বাংলার চিত্রকলা - The Paintings of Bengal | A book that mesmerized me.

I recently had the chance to go through a book based on the art and painting of ancient Bengal named বাংলার চিত্রকলা; written by Ashok Bhattacharya. I'm not a student of art nor have much knowledge of art and painting. But while going through this book, I can feel this is a great book all because of the amount of information the writer provides for his readers.

Nowadays when I read books of modern writers, I feel like they compromised, they are not giving their 100% and it makes me feel uncomfortable. But this book didn't fail to mesmerize me.

I guess this used to be one of the academic books for the students of fine arts, not sure if they read it till now or not. As I have said, I have no deeper knowledge about the art of Bengal, maybe that's why I found this book more helpful, to begin with.

So let's not review the book rather I'm gonna share how I felt going through this book.

I got to learn about the socio-religious background of many arts, how the political agenda, different revolutions impacted art. The writer tried to provide as much information as he could. So it was like going through history at a glance.

Moreover, what I like most about the book is, it comes with 114 paintings and art that gives a lot of insight into the time we leave behind. Also, I can see from modern art got influenced.

Another thing is, knowing more about famous people from history through art. They used to be connected with art, some of them were artists themselves, many of them were related to the artists. So going through the book gave me a deeper knowledge about the surroundings of that time.

However, the writer couldn't provide the background of many of the arts nor even the name of the artist. I understand how different it might be to accumulate the information in that time. I wondered seeing the amazing creation of many artists, it must be wonderful to know more about them.

This was probably my first interaction with such a book. I have seen some documentaries, read some books about art and painting. But they were very limited. I find this book is quite different from what I came across earlier. I got to know so much information at a time, it felt great to go through this book.

I would highly recommend you to read this book if it's available to you if you also have an interest in art and don't have much knowledge about it.

Have a wonderful day, everyone!