Theatre is alive and kicking in Bangladesh. The lack of theatre infrastructure and other impediments have not been able to hold back theatre groups and they have consistently displayed burgeoning diversity and a firm commitment to theatre Theatre critics and others involved with the theatre pinpoint Drama Circle as the pioneer of the theatre movement…
From the pure visual pleasure of Fokhrul Islam’s cosmic landscape, Murshida Arzu Alpana’s canvas that records her sense of displacement born out of her exile, to Anwar Hossain’s photographic meditation on children and their environment to multimedia artist Fida Haq, an expatriate Bangladeshi living in Australia, the exhibition calendar in the first quarter of 2006…
During Bangladesh’s war of liberation in 1971, Swapan Choudhury toured the fronts and the refugee camps, drawing pictures that depicted both the heroism of freedom fighters and the sufferings of refugees. The traumatic experience of the war left its mark in Swapan’s subsequent work, accounting for its expressionistic bent. His close encounter with death and…
There is a disco like atmosphere at Hayward Gallery in London, where Dan Flavin’s: A Retrospective is being housed. With a retro-sight and techno-sound, the exhibition certainly has the hint of a disco. But as you trail through the lower and upper tiers of the gallery, you will find a ‘light’ entertainment of photic dance.…
Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920, aka ‘Modi’) is an outstanding example of the ‘tormented modern artist-genius’ who suffered for his art and died prematurely. He was a School of Paris painter and sculptor of Italian-Jewish origin, who became popular after his death because of his distinctive but mannered and melancholy portraits, erotic female nudes with sinuous outlines…
When one thinks of the history of the stage, or the cinema, it is the celebrated actors who first surface in the consciousness. And among them, I daresay, it is the women whose presence lingers, haunts us ineluctably. Sarah Siddons, Lily Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt, Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe. None of them yields in iconic lustrue…
Ustaad Zakir Hussain is one of the most charismatic musicians of India. Once a musical prodigy, he started his musical journey at an early age with his father – the late Ustad Alla Rakha who, with Ravi Shankar, introduced Indian classical music to the West I had seen Ustaad Zakir Hussian acting in movies, or…
Bengal in the late eighteenth century was an unlikely destination for a young Flemish marine painter born to a prominent merchant family of Antwerp. But political unrest in Europe and the lure of fame and fortune led Francois Balthazar Solvyns (1760-1824) to arrive in Bengal in 1790. For the next thirteen years (from 1791 to…
At different points in the history of the subcontinent, popular culture has shown sensitivity to the constantly energized political, cultural, religious and economic spheres that provide the context and rational for its production. The creative inspiration for printed art, however, is not always directly the people but often parallel cultural strands–such as the literary, visual…
Sayed Haider Raza’s spectacles were slightly awry and his hair was mussed, but his black Armani suit was immaculate. He needed a cane to walk into the Palette Art Gallery in New Delhi. At 84, he was not as firm on his feet as he used to be. It was as if on each visit…
