Tamils - a Trans State Nation..

"To us all towns are one, all men our kin.
Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from within.
Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !."
-
Tamil Poem in Purananuru, circa 500 B.C

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CONTENTS


Thirukural in Paintings

Jayalakshmi Satyendra
- Paintings in Oils
-

Tamil Art - Aum

Tamil Art - Puthumai Penn - Jayalakshmi SatyendraPuthumai Penn - A Tribute to the Women of Eelam "..Her forehead shall be adorned not with kunkumam (but) with red blood. All that is seen in her eyes is not the sweetness of youth (but) the tombs of the dead..."
Tamil Art - Spacetime - Jayalakshmi SatyendraMoments of Awareness Exhibition - Sponsored by German Cultural Institute "'Each painting is like an experiment,' and into that experiment in colour goes what she really feels and thinks.The canvas hasn't limited her sub-conscious.'I am only a tiny speck in the great universe' and yet all her inner emotions she has translated into colour and line creating sensations and responses that are distinctly individual..."
Tamil Art - HiddenMoscow Exhibition - Sponsored USSR Cultural Ministry "Jayalakshmi's extraordinary command and use of color gives her paintings a vibrancy and power which attracts and rivets attention..."
Child's View by NirmalaTamil Eelam Freedom Struggle - Paintings "War brings with it a particular social reality. Death, destruction and fear may prevail but so too does great courage and determined resistance... For some people, the particular social reality generated in wartime conditions should be captured as a documentary record of the particularity of those times. These records form part of the cultural heritage of humanity, for they seek to tell the world of a particular human condition.."
'Space, Life, Lines' Exhibition by Eelam Tamil Artists, August 2004

ஈழத்தில் போர் நிறுத்தத்தினை வலியுறுத்தி சென்னையில் தூரிகைப் போராட்டம், March 2009

The Art of Painting of Tamils from the Sangam Age to Kamban - Trivikrama Narayan
Tamil Art & Architecture - T.V.Mahalingam
Related Offsite Links

Books on Art & Architecture at the Tamil Nation Library

TAMIL ART ON THE WEB: Sathyam Art Gallery

தமிழ் ஓவிய கண்காட்சி

"...On the one hand, the work of art is a product of its time, a mirror of its age, a historical reflection of society to which both the author and the original audience belonged. On the other hand, it is surely no idealism to assume that the work of art is not merely a product, but a producer of its age; not merely a mirror of the past but a lamp to the future.." - Karthigesu Sivathamby in Literary History in Tamil

'Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts; the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last.' - John Ruskin

"Nation building is rightly, though at times excessively, associated with political and social processes. Yet, it is not confined to national liberation movements, charismatic leaders and liberators, wars of national independence, and the struggle of national entities to emerge to independence from a position of relative powerlessness and subservience to a dominant power.

Nations are as much cultural as political forms, and the creation of a unique high culture of world significance is often central to their legitimation. True, the effects of culture are not as clearly quantifiable as those of politics. The effect of Verdi, for example, on Italian nationalism is hardly as clear cut as that of Garibaldi. Wagner's impact on German nationalism is amorphous alongside the concrete political achievement of Bismarck. William Butler Yeats' influence on Irish nationalism is not as definable as that of Michael Collins or Eamon De Valera. The inspiration of Chaim Nachman Bialik on Jewish nationalism is diffuse in comparison with that of Herzl.

Yet it may be argued justly that artists have equal if not greater importance. They above all express the nation's distinctiveness; their creativity is part of the momentum to independence; they are themselves symbols and icons of the nation's unique creative power; they regenerate their nation morally and speak for its heart and conscience." ( John Hutchinson, European Institute, London School of Economics and David Aberbach, Department of Jewish Studies, McGill University, Quebec, Canada in Nations & Nationalism, Volume 4, 1999)


"Artists have played a crucial role in the expression, representation and crystallisation of the nation. A study of the art of a people is a study of its culture, or, to use Herder's term, its 'spirit'. Artists have thus been the chroniclers of national identity and of its changes over time, under varying historical circumstances. As Herder made clear a long time ago, not only the visual arts, but also music and dance, are crucial parts of the heritage of 'the people', embodying and documenting different states of what Durkheim called the 'conscience collective', the spirit of a people, as it was, as it changed, and as it persisted or revived this or that principle from the past." (from the Introduction to an Exhibition in honour of Professor Anthony D Smith held in conjunction with a Conference on 'When is Nation' at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 23-24 April 2004)


"...There is a tendency in modern times to depreciate the value of the beautiful and over stress the value of the useful...We do not ordinarily recognise how largely our sense of virtue is a sense of the beautiful in conduct and our sense of sin a sense of ugliness and deformity in conduct...

It is not necessary that every man should have his artistic faculty developed, his taste trained, his sense of beauty and insight into form and colour and that which is expressed in form and colour, made habitually active, correct and sensitive.

It is necessary that those who create, whether in great things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces of art and genius or in the small common things of use that surround a man's daily life, should be habituated to produce and the nation habituated to expect the beautiful in preference to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the fine in preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to the gaudy.

A nation surrounded daily by the beautiful, noble, fine and harmonious becomes that which it is habituated to contemplate and realizes the fullness of the expanding Spirit in itself.... " - Sri Aurobindo on the National value of Art


Related Offsite Links:

Tamil Arts - Dr. R. Nagaswamy - Volume 1 - Volume 2 - Volume 3

Art Gallery, Chennai Museum
Thanjavur Paintiings
Thanjavur Paintings
Tanjavur Art Gallery Thanjavur Arts

Tanjore Creations, Chennai
Reflections - Jayalakshmi Satyendra
Painters from Sri Lanka


Suryamoorthy

A.V.Ilango
also at
Web India
Chennai Gallery Artists at Chennai on Line Tamil Arts Academy
ஓவியர் புகழேந்தி Cholamandal Artists Village Arts & Crafts in Tamil Nadu
Gopulu Ravi Varma Mark Rathinaraj
Vasuki, Batticaloa,Tamil Eelam Kiko, Batticaloa, Tamil Eelam Vasan, Batticaloa, Tamil Eelam
S.P.Ravi Jayashree Ganesh: Jeyaraj
Shobana Maniam Shan Sundaram
Banu Krishnan Paintings Kanthan Drawings Senathipathi Paintings
Gopinath Paintings Silpi Asma Menon
Mark Gallery Gita Suri - Adyar Art Club
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