The Contemporary vision Jogen Chowdhary

Farhan Asim B.Arch 2nd Year Ansal School of Architecture

Of

 We see Contemporary art as the work of artists who are living in the twenty-first century. Contemporary art mirrors contemporary culture and society, offering teachers, students, and general audiences a rich resource through which to consider current ideas and rethink the familiar. The work of contemporary artists is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that challenges traditional boundaries and defies easy definition. Diverse and eclectic, contemporary art is distinguished by the very lack of a uniform organizing principle, ideology, or -ism. In a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world, contemporary artists give voice to the varied and changing cultural landscape of identity, values, and beliefs.

CONTEMPORARY ART

JOGEN CHOWDHARY
Born: January 30. 1939 Important painter of 21st century India Lives and works in Santiniketan Graduated from the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata Famous paintings are in ink, water colour and pastel He has painted in oil medium as well.

His Vision of Contemporary Art Speaking on contemporary art, Chowdhury maintains

the necessity of a uniquely Indian approach to art, as opposed to the blind aping of Western trends, "To be global you do not have to do something that is imitative of America, Australia or England. It has to have an authenticity, which is not what blind imitation allows for. I am passionately engaged in practice of visual art for a quite long time and all through expressed life in various forms and colors in my art works. Man is always in the centre point of my work. I get reacted and disturbed with social disturbances taking place allover around me."

JOGEN CHOWDHARY
THE REALISM ARTIST

Jogen Chowdhuri, born in 1939 in the Faridpur District of present day Bangladesh is one among the many artists of Bengal who has his roots in the Eastern Bengal and who had shifted to India at the time of partition in the 1947.

Life and Education

Jogen was born in Daharpara Village, a village in the Faridpur district of Bangladesh in 1939. His father Pramatha Nath Chowdhury was a Brahmin zamindar. Jogen received the interest on art from his parents as both his parents were artists. Pramatha Nath was interested in Hindu mythological incidents and characters. He had painted several mythological scenes from the village theatres. He had also sculpted various Hindu deities. Jogen's mother was an expert in Alpana drawings. Jogen Chowdhury was born and brought-up in a village culture and atmosphere. Just before partition Jogen along with his father came to Calcutta; the rest of the family moved to Calcutta in 1948, after the partition. The family stayed at his uncle's quarter. Here Jogen painted his first painting, on the wall. In 1951, Jogen's family moved to Saheednagar Colony, Dhakuria. Jogen was admitted to the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata in 1955 wherefrom he graduated by 1960. His first job was as an art teacher in a school in Howrah. After two years in 1962, he was employed as Designer in the Handloom Board, Calcutta.

Life and Art

In 1965, he went to Paris to study in Ecole des Beaux Arts, in William Hayter's Atelier 17. Afterwards he spent five months in London. He returned to India in early 1968. He was appointed as a textile designer in the Handloom Board in Chennai. In 1970, he joined the Calcutta Painters Group. His first collection of poems Hridoy Train Beje Othey was also published in the same year. He quit his job at the Madras Handloom Board in 1972 to join the Art Gallery of Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi as a Curator. Due to this new job, he moved to New Delhi. He founded the Gallery 26 and Artists' Forum in New Delhi in 1975 along with some leading painters of New Delhi. In 1986, Jogen represented India in the 'Festival of Art' in Baghdadwi.

Paintings
Jogen Chowdhury is known for his ability to successfully marry traditional imagery with the contemporary painting, in a skillful blend of an urban self-awareness and a highly localized Bengali influence. His early works show an attention to figuration that carries through in his current pieces.

In an interview, Chowdhury commented that, in his early works, "the space projected a simple iconic presence. A spatial sequence was worked out but the space was not complex. The background seemed to vanish."
Anshuman Dasgupta describes these works as more iconic and more dramatized; per contra, Chowdhury describes his later works as "now more personalized and subtle".

Painting : Couple A
In this work, Chowdhury makes his monochromatic grotesques stand out against the dark void behind them. The metaphor of overripeness is applied to humans and inanimate objects, which take on the qualities of an ageing organism, decaying and corrupt.
Category : Painting Medium/Materials : Pen and ink with pastel on paper Dimensions(l,b,d) : 63.5 x 95.2 cm

Painting : Dead I
Symbol of Pain and Suffering. Dead - I inscribed, titled and dated in Bengali (upper right); signed and dated 'JOGEN 2004' (lower centre); inscribed 'Artist: Jogen Chowdhury Title: "Dead - I Medium: Pen & Ink & Pastels Size: 18.7 x 23.8 cm Year: 2004 Santiniketan' (on the reverse) pen, ink and pastel on paper 7 x 9 in. (18.5 x 23.5 cm.) Executed in 2004

THANK YOU
FARHAN ASIM B.ACRH 2nd YEAR ANSAL SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE