This stunning 100% silk scarf is an exclusive design for the National Galleries of Scotland featuring a detail of the artwork The Purification of the Temple (after Marcello Venusti) II by Raqib Shaw. Produced in pure silk, this beautiful scarf has a satin feeling and it is finished with hand-rolled edges, printed in the United Kingdom.
This luxury scarf was produced to accompany the exhibition Raqib Shaw | Reinventing the Old Masters at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art One.
Shaw borrows the Baroque architectural setting of Marcello Venusti’s work, to create a technicolour stage for a dance by the Hindu God Shiva. Complete with skeletons swinging on ropes suspended from the ceiling and cavorting figures in Indian dress, the scene is strewn with gold coins, showered from the balcony above by mischievous characters peering down. By combining elements in this way, Shaw disrupts the harmony of the picture plane and sets up dualities: that of heaven and hell, eroticism and restraint, transgression and submission, reality and fantasy.
Contemporary Indian artist, Raqib Shaw, moved to London in 1998 to study at St Martin’s School of Art. He gets inspiration form Old Master paintings, often depicting himself, his dogs, and more personal related features.
