From the blurb
Years of Laughter — Reminiscences of a Cartoonist: Kutty, Pub.by Thema, 46, Satish Mukerjee Road, Kolkata-700026. Rs. 500.
One of India’s foremost cartoonists, ‘Kutty’ (P.K.S. Kutty) has been witness to a fascinating and rich tapestry of India’s social and political history since the final phase of colonial rule, and he has chronicled the major events and epoch-making changes of that period in the form of cartoons he drew for the newspapers he worked for during his professional career that began in 1940.
Among the newspapers he served as a regular political cartoonist are: National Herald (from where he started), Free Press Journal, Hindustan Standard, and Ananda Bazar Patrika.
In this book of reminiscences, ‘Kutty’ re-lives his growing up in Kerala, his first stint as a cartoonist in Delhi and Lucknow, his encounters with renowned journalists of the time and the political personages who shaped post-colonial India, and his days in Madras (now Chennai), Bombay (now Mumbai), Delhi, and Calcutta (now Kolkata). All this is said with a sharp insight and in a characteristically unpretentious way. ‘
‘Kutty’ takes pride in acknowledging cartoonist Shankar as his master — “...by God’s will I got to become an understudy of the great cartoonist Shankar…” he says in the Prologue. In the words of Himanish Goswami, he had a “keen, perceptive, analytical mind” and there are not “too many like Kutty.”
Interpreting Mughal Painting — Essays on Art, Society, and Culture: Som Prakash Verma; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 595.
This collection of 10 essays by Som Prakash Verma (already published elsewhere) provides an insight into the Mughal art of book-illustration, portraiture, and pictures, and brings out the Mughal artists’ overarching concern for the aesthetic appeal of their work as well as for the intellectual message they wanted to convey through it. A rigorous but stimulating account of Mughal painting is presented by tapping diverse sources — Persian, Central Asian, European and Indian. The distinguishing features of the collection include: the rich detail it provides about the debate on distinctions between assignments, signatures and later attributions in inscriptions on paintings; the meticulous study of painting technique; and the use of painting as a historical source for the reconstruction of social life and technological advancements.
Apart from highlighting the impact of Persian influence and the Renaissance humanism on Mughal painting, the author uses pictorial evidence to take a close look at areas like technology and firearms, flora and fauna, and ordinary day-to-day life during the Mughal period.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Book Review
