Bøker av K. G. Subramanyan

Word-pictures crafted by a master artist from everyday moments offer deep reflections on contemporary existence in this poem collection. I lie and lay my head upon the grass And unwind the body hardened stiff like glass. But the tiny blades tickle the lower ear Making me ask myself, why do I bear This crass impertinence and sink my head Still further down its bed of prickly green? So asks the poet, his ears pressed against the earth as he maps the world around him in a new geography of sound. Places, photographs, books, neighbors, afternoons, love, loss, and longing are sketched into word-pictures by Subramanyan as he reflects, reacts, and reminisces in this collection of poems. These memoir-poems will help throw into relief some of Subramanyan's symbols and motifs, better contextualizing his oeuvre.

From one of India's best-known artists, an inspired exploration of China's cities and small towns and villages, highlighting landscapes and everyday life. In 1985, K. G. Subramanyan visited China on an invitation from the China Artists Association, exploring Beijing, the Dunhuang caves, Xinjiang, Shaanxi, and Guangdong. Rather than its old monuments and new cities, what caught his eye were China's landscapes and the quotidian scenes of life in its small towns and villages. During his travels, he preferred to make visual impressions rather than elaborate drawings. Upon returning to Santiniketan, he used those visual notes to produce a large body of ink works on card-sized handmade paper, as well as a few paintings, registering his recollections with precise calligraphic economy. This volume brings together a number of these drawings and paintings along with Subramanyan's writings on China, giving us a rare insight into this cross-cultural interaction.

A collection of letters discussing the role of the state in the preservation and promotion of art and culture, by one of India's greatest artists. The seventeen letters in this collection were written by K.G. Subramanyan in response to requests from "various quarters" about matters ranging from the National Policy of Education to the government's seeming preference for erecting statues of dead men and organizing grand Republic Day parades rather than for preserving the myriad threads of cultural tradition and ensuring the survival of the Indian value system against the onslaught of a "Western" lifestyle. As Subramanyan writes in his preface, although he has no proof that any of his views and suggestions translated into practice, the very writing of them was, for him, a process of thinking through a range of issues that pertain not merely to art and aesthetics but to life itself.

Offers a stinging parable of democracy gone wrong by narrating and illustrating the story of a princess whose autocratic rule brought nothing but suffering to her people, despite her ambition of progress for her country.