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SOCIETY & CULTURE

 Traditional societies - Wisdom and Challenges
 by
Isabel Allende

SOUTH ASIAN FEATURE

 Hands Across Borders
- Bringing south Asia closer

 

 INTERVIEW

 Sunil Dutt


ART

 Shantiniketan and origin  of  Modern Art
 by
Vijay Kowshik

 
Modern Idiom in Pakistan's Art
 by
Niilofur Farrukh

 
Contemporary Art of  Bangladesh


TECHNOLOGY

Reinventing India
by
Mira Kamdar


LITERATURE

Sufis - the  poet-saints 
by
Salman Saeed


MUSIC

Music Gharanas & Generation 2000
by
Mukesh Khosla


ON THE FRINGE

The First People - Wanniyala Aetto of Sri Lanka and Jarawa of Andaman
by
Nalini Bakshi


WILDLIFE

Royal Bengal's last roar?
by
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Page  1  of  4

 

Shantiniketan and the Origin of Modern Art in India.

By 

Vijay Kowshik

     

From L to R: Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Nandlal Bose, Binodebihari Mukherjee

 

In the eight decades of its existence, the Art School at Shantiniketan's Visva Bharati University has been synonymous with giants of Indian modern art. Founded by Rabindranath Tagore, and nurtured by the artistic greats -Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and Binodebihari Mukherji - the Art School became the University's most notable department.

K.G. Subramanyan, Somenath Hore and Dinkar Kowshik - all live there - their canvasses still flowing with creative energies.


The Visva Bharati University at Shantiniketan [Abode of Peace] was founded by Rabindranath Tagore in 1921 - as a spiritual and intellectual haven - a catalyst for the synthesis of Asian and western thought, "… a conduit between Asia's past and present, so that the ancient learning might be rejuvenated through contact with modern thinking."

The origins and association with Shantiniketan go back over a hundred years. It was in 1863 that Rabindranath's father Debendranath Tagore, on one of his journeys, stopped at Shantiniketan [near Bolpur], about a hundred miles north-west of Calcutta, to meditate under one of the few trees that existed there at the time. The area was desolate, barren, and denuded. Debendranath was charmed by the solitude and the aloofness of the place and bought it - as a retreat for his family. Over the years, soil and plants were transported and thus began the greening of Shantiniketan. In 1901, Rabindranath, at the age of forty, decided to make Shantiniketan his home and at first founded a school there, and twenty years later - a University - The Visva Bharati University.

The idea of Visva Bharati University at Shantiniketan was far ahead of its time. "I have it in mind to make Shantiniketan the connecting thread between India and the world…The days of petty nationalism are numbered - let the first step towards universal union occur in the fields of Bolpur. I want to make that place somewhere beyond the limits of nature and geography" - Rabindranath had articulated. At the time it began functioning in 1921, it was dismissed by some as an idealist's dream. Rabindranath, nevertheless, pursued and set up three departments - Art, Music and Indology - which attracted indigenous talent and Orientalists from Europe and the Far East. From the time he won the Nobel Prize in 1913 until his death in 1941, many distinguished scholars, artists, and writers from the world over visited Rabindranath at Shantiniketan. Ramsay MacDonald, Kakuzo Okakura, Wilmot Perera, Moritz Winternitz, Sylvain Levi were some of the visitors to Shantiniketan.

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