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Rishnitt Singh Heera

@rishtalkies

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The Indian art world is full of stories. I just point at them.
Art•Books•Culture
#rishtalkies #rishreads
Art Advisory @astaguru

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Some festival paintings show you the idol. This one shows you who came to see her.

Happy Navratri.

#Navratri #BikashBhattacharjee #IndianArt #InsideTheFrame #RishTalkies

Image courtesy: Peabody Essex Museum, Gift of the Chester and Davida Herwitz Collection, 2001. Artwork shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective artists, estates, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended.

Bikash Bhattacharjee Durga, Durga painting, Durga Puja art, Navratri art, Bengali artist, Kolkata artist, Indian art history explained, Indian modern art by @rishtalkies

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7 days ago

Every household in India has seen a version of a Raja Ravi Varma god/goddess be it on a calendar, a matchbox, a wedding card, even if they’ve never heard his name. A Largely self taught artist decided to paint Hindu deities the same way European painters depicted their aristocracy, with light, drapery, and anatomy nobody had used for them before.

Centuries of temple art, and it took one painter to create a version of these deities that stuck in the Indian imagination. That’s probably why works by this National Art Treasure artist are fetching crores today, it’s less about the painting itself and more about how much he shaped the way Indian culture still pictures itself.
#RajaRaviVarma #IndianArt #ArtHistory #RishTalkies

Raja Ravi Varma paintings, Indian mythology art, Yashoda Krishna painting, Indian oleograph art, European realism Indian art, Hindu deity paintings, 19th century Indian artists, Indian art history explained, Krishna paintings India, Indian calendar art history

Image courtesy: Google Arts & Culture. Artworks shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective artists, estates, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended. by @rishtalkies

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13 days ago

Different regions. Different visual languages. Which one speaks to you?

Nine indigenous Indian art traditions, one bracket. Warli, Kalighat, Cheriyal, Indian Miniature, Madhubani, Gond, Pichwai, Thangka, Kerala Mural, Tanjore, all going head to head.

Watch till the end and tell us, would your picks have gone the same way?

#RishTalkies #IndianArt #IndigenousArt #ArtHistoryIndia #ThisOrThat

Warli Kalighat Cheriyal IndianMiniature Madhubani GondArt Pichwai Thangka KeralaMural TanjorePainting FolkArtIndia TribalArtIndia

Artworks and art styles shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective artists, communities, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended.
@meharmaini by @rishtalkies

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19 days ago

I get asked constantly how someone should start buying art, and the follow-up is always the same worry, “I don’t know enough about it.” Honestly, understanding art isn’t where this begins. It comes from the time spent looking at it.

The elephant never really changed. Only who was touching it did. Same with art. Feel first. Research after. Your perspective is as valid as anyone else’s… ✨🙂

#RishTalkies #IndianArt #HowToReadArt #FourPurusharthas #ArtPhilosophy

SHRaza KrishenKhanna ZarinaHashmi IndianModernArt BlindMenAndTheElephant ArtAppreciation FourPurusharthas ShashiTharoor ArtHistoryIndia ArtCollecting

Image and video credits:
Rajasthan II, S. H. Raza, 1983, oil on canvas — Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, via Google Arts & Culture, Gift of the Chester and Davida Herwitz Collection
Rear View, Krishen Khanna, 1991, oil on canvas — Kerala Museum, Kochi, via Google Arts & Culture
City-VIII, Zarina Hashmi, 2003, woodcut print — Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, via Google Arts & Culture

Book referenced: The Four Purusharthas: The Path to Happiness, Success, and a Meaningful Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, foreword by Shashi Tharoor, published by Cornerstone Press

Artworks and images shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective artists, estates, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended. by @rishtalkies

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a month ago

Every mother has watched her child reach for something just out of grasp, and stayed close enough to catch them if they fell.

Abanindranath Tagore painted that exact moment in 1908, and gave it to Ganesha.

This Ganesh Chaturthi, we’re celebrating the divine the way we recognise it best. In something completely human.

