ART GALLERY - AJANTA CAVES
I live in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India. Bhavnagar is famous as a place of art and culture "કાલા અને સંસ્કૃતિની નગરી." It is said that a town or a city which has an Art gallery suggests that the citizens of a particular city or town are greatly interested in art and artists are respected in a particular city. Art galleries exhibit works by artists known by the general public; Exhibitions act as the catalyst of art and ideas to the public. Bhavnagar has one Art gallery named after the great artist Shri Khodidas Parmar.
SHRI KHODIDAS PARMAR
Shri Khodidas Parmar, a little- known artist of Gujarat who has greatly contributed to the fine arts. He has developed his own style of art, he was the one to introduce Saurashtra's Bhatigal style of art which is still kept alive by his students. He very significantly painted art and culture of Saurashtra and Kutch region of Gujarat.
Khodidas Parmar has also tried his hands on Ajanta caves' paintings and to continue that idea and paying respect to their idol some of his students painted the caves' paintings and an exhibition was held on it. An exhibition took us towards two different eagernesses. One, to know more about Shri Khodidas Parmar and second, to know more about Ajanta Caves.
Shri Khodidas Parmar's Ajanta Painting
with his signature
AJANTA CAVES
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 29 caves were excavated beginning around 200 BC, but they were abandoned in AD 650 in favour of Ellora. Five of the caves were temples and 24 were monasteries, thought to have been occupied by some 200 monks and artisans. The Ajanta Caves were gradually forgotten until their 'rediscovery' by a British tiger-hunting party in 1819.The site is a protected monument in the care of the Archeological Survey of India and since 1983, the Ajanta Caves have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
AJANTA HAS 30 CAVES - FIVE ARE CHAITYA (PRAYER HALL)
& THE REST ARE VIHARA (MONASTERY).
PAINTINGS OF AJANTA
The Ajanta murals, owing to their inherent fragility and an abundance of destructive natural and maleficent human agents, have suffered considerable damage, often irrevocably so. Despite the depredations, the excellent craftsmanship (specifically in Caves 1, 2, 16, 17) shines through the defiled and blackened surfaces even today. The poise, poignant faces, and expressive gestures bear infinite significance. This includes those hand signals known as mudras which are core to yoga, meditation, and Indian dance drama.The carvings and sculptures at Ajanta wall are considered to be the beginning of classical Indian art. 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. The great religious art of Ajanta through all its sincerity and refinement acts as crucial markers towards the journey within.
TECHNIQUE OF PAINTINGS
The technique used in Ajanta caves painting is 'FRESCO' technique. It would turn impossible to make paintings of the rugged walls of the Ajanta caves, to make the walls firm enough to hold colors the covering plaster was made, which was of ground ferruginous earth, rock grit, sand, vegetable fibres, paddy husk, and other fibrous materials of organic origin; Then a second layer of mud, ferruginous earth mixed with pulverised rock powder or sand and fine vegetable fibre helped to cover the whole interior of the cave. The surface was then treated with a thin coat of limewash over which pigments were applied.
Even the colors for murals were prepared with great care. Green color (glauconite) was obtained from the rocks present around; yellow, brown and of same shades were obtained from mud; blue color which is very rarely used was imported from Persia (lapis lazuli). Red ochre, yellow ochre, brown ochre, lamp black, white, and lapis were the main colours which were used; some say they were imported from Northern India, central Asia, and Persia. Paintings of Ajanta are mainly line paintings.
In Ajanta murals the power of expression depends chiefly on the swiftness of its outlines. The bold, sweeping brush strokes portray an intimacy and sensitiveness that, even though the original lustrous colours have all but faded, reveal these to be works of adept minds and assured hands.
Cave 2 fresco above the right door
The Ajanta cave arts are a window into the culture, society and religiosity of the native population of India of that time. Different scholars have variously interpreted them from the perspective of gender studies, history, sociology, and the anthropology of South Asia. The dress, the jewelry, the gender relations, the social activities depicted showcase at least a lifestyle of the royalty and elite, and also the costumes of the common man, monks and rishi depicted there. The Ajanta artworks provide a contrast between the spiritual life of monks who had given up all materialistic possessions versus the sensual life of those it considered materialistic, luxurious, symbols of wealth, leisurely and high fashion.
The early colonial era description of Ajanta caves was largely orientalist and critical, inconsistent with the Victorian values and stereotyping. According to William Dalrymple, the themes and arts in the Ajanta caves were puzzling to the 19th-century Orientalists. Lacking the Asian cultural heritage and framework that sees "nothing odd in the juxtaposition of monk and dancing girl", and with no knowledge of Jataka Tales or equivalent Indian fables, they could not comprehend it. The 19th-century views and interpretations of the Ajanta Caves were conditioned by ideas and assumptions in the colonial mind and saw what they wanted to see.
FOREIGNERS IN AJANTA PAINTINGS
The Ajanta Caves paintings are a significant source of socio-economic information in ancient India, particularly in relation to the interactions of India with foreign cultures at the time most of the paintings were made, in the 5th century CE. These foreigners may reflect the Sassanian merchants, visitors and the flourishing trade routes of the day.Spink states that Ajanta, "one of the most remarkable
creative achievements in man's history".
Walter Spink: Spink's major contribution was to interpret the Ajanta Caves, He started studying the complex in the 1950s, and analysed the caves for over four decades in almost 100 publications. The culmination of his research was the Ajanta: History and Development series published by Brill in Leiden, Netherlands.
Persian embassy scene
HINDU AND BUDDHIST
The Ajanta Caves were built in a period when both the Buddha and the Hindu gods were simultaneously revered in Indian culture. According to Spink and other scholars, the royal sponsors of the Ajanta Caves probably worshipped both Hindu and Buddhist gods.That one could worship both the Buddha and the Hindu gods may well account for Varahadeva's participation here, just as it can explain why the emperor Harisena himself could sponsor the remarkable Cave 1, even though most scholars agree that he was certainly a Hindu, like earlier Vakataka kings.
— Walter Spink, Ajanta: History and Development, Cave by Cave
WINDING UP
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 Tarsim 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. Abindranath Tagore and Syed Thajudeen also used the Ajanta paintings for inspiration. Painting of Ajanta caves turned into an inspiration for other artists in every form of art, many got inspired for Ballet, poem, writing etc. It became a great source of inspiration.
I support to a point that if the painters of the exhibited paintings would have visited Ajanta caves, examined the painting and if then painted the result might have been different. But still the work done by them is worth appreciating. Here, I am comparing two of the original paintings and exhibition paintings.
We can clearly see the changes in the brightness of colors. But it is astonishing to see how the natural colors used in Ajanta paintings are still alive after thousands of years. At present, Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) is making replicas of the four main Ajanta caves in order to preserve the original caves. The paintings of the caves are being affected by the flash lights so in order to reduce tourism at original caves, replica caves are planned.
Here we see how one art exhibition took us to Maharashtra and we gained a lot of knowledge about it.
These are my outcomes; If you find any changes,your perspectives are accepted.
Thank you.
[words count- 1596; paragraphs- 18]
No comments:
Post a Comment