Word: dalmia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...March, when an Indian businessman bought Sher-Gil's Village Scene for $1.6 million, the most ever paid for a work of art in India. This massive sale is focusing attention on Sher-Gil, as is a new biography, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life, by art historian Yashodhara Dalmia...
...have given appointments to her lovers, three to four every day with intervals of a couple of hours in between." Perhaps none of this was true, but it added to her mystique, as did rumors of her bisexuality. Even her death had a whiff of scandal to it; Dalmia says it may have resulted from a botched abortion...
...Cutting through the myths and gossip, Dalmia shows that Sher-Gil was a serious artist intent upon bridging the gulf between the Western-educated Indian ?lite to which she belonged, and the impoverished millions surrounding them. She wrote of traveling through India and finding it full "of dark-bodied, sad-faced, incredibly thin men and women who move silently looking almost like silhouettes." She decided her task would be "to interpret the life of Indians, particularly the poor Indians pictorially; to paint those images of infinite submission and patience." This she did like no one before her, filling canvases with...
...them and their vivid hands as if trespassing on a religious mystery. The young Brahmins of Brahmacharis, with their distinctive faces, look like so many who still sit beside temples in South India, yet they could also be ancient hierophants sharing a hushed secret. In such works, writes Dalmia, "the contemporary [is] elevated to the level of the classical." In a tragically brief career, Sher-Gil did much to introduce her country to the idea of the free-spirited artist, and to show them that art could interpret Indian life for Indians. As Dalmia puts it: "She introduced the modern...