“Perhaps due to the diversity and depth of Indian culture, people carry many different images of India. Contemporary art can act as a common language to reveal the India beyond the images and to lead us to a greater understanding within, for there is something that transcends the diversity of images, a spirit that is contemporary and a presence that is universal, even in its Indianness, above all there is a sense of creative adventure that reaches out to something beyond the image, through the image, be it figurative or abstract.

This, I feel, is what captivated me – the glimpse of a window in the image, opening to a space beyond.”    Masanori Fukuoka, Collector and Director, Glenbarra Art Museum

In a complex time when the numbers of currents affecting Indian society seem to multiply Indian art is confidently coming of age.  Artists evince a deep awareness of globalization as the technology of communications makes mountains of data available, while they negotiate a unique, personal esthetic vision that strongly reflects their Indian cultural heritage.  They grapple with the issues of how to express their Indian ethos; how to relate to international art idioms; and how to evolve an original “voice”.

Maitreya from the Thikse Monastery in Ladakh, 1970

Ravinder Reddy’s contemporary Indian “goddess”

One of the superstars of Indian contemporary art, Ravinder Reddy explores the traditional and the contemporary in both theme and material.  Made from fiberglass and enamel paint rather than traditional materials such as clay, plaster and gold leaf, Reddy brings to his sculptures an eclectic mix of folk and kitsch, whilst thematically addressing the issue of maintaining reverence and adherence to tradition.

Every key private collection I visited during my stay had a Reddy or two.  Even the superb Aman Hotel in Delhi greeted me with a Reddy head.

A Ravinder Reddy head at the Aman Hotel in Delhi (cheek to cheek with me for scale)

The high-impact work I saw around India was proof that if art is powerful enough in its form and substance it doesn’t quite matter where it comes from.  And that is exactly what the quote at the beginning of this post from Masanori Fukuoka was describing: the enchantment of finding the universal in the particular, as in all good art.

Subodh Gupta – Two Cows 2003-2008 (bronze, chrome, variable dimensions)

Grabbing attention internationally are husband-and-wife Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher who reinvigorate everyday Indian subjects and materials in eye-catching sculptures.

Describing himself as “the idol thief”, Subodh Gupta is one of the most exciting contemporary artists to have emerged in recent years.  The man dubbed by The Guardian as the “Sub-Continental Marcel Duchamp” trained as a painter and went on to experiment with a variety of media.

His strategy of appropriating everyday objects ubiquitous throughout India and turning them into artworks that dissolve their former meaning and function, reflects on the economic transformation of his homeland, and relates to his own life and memories. Gupta transforms the icons of Indian everyday life into artworks that are readable globally.

Subodh Gupta - Doodhwalas (milk sellers) 2003 (oil on canvas)

Bharti Kher was born in 1969 in London. Relocating to New Delhi after studying painting in Newcastle, England, she likens herself to a well-intentioned ethnographer investigating her Indian culture.  She is committed to exploring cultural misunderstandings and social codes through her art practice and delivers a very forceful reinterpretation of modern India.

Her work encompasses painting, sculpture and installation, often incorporating bindis, the forehead decoration worn by women in India. “Many people,” she has explained, “believe it’s a traditional symbol of marriage, but actually it’s meant to represent a third eye — one that forges a link between the real and the spiritual worlds.”

Bharti Kher - The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own, 2006 at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

In “The skin speaks a language not its own” a slumped, life-size she-elephant’s considerable surface courses with white sperm bindi, and it took Bharti Kher 10 months to make.  It was auctioned at Sotheby’s London last June for a record $1.2m and can be seen now at Delhi’s new private Kiran Nadar Museum.

Sotheby’s deputy director of contemporary art, James Sevier, called it an “icon” of contemporary Indian art. He said: “It is India’s identity in all its glorious complexities that is the hero of this masterpiece and the sculpture remains a beacon of India’s avant-garde scene at the beginning of the 21st century.”

To be continued:
Art and culture tour of India – Part 8:
Private Museums and Art Hotels

N.S. Harsha – Nations 2007 (installation)

Collecting art and investment in art have always been regarded in India as the rich man’s hobby.  Through the second half of the twentieth century, the main collectors were old Indian business families, such as the Birlas, Tatas and Goenkas. There was also an occasional rare collector abroad – notably, the late Chester Herwitz in the US (many of his works are now at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts,) and Masanori Fukuoka, the Japanese food processing tycoon who is believed to own over 4,000 works, many housed in a three-story museum near Kobe, and who is still actively involved buying and supporting Indian art.

