This delectable intimate vision of this loving couple is an artistic triumph. The young man-child is entirely engrossed in navigating the whole spectrum of musical notes in an ecstatic fanciful flight at his own sweet will. His beloved is urging him on even as she is collapsing in his lap in great emotional ecstasy.

Mumbiram’s Rasa Art is a consummate union of aphrodisia and spirituality. It can be appreciated simply as Art about Love. Yet if you see it as a Paradigm of Divine Love, it elevates you to ecstatic heights of Esoteric High Spirituality.

Everybody knows what an iceberg is. Bayou is a word of Native American origin used in French Louisiana. It means a marshy offshoot of a river. A bayou may be hot and humid. An iceberg is eight times as big underneath as it appears above water.

The title is from Iceberg in the Bayou which is second of the “Deluges of Ecstasy” trilogy which was composed when Mumbiram was living in an abandoned cowshed on a farm in Potomac Maryland (1978-79). Deluges of Ecstasy takes us to a brave new world of a brave new idiom and brave new images. The ambience is charged with the energy and candor of first love. It has the outrageous promises and audacious threats of adolescence. It has the desperation of teen infatuation. The landscape stretches from icebergs to bayous. It is dotted with cowsheds and hermitages. This is no ordinary dust of day. It turns into stars of night. Waters of the river are deep. It does not deter the lovers from making a rendezvous.

It may be said that if the legendary Jayadeva and his Gita Govinda did not exist, they would have to be invented as literary equivalents of Mumbiram and his Art. Indeed this sweet and simple masterpiece and a few similar masterpieces embellish the Conjugal Fountainhead which is Mumbiram’s translation of Jayadeva’s 12th century Sanskrit classic Gita Govinda. It also appears in Deluges of Ecstasy which is Mumbiram’s original work in the Prema Vivarta mood.

Mumbiram’s art is not created as illustrations to any existing text. Mumbiram’s art is inspired by real happenings between the artist and his muses. They share the same rasa as is invoked in the texts of the ancient classics. The couple seen here certainly reminds you of Krishna with his beloved. That is exactly what Mumbiram’s Prema Vivarta mood is about.

Mumbiram’s visions are unabashed and guileless. In comparison the postures of the Kamsutra and the sculptures of Khajuraho appear to be mere gymnastics. With his brush Mumbiram has conjured eroticism that is Divine. No other artist’s work comes anywhere near this in shringaar rasa, the rasa of conjugal love. In comparison William Blake’s engravings are mere studies in muscularity and Khalil Gibran’s illustrations are just corpses floating in space.

Mumbiram’s treatment is free from painterly affectations of brushstrokes and shadows. The lines are sweet and simple, nearly minimal. Such leela …! When you are experiencing these visions you are instantly transported to the world of a classical rustic romance that is simultaneously innocent and passionate, like nature itself. These visions clearly raise you above language and culture. They speak the universal language of Love. Mumbiram’s Rasa Art takes us to a brave new world of a brave new idiom and brave new images. This is a rainbow of rasa. Mumbi is humbly carrying it like a caddy for Beloved Creator. This is a worship of Blue Cloud with amazing unbelievable paraphernalia.
This presentation is an artistic triumph. It is a Rasa Classic. High Five to a ‘Brave new world of brave new visions’.