#RishTalkies #IndianArt #GaneshChaturthi #AbanindranathTagore #GaneshJanani

GaneshJananiPainting BengalSchoolOfArt IndianModernism GanpatiBappa MaternalLove ArtHistoryIndia IndianMuseumKolkata

Image credit: Ganesh Janani, Abanindranath Tagore, 1908, Indian Museum, Kolkata

Artworks shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective artists, estates, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended. by @rishtalkies

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a month ago

He worked as a road inspector by day. By night, for 18 years, he built an entire kingdom out of what the city threw away.

Nek Chand never told anyone. Broken bangles, bathroom tiles, electrical waste, he turned all of it into thousands of sculptures on government forest land he wasn’t allowed to touch.

When authorities finally found it in the 1970s, they didn’t tear it down. Public support saved it, and the state gave him a salary and a crew to keep building.

Today it’s one of the most visited tourist sites in India. Most visitors have no idea it started as one man’s illegal secret.

#RishTalkies #IndianArt #NekChand #RockGarden #Chandigarh

NekChandSaini RockGardenChandigarh RecycledArt OutsiderArt IndianSculpture ChandigarhHistory PadmaShri PublicArtIndia

Video and image credits:
The Heritage Lab, ‘Randhawa & Chandigarh Museum Collection’
India Today, GK/Current Affairs archive
The Indian Express, photo gallery
The Tribune, archive
Chandigarh City News
Instagram: museumofchandigarh
YouTube: Rock Garden Chandigarh (Official) - Hindi
YouTube: Lungset, ‘Nek Chand Saini, The man behind Rock Garden, Chandigarh’
Youtube: drifteraftab, ‘Inside Rock Garden Chandigarh’

Artworks and footage shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective creators, institutions, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended. by @rishtalkies

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a month ago

Everyone in that family painted or wrote something that got remembered. Except her, well almost.

Swipe through and you’ll know why that gap never made sense.

#RishTalkies #IndianArt #SunayaniDevi #RakshaBandhan #womenartists

SunayaniDevi TagoreFamily IndianModernArt WomenInArt StellaKramrisch BengalRenaissance ForgottenArtists ArtHistoryIndia

Image credits:
Self-portrait (1920s, watercolour on paper) — Wikipedia / The Heritage Lab
Lady Holding a Fan (c. 1920s, watercolour on paper) — Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata
Radha and Krishna (20th century, watercolour on paper) — Indian Museum, Kolkata
Milk Maids (c. 1920s, tempera on paper) — National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru
Laxmi (wash and tempera on paper) — National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi
Portrait of Gaganendranath Tagore — Wikipedia
Portrait of Abanindranath Tagore — Britannica

Artworks shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective artists, estates, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended. by @rishtalkies

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2 months ago

Sohni swam across a river every night to meet a man she wasn’t permitted to love, using nothing but a baked clay pot to keep herself afloat.

Her husband’s family found out, and swapped it for one made of unbaked clay. That night, in the middle of the river, it dissolved beneath her. She drowned. Mahiwal, waiting on the far bank, didn’t survive either.

Now look at the painting again. Among the row of clay pots in the background, one is broken.

That’s not decoration. It’s the ending, placed quietly before the story has even started.

Arpana Caur has spoken about the Persian Miniature tradition as an influence on her work, its spacing, colour, and compositional style. You can feel that restraint in how deliberately this one detail is placed.

Arpana Caur painted this in 2000. Some paintings tell you the ending immediately. You just have to actually look.

#RishTalkies #IndianArt #ArpanaCaur #SohniMahiwal #InsideTheFrame
PunjabFolklore IndianFolkTales PersianMiniature IndianContemporaryArt LoveStoriesInArt

Image credits: Arpana Caur, ‘Sohni Mahiwal,’ 2000, Kapany Collection, via Sikh Foundation International and Google Arts & Culture.
Artwork shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective artist, estate, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended. by @rishtalkies

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2 months ago

A single painting doesn’t usually change how a nation sees itself. This one did.

Abanindranath Tagore’s Bharat Mata holds a book, sheaves of paddy, a piece of white cloth, and a rosary each representing knowledge, food, clothing, and faith, everything a civilisation actually stands on. Painted in 1905, right after the British split Bengal in two, it wasn’t meant to be political but it became exactly that.

