Looking at Cartoons, Getting Along

Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,100+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"...William Hazlitt: "Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding."

मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Friday, January 08, 2016

प्रगती? छे नव-निर्मिती: Replacing The Word Progress With Innovation

Paul-Louis Courier (1772-1825):

"O terrible influence of this race
which serves neither god nor king,
given over to the mundane sciences,
to base mechanical professions!
Pernicious breed! What will you not attempt,

left to your own devices,
abandoned without restraint
to that fatal spirit of knowledge, of invention, of progress."

Stephen Jay Gould, ‘Full House: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin’, 1996 :

“…Between 1685 (the birth of Bach and Handel) and 1828 (the death of Schubert), the small world of German-speaking people gave us the full life spans of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, to mention just a few. Where are their counterparts today? Who, in the vastly larger domain of the entire world, with musical training available to so many million more people, would you choose among late-twentieth-century composers to rank with these men?

I can’t believe that a musical virus, now extinct, was then loose in the German-speaking world. Nor can we deny that many more people of equal or greater potential talent must now be alive and active somewhere on this planet. What are they doing? Are they writing in styles so arcane that only a rarefied avant-garde of professionals has any access? Are they performing jazz, or (God help us) rock, or some other genre instead? I do suspect that these people exist, but are victims of the right wall and our unforgiving ethic of innovation …”

Evgeny Morozov:

"...The sewing machine was the smartphone of the nineteenth century. Just skim through the promotional materials of the leading sewing-machine manufacturers of that distant era and you will notice the many similarities with our own lofty, dizzy discourse. The catalog from Willcox & Gibbs, the Apple of its day, in 1864, includes glowing testimonials from a number of reverends thrilled by the civilizing powers of the new machine..."

I bought much talked about Clayton M. Christensen's ' The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail', 1997 many years ago.

Like majority of my books, I have still NOT finished reading it.

Now, after reading Jill Lepore's essay from The New Yorker, June 23 2014 ,I don't have to. What a relief!

Lepore has taken apart the book and a lot of management jargon in it and how!

I have always been mildly suspicious of the word 'innovation'. Lepore says all we have done is replaced the word progress with innovation!

"...The idea of progress—the notion that human history is the history of human betterment—dominated the world view of the West between the Enlightenment and the First World War. It had critics from the start, and, in the last century, even people who cherish the idea of progress, and point to improvements like the eradication of contagious diseases and the education of girls, have been hard-pressed to hold on to it while reckoning with two World Wars, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, genocide and global warming. Replacing “progress” with “innovation” skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer."

Yes, 'the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer.'

Artist: Charles Barsotti (1933- June 16 2014), The New Yorker, 27 January 2003

Sunday, January 03, 2016

Dinanath Dalal and Others: Lady with Pointy Breasts and an Hourglass Waistline....

May 31 2015 - May 30 2016 is birth centenary year of Dinanath Dalal ( दीनानाथ दलाल)

आधुनिक साधनांचा वापर करून आणि पाश्चात्त्य वाङ्मय सजावटीचा सखोल अभ्यास करूनही त्यांनी आपल्या चित्रांतले भारतीयत्व जपले, हे विशेष. त्यांच्या चित्रांत लयबद्ध रेषा, काव्यात्मकता दिसते. स्त्रीचित्रण हा दलालांच्या कुंचल्याची श्रीमंती डोळ्यांत भरवणारा विषय. त्यांच्या चित्रांतल्या शेलाटय़ा बांध्याच्या रूपवतींचा स्त्रियांनाही हेवा वाटे. परंतु पदर फडकवत जाणाऱ्या या ललनांचे सौंदर्य कधीही उत्तान वाटले नाही. काहींच्या चेहऱ्यावर सोज्वळ भाव, काहींच्या चेहऱ्यावर असीम गोडवा, कधी कधी खटय़ाळ भाव, तर काही मुग्ध सौंदर्यवती. त्यांच्या चित्रांतल्या स्त्रिया अजिंठा-वेरुळच्या लेण्यांतील स्त्रियांची आठवण करून देतात. धनुष्याकृती भुवया, कमळासारखे हात, सिंहकटी, सुंदर केससंभार, याचबरोबर नृत्यकलेचा प्रभाव जो भारतीय चित्र आणि शिल्पांवर आढळतो, तोही दलालांनी अंगिकारला आहे. त्यामुळे भारतीय कलारसिकाला त्यांची चित्रे देशी मातीतून निर्माण झालेली वाटतात. - See more at: http://www.loksatta.com/lekha-news/painting-exhibition-of-artist-dinanath-dalal-1169853/#sthash.kT07Cz9m.dpuf

