The pictures changed slowly. Damayanti talking to a swan, Draupadi carrying milk and honey, a portrait of Maharana Jai Singh, a lady playing the Veena…. Although all the pictures in the slideshow were of paintings they appeared more like the carefully framed still photographs of an older, slower time.
Admirers of Raja Ravi Varma, the famous Travancore artist, gathered in the auditorium of the National Gallery of Modern Art to listen to Manik Mukherjee, Editor of the cultural magazine, ‘Trend’ speak on ‘Raja Ravi Varma: His contribution to Indian Art’. The National Gallery of Modern Art in collaboration with Aavishkaara organised this talk on April 28, the day before Ravi Varma’s birthday.
The slideshow preceding the talk presented some of Ravi Varma’s work – many of his famous paintings, as well as others not as well known.
Mukherjee started his talk by saying that while he did not claim to be the authority on Varma, he was a devout admirer.
“I love him, I adore him and I respect him.” He believed that Varma helped introduce the renaissance to India through his work in oil painting. “As a nation we should be proud of him and give him a proper tribute,” he said. Art, he emphasis, was not a complex concept aimed at the elite. “If you do your job well, the common person will understand it. They may not be able to explain it but they will be attracted to it. If an artist paints a tree, it shouldn’t be just a tree.
It should say something. The feeling of the artist should be conveyed through the tree.” This, he felt, was what made Varma’s work so powerful. “Varma painted human life with all its warmth and tenderness. He created beauty from and within human life.”
