Tapati Guha-Thakurta | |
---|---|
Born | Calcutta, India | 27 September 1957
Nationality | Indian |
Occupation(s) | Cultural historian, academic |
Known for | Art history, visual studies, cultural history of India |
Spouse | Hari Vasudevan (d. 2020) |
Relatives | Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (brother) [1] |
Academic background | |
Education | Presidency College, Kolkata University of Oxford |
Academic work | |
Notable works | Monuments,Objects,Histories:Art in Colonial and Post–Colonial India Making of a New 'Indian' Art:Artists,Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal |
Tapati Guha-Thakurta (born 27 September 1957) is an Indian historian who has written about the cultural history and art of India. She is a director and professor in history at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,Calcutta,and was previously a professor at Presidency College,Kolkata. Her extensive research work on Kolkata's Durga Puja led to its inclusion in UNESCOs Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
Guha-Thakurta was born in Calcutta and obtained a bachelor's and a master's degree in history from the Presidency College and Calcutta University. She finished her DPhil. at the University of Oxford. [2] Guha-Thakurta was married to historian Hari Vasudevan,who died in May 2020 after contracting the Covid-19 virus. [3]
In 1995,she was awarded the Charles Wallace Visiting Fellowship at Wolfson College,Cambridge. [4] In 2011,she was a visiting fellow at the Yale Center for British Art. [5] In 2018,she was a visiting professor at Brown University. [6] She has written exhibition monographs and curated many art exhibitions. [7] In 2019,she was assigned by the Indian Ministry of Culture to prepare a dossier proposing the inclusion of Durga Puja in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. [8]
Vijayadashami, more commonly known as Dussehra, and also known as Dasara or Dashain, is a major Hindu festival celebrated every year at the end of Durga Puja and Navaratri. It is observed on the tenth day of the month of Ashvin, the seventh in the Hindu lunisolar calendar. The festival typically falls in the Gregorian calendar months of September and October.
Durga Puja, also known as Durgotsava or Shaaradotsava, is an annual festival originating in the Indian subcontinent which reveres and pays homage to the Hindu goddess Durga, and is also celebrated because of Durga's victory over Mahishasura. It is particularly celebrated in the Eastern Indian states of West Bengal,Tripura, Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Odisha and by Hindus in Bangladesh. The festival is observed in the Indian calendar in the month of Ashvin, which corresponds to September–October in the Gregorian calendar. Durga Puja is a ten-day festival, of which the last five are of the most significance. The puja is performed in homes and public, the latter featuring a temporary stage and structural decorations. The festival is also marked by scripture recitations, performance arts, revelry, gift-giving, family visits, feasting, and public processions called a melā. Durga Puja is an important festival in the Shaktism tradition of Hinduism. Durga Puja in Kolkata has been inscribed on the intangible cultural heritage list of UNESCO in December 2021.
The Bengal School of Art, commonly referred as Bengal School, was an art movement and a style of Indian painting that originated in Bengal, primarily Calcutta and Shantiniketan, and flourished throughout the Indian subcontinent, during the British Raj in the early 20th century. Also known as 'Indian style of painting' in its early days, it was associated with Indian nationalism (swadeshi) and led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), and was also being promoted and supported by British arts administrators like E. B. Havell, the principal of the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata from 1896; eventually it led to the development of the modern Indian painting.
Kalighat painting, Kalighat Patachitra, or Kalighat Pat is a style of Indian paintings which originated in the 19th century. It was first practiced by a group of specialized scroll painters known as the patuas in the vicinity of the Kalighat Kali Temple in Kolkata, in the present Indian state of West Bengal. Composed of bold outlines, vibrant colour tones, and minimal background details, these paintings and drawings were done on both hand-made and machine manufactured paper. The paintings depicted mythological stories, figures of Hindu gods and goddesses, as well as scenes from everyday life and society, thereby recording a socio-cultural landscape which was undergoing a series of transitions during the 19th and early 20th century, when the Kalighat pat reached its pinnacle.
