29 September 2021
Sunday reading task: Visit to an Art Gallery: Ajanta Exhibition
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- Khodidas Parmar
Born: July 31,1930 Died: March 2004. |
Khodidas Parmar was born on July 31, 1930, and was the only son of a poor Karadia Rajput family. He was named after the goddess Khodiyar as the family thought of him being a gift from the goddess after many daughters.
Though hailing from a poor family, his parents were determined for him to get a good education. He did his M.A. with Gujarati and Sanskrit, learnt painting even as he studied and went on to become a guide to students doing doctoral research on folk literature for their Ph. D. He was trained in art by Guru Somalal Shah from 1948 – 1951 whom he met at the Alfred High school.
A recipient of several awards, he has participated in several group shows and his works are a part of several permanent collections like the Museum of Modern Art and National Art Gallery, New Delhi. Parmar passed away in March 2004 in Bhavnagar.
Ajanta caves:-
The Buddhist Caves in Ajanta are approximately 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from the 2nd century BCE to about 480 CE in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra state in India. The caves include paintings and rock-cut sculptures described as among the finest surviving examples of ancient Indian art, particularly expressive paintings that present emotions through gesture, pose and form.
The caves were built in two phases, the first starting around the 2nd century BCE and the second occurring from 400 to 650 CE, according to older accounts, or in a brief period of 460–480 CE according to later scholarship. The site is a protected monument in the care of the Archaeological Survey of India, and since 1983, the Ajanta Caves have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Ajanta Caves
The Ajanta Caves constitute ancient monasteries and worship-halls of different Buddhist traditions carved into a 75-metre (246 ft) wall of rock. The caves also present paintings depicting the past lives and rebirths of the Buddha, pictorial tales from Aryasura's Jatakamala, and rock-cut sculptures of Buddhist deities. While vivid colours and mural wall-painting were abundant in Indian history as evidenced by historical records, Caves 16, 17, 1 and 2 of Ajanta form the largest corpus of surviving ancient Indian wall-painting.
"The second phase of paintings started around 5th–6th centuries A.D. and continued for the next two centuries". According to Spink, the construction activity at the incomplete Ajanta Caves was abandoned by wealthy patrons in about 480 CE, a few years after the death of Harishena. The Ajanta caves are mentioned in the 17th-century text Ain-i-Akbari by Abu al-Fazl, as twenty-four rock-cut temples each with remarkable idols.
- Paintings:-
The paintings in the Ajanta caves have previous births of the Buddha. These fables embed ancient morals and cultural lores that are also found in the fable ses and legends of Hindu and Jain texts. The Jataka tales are exemplified through the life example and sacrifices that the Buddha made in hundreds of his past incarnations, where he is depicted as having been reborn as an animal or human. The Ajanta frescos are classical paintings and the work of confident artists, without cliches, rich and full. They are luxurious, sensuous and celebrate physical beauty, aspects that early Western observers felt were shockingly out of place in these caves presumed to be meant for religious worship and ascetic monastic life.
- Tathagata:
The Buddha is quoted on numerous occasions in the Pali Canon as referring to himself as the Tathāgata instead of using the pronouns me, I or myself. This may be meant to emphasize by implication that the teaching is uttered by one who has transcended the human condition, one beyond the otherwise endless cycle of rebirth and death, i.e. beyond dukkha.
Just as tathata designates true reality in general, so the word which developed into "Tathagata " designated the true self, the true reality within man.
- The image on later painting other arts:-
Impact on later painting and other arts Edit
The Ajanta paintings, or more likely the general style they come from, influenced painting in Tibet and Sri Lanka. Some influences from Ajanta have also been suggested in the Kizil Caves of the Tarim Basin, in particular in early caves such as the Peacock Cave.
The rediscovery of ancient Indian paintings at Ajanta provided Indian artists with examples from ancient India to follow. Nandalal Bose experimented with techniques to follow the ancient style which allowed him to develop his unique style. Abanindranath Tagore and Syed Thajudeen also used the Ajanta paintings for inspiration.
Anna Pavlova's ballet Ajanta's Frescoes was inspired by her visit to Ajanta, choreographed by Ivan Clustine, with music by Nikolai Tcherepnin (one report says Mikhail Fokine in 1923). and premiered at Covent Garden in 1923.
Jewish American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote about the caves in "Ajanta," the opening poem of her third collection Beast in View (1944). Rukeyser was inspired in part by writings on the caves by artist Mukul Dey in 1925 and art historian Stella Kramrisch in 1937.
- Other painting of the art Gallery:-
This is a small piece of information about the Ajanta caves and the Khodidas Parmar art gallery and his paintings. And the best experience of the art Exhibition.
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