Page 395 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

392 ART AND CRAFTS

According to him, ‘Two things, individuality and an indigenous consciousness, what
may be termed as the perception of Bengali-ness are needed to be blended properly to
48
create modern art.’ His art was committed to this belief. He searched for his country
in tradition, and from tradition, he chose images through which he could express his
emotions. One can say he tried to transplant his sensibilities within folk images.
Rashid Choudhury worked in various media simultaneously. He worked with
gouache, tempera, watercolor, terracotta and tapestry. There is not much variation in
subject and composition of his works in different media. It can, however, be said that
the process of tapestry weaving controlled his compositions in all media. The main
characteristic of his compositions is the coexistence of vertical and horizontal lines.
Horizontal lines gradually create vertical line that ultimately ended in angular shapes.
The subject is depicted on the entire surface and it has been placed on a thick, dark
color. Like subjects, he also chose some definite colors. He used basic colors like deep
red, blue, yellow, green, black and white. His use of color created high contrasts of
light and shade. His subjects (Durga, Kali, elephant, Radha-Krishna, tree) were drawn
using small and big, straight and curved lines, sometimes circles, rectangles, half
circles; sometimes they took the forms of dots or leaves and they either emerged from
dark colors or merged gradually from light to darkness. His works did not involve the
concept of perspective but created the mystery of light and darkness. Along with that
we get a mood of design which does not give the feeling of mere design; rather we
reach into a sense of a world which is mysterious, dreamy, unreal and absurd.
fig. 9.27 Peasant Another characteristic of Rashid Choudhury’s works is the absence of the concept of
Woman-2, tapestry, 1979 time. There is no present or past – his strong dreaming mind traversed between his
memories and the present and back again. His works give an idea of an image without
time, which is natural, full of love and also indigenous. Borhanuddin
Khan Jahangir wrote, ‘Like Chagall he collected the elements of
dreams from human beings, trees, birds and animal and he
drove in the elements of dreams into human beings, trees,
the animal world so that it seems like one has grown
49
from the other.’ [Trans.]
The folk motifs that Rashid Choudhury used as the
main subjects in his works were not presented
with traditional interpretation. Neither did he give
them any new interpretation. Rather he
propagated his emotions and romanticism into
his works where man and woman, trees, animals
and birds all mingle together to give a happy
feeling of a lively world. In many of his works,
human figures and trees are presented in the same
manner. For example, the figures in Woman