प्रा. प्रतिभा लक्ष्मण वाघ (Prof. P. L. Wagh), Loksatta, December 13 2015:

“…स्त्रीचित्रण हा दलालांच्या कुंचल्याची श्रीमंती डोळ्यांत भरवणारा विषय. त्यांच्या चित्रांतल्या शेलाटय़ा बांध्याच्या रूपवतींचा स्त्रियांनाही हेवा वाटे. परंतु पदर फडकवत जाणाऱ्या या ललनांचे सौंदर्य कधीही उत्तान वाटले नाही. काहींच्या चेहऱ्यावर सोज्वळ भाव, काहींच्या चेहऱ्यावर असीम गोडवा, कधी कधी खटय़ाळ भाव, तर काही मुग्ध सौंदर्यवती. त्यांच्या चित्रांतल्या स्त्रिया अजिंठा-वेरुळच्या लेण्यांतील स्त्रियांची आठवण करून देतात. धनुष्याकृती भुवया, कमळासारखे हात, सिंहकटी, सुंदर केससंभार, याचबरोबर नृत्यकलेचा प्रभाव जो भारतीय चित्र आणि शिल्पांवर आढळतो, तोही दलालांनी अंगिकारला आहे. त्यामुळे भारतीय कलारसिकाला त्यांची चित्रे देशी मातीतून निर्माण झालेली वाटतात….”

Deborah Solomon says in her book 'American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell', 2013 ()

"....(Charles Dana) Gibson was the creator of the ubiquitous Gibson Girl, that fashionable belle with pointy breasts and an hourglass waistline and a tremendous amount of long, wavy hair that is usually pinned up in what was called a pompadour; it can put you in mind of a robin’s nest or swirls of soft ice cream. In her heyday, she was viewed as an icon of female independence, a woman willing to express an opinion or have a drink without parental consent..."

'Gibson Girl' was 'born' in 1890's.

Gibson Girl, 1902

Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Hugely successful Marathi magazine 'Awaaz'(आवाज) has been published every Diwali since its inception in 1951.

As long as I remember, it has featured women with 'pointy breasts and an hourglass waistline' or 'breasts or buttocks grossly over-emphasized'. (More on this subject on my blog here. )

Look at two pictures of Dalal's: the first appeared on the cover of 'Deepawali' magazine dated 1970 and the second on the cover of 'Lokprabha' Diwali 2015.

Dalal's ladies clearly have 'pointy breasts and an hourglass waistline'.

If you read Marathi, go to the quote of Prof. Wagh at the top of this post.

"परंतु पदर फडकवत जाणाऱ्या या ललनांचे सौंदर्य कधीही उत्तान वाटले नाही" (Interpretation: One never felt the beauty of those pallu-waving ladies revealing / erotic/ titillating)

Dalal's 'ladies' never titillated....I disagree. Many of them very well did....big time...at least they have that effect on me even in 2016 when I am 55...and that's where Dalal's success lies...'pointy breasts and an hourglass waistline' are drawn primarily for mild eroticism...and why can't they be titillating in the first place?

Now to Prof. Wagh's next claim: त्यामुळे भारतीय कलारसिकाला त्यांची चित्रे देशी मातीतून निर्माण झालेली वाटतात...(Interpretation: The Indian fans of the art feel his pictures are rooted in Indian soil.)

I disagree again. If fans, readers think that- rooted in Indian soil etc- it's only out of ignorance. 'Those' pictures of Dalal have been heavily influenced by Western artists.

Which are those likely influences?

