Almost all of Rabindranath Tagore painting s mainly started when he was about seventy-four producers can be in your life. He became very sick in 1937 and he slipped into unconsciousness for a while. Warble himself reversed romantic luxuries and pedantry of life with the death in his thought process after a cure from illness. Death became one of the dominant themes in much of his later poetry. That Tagore’s sister-in-law Kadambini, twenty-four at the time his match was made, killed herself is well-known. Tagore was famously infatuated with his sister-in-law. Tagore himself called the paintings he created after his illness, “Kadambini” where he transitions from a heightened state of spirituality to a more earthly one.
Previous to this period, Rabindranath Tagore also painted, mostly while composing poetry, the forms evolving and changing over time. It would seem that the Tagore who was best known is the one who painted in these last four years; for up to this time, it seems as though his mind were fully concentrated on figures and shapes in his art.
Rabindranath was really influenced by western lifestyle and subsequently, freed himself from it. He had dreamt of Santiniketan and he came back to his old lifestyle. This return was so deep that he may be the only Indian poet who has renedered and redefined tradtion in such a fashion. Bengal without Rabindra Sangeet(Tagore’s music) would be like incompleteness. The music of Rabindranath, so much a part of Bengali culture and just as free and troubled by political boundaries or ethnic divisions.
It probably wasnt that easy for Rabindranath Tagore to come back after his illness. I imagine he faced death, and hovered at the edge of it for some time. He had presumably endured the solitude and anguish of separation during this time. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps materials became trash and junk not worth holding on to. But not even the poet so close to death —din is detoxer— it brilliantly distills culture into worldliness that he ever imagined living the loneliness he knew coming but felt imposed upon settling in and cooking his meals, making him suffer his hunger pains. He found a new universe of solitude and the rest, reality in dance on his return. But he wrongfully assumed that Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore returned to life, when it was a perturbed Rabindranath who had glimpsed into the void of life and was back from land filled with something absolutely spiritual transcending our everyday mundane. In governmentless freedom His innerself now breathed, visualising human soulful liberty.
Rabindranath Tagore poetry and writings that was influenced by painting did not emerge then; instead came his paintings. Writing was difficult for him. A lonely Golper Bhabhi The world famous Rabindra-Jibonmoinar Rabindratho Others have touredbusy cabin of akalpokhotite but now itstheworld-created by the Creator as bigegltreiwipebe even and this in the meantime. Asokepranto awarded with Kadabini It was impossible to shake after a long sleep, broken downENOMEMI_WORLD-_-101You could not take his marchängsela out ofcruorrir Arambaripuri; His dead maha-meda; Lacooked from all corners by asking again: Onno where did you? Where did Nakmbhini get up? He started to doubt like ink in his writing. Most arrogant work of some high-flown poets whose colours sail the tide of vanity in the very quite feeble ( but immature) works like discourses written by Shamsher Bahadur Singh, Malayaj and Sripat Rai.
The ink of Rabindranath steps towards the truth with a little timidity. It shines merely fact not brought to question, a portrait of his genuine honest heart. The figure in Tagore’s paintings seems to brimming with the diversity of their own maker.
“The poet’s paintings and sketches exhibit a range of influences and cannot be categorised into a single style. They contain elements of expressionism, representationalism, and a certain primitive roughness.“
— Swaminathan, Link Magazine, 1961
The subjects Rabindranath Tagore sought were anything but found traditionally in his paintings. But unlike Ravi Varma, he turned neither to the Indianness (or tradition-keeping and engaging) nor to European art or patronage. Tagore considered folk and modern elements, civilization or illiteracy, expressionism or any other ism was as unimportant to him as was the western culture he knew. He dared the deepest, most quivering srecesses of his own heart, where a primordial cry of death-terror intrepidly huddled in fear. Is this quivering visible in the initial sketches of Tagore. The theme of separation pierced as well through the sad years, and this is how he turned to it too. Seeing the paintings, you get the impression that this sadness permeates them.
He approaches the forms of words.
He strolls with a pen that drifts spontaneously.
He encounters the ‘sudden,’ whose form constantly changes.
He collides with the accidental.
He abandons himself like a dancer spinning continuously—whose aim is not to perform.