Swaraj Prakash Gupta was a prominent Indian archaeologist, art historian authority, Chairman of Indian Archaeological Society, founder of the Indian History and Culture Society, and Director of the Allahabad Museum. He was most noted for several excavations Indus Valley civilisation sites and for his support of the existence of a destroyed Ram Mandir underneath the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
Kolkata has many festivals throughout the year. The largest and most magnificently celebrated festival of the city is Durga Puja, and it features colourful pandals, decorative idols of Hindu goddess Durga and her family, lighting decorations and fireworks. Other major festivals are Diwali, Kali Puja, Holi, Saraswati Puja, Poush Parbon, Poila Boishakh, Christmas, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, etc.
Ruma Guha Thakurta was an Indian actress and singer primarily associated with Bengali language films. She founded Calcutta Youth Choir in 1958.
The Academy of Fine Arts, in Kolkata is one of the oldest fine arts societies in India. The galleries of the Academy provide a whopping 6,300 square feet of space and has an auditorium, a conference centre, and several important and priceless collections of paintings, textiles, etc.
The culture of West Bengal is an Indian culture which has its roots in Bengali literature, music, fine arts, drama and cinema. Different geographic regions of West Bengal have subtle as well as more pronounced variations between each other, with Darjeeling Himalayan hill region and Duars showing particularly different socio-cultural aspects.
Rajat Kanta Ray is a historian of South Asian history, specializing in Modern Indian history.
Dakshinee is one of the music academies in Kolkata. It primarily focuses on teaching and promoting the Rabindrasangeet.
Amrita Kumbher Sandhane is a 1982 Bengali film directed by Dilip Roy. It is based on a story by "Kalkut", pseudonym of Samaresh Basu (1924–1988). Music is by Sudhin Dasgupta and stars Shubhendu Chatterjee, Aparna Sen, Bhanu Bandhopadhyay, Samit Bhanja, Ruma Guha Thakurta amongst others.
Shanu Lahiri was a painter and art educator who belonged to one of the most prominent and culturally elevated families of Kolkata and a first-generation modernist who emerged post independence. She was one of Kolkata's most prominent public artists, often dubbed as "the city's First Lady of Public Art", undertaking extensive graffiti art drives across Kolkata to beautify the city and hide aggressive political sloganeering. Her paintings are housed in the Salar Jung Museum and the National Gallery of Modern Art.
Nagendranath Basu was an archaeologist, encyclopaedist and a nationalist social historian of Bengal.
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) is a social science and humanities research and teaching institute in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Sunil K. Dutt is an Indian photographer and photojournalist.
Hari Shankar Vasudevan was an Indian historian, writer and emeritus professor. His work was primarily focused on history of Europe and India–Russia relations besides his contribution to the history of Russian and Central Asia. He served as the president of the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata from July 2018 until he died in May 2020. His last publication was India and the October Revolution: Nationalist Revolutionaries, Bolshevik Power and Lord Curzon’s Nightmare, later published in multiple parts and volumes in the book titled The Global Impact of Russia’s Great War and Revolution (RGWR), and in its second book The Wider Arc of Revolution. It is also published in RGWR's second part titled Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2019.
Karnasubarner Guptodhon is an Indian Bengali adventure thriller film directed by Dhrubo Banerjee and produced by Shrikant Mohta and Mahendra Soni. It is a sequel to Durgeshgorer Guptodhon and the third film in Sona Da franchise. The film released on 30 September 2022, coinciding with Durga Puja, under the banner of SVF Entertainment. The film was a blockbuster at the box office and became the second highest grossing Bengali film of 2022 and one of the highest-grossing Bengali films of all time.
Durga Puja is an annual festival celebrated magnificently marking the worship of the Hindu mother goddess Durga. This festival is the biggest festival in Kolkata, the capital of Indian state West Bengal.
Sundari paintings or Sundari images are a type of pin-up or erotic art that were popular in 19th-century Calcutta, in the province of Bengal in British India. Mostly sold as prints, the images depict women, particularly the new class of widows who took up sex work to survive, and are valuable references to understand the position of women in a society that was undergoing drastic shifts.