Ever since the new building of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations opened in Calcutta on 1 June I've been waiting for an opportunity to go there and check out the five inaugural exhibitions they have organised in different floors of the same building. Today I finally got the time to check out the exhibitions. Plenty of goodies to feast your eyes on, but my attention was monopolised to a large extent by an oil that I found in one of exhibitions. Since I am always intrigued by the lack of male bodies in Indian art (boobies, boobies wherever you look!) I was struck my Rathin Moitra's undated "Nulia" (the first two pictures in this post). This painting reminded me of the pictures of Bruce Weber, somehow. Weber's subjects are mostly well-built young men, mostly on the beach, mostly in swimwear. By strange coincidence, Weber appeared on BBC World hours after I returned home. He was being interviewed by Stephen Sackur on Hardtalk. During the interview Sackur tried to out Weber but the photographer was defensive. He thought what he did in his bedroom was irrelevant. The fact that his images are often described as homoerotic does not, apparently, put him under any pressure to come out. I know nothing about Rathin Moitra apart from the fact that he was part of the Calcutta Group formed in 1942, a group which emphasized colour over form. But what can see in the painting is an awareness of the young male form like it is seldom seen in Indian art.
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