Much has changed in the past two decades, driven by new wealth, initially among NRIs, the non-resident Indians in the US and overseas, and then by Indians at home where the 1991 economic reforms led by Manmohan Singh, now Prime Minister, have resulted in a booming consumer economy. The era of greater entrepreneurial opportunity gave rise to a generation keen to strut its stuff and the number of collectors of Indian modern and contemporary art is growing – though gallery owners estimate there are “only” perhaps 500 serious collectors in India and internationally, out of an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 potential buyers.

Rameshwar Broota - Nature Tapestries (large scale photography)

One way to increase awareness and make art collecting more accessible is through art fairs and events.  Marking the growth of a ‘culture of art events’ centered on the display of new art, already two happenings took place this year:  the evermore important India Art Summit and Art Chennai 2011.

India Art Summit held in New Delhi is the largest and most diverse showcase of contemporary art in India and is viewed as a key player in the evolution of this dynamic young market.  Now in its third phase, with supporting partner Sotheby’s, it is helping to create a larger body of collectors and to introduce Indian artists on the global stage.  According to the organizers, India Art Summit 2011 this past January represented 500 artists, 84 galleries and had 128,000 visitors – which put it above Frieze and ArtBasel Miami Beach together.  This record attendance was proof that there is an audience, and not just a market, for art in India.

Alongside the fair, there were exciting collateral events around the city with twenty art exhibitions, the launch of a private museum, curated art projects, live performances, a sculpture park, a video lounge, Speakers’ Forum, and an art store.

Art Chennai 2011 in March was a city-wide festival of modern and contemporary art in Chennai, with 27 art shows in various galleries, anchored by informal discussions and talks by nationally and internationally known artists, collectors, critics, and curators.

Bose Krishnamachari - Stretched Bodies 2008 (acrylic on canvas)

Helpful, ground-breaking anthologies such as Amrita Jhaveri’s A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian Artists, and the comprehensive catalogues issued by the major auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, as well as the lavish publications of Saffronart Online Auctions, all became part of the essential infrastructure of a healthy market for contemporary Indian art.

For a select group of artists, the Indian art market experienced one of the most dramatic rises of all during the art boom of 2006 to 2008.  According to ArtTactic, a London-based analysis firm that monitors the progress of emerging markets, average prices for contemporary Indian art at auction rose by 140 per cent between March 2006 and September 2008.  However, between September 2008 and September 2009, they fell by 75 per cent.

ArtTactic, which measures the confidence its subscribers have in the future of particular markets, says that its confidence indicator for modern and contemporary Indian art has showed a respectable uplift in its last reading since it fell to its lowest point in May 2009.

Ranbir Kaleka video still from "Cul-de-sac in Taxila" 2010

The collecting expansion of contemporary Indian art could not have happened at such a speed and scale without the internet which has vastly widened the potential art-buying public, providing instant access to images and historical data.

A decade ago, when the world wide web surfaced as a just-a-click-away-mart, few thought that it could become a platform for selling art.  Today the web is finding its place in the art market spearheaded by Saffronart, the world’s largest fine-art online auction house with gallery spaces in Mumbai, Delhi and New York, and offices in London.

Launched in 2000 by Dinesh Vazirani, 44, and his wife Minal, 38, with funding from Sequoia Capital, the Silicon Valley firm that had also put money into Google, Saffronart rapidly elbowed its way onto the Indian art auction scene, alongside established veterans like Christie’s and Sotheby’s, and successfully cornered the market for online auctions of Indian contemporary art.  It repots a reach of 60 per cent of sales to buyers outside India, with the vast majority being overseas Indians, and an abundance of first-time buyers.

Years ago, as aspiring collectors, the ambitious and forward-thinking couple, both MBAs - he from Harvard and she from INSEAD, France – found it frustrating to try to obtain information about Indian art.  I mentioned their ages because it is impressive how so young they took their vision and turned it into a global reality.  They were first to introduce downloadable mobile applications for bidding in auction (including versions for the iPhone and BlackBerry) and coinciding with Saffronart’s March sales this year they announced a new mobile version of their website that allows for easy viewing of artworks, jewelry and prime properties from any internet-enabled mobile device.  They also publish the prices of the works on the site, an idea considered practically heretical in India 10 years ago. “It allows for a transparency that hadn’t existed in the Indian art market before” says Minal.

The Vaziranis captured the momentum of contemporary art in India as it was just emerging as a substantial public culture.

Sudarshan Shetty – Taj Mahal 2008 – detail (Mixed media and video)

Responding to the flourishing art scene in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore, Christie’s had a pioneering auction in London in 1995.  In 2001 Tate Modern had an exhibit focusing on Mumbai’s art scene, and independent curators Peter Nagy, Julie Evans, and Gordon Knox, organized an exhibition focusing on contemporary art from India for the 2005 Venice Biennale.  Last spring (February through April 2010) self described “artoholic” Charles Saatchi, one of Britain’s most influential art collectors, had an exhibition in his 70,000 sq ft Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea titled “The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today.”

