Skip to main content

Contemporary Durgas


Durga Vahini, reportedly a women's wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, is objecting to the art exhibition going on at Delhi Art Gallery.  The current Durgas think that the paintings on display in the Gallery demean women.

Below is one of the paintings/sculptures exhibited at the gallery.



And below is one of the sculptures from Khajuraho temple.



When are the Durgas going to demolish the Khajuraho temple, the sculptures in Ajanta and Ellora caves, and many other works of art belonging to the country's past which is usually glorified in our history books?


Labels:

Comments

  1. AmitAagFebruary 5, 2013 at 12:32 PM

    Lovely art!
    Nice post!
    Relevant question!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Easwar ArumugamFebruary 5, 2013 at 1:15 PM

    Nice artistic work. i agree with you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2013 at 6:13 PM

      When politics enters, art acquires many meanings which are not dreamt of by the artist!

      Delete
  3. Vishal RathodFebruary 5, 2013 at 3:00 PM

    A good thought with a meaningful question . Thanks for sharing .

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sunil DeepakFebruary 5, 2013 at 5:57 PM

    I hope that these Indian talibans don't take it one day as their life's mission to destroy heritage of Khujaraho and Konark because "it is against Indian culture"!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2013 at 6:15 PM

      This is exactly what I fear too, Sunil ji. Perhaps, our country is getting a bit too religionised!

      Delete
  5. mandakolathurFebruary 5, 2013 at 6:08 PM

    You do not need to go to exotic places to see erotic art in temples, Matheikal. You send the Durga Vahinis to Kanchipuram, that holy town not too far from Chennai and I will shock them. It should be the same in Madurai, Tiruchirapalli, Srirangam ... no temple artist was devoid of human urges to showcase his, what we call pornographic talents!

    I may be wrong, but the first photograph, I remember to have read or seen in an article about historic sculpture, recently found somewhere in Kerala.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2013 at 6:19 PM

      Yes, I too have seen such works of art in many temples.

      I'm really not a connoisseur of painting and sculpture. Sometimes I too wonder where lies the difference between art and pornography.

      What I find more detestable is when the so-called guardians of culture and religion choose to attack some and leave the others...

      The present art exhibition of the nude and the naked in the Delhi gallery has paintings and sculptures from olden periods too and from other places as well. Even Ravi Verma's paintings are there. So the present one must be the same as the one you're referring to. I took it from the website of the Delhi Art Gallery. I don't visit art exhibitions, in fact.

      Delete
  6. Deepak KripalFebruary 5, 2013 at 7:51 PM

    Very relevant question.. i don't know the answer.. but i don't like this hulla baloo created over such issues. most are politically motivated.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2013 at 9:33 PM

      Every religion has such groups, unfortunately. Look at what they did to the 3 girls in Kashmir. Vishwaroopam. And now, Mani Ratnam's Kadal is facing the Christian ire...

      Delete
    2. Deepak KripalFebruary 5, 2013 at 10:06 PM

      Really.. this is sheer non sense. I wonder how much time people have got for these worthless activities. This world is strange.

      Delete
  7. chetan desaiApril 20, 2013 at 9:52 PM

    I dont think there is any explicitly sexual depiction in Ajanta and Ellora caves!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousMarch 6, 2015 at 12:51 AM

    Apparently those people in those times were not so afraid of the body and the nature of humans as much as today society is. Sex is natural. Priest and people who denounce that art just taking the human mind away from what is natural and present everywhere. the more this is oppressed the more it will be in your face because its natural to be natural in the whole universe. Why don't they cover the statue of David since his penis is showing? You body is your spirits only vehicle, why would it want to hide it?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...
4 comments
Read more

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...
14 comments
Read more

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...
10 comments
Read more

Koorumala Viewpoint

  Koorumala is at once reticent and coquettish. It is an emerging tourist spot in the Ernakulam district of Kerala. At an altitude of 169 metres from MSL, the viewpoint is about 40 km from Kochi. The final stretch of the road, about 2 km, is very narrow. It passes through lush green forest-looking topography. The drive itself is exhilarating. And finally you arrive at a 'Pay & Park' signboard on a rocky terrain. The land belongs to the CSI St Peter's Church. You park your vehicle there and walk up a concrete path which leads to a tiled walkway which in turn will take you the viewpoint. Below are some pictures of the place.  From the parking lot to the viewpoint The tiled walkway A selfie from near the view tower  A view from the tower Another view The tower and the rest mandap at the back Koorumala viewpoint is a recent addition to Kerala's tourist map. It's a 'cool' place for people of nearby areas to spend some leisure in splendid isolation from the hu...
30 comments
Read more