions in his paintings.
Silence is the chief theme in his paintings. Colour,season and emotion all gain a remarkable dimension
in Tagore`s paintings. His paintings had a strange surrealism and bizarre
emotions.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
14/29
STYLE: IMAGES
His paintings are stark images of man and nature.They are not bound by known canons of art but areinstead expressions of freedom.
Many of the maestro's works are doodles that
resemble birds, faces and monsters. The subsequent phase shows figural compositions in
which human figures are placed in vertical positionsundertaking varied actions that make them seem
more dramatic. The works of his next phase are based on a simple
scheme of arranging figures in a single horizontalrow.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
15/29
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
16/29
Many of them represent animals, but they are
seldom of the ones we know of; he has described as
a probable animal that had missed its chance of
existence or a bird that only can soar in ourdreams. This led him to the creation of an
antediluvian menagerie.
Spurred by the same spirit of inventiveness he also
took to cross projecting the movement of a living
animal on to an imagined body, or a human gesture
onto an animal body and vice versa. This exchange
between the familiar and the unknown has led him
to forms that are as expressive as they are inventive.
STYLE: ANIMALS and BIRDS
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
17/29
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
18/29
STYLE: HEADS AND FACES
He made individual heads where one sees a variety
of physiognomic features with distortions and varied
facial expressions such as a grimace, one of disgust,
one of laughter and so on. Of the Head' series, his female figures are more
graceful. The masculine heads, meanwhile, have a
greater variety ranging from the comic to tragic.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
19/29
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
20/29
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
21/29
STYLE: LANDSCAPES
Landscapes constitute a major theme of his
paintings.
In them, one can observe a steady growth towards
maturity and enriched vision. They indicate his growing sensibility and feeling for
the pictorial medium his deep understanding of the
medium, of colour, of texture, of the beauty and
rhythm of lines and how their potential could be
used for expressing the myriad moods and mystery
of nature.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
22/29
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
23/29
STYLE: LANDSCAPES
When he started using colours for landscapes, Tagoretried to capture the spirit of nature and the mood itevoked in his heart.
The common feature of these landscapes are
silhouetted trees placed against the sky on eitherside of the painted surface and the open middlethrough which the glow of the sky is seen.
Absence of human figures in his landscape gives
them a mysterious look. Reddish, brownish and yellowish tones that are
imbued with expressive power often contrast with ablack ground.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
24/29
STYLE
Elements of Expressionism and Art Nouvea can be
found in his works.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
25/29
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
26/29
IMMINENT STUDENTS
Tagore's paintings and sketches fascinated young
German students to mass hysteria. Among them a
student of the Art Academy of Munich Oswald
Malura. At Santiniketan, this amateur cinematogarpher
recorded a 12 minute-film on Tagore as a painter and
teacher in the open-air classes. There are some still
photographs that showed how Tagore drew andpainted but this movie film or cinema on Tagore as
an artist is indeed rare.
1986
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
27/29
CONCLUSION
In Tagore's own words, "The world speaks to me in
colours, my soul answers in music". Obviously, the
soul was very articulate with colours too.
The drawings of Rabindranath Tagore proved that the
poet, though a master in the use of words, felt that
certain things can be better expressed, or perhaps
only expressed in the language of line, tone and
colour.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
28/29
CONCLUSION
He had said: We who have traded in lyrics should knowthat these will not find acceptance at another time. Thisis inevitable. So I often think that only painting has adeathless quality.
My pictures are verses in lines.
In his life, he embodied the quintessence of Indianculture, combining an abundant intellect with a devoutpassion to his cause, and his inspirational compositions
have stood the passage of time. Tagore's contribution tothe art of India remains one of the most important tilldate.
7/29/2019 Visual communication: Tagore
29/29
top related