This year will mark India’s debut at the 54th Venice Biennale as an official entrant sponsored by the Ministry of Culture.  The contemporary showcase “Everyone Agrees: It’s About to Explode” will feature mixed media artworks by four leading artists: India-born New York-based artist Zarina Hashmi, Gigi Scaria of Delhi, Guwahati-based Desire Machine Collective (DMC), a multi-media art intervention collaboration between Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya; and Praneet Soi, who works out of Kolkata and Amsterdam.

”Indian art is an incredible force in the international art scene today.  There is good art coming out of all the big cities across India…  Like the sudden 16th-century shift from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, this is a similar big shift, and there is going to be ever-increasing dynamics in China, in India, and in the Middle East. I think collectively they will eventually change the art world” said Hans Ulbrich Obrist, renowned curator of the Serpentine Gallery in London, in an interview recently.

To be continued:
Art and culture tour of India- Part 7:
More on the contemporary art scene in India

For me, exploring the culture of India naturally included its much talked about contemporary art scene, so I’m making a geographic, thematic and time leap from the Dravidian temples of South India to contemporary art and art support in Bangalore and Mumbai – my next two stops.

When The Gods Came Down To Earth – still from filmmaker Srinivas Krishna’s installation

I have been exposed to India’s contemporary art stars for a number of years at various art events and through publications, but got much more involved last year while at Art Dubai.  Not only did the art fair and Dubai have many galleries showing art from the Indian subcontinent, but I also had the opportunity to visit Indian expat collectors with wonderful contemporary collections.

Adding a dimension to my immersion in the art of today was seeing a rare collection of artistic and historic breadth, that of Jane and Kito de Boer who collect Indian art from the early Bengal period to the late 20th century, tracing the arc of India’s history from the colonial period through the modern independent era.  Their curator Robin Dean’s overview was a great introduction to my explorations this year.

After flying to Bangalore from Chennai, I had some unexpected business in Los Angeles to deal with which cut short my time to discover the contemporary art scene in this city. However, I didn’t miss the main reason for going there: meeting the highly respected young collector Abhishek Poddar.

From being the scion of a prominent business family, to director of the family business dealing with explosives, tea, shipping, and then to ardent art lover and collector, 41-year-old Abhishek dons many hats. His personal interests lie in art, photography, design and architecture. Currently, he is the joint owner of the Tasveer Galleries, a pan-Indian project that he started four years ago to exhibit photographs and to promote photography as art.

This is where I saw Karen Knorr’s India Song, a series of carefully crafted photographs that explores the past and its relation to India’s contemporary heritage sites across Rajasthan.

Gatekeeper - Karen Knorr

Following tea in Abhishek’s art and design focused elegant offices we went on to his wife’s lifestyle boutique “Cinnamon.”  Radhika Poddar, its aesthetic guardian, ensures that the craft traditions of the past successfully meet contemporary design for the new-wealthy consumers.

Prices are high even by American standards, though I found that to be the case across the board in India, from hotels, restaurants, fashion boutiques and art galleries, to basic small-town craft stores; all catering to a growing middle class and its growing purchasing power fueled by the strong Indian economy.

There is a lot being said and written on the consumerism boom that has been witnessed in India since the economy was opened up in 1991.  20 years after the country abandoned its Soviet-style, centrally planned economic model, embraced capitalism, and jump-started economic growth, its economy is thriving, its growth second only to China’s.

The Wall Street Journal last week quoted data from McKinsey & Co. showing that the number of households in the highest-earning income bracket, making more than $34,000 a year, has risen to 2.5 million, from 1 million in 2005 (but the ranks of those at the bottom, making less than $3,000 a year, also have grown, to 111 million, from 101 million in 2005.)

India boasts 69 billionaires — a near-tripling since 2008 – and its four richest are worth more than the forty richest Chinese combined.

At my next stop in Mumbai I saw (only from the outside!) the most expensive home in history, anywhere.  Built by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, the 27-story skyscraper cost over $1 billion.

The “billion dollar home”

Named Antilla, its design is based on Vaastu, an Indian tradition much like Feng Shui that is said to move energy beneficially through the building by strategically placing materials, rooms and objects.  Atop six floors of parking, Antilla’s living quarters begin at a lobby with nine elevators. Among its many amenities are a ballroom, movie theatre, a cold climate room dusted by man-made snow flurries to escape the Mumbai heat, a four-story garden, and three helipads. And with a wait staff of 600, no desire will go unfulfilled.

