Saturday, April 4, 2009

A selective epitaph

While compiling the details of a calender of prints by Indian masters, I was intrigued by the lack of details about the artist, P.V. Dongare.

A quick google of him yielded little. As I struggled to come to terms with the fact that I'd several paras on the other artists including Amrita Shergill, Chugati, Raja Ravi Varma, B Prabha and NS Bendre, but none on Dongare, I expressed some of my angst to the team.

Well if he's not on Google, he's probably not that important, they said.

While my glare was enough to silence that irreverential thought, I was left wondering if google is the latest of the hierarchies, the new great divider. Obscurity, importance, popularity, worth and influence - all decided by the a simple statement: are you on google?

--

ps: Anyone have any info on PV Dongare? One of the few advantages of this new hierarchy is that it can be suitably altered. I want to make sure he's on google.

4 comments:

Choxbox said...

err.. no n's m, haven't ever heard of him. would like to know more though.

Swati said...

There is a P.V. Dongre at the national museum of modern arts - but no info. Searching by that name lead to a rather blurry looking image uploaded at fropper.com by someone as belonging to his/her collection, nothing more. Maybe you could contact this person?

ra said...

give me a couple of days

ra said...

Have you tried the Lalit Kala Akademi?