Rodevra Republic

I was referred to a painting asking for my comments. The first thing I noticed that it was an AI generated picture. I had my doubts and confirmed this by asking ChatGPT to draw a picture of boys playing football in the rain. It produced the picture below, which was not the same but very similar to the picture I was referred to. Next I asked it to draw a picture of boys playing cricket in the rain and it again produced a very similar picture that you can see below.  AI has considerably diluted our artistic sensibilities. In artistic terms the picture is trash, though it invokes certain emotions like the unbridled joy in playing the game. But again these are drawn from certain stereotypes that fit in with popular images that are held in mind by the public at large. The reason I can say that it is not a real painting is that it lacks the natural irregularities formed by brush strokes and there is no indication of the medium used - oil, watercolours, etc. These lend a particular textur...

This is the story of Nitin Nadkarni, a school friend, and his wife Chitra, who is a phenomenal sportswoman. She is an inspiration, having completed the Devil's Circuit recently. Before that, she did five of the six World Marathon Majors and the 90 km Comrades Ultra Marathon. These are extreme physical events that must require  high degree of strength, stamina and perseverance.  When I wished Nitin personally on his birthday, I commented on the super fitness of his wife. This started a conversation that revealed these astounding facts. Would you believe that all these incredible achievements were achieved after crossing the age of 50?  When I enquired on what motivated her, I was told she was a runner in her school and college days and had represented at the district level. After marriage all this took a back seat as she was a working woman and was also managing the family. She had made a bucket list in which she wanted to complete the half marathon at the age of 50. This ...

This is a story of the previous century’s most enduring, appealing and successful advertising slogans, "Does She or Doesn’t She?"  See pictures of the ads  below. It was the time in the 1950s and 1960s when hair coloring was a stigma and most women found it difficult to hide the few strands of off-colour hair. All this changed when the modern hair coloring revolution came not through a safer product, or through a one-step, easy-to-use formulation, but through clever, image-changing advertising that captured the feminist sensibilities of the day. In 1949, the single-step Miss Clairol Hair Colour Bath was introduced to the American beauty industry. In 1956, Clairol launched an at-home version of Miss Clairol Hair Colour Bath and became a household name. Clairol’s one-step home colour was a breakthrough in the beauty industry as was its advertising campaign. Clairol hired the advertising firm Foote, Cone & Belding, which assigned the account to a junior copywriter, Shirley P...

 This week's edition of Saturday Art is about my own involvement in the world of art, more specifically about the revival of a dying art. The following write-up was published a few years back in a local news magazine, 'Voice of Malabar Hills' that traces the history of the art of clay model making to the present day with the efforts involved in reviving it. " India has a rich and ancient heritage of clay figurines. The fired clay figurines discovered from excavations at Indus Valley are a standing testimony of India’s ancient terracotta art and the craft of clay model making. In relatively recent history, the art received royal patronage. Maharaja Krishnachandra (1710-1783) was a patron of arts, and supported the production of clay figurines. In 1728 he invited families of expert artisans from other regions and settled them in what is today’s Nadia district in West Bengal. By end of 19th century, their work became hugely popular for their exquisite craftsmanship and w...

Here is a story I read some time back: Once upon a time there was a small time business man from a small village who used to sell butter in the nearby town. A big shop owner in the town was his regular customer. The villager used to deliver every month the required butter in 1 Kg blocks to the shop owner and in turn he used to get grocery items like sugar, pulses etc.  from the  big  shop  owner. Once, the shop owner decided to weigh the butter and to his surprise every block of butter weighed 900 gms.  instead of 1kg. Next month when the villager came to supply butter, the shop owner was very angry at him and told him to leave the shop, to this the villager replied him courteously, "Sir, I am a very poor villager, I don’t have enough money to even buy the required weights for weighing the butter, I usually put the 1 kg sugar you give me on one side of weighing scale and weigh butter on another side" This beautifully illustrates that what we give to others comes...

Can you guess something very unusual about this lamp? No, it is not its value, though each individual lamp costs anywhere between  10 crores to 30 crores rupees. Neither does it have any intrinsic value in terms of precious stones or jewels. The answer is that this is a ‘Tiffany’ lamp and these are all designed and made by ladies. By a quirk of Nature there are some ladies who have four colour receptors instead of three.  Normal humans are “trichromats”, comprising 99% of population, who can only truly see three colors - red, green and blue. All of the other colors are seen as approximations to red, green and blue. The ladies Louis Comfort Tiffany hired were “tetrachromats”, having a fourth receptor, a type of cone featuring a photopigment that allows perception of more colors that aren’t on the typically visible spectrum. While trichromats can see about 1 million colours,  tetrachromats may be able to see an incredible 100 million colours! By the way, only ladies have th...

It looks like a person is reading in the water. When you zoom in, you will find that there is no person, no book, no reading, everything is an illusion. Just like life, it seems to be the case, but it is not the case at all.. A few days back a friend had sent the above post. Apart from the message it conveyed, one could not help noticing the beautiful art behind it. On the face of it, it is just an arrangement of stones, but the art was is in giving the visual effect of a man reading in water. It involved finding stones of the right size and shape, chipping and polishing them if necessary and placing them in a particular order to create a meaningful image from a distance.  Most art is instructive as much as it gives joy, but more often we discuss the artistic merit of a piece of art and rarely the underlying message or meaning it conveys. So in today's art class, we will be deriving meaning from this work of art involving stones. The accompanying note says everything is an illusion...

With the passing away of Rata Tata we have lost a  Karma Yogi.  One of the signs of this was his actions were never for personal gain or profit, but for the long term interest and growth of his companies. His organizations too were not independent microcosms, but they thrived in the benefit of its people and society they belonged to at large. As an industrialist, he had the  vision to create and give something of enduring value to the nation and its society, and envisaged a larger goal than just making a profit. The aspect which underscores his being a Karma Yogi is his huge contribution to charity. For anyone to be called an industrialist and a philanthropist in the same breath defines the person he was. When two thirds of equity share capital is held by philanthropic trusts, one can imagine the emphasis on social welfare rather than private wealth.  He touched the lives of millions of people, and more than anything else people remember him for his kindness and comp...

The debate on letters  vs numbers will continue but while words can express emotions, the sheer beauty of numbers can leave you speechless. For example there is no known pattern for prime numbers and remains a mystery that humanity has not deciphered ever since they were discovered 2000 years ago.  They are indestructible, irreducible, but when combined produce a natural even number. You never know when the next prime numbers will come up and suddenly you will see them coming in pairs separated by an even number (11 an 13, 41and 43, 137 and 139). Is there any parallel to this in letters? Like with words there are palindromes, "racecar" for example, there are "emirp" ('prime' spelt backwards) numbers which we call as a mirror primes. If a number is prime, and the number written in a reverse order is also prime, it is called as  a "mirror prime". For example 13, 31.  Numbers share a love relationship too, and their love affair is no secret. We human...

The Ravi Varma paintings come to life! Thanks to AI and technology! This has been circulating on the WhatsApp circuit. From an AI point of view it is excellent use of technology to bring these still pictures to life. But from a pure art perspective, the essence of the original painting is lost.  When Ravi Verma originally painted it, there must have been numerous considerations. The proportions, the expression, the brush strokes, the visual balance and coherence. The main feature of his paintings was creating a moment in time that evokes a contemplative mood. The effect of light was also so important that for him it was 'subject matter'. Sadly all these elements are lost in the animation. To the purist it is almost sacrilege to play around with paintings like these. However the only justification can be we are not seeing art, but the creative possibilities of AI.