Art: strange animals by Rabindranath Tagore

Untitled by Rabindranath Tagore (credit)

Today I discovered these dynamic, stylized animal paintings by Rabindranath Tagore.    Something about them caught my imagination.

I’m an artist, (I like the German term Kunstarbeiter – “cultural worker”) and though you might think artists themselves are the best qualified people to talk about art, we’re not.

I respond viscerally to form and color, but it’s difficult for me to express this in words.  Even though I can express most other things in words without a problem.  The visual processing side of my brain does not like to work with the verbal processing side.  So my remarks about the art I see and the art I do tend to be minimalistic.    I can say that the fluid lines of Tagore’s work appeal to me.  I don’t like square corners and boxy, rectangular shapes; they remind me too much of the brutalist architecture I grew up around.   Tagore’s forms have a natural flow. I’m not sure what this animal is, it looks rather duck-ish, but I am sure it’s free-range.

Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore’s work has been seldom seen outside India.   But now, from 11th December 2011 to March 4th 2012, you can catch his exhibition of 50 paintings  at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

(via  the V&A museum and Prospect)