Sister Nivedita loved it so much she wanted it printed by the thousands and hung in every home between Kashmir and Kanyakumari. In many ways, that’s exactly what happened. Since 1905, countless artists have made their own versions of Bharat Mata, in paintings, posters, and prints.

It’s a good reminder that a nation’s freedom movement wasn’t built on politics alone. Art and literature gave people something to actually believe in too.

#RishTalkies #IndianArt #BharatMata #AbanindranathTagore #independenceday🇮🇳
BengalPartition SisterNivedita SwadeshiMovement Anandamath IndianIndependence ClassicalIndianArt

Image and video credits:
Wikipedia, ‘Bharat Mata (painting)’
Wikipedia, ‘Anandamath’
Wikipedia, ‘Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’
DAG World, ‘150 Years of Abanindranath Tagore’
Wikimedia Commons, ‘BengalPartition1905 Map.png’
Wikipedia, ‘Sister Nivedita’
Video footage via YouTube

Some visuals in this video are AI-generated recreations used for illustrative purposes only, and are not authentic historical photographs or footage.

Artworks and footage shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective artists, estates, institutions, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended. by @rishtalkies

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2 months ago

A Polish artist fled the Nazi invasion in 1941 and ended up in Bombay with nothing. Within a few years, Indian maharajas commissioned him to paint their palaces.

Stefan Norblin painted the Indian gods and goddesses across the walls of Umaid Bhawan Palace, Jodhpur, in full Art Deco style, a European refugee’s hand shaping how one of India’s most iconic epics would be visually remembered inside a royal residence.

He left India in 1946. Six years later, he took his own life.

His murals are still there. Thousands walk past them every year. Most have no idea who painted them. This is a homage to the talented Stefan Norblin and his legacy.

#RishTalkies #IndianArt #StefanNorblin #ArtDeco #UmaidBhawanPalace

PolishArtist Jodhpur Ramayana ArtDecoIndia RoyalCommission ForgottenArtists 20thCenturyArt

Image and video credits:
Google Arts & Culture, ‘Scenes from Ramayana at the Maharaja Palace in Jodhpur, India’ (Stefan Norblin)
Rooted Narratives, ‘Stefan Norblin’s Indian Legacy’
Video footage ©️ 2011 National Audiovisual Institute Poland & Embassy of the Republic of Poland in New Delhi
Umaid Bhawan Palace footage: Prateek Swadesh, via YouTube

Artworks and footage shown for educational and commentary purposes only. No ownership is claimed over any image or video used. All rights remain with the respective institutions, creators, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended. by @rishtalkies

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2 months ago

There is a particular kind of quiet that happens when a painting stops staying still. I walked into a tunnel of light and found myself inside Husain’s colours, ochres and blacks and blood reds, his horses finally allowed to run.

Collectors Cove, presented by Giftex. Some experiences simply ask to be felt.

#RishTalkies #CollectorsCove #MFHusain #Giftex #IndianArt taken in Ballard Pier by @rishtalkies

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3 months ago

So much of how we read a painting depends on who it’s really centered on. Here, Raja Ravi Varma makes a choice that feels radical, the frame belongs to Sita, not to the men reacting to her.
Look at what’s happening in this one moment. Everyone reacts a little differently, a little late. The saints are frozen in shock. Ram reaches forward, a beat too slow. Sita alone already knows what she’s doing, calm, decisive, already leaving.
Her exit isn’t a tragedy happening to her. It’s her choice. That’s the whole painting.

#RishTalkies #IndianArt #RajaRaviVarma #SitaBhumiPravesh #Ramayana
SitaBhumiPravesh IndianEpics Ramayana LavKush Lakshman ClassicalIndianArt IndianPainting RajaRaviVarmaArt

Image credits: Raja Ravi Varma, ‘Sita Bhumi Pravesh,’ 1880, Royal Gaekwad Collection, Lukshmi Vilas Palace, Baroda. Curatorial rights: The Ganesh Shivaswamy Foundation, Bengaluru. Via Google Arts & Culture.

Artworks shown for educational and commentary purposes only. All rights belong to the respective artists, estates, and copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended. by @rishtalkies

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3 months ago