Editor’s note

While initiating a new Gallerie series ‘Rediscovering India’, a volume on contemporary culture in Bengal, transmuted interestingly, into an issue where poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore got woven through all its features –– not just to celebrate his 150th birth year, but to have his footprints etched again where he once walked; where he once left a magnificent trail of literature, the arts and education. Above all, creative thinking.

Over the years, those footprints have been washed over by waves of debate on whether Tagore’s mind was indeed, as evolved and brilliant as believed by most, or was it as some like the formidable philosopher Bertrand Russell dismissed as, “unmitigated rubbish, cut-and-dried conventional stuff about the river becoming one with the ocean and man becoming one with Brahma. The man is sincere and in earnest but merely rattling old dry bones…” While I have much admiration for Russell, who had challenged my mind during senior school years, I differ with his view on Tagore, even as I am remotely not in the queue of sychophantic Tagore-worshippers.

In this issue

  • Reflections on Modernism
    Modern art has been inspired by a natural desire to chart the uncharted. - Robert Hughes, art critic
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    Fast Forward
    “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ––Henry David Thoreau
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  •
    Future Perfect
    That contemporary art be considered as classic and enduring can only be judged by future generations. -Ian Semple
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    Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Visual Meditations
    Nuri Bilge Ceylan 52, has made a series of painstakingly crafted films in the last two decades, some of...
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  •
    Tulay German: The Personal Is Political
    ‘Years of Fire and Cinders’ explores the legacy of one of Turkey’s most influential singer, Tulay German, who came...
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  •
    Erkan Ogur: Father Of Fretless
    . Erkan Ogur, 57, is widely respected in Turkey and internationally, as a musician and creator of the fretless...
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  •
    All That Jazz
    The music of Turkey has so impressed past visiting jazzmen that many wrote music trying to incorporate local rhythms...
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  •
    Dreaming on her Feet
    Dancing: This is all I know and this all I do -Zeynep Tanbay
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    Turkish Theatre: Tenuous And Triumphant
    The Istanbul Municipal Theatre is the first institutional theatre founded in 1914. Today, with its seven stages on...
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  •
    A Legend In His Lifetime
    Having contributed a rich visual legacy to Turkey and the world, Guler is also reputed for being a temperamental...
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  •
    A Time to Reflect
    Poet and writer Bejan Matur, of Kurdish origin, writes in Turkish, the language in which she was educated [Kurdish...
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  •
    The Soldier and the Slave
    "What do I do, I am a soldier to photography...a slave to it" -Ara Guler
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  •
    A Photographer and the Subtext
    "Unfortunately, art itself is totally irrelevant to the realities of 98% of the world population”.––Nazif Topçuoglu
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  •
    Poetry
    it was the kiss, was the voice, was the lips
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  •
    Istanbul: Ancient, chic and QUITE DIVINE!
    To Istanbul’s many delights, you can add a renewed self-belief that is in the air at every turn. But...
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  •
    The Principle of Hope
    You choose your own country, not your geographical one of course, but your daydream nation, your dream world. You choose...
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