Haut-reliëf met Shiva als Nataraja in de grotten van Elefanta c. 1895 - 1915

This ancient high relief of Shiva as Nataraja in the Elephanta caves has been documented in a photograph. Look at those figures emerging from the stone! I wonder how the sculptor began? Did they roughly hack out the main forms, or did they carefully coax the image out, bit by bit? I imagine them chipping away, day after day, the dust and stone building up around their feet. There's a real sense of movement and energy. Shiva’s pose is dynamic, almost as if caught mid-dance. Other figures swirl around him, carved with great precision. See the textures and the way light plays across the surface? It’s rough, raw, yet refined. That contrast makes it so compelling! I'm thinking about the relationship between figuration and abstraction, how the artist has used their tools to bring form out of stone. There's a kind of conversation going on between them, a call and response, that spans centuries. It’s like a game of telephone, each artist building on what came before, adding their own voice to the chorus.