Mr. Ambani, 54, runs Reliance Industries, the oil, retail and biotechnology conglomerate that is the largest private sector enterprise in India.  He is the first non-U.S. citizen to join the board of Bank of America. His younger brother, Wharton-educated Anil Ambani is the fourth richest Indian with a personal wealth of $8.8 billion, behind Mukesh Ambani, Lakshmi Mittal and Azim Premji. He recently became one of the biggest players in Hollywood due to a joint venture worth $825 million with Steven Spielberg.

The Ambani brothers’ Shakespearean feuds after the death of their father, Reliance founder Dhirubhai Ambani in 2002, threatened to de-stabilize India’s economy. Their mother brokered a de-merger in 2005 which gave Mukesh control of oil and gas, petrochemicals, refining and manufacturing, while Anil took charge of electricity, telecoms and financial services.

The aesthetic vision and deep-rooted philanthropy of Anil Ambani and his wife Tina Ambani, a successful actress in Bollywood movies prior to her marriage, have combined to form an important art collection and a non-profit foundation that represents their support and commitment to art practice in India today.

“Art is an experience, not an event – it is a process, not a product.  Art is an inner journey.” – Tina Ambani

In 1995, well before the surge of global interest in modern and contemporary Indian art, Tina Ambani created Harmony Art Foundation to provide a platform for emerging artists in the subcontinent and build bridges of understanding with other cultures and artistic perspectives.  Many of today’s prominent artists started their careers at Harmony, including Jitish Kallat, Anju Dodiya and Atul Dodiya.

I had the opportunity, and pleasure, to meet Preeti Ambani, president of Harmony Art Foundation, at a luncheon in Mumbai.  She generously offered to drive a couple of us over to the Reliance ADAG coporate headquarters to see their superb collection of modern Indian masters like Souza, M.F.Husain and Tyeb Mehta.

Art in the Reliance ADAG offices

Two works by Satish Gujral in the boardroom

An understated, knowledgeable, generous, and very pretty young woman – who navigates Mumbai’s horrendously challenging traffic like a New York cabby – she explained that Harmony organizes annual non-profit selling exhibitions and India’s largest annual private contemporary art show.  Over the past 13 years, it has showcased the work of nearly 1,500 artists—at different stages in their careers—and attracted over half-a-million visitors.

More significantly, it has nurtured emerging talent, generated awareness about Indian art, and simplified the acquisition of art by creating an enabling environment for artists and collectors to connect.

The Foundation promotes international collaboration holding residencies that link up Indian and international artists, and offers support for non-mainstream art forms in sculpture, environmental art, installation, and video.  Other current projects include reviving old Warli tribal art in the Indian state of Maharashtra and fine Pichwai paintings in Rajasthan.

To be continued:
Art and culture tour of India- Part 6:
Contemporary Indian artists and the art market

Staying with a chronological description of my travels, complemented by impressions and information appropriate for particular sites, in this post I will describe my discovery of early temple architecture in and around Chennai, where I returned after my excursion to Madurai.

Chennai (in the beautiful Tamil script சென்னை) formerly known as Madras, is the capital city of Tamil Nadu on the Bay of Bengal, and it is the fourth largest metropolis of India after New Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta.  The area has many monuments and temples exemplifying Dravidian architecture and the contributions of the Pallava dynasty during their greatest epoch corresponding to the 7th and 8th century, followed by the medieval Chola dynasty through their golden era.

After my visit of the Kapaleeshwarar temple in Mylapore and then the masterpiece of Dravidian temple architecture, the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, I wanted to learn more about the Dravidian civilization, its past and its legacy.  As I tried to untangle the stories of the early history of India I came upon an academic controversy centering around the theory that India was invaded and conquered by nomadic light-skinned Indo-European tribes, the Aryans from Central Asia, around 1500-1000 BC. They overran the earlier, more advanced, dark-skinned Dravidian civilization from which they took most of what later became Indian civilization.  I found this in several books and then found passionate and convincing refutation.

Oh dear!  Let’s stay with the temple architecture termed Dravidian which evolved in South India around the 6th century and developed for about 10 centuries, subdivided into five periods:

• Pallava Period
• Chola Period
• Pandava Period
• Vijayanagara Period
• Nayakkar Period.

The earliest examples of temples in the Dravidian style belong to the Pallava period and are best represented by the rock-cut temples of Mahabalipuram dating from 610 – 690 AD.  And this was my next destination.

