jueves, 19 de mayo de 2011

Parvati with Ganesha in Her Lap

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Parvati with Ganesha in Her Lap

Código del Artículo: HL13

Water Color Painting on Paper
Artist: Kailash Raj

9.8 inch X 12.6 inch
Precio: Euro 682.00

Descripción

This beautiful portrayal of the young mother Parvati with her son Ganesha cajoling his mother for some favour takes the viewer back to India's classical age when her ever the greatest poet Kalidasa in his Kumarasambhava, while portraying the youthful beauty and bewitching charms of the world mother Parvati, traverses beyond the son-mother relationship in describing her nude youthfulness and romantic charms. Different from this visualisation on canvas Kalidasa's Parvati has been portrayed doing penance on a Himalayan peak for winning Shiva's love.

Here on canvas it is mother Parvati, though with her ever enduring beauty and charm she is yet the same as Kalidasa had seen her two thousand year back engaged in penance on an ice-covered mountain peak. She has the same thick black hair wherein the drops of water oozing from the icy Himalayan peak lose their way, and if ever they come out of them and dive below, her thick deep eye brows arrest them mid-way, and if ever they allow them to take their downward course, they are destined to strike against her coconut-like strong and well protruded breasts and melt into a sleek ripple of water stealing its way across the narrow pass where her two breasts meet.

Parvati's exposure here, the exposition of her upper part which a mother usually exposes to her child, is just for a son's eye. A male child's love and attachment to his mother is an all time universal phenomenon. A child seeks the ever first taste and touch of the human body in the form of his mother only. It is this universal principle which the artist seems to have applied with his Parvati and Ganesha theme. The artist seems to replace Ganesha in his enjoyment of a mother's alluring youthfulness and charm, though at the same time he has installed the lively mother instead under an arch on a golden throne against a huge bolster and has blended with his visualisation her deity form, his deep devotion and India's votive cult.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.

Lord Shiva in Meditative Dance with Parvati Playing Vina

Código del Artículo: HJ62

Water Color on Paper
Artist: Kailash Raj

6.0 inches X 8.5 inches

Precio: Euro 194.00

Descripción

This magnificent miniature, in its characteristic Chamba, Pahari, art style of medieval India, represents one of the rarest manifestations of Shiva blending in his form his Natesh and Mahayogi aspects. Lord Shiva, in this manifestation, combines in his form the dance and meditation. The manifested dance form is further a blend of 'lasya' and 'tandava'. In its manifestation of Parvati the painting is as much rarer, for in her form the artist has blended an aspect of Saraswati, the goddess of learning and music. The 'vina', which Parvati is holding and is playing on, is more akin to Saraswati, whose visual manifestations are never without it.

There are episodes in Devi Bhagavata and other Devi legends wherein Parvati wished that Lord Shiva danced for her. Shiva declined and engaged in meditation. It was not acceptable to Parvati. She picked her 'vina' and began playing on it, and the music it produced was so bewitching that the entire cosmos began dancing to its tunes. The earth glowed with rarer brilliance, lakes gave forth lotuses, birds left feeding and began dancing, trees burst with flowers, fire in 'agni-kunda', or the ritual hearth, turned into lotus leaves, Shiva's snakes abandoned him to dance and Shiva's own form turned to dance modes. He was able to retain his 'padmishana' posture but the rest of his form betrayed to the magic spell of Parvati's 'vina'. His 'damaru', the double drum, was heard accompanying Parvati's 'vina' and his knotted hair unfurled and waved like a flag rising towards heavens.

The artist has translated the legend into lines and colours with exceptional genius. He, as a matter of fact, created his own legend wherein he has visualised the strength of music surpassing the strength of meditation, particularly in case of Shiva who has been conceived as accomplishing everything by dance, the love, union and creation by 'lasya' and destruction and dissolution by 'tandava'. For a more accomplished symbolism, he has hence blended in Shiva's form both, the 'lasya' and 'tandava'. He has painted his hair unfurling like flames of fire, as they do in 'tandava', but at the same time, and very unlike of Shiva's iconography, he has clad him in crimson red, the colour of love, union and creation, the representative colour of 'lasya'. Though in sheer 'padmashana' posture, the form of Shiva represents the 'absolute dance', which combines in it all dance forms, rhythm, moods and modes. Parvati, fully clad and covered in her clothes, charms him only by her music and not by her beauty, which the artist could easily render but did not, simply because he aimed at creating the cosmology of music, its creative strength and all-surpassing appeal.