C. D. Gibson's 'Gibson Girl'

or

the art of the late Mr. Chandrashekhar Patki (c 1933-2008) (चंदशेखर पत्की) who worked for Awaaz

or

the artists who inspired Mr. Patki, for instance Bill Wenzel (1918–1987)

Looking at some of Gibson's pictures and reading about him, I increasingly feel that Mr. Dalal was influenced by him because like Gibson, despite his immense talent, Dalal remained largely a very-well-paid illustrator.

BTW- From all the ladies above, who do I like most? Dinanath Dalal's from 1970!

Thursday, December 31, 2015

जो आला तो रमला...भरपूर दुधी हलवा....Cartoonist Gavankar

Silenus:

"That the best thing for a man is not to be born, and if already born, to die as soon as possible."

ग. दि. माडगूळकर:

"...सुटकेलागी मन घाबरते, जो आला तो रमला."

Look at the following cartoon of the late Gavankar (गवाणकर)...I find it so funny and rather deep...

I don't like curry of bottle gourd (दुधी भोपळा) but I like the sweet made out of it called: 'Dudhi Halwa' (दुधी हलवा).

In the picture above, in the top frame, the man is looking at the sign board that says: "फक्त २५ पैशात भरपूर दुधी हलवा" (In only 25 paise, plenty of 'Dudhi Halwa').

Marathi word 'halwa' can mean a sweetmeat- pictured immediately below- or a form of the verb: to shake.

courtesy: Anjali A. Kulkarni, August 2015

As the man walks in (look how happy and excited he looks), he discovers- as shown in the lower frame- that a bottle gourd is hung. Next to it is a signboard that says "Please shake the gourd carefully" and tough looking guy is standing there to ensure its compliance.

Now you expect the man to leave disappointed or to argue with the establishment. Instead he is shown shaking the gourd gently!

Isn't life like a "gourd" trap? Once we enter it, we are reluctant to exit it even after discovering that this is not what we sought.

Happy New Year 2016...

Friday, December 25, 2015

गोठा बाळ जन्मलें....The Star of Bethlehem or Star Wars?

Today December 25 2015 is Christmas

One of the best writing on Jesus I have read is Durga Bhagwat's (दुर्गा भागवत) Marathi essay "christ-sangat" (ख्रिस्त-संगत)- first written for 'Abhiruchi' (अभिरुची), June 1967- now part of her book: 'Paisa' ('पैस', 1970/1988).

She quotes the following poem/ folk song in it.

This month I saw a brilliant cartoon to coincide with the release of the film 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'

Artist: Mike Lukovich

It's a popular (mis?) conception that the three wise men visited Jesus at the stable on the night of his birth. But here they are shown lining for the blockbuster movie!

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Oh He's Not a Whale, He's the Devil Himself!...Or Is He?

Herman Melville, 'Moby-Dick', 1851:

"BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER IV. (Killer).—Of this whale little is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage—a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included."

"Io! Paean! Io! sing.

To the finny people's king.

Not a mightier whale than this

In the vast Atlantic is;

Not a fatter fish than he,

Flounders round the Polar Sea."

—Charles Lamb's Triumph of the Whale.

Captain Ahab: "Oh he's not a whale, he's the devil himself!"

Artist: Zachary Kanin, The New Yorker, October 2015

Saturday, December 19, 2015

हजार पाचशेतून निवडून काढली आहे...Natyachhatakar Diwakar's GM Bat

Enclosed is a dramatic monologue (DM) on cricket by Natyachhatakar Diwakar (नाट्यछटाकार दिवाकर) dated August 8 1913....so interesting and funny...

It is more than 100 year old but a few of today's issues are touched upon...Decision Review System (did ball touch the bat or not?), quality of bats.....

Bat brand/ manufacturer Gunn & Moore , referred by Diwakar, survives...He calls the bat: दिलजान....what a beautiful word...had not seen it being used in Marathi....he also says bat has the autograph of 'Gunn & Moore'....did he mean logo?

Diwakar says about the bat: हजार पाचशेतून निवडून काढली आहे (Chosen from a thousand / five hundred ones)...It's interesting Gunn & Moore does have bat selector module on its website. It presents some 10+ screens for you to enter data before it picks out a bat for you!

I went through the process and it chose the following bat for me:

Diwakar would be amused by the process.....I wonder if he were to write the DM today, how he would have gone about it....