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Lot Essay
Akbar Padamsee's Metascapes, begun in 1970, represent his long involvement with the theme of the landscape. As the term 'Metascape" suggests, Padamsee is concerned with the mythic or archetypal landscape that is expressed visually by a stringent ordering of timeless elements, such as the earth, the sun, and the moon, in a temporal space.
"The idea of using the (sun and) the moon in my metascapes originated when I was reading the introductory stanzas to the Abhijnana Sakuntalam, where Kalidasa speaks of the eight visible forms of Lord Siva without mentioning them by name. For instance, he suggests the sun and the moon as the controllers of time. It is by this process that the artist deals with reality; not by describing or naming, but by a superimposition of secondary and tertiary semantic planes upon the pictorial sign." (Akbar Padamsee, India Myth and Reality, Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Oxford, 1982, p. 17).
The use of a bold palette complements his choice of landscape as subject. The colours evoke a sense of movement in an unmoving space. Padamsee states, "...colours expand and contract, colours travel on the surface of the static painting...colour trajectory is strategy...A colourist needs to master the art of silencing some colours, so as to render others eloquent." (Akbar Padamsee, India Myth and Reality, Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Oxford, 1982, p. 17).
"The idea of using the (sun and) the moon in my metascapes originated when I was reading the introductory stanzas to the Abhijnana Sakuntalam, where Kalidasa speaks of the eight visible forms of Lord Siva without mentioning them by name. For instance, he suggests the sun and the moon as the controllers of time. It is by this process that the artist deals with reality; not by describing or naming, but by a superimposition of secondary and tertiary semantic planes upon the pictorial sign." (Akbar Padamsee, India Myth and Reality, Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Oxford, 1982, p. 17).
The use of a bold palette complements his choice of landscape as subject. The colours evoke a sense of movement in an unmoving space. Padamsee states, "...colours expand and contract, colours travel on the surface of the static painting...colour trajectory is strategy...A colourist needs to master the art of silencing some colours, so as to render others eloquent." (Akbar Padamsee, India Myth and Reality, Aspects of Modern Indian Art, Oxford, 1982, p. 17).