Artistically the miniature is one of the finest examples reviving the medieval Pahari art style practised at Chamba. Despite diffusing and finely shading his colours the artist did not lose the form and identity even of a small leaf. Colours are contrasted within themselves by their varying tones and shades. He has covered the entire canvas but not to look crowded but only to better manage and balance it. The round faced Shiva and Parvati depict the true Pahari art style.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of ancient Indian literature. Dr Daljeet is the chief curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the National Museum of India, New Delhi. They have both collaborated on numerous books on Indian art and culture.

Shiva and the Power of Asceticism

Código del Artículo: WK81

Water Color Painting On Cotton Fabric

32.5 inches X 43.0

Precio: Euro 179.00

Descripción

Seated on the high-peaked Mountain that symbolizes height attained and kept, is Shiva, also known as Rudra in the Vedas. His steady pose represents controlled intellect that is free from ignorance and passion. His three eyes reflect the ever-running consciousness that links past, present and the future. The Mahabharata gives an interesting legend behind the third eye:

Once upon a time as Shiva sat on the Himalayas, engaged in austerities, Uma, attended by her companions, and dressed as an ascetic, came behind him and playfully put her hands over his eyes. The effect was tremendous. Suddenly the world became dark, lifeless and destitute of oblations. The gloom, however, is as suddenly dispelled. A great flame burst forth from Mahadeva's forehead, in which a third eye, luminous as the sun was formed. By fire from this eye the mountain was scorched, and everything upon it consumed.

Shiva is shown wearing an tiger-skin loincloth. A snake coils around his neck like a scarf and the holy river Ganga flows from his head. In addition Shiva's hair has the following characteristics:

1). Jatamukuta: The formalized knot of matted hair, symbolizing store up ascetic power.

2). Chandra: The crescent moon, symbol of creation.

Jnana Dakshinamurti Shiva

Availability: Sólo Uno en la acción

Código del Artículo: WK26

Water Color Painting On Cotton Fabric
© Himalayan Academy

21.0 inches X 31.0 inches

Precio: Euro 133.00

Descripción

This painting represents Lord Shiva on the icy peaks of Mount Kailash. He is seated with his left leg placed over his right thigh. In Indian tradition the posture is known as Lalitasana – that which revealed ease and aesthetic beauty. The form of Shiva that this statue represents is identified in Shaivite iconography as his Dakshinamurti manifestation. The term Dakshinamurti combines two Sanskrit terms, one 'Dakshin', meaning the supreme master or expert in any of the disciplines, and the other, 'Murti', meaning form, that is, Dakshinamurti is the form of one who is at the top of any skill or discipline and is its supreme master.

Scriptural tradition perceives the origin and accomplishment of dance, music, entire knowledge, rhetoric, Yoga, aesthetics and various other disciplines in Shiva alone. Hence, Dakshinamurti is an epithet used exclusively for Shiva. In immensely diversified Shaivite iconography the term Dakshinamurti denotes one of the Shiva’s many forms, that is, the form that represents him as the master of one skill or discipline, or of the other. Obviously, Dakshinamurti form has many manifestations related to various skills and disciplines that Lord Shiva commanded : 'Vinadhara Dakshinamurti' – expressing dance and music, 'Pushkara Dakshinamurti' – the expression of aestheticism and beauty, 'Vyakhyana Dakshinamurti' – master of rhetoric and the supreme teacher, 'Jnana Dakshinamurti' – possessed of all knowledge, 'Yoga Dakshinamurti' – one capable of controlling body and mind for the realisation of one's pure self, and the like.

This form of Shiva represents Jnana Dakshinamurti, holding sacred books in hands representing knowledge and wisdom. Four of Shiva's saintly disciples in front of him pay their reverence to the supreme teacher Shiva.

Licensed under a Special Agreement with the Himalayan Academy.

Shiva and Durga

Código del Artículo: PN74

Kalamkari Painting on Cotton

19.5 inch X 32.5 inch

Precio: Euro 72.00

Descripción

There is duality in manifestation and this duality has the character of complimentary poles of attraction. There can be no creation without the relation of opposites. Shiva contains all opposites within him and even described as half male, half female. In Hindu thought, Parvati is considered to be the cosmic energy, Shakti, and can be benevolent and fierce. In her aspect as Durga, she is a fierce woman who rides on a tiger and is called the 'Inaccessible'.

This Ardhanarishvara painting of Shiva in a way symbolizes the syncretic ideology, for it emphasizes the union of the principal cult deities of Shaivism and Shaktism. The dress and ornaments of the two halves of the body are different in as much as they are made to befit a male and a female. While Shiva’s lower garment made of animal skin ends at his knees, that of the goddess covers her leg completely.

At the feet of Shiva is Nandi, the bull that is his associated vehicle. At the other side is the fierce lion, belonging to Durga. This beautiful androgyne image portrays the coming together of Parvati as Durga with her lord, the togetherness of female and male and the oneness of prakriti and purusha.