Upon the 160th anniversary of Raja Ravi Varma's birth, the completion of the movie Rang Rasiya, based on his life, was completed. To celebrate, the movie's trailer and look were revealed at the Taj Lands End in Bandra on Tuesday. Here are some comparisons between an original Ravi Varma painting and Tuesday's recreations.
Musicians by Raja Ravi Varma
Recreations for Rang Rasiya
Rang Rasiya Stars Randeep Hooda and Nandana Sen
The recreations are definitely not up to par with the original! It's very disappointing.
3 comments:
You're absolutely right -- in the paintings, the women are down to earth, wearing somber colors, white to red, and minimal to medium jewelry. In the recreations, the jewelry is way too heavy, the silks are overworked with gaudy embelishments, and the colors contrast with each other. If you put all those women in the same room, it would look like Vegas -- certainly not what the artist had in mind.
Last weekend I was in San Diego and actually had a chance to see the paintings (oleoographs) of Raja Ravi Verma.
I don't think the digital pictures of the paintings do justice to the actual painting and from Sarah's comment, it seems that you get a completely wrong impression of the mood of the painting. It is much richer and shows off a lot more opulence than what can be seen in a small jpeg file.
Regarding the contrasting blouse, if you notice the central figure in the painting, she is actually wearing a contrasting blouse; red saree with a black blouse.
And if you see closely, each and every woman in the painting is wearing a lot of jewelry.
I am not saying that they got the recreation right; far from it. But they are 'technically' correct reproductions.
Satya Paul has a Raja Ravi Ram collection as well. They tried to capture the spirit of the painting rather than recreate it, so it worked a lot better.
Sunny, actually, I never minded contrasting blouses -- I minded the fact that each individual contrasted with the others -- when you put women together in a group for a painting or for a picture -- the individuals should coordinate with each other, or wear colors that are complimentary with each other. In the painting, you have only one person (in the back row) that is either wearing dark blue or black, its hard to tell from the jpeg) The rest are wearing white, red, or saffron/gold.
Of course, one drawback to the recreation is that they didn't have a richly painted background to pull it all together at least not that we can see from the photos provided) but I'm sure that may have helped.
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