“Beyond Borders”: Rabindranath Tagore’s Paintings and Visva-Bharati

This paper seeks to locate Tagore’s paintings and his writings on art in the context of the evolution of his ideas of Visva-Bharati. It intends to argue that as Tagore moved from the idea of the brahmavidyalaya to the idea of Visva-Bharati, his paintings and his concept of art changed substantially....

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Amrit Sen
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: AesthetixMS: Aesthetics Media Services 2010-01-01
Series:Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
Subjects:
Online Access:http://rupkatha.com/V2/n1/rabindranathtagorepaintings.pdf
Description
Summary:This paper seeks to locate Tagore’s paintings and his writings on art in the context of the evolution of his ideas of Visva-Bharati. It intends to argue that as Tagore moved from the idea of the brahmavidyalaya to the idea of Visva-Bharati, his paintings and his concept of art changed substantially. The ‘imagined community’ of Visva Bharati was replicated in Tagore’s canvas as he conceptualised a world without borders, where ideas and knowledge could be freely and equally assimilated and exchanged. Setting himself apart from the binaries of the self and the ‘other’ and the rhetoric of nationalism, Tagore’s unique postcoloniality used the aesthetic and the pedagogic to bypass the political.
ISSN:0975-2935