Rabindranath Tagore… “The Last Harvest” …
Rabindranath Tagore…
Mesmeric…
Poet… novelist…
Visionary… mystic…
Artist…
A… titan…
India and Bangladesh were recently celebrating the 150th anniversary of Tagore’s poetry… art and philosophy…
A colossus… with a thousand poems to his name… eight novels… two dozen plays… eight volumes of short stories… 2,230 songs… of which he wrote the words and music…
He also wrote the two national anthems of two nations… India and Bangladesh…
Tagore also wrote prose on literary, social, religious, and political issues, as well as other topics…
He also won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
We were invited to attend the “Peintures de Rabindranath Tagore: La Dernière Moisson“… exhibition at the Petit Palais… “Musée des beaux-arts de la ville de Paris”…
Rabindranath Tagore… Bengali born on May 7th 1861 ( – August 7th 1941)… started drawing at the late age of 67…
“La Dernière Moisson“… “The Last Harvest” … expressed Tagore’s personal and emotional visions of his world…
His artworks… paintings from 1928-1939… were mainly images of faces… with amazing expressions… also sombre landscapes… animals… none of which had a title…
Discovering his “oeuvres“… one is… plunged… into an enigmatic world of the whimsical and the unexpected… of poetic variety of the visual… the mysterious…
His paintings… which were prolific… had an originality and freedom of expression and spirit.
His works… abundant as they were… seemed to be a link between his beloved India… and the rest of the planet. The message in his paintings is profoundly inspiring to the modern young Indian artists of today…
Tagore… commenting on his art… said…
“Now in the evening of my life my mind is filled with forms and colours”…
“Sesh boisher priya”… “an affair in the evening of life”…
While touring France in 1930… Tagore held the first public and international exhibition of his paintings in Paris… in May of that year… at the Gallerie Pigalle…
After which he held exhibitions in… England, Denmark, Sweden, Rome, Germany, and Russia… he also exhibited in the U.S.A. and Canada.
An overwhelming admiration for his artworks came from Berlin, Germany… where the German President and ministers attended his exhibition… as well as the great scientist himself… Albert Einstein… who became a close personal friend.
Tagore… eloquently expresses his feelings about his paintings… thus…
“People often ask me about the meaning of my pictures. I remain silent even as my pictures are. It is for them to express and not to explain. They have nothing ulterior behind their own appearance for the thoughts to explore and words to describe, and that appearance carries its ultimate worth. Then they remain, otherwise they are rejected and forgotten even though they may have some scientific truth or ethical justification. Love is kindred to art, it is inexplicable. Duty can be measured by the degree of its benefit, utility by the profit and power it may bring, but art by nothing but itself. There are other factors of life which are visitors that come and go. Art is the guest that comes and remains. The dithers may be important, but Art is inevitable.”
We were more than impressed… by this enlightened man’s artworks… and especially enjoyed the short film shown at the end of the exhibition… on a small screen… about Tagore’s childhood… later years…and his life…
A beautiful… man…
Flowing white hair…
Eclectic…
Enigmatic…
Wise and serene…
We delighted in the inspiring exhibition… “Peintures de Rabindranath Tagore: La Dernière Moisson” at the Petit Palais…
And as this eclectic man said poetically… in his words…
“The world speaks to me in colours; my soul answers in music.”
Rabindranath Tagore…
A humanist…
“Universalist”… “Internationalist”…
Mesmeric… personality...
Was transformed into a…
Near prophet…
Elegant… prose…
Poetic… elegance…
“Profoundly sensitive”…
Enlightened spiritualist…
A man for all… seasons…
Rabindranath Tagore…
Inspirational…
A colossus…
A titan…
To be…
Revered…
a.