Social and Visual Discourses in A.R. Nagori’s Art
Keywords:
Nagori’s Art, Social, Visual discourses etc.Abstract
This study analyses the ease and perfection Nagori shows in
expressing his fierce emotions and communicating his anger of a social
activist. It also explores and investigates Nagori’s connotation of “aesthetic
manner” (Hashmi, 44) and his priority to keep the painting as a painting
and not an open petition or a declaration against the prevalent social and
political mayhem of the society that most of his paintings look like
otherwise. For the clarity and better understanding the discussion is divided
in three parts. The first part discusses the role of Art as a medium of
Communication of feeling. The second part, Communication vs. Expression,
differentiates between two situations where art has been used as a medium
of communication and as a medium of expression. It analyses the impact of
such choices in artistic endeavors in general and in Nagori’s paintings in
particular. The art of the German Expressionists and other like-minded
artists from the history of Western Art is also surveyed to draw parallel
comparison with Nagori’s works and his time. The third part, Specific
Aesthetic Emotion, while looking at the different emotion theories proposed
by the psychologists, tries to identify specific emotions that result in certain
kind of artistic expressions especially of a social activist painter such as
Nagori.
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