Mahabalipuram – or Mamallapuram – once the port city of the Pallava rulers, is located about 30 miles south of Chennai on the Coromandel Coast.  It has various historic monuments and has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  India has 28 World Heritage Sites of which 23 are cultural monuments and the other five are natural sites. Tamil Nadu has the highest number of sites in India.

We drove down from Chennai on a Sunday morning.  The sight of the monochromatic granite carvings of Mahabalipuram was enhanced by families on Sunday outings, all dressed up and intricately adorned, in saris of jewel colors, and young girls with jasmine garlands in their hair. 

The Mahabalipuram sanctuary monuments may be subdivided into five categories:

• ratha temples in the form of processional chariots, monolithic constructions cut into the residual blocks of diorite which emerge from the sand;
• mandapa, or rock sanctuaries modeled as rooms covered with bas-reliefs;
• rock reliefs in the open air called ”Arjuna’s Penance” illustrating a popular episode in the iconography of Shiva: the Descent of the Ganges. The sculptors used the natural fissure dividing the cliff to suggest this cosmic event to which a swarming crowd of gods, goddesses, mythical beings, wild and domestic animals bear witness;
• temples built from cut stone;
• structural architecture that was introduced on a grand scale by Pallava Rajasimha (700-728), culminating in the erection of the Shore Temple.

The Five Rathas carved from single granite boulders

A mandapa – cave sanctuary carved into the granite rock

Arjuna’s Penance, 96 feet long by 43 feet high, the world’s largest rock-cut bas-relief

The rock-carved sculptures, excellent examples of Pallava art, are characterized by the softness and supple mass of their modeling.  They tell many stories from the life of deities Krishna, Shiva, Durgha and from the Sanskrit epic of the Mahabarata.

Shore Temple

Unlike the rock-cut monuments at the site, the famed Shore Temple is a structural temple.  It is the earliest important structural temple in Southern India, a monument of architectural importance standing against the backdrop of the deep blue waters of the Bay.  It belongs to a period when the construction style of the Pallavas was at its peak in its decorative beauty and intrinsic quality.

The ancient city of Mahabalipuram has been called the “Town of the Seven Pagodas” ever since the first European explorers reached the city many centuries ago.  According to popular belief, once upon a time there were seven magnificent pagodas at the site.  When God Indra became jealous of this earthly city, he sank it during a great storm, leaving only the Shore Temple above water.

Following the 2004 tsunami that ravaged the area, as the water receded the force of the water removed sand deposits that had covered some substantial structures in the vicinity of the Temple.  Since then the Archaeological Survey of India has been leading an effort yielding exciting findings.  The current opinion among archaeologists is that yet another tsunami destroyed the Pallava temples in the 13th century and these may be remnants of the Seven Pagodas.  As exploration continues we will come closer to knowing the reality behind the myth, and add to the story of Mahabalipuram.

To be continued:
Art and culture tour of India- Part 5:
Tracking contemporary art from Bangalore to Mumbai

I dwell on the first two days of my travels because they set the tone for much of what was to follow.  Louise Nicholson said: “Make of India what you choose.”  In the limited amount of time to cover so much of the country, I hoped to get a flavor of its culture, and this introduction through the south gave me more of an understanding of the traditions and the religious practices of India that permeate everything.

Tamil Nadu is referred to as the “Land of Temples” and is the mystical epicenter of India as well as the last surviving classical civilization.  Here in Madurai it was interesting to catch a glimpse of everyday life and the unadulterated living rituals of faith that define it.

The skyline of Madurai is dominated by the Meenakshi Sundareswar Temple’s fourteen gopuras, particularly the four outer towers, the tallest of which is 170 feet high.  And, much like the Kapaleeswarar Temple, they feature an astonishing profusion of stucco figures of deities, mythical animals and demons painted in vivid colors.  The towers were recently repainted by craftsmen who abstained from a number of vices to be eligible to undertake the work.

It has been mentioned since antiquity in Tamil literature but its current lavish aura is testament to the Nayaka royal and aristocratic patronage of the 17th and 18th centuries.   The temple complex is within a high-walled enclosure at the core of which are the two sanctums surrounded by a number of smaller shrines.  Inside the temple are an estimated 33 million sculptures.

Screenshot from the Madurai Meenakshi Temple Virtual Tour

It is also a “living temple” and one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Hindus. The atmosphere inside the temple is quite mesmerizingly active with hundreds of worshippers and various rituals.  A striking feature of the temple is the Thousand Pillar Hall with its amazingly carved columns.

Meenakshi Sundareswar Temple Thousand Pillar Hall

Decorating the Temple’s resident elephant

Worshippers inside the Temple

 The Meenakshi Sundareswar Temple is dedicated to Shiva and