Another saying: He who does not wish to create, wishes to die; he wants for nothing but that moment of twilight — he dwells within the act of creation. From him flows and creates, and we watch in amazement how paintings by Tagore the non-artist are part of the larger creation itself. They are of not the world, but of the lord of the world. He sees his paintings as poems written on a tuned piano. He writes:
“My paintings are poetic compositions between lines. If something recognisable can be discerned, it is primarily rhythmic intent, which is the ultimate truth. It is neither a presentation of any kind of thought nor an interpretation of reality.”
The creator of these paintings is infused with a primal self, whose vision is pierced by the horrors of the modern twentieth century. The memory of world wars, the shudder of innocent murders, and the irony of humanity losing its essence. The sadness and despair in those unfamiliar faces of the creator’s unknown images spread like the dim light of an unknown mind. Rabindranath Tagore’s paintings are a universal manifestation of personal melancholy. They are adept portrayals of the delicate relationships between the eternal and the ephemeral. They reflect the sense of continuity and fragmentation of the world. These are images of faith in the crumbling of faith. Tagore was perhaps witnessing the suffering of the modern human’s predicament and the pain of not being able to escape it. He felt the growing difficulties of ordinary people caused by industrialization and the ideologies woven around it.
Upon his return, Rabindranath Tagore must have realiSed the human mind’s capacity to transform from the ordinary to the extraordinary, where he moved from writing to painting, and from painting to dancing. This realisation and the primal sense of creating and dancing likely guided him towards that unknown, unspoken, and unfamiliar realm, where the chirping of birds is not merely heard but seen, and where sorrow is not expressed but permeates the space.
Rabindranath Tagore creates these paintings, emerging from the darkness of black ink into a realm of light and shadow, with forms that are self-absorbing. He crafts shapes that are not related to civilisations, cultures, or human traditions, but rather to the state of a free-spirited human being, whose awareness was somewhat present, tinged with a sense of semi-consciousness.
There was a connection with the forms hidden within the structure of words.
New meanings were emerging in the sentences.
These paintings were evidence of the independent expression of Indian art, taking form on earth before the achievement of political freedom. On the first birthday after Swaminathan’s passing, renowned artist Ramkumar, speaking in his memory, said:
Rabindranath Tagore, Amrita Sher-Gil, M.F. Husain, and Swaminathan are essential to the beginning of modern Indian art; their contributions are integral to its development.
Paintings of this kind were the bastion of Indian art prior to the resumption of political freedom and they constituted a defiant articulation that yes, here was an Indian art being practiced on our soil. Renowned artist Ramkumar at a meeting on On the first death anniversary of On Swaminathan saidThousands of miles away he will never be able to see the way his work is treated, Rabindranath Tagore, Amrita Sher-Gil, M.F. Husain and Swaminathan were defining figures in modern Indian art; without them it could never have evolved.
These are non-urgent paintings. They do not pretend to be human self-milestones. Rather, they are hesitating ones of self-pride. Doubt made them so much more complex. These specimens reveal the sights and minds of an independent nation arising from a long-drawn fight for independence; but they neither claim to have fought in the battle nor aspire to join. Not the Images of Social-Political Awareness, in which it’s a sad exchange of rueful self-reproach.
“Rabindranath Tagore, in his sketches filled with utmost simplicity, is not drawn towards embellishments or narratives. Many of his practice drawings are filled with contemplative themes emerging from the depths of semi-consciousness, which we can gladly call the ‘hero’ of modern Indian art.“
— Swaminathan, March 1959
The meanings that Swaminathan refers to, emerging from the depths of semi-consciousness, likely involve an encounter with the eternal death experienced during Tagore’s long coma. After his illness, the paintings created by Tagore in these four years, amidst death-related poetry and evocative dance, seem to transcend the meanings that merely attempt to pull him back to worldly existence. These paintings address the dance settled in the innermost self, which silently entered the heart long ago, an experience Tagore once had and describes in this poem included in “Gitanjali”:
The day was when I did not keep myself in readiness for thee; and entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd, unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon many a fleeting moment of my life.
And to-day when by chance I light upon them and see thy signature, I find they have lain scattered in the dust mixed with the memory of joys and sorrows of my trivial days forgotten.
Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play among dust, and the steps that I heard in my playroom are the same that are echoing from star to star.
-Geetanjali 60
Original chapter in hindi translated to English from the book Unke Baare Mein authored by Akhilesh.
Born in 1956, is an artist, curator and writer. He has gained worldwide recognition and appreciation for his works through extensive participation in numerable exhibitions, shows, camps and other activities.
