Artworks with Emotional Expressions....

Images can affect people on an emotional level. Since the emotions that arise in the viewer of an image are highly subjective, they are rarely indexed. However there are situations when it would be helpful if images could be retrieved based on their emotional content. We investigate and develop methods to extract and combine low-level features that represent the emotional content of an image, and use these for image emotion classification. Specifically, we exploit theoretical and empirical concepts from psychology and art theory to extract image features that are specific to the domain of artworks with emotional expression.

Sean Scully says “I’m using extremely simple forms that I see running through the basic human ordering systems … I see these simple forms as what unites us and what runs beneath the cultural superstructures that have caused us to be estranged.”

We feel, “Paintings are static two-dimensional images with limited narrative means. On the basis of a critical analysis of the relevant laboratory scaling studies, museum studies, and neuro-aesthetic work, the article reaches a negative conclusion about most paintings’ ability to engage sufficiently with general viewers’ associative-memory systems, so as to lead to identification and empathy, and induce fundamental psycho-biological emotions. In contrast, designers of art installations can draw on subtle combinations of several classes of stimulus properties with psychological significance under the classical concept of the sublime (physical grandeur, rarity, an association with beauty and with biologically significant outcomes), so that some installations may induce the peak aesthetic emotional response, aesthetic awe – as defined in Aesthetic Trinity Theory, along with the states of being moved and physiological thrills. The approach also involves an analytical skepticism about emotion, defined as a culture-o-logical proclivity for unnecessary insertion of emotion into accounts of mental life and behavior, especially in the arts. Implications for the role of emotion theory in empirical aesthetics are examined.”

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Raghu Rai: The Unflinching Eye That Framed India’s Conscience by Prabuddha Ghosh

Raghu Rai: The Unflinching Eye That Framed India’s Conscience by Prabuddha Ghosh In the long and unsettled narrative of modern India, few visual chroniclers have worked with the moral clarity, emotional depth, and sustained intensity of Raghu Rai. To speak of him merely as a photographer is to understate the scope of his engagement. He is, more precisely, a witness to India’s becoming—its fractures, its continuities, its silences, and its eruptions. Across decades, his lens has moved with a rare steadiness through the country’s most defining moments, refusing spectacle while never relinquishing the power of the image. Born on 18 December 1942 in Jhang, in undivided Punjab—now in Pakistan—Rai belonged to a generation marked indelibly by the trauma of Partition. Geography, for him, was never inert. It was memory, rupture, and inheritance. Punjab was not simply a birthplace; it was a divided consciousness. That inheritance would quietly shape his sensibility. There is, in his work, an unm...

A Timeless Gaze, A Global Ascent: When Raja Ravi Varma Redefined the Place of Indian Art by Prabuddha Ghosh

A Timeless Gaze, A Global Ascent: When Raja Ravi Varma Redefined the Place of Indian Art by Prabuddha Ghosh ( The recent sale of Yashoda and Krishna by Raja Ravi Varma marks a defining moment in the trajectory of Indian art. Achieving an unprecedented ₹167.2 crore at Saffronart ’s Spring Live Auction in Mumbai, the painting has become the highest-valued work of Indian art ever sold. Acquired by Cyrus S. Poonawalla , it surpasses the earlier record set by M. F. Husain ’s Gram Yatra , indicating not only a shift in market dynamics but also a renewed cultural recognition. This article approaches the event as more than an auction milestone. It connects the sale to broader questions shaping the present and future of Indian art, including the evolution of collecting practices, the continued relevance of Varma’s legacy, the distinctive qualities of his paintings, the ongoing surge in the Indian art market, and the factors contributing to such extraordinary valuation. Drawing on current ...

A New Vista in My Creative Journey: Entering Digital Art by Prabuddha Ghosh

A New Vista in My Creative Journey: Entering Digital Art in 2025 by Prabuddha Ghosh A fter more than thirty-five years of dedicated engagement with photography and nearly two decades of sustained practice in digital photography, I have now entered a new and significant phase of my creative journey: the field of Digital Art. This transition has emerged organically through reflection, experimentation and encouragement from individuals whose guidance and faith have been deeply meaningful to me. In particular, I wish to acknowledge the constant motivation and mentorship of my friend and senior artist, Shri Atul Padiaji of Vadodara, Gujarat, whose encouragement gave me the confidence to explore this medium with greater seriousness and depth. Equally important has been the role of my younger brother, Shri Jayanta Khan of Kolkata, who, through his persistent inspiration over more than a year, urged me to take this decisive step and begin a new chapter in my artistic life. I also believe t...

…. Curator’s Pen by Prabuddha Ghosh

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