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| Durga |
Bihar’s
Regional Art - Madhubani Paintings
Madhubani can be said as one of the unique art from Biahr and
nearby states. Production and initial marketing have been regulated
by regional craft guilds, the state government of Bihar, and the
Government of India. But the continuing market in this art throughout
the world is a tribute to the resourcefulness of the women of Mithila
who have successfully transferred their techniques of bhitti chitra
or wall-painting to the medium of paper, and have resisted the temptation
to adapt their traditional designs too freely in pursuit of unpredictable
public tastes.
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| Tripura Sundari |
The paper itself is handmade and treated with cowdung and the
colours used are extracted from vegetables. People of Mithila have
their own language and a sense of regional identity that goes back
more than 2500 years. Among the most celebrated figures believed
to have been born in the region are Mahavira (a great spiritual
hero of the Jain religion), Siddhartha Gautama (better known to
the world as the Buddha), and Sita (the legendary wife of Prince
Rama and herself a central figure in the world's epic the Ramayana).
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| The Fish |
The Region of Mithila Near the India-Nepal Border Commercialization
of the folk art has been a mixed blessing. It has been regulated
by governmental bureaucracies, has generated a multi-levelled distribution
system, and has put a premium on productivity per se - independent
of any meaningful connection to the traditional cycles of village
life and the rhythms of the religious year. But it also has allowed
people around the world to discover a style of art with a long heritage
linked to the lives of women, and that retains evident signs of
its rootedness in a vital folk tradition. And, more to the point,
it has created a new source of gainful employment in rural India
for women and their families. The exhibited paintings include examples
of several themes in the representational but stylized and symbolic
Madhubani tradition - the great life-cycle rite of marriage; some
of the major goddesses and gods of the Hindu pantheon; domesticated
and wild animals.
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