Cover Story

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

The starving artist is no longer fashionable. Alongside creating artworks for pleasure, present day artists want to ensure that they can earn a livelihood through their art. The global art scene has developed to allow artists to sustain on their works but the Bangladeshi art market is still stuck in an era where experience triumphs over talent. Art in Bangladesh can only flourish if we are ready to invest in our young artists.

UPASHANA SALAM

One would like to imagine that art is not beholden to unsavoury commercialism and is above the baseness of material greed. But then even artists have to eat. An art gallery can provide artists with the vital support to make…

Current Affairs

Cracks in the AL Skyscraper

Shakhawat Liton

The way the ruling Awami League high command has reacted to the party’s humiliating defeat in the just-concluded prestigious battle of ballots in the four city corporations has exposed turmoil in the ruling party. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been…

Art

The Quest for Truth and Beauty

Fayza Haq

Samarjit Roy Chowdhury highlights the joie de vivre and the picturesque aspects of rural existence. “Even in the drooping of a flower there is a beauty”, says the artist. “Just as there is sunrise there is the following sunset, and…

Perspectives

Of Spies, Traitors and Ballerinas

Adnan R Amin

Last week, sales of George Orwell’s classic ’1984′ jumped more than 9500 percent. Media reports suggest it had a lot to do with the recent leak about the NSA’s mass surveillance programme code-named PRISM. While clocks are yet to strike…

One Off

All’s Not Over Yet!

Aly Zaker

I have seen this city for the last five decades. Growing up in it, I saw it go through tribulations, cried in its misery, rocked in its glee and marinated in its juice, hot, cold, friendly warm and frightening, day…

Neighbours

Mr Xi in America

As China has risen, the US has grappled with the task of coming to terms with this constantly more prominent reality on the international scene. This has not been a smooth process, indeed it has been marked by many disagreements…

Writing the Wrong

We Are The Champions

SHARBARI AHMED

It’s starting to dawn on me– we have to be our own champions. We have to be the ones, on the sidelines, rooting ourselves on, telling ourselves when we take a spill or hit the goal post, “that’s ok, walk…

Photography

Forensic Echoes

Andrew Eagle

In the plains, the astute villager on the way to market witnesses the flash of the out of focus mongoose as it darts across the pathway. He sees and hears the bushes rustle and a mongoose shaped memory is constructed…

Travel

Three Diamonds in the Cote d’ Azur

Azizul Jalil

Amost magnificent forty-mile long, wide and curved, palm tree-lined road by the Mediterranean Sea in Nice is called La Promenade des Anglais. In the Eighteenth century, prosperous Englishmen would leave their cold and damp cities in England in the winter…

MOTIVATION AT WORKPLACES

IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO

Amitava Kar

Getting people to give their best at work, even in trying circumstances, is one of the most enduring and slippery challenges faced by managers. Deciphering what motivates human beings is a centuries-old puzzle. Some of history’s most influential thinkers about…

Perceptions

Just a Simple Question

Samiha Matin

On April 20 1999, which happened to coincide with Hitler’s birthday, two senior boys of Columbine High School in Colorado, America, armed with shotguns, semi-automatic handguns and knives, entered their school campus, injuring more than twenty students and killing twelve…

International

From Street Protest to Cyber Protest

Mass rallies give way to smaller events organised online

Huge street demonstrations have been absent from Thai politics for several months. They are being replaced by smaller protests held by people who connect with one other through cyber space. These people are frustrated with Yingluck Shinawatra’s administration, like the…

Health

Ouch! My Back Hurts…

If one day you wake up to realise that moving the neck or the arms has become very difficult and your vision is blurry, it may give rise to panic. Although this may be caused by a sudden illness or…

Write to Mita

Dear Mita, My parents are great but they are beyond overprotective. I think it’s because I’m an only child. I don’t have a phone, I’m not allowed to use the computer; be it to go online, write articles, or play…

Star Diary

Post-Office Woes The post-office services of Bangladesh are regarded as incompetent nowadays, even though people had enjoyed productive, quick services from post-offices in the past. I should mention the exhausting experience I had to suffer when I went to a…

Voicebox

“These elections have proved that there’s no need for any unconstitutional regime to hold free and fair elections.” SHEIKH HASINA Prime Minister asserting that the recently held elections of the four city corporations were free and fair and proved to…

Postscript

The Rich, Famous and Eccentric

AASHA MEHREEN AMIN

Being eccentric is usually associated with genius and we have plenty of famous people who are considered to be above average and who also have displayed the strangest of habits. Albert Einstein collected discarded cigarette butts off the street as…

Letters

Here Comes Lunch!

I want to thank the Star magazine for allowing us to take a rare look into the lives of Dhaka’s tiffin-wallahs. The tifin-wallahs of Dhaka provide many office workers with a service that is affordable and efficient. I am grateful…

Cartoon Strip

The Conspiracy

Sharier

REJUVENATING THE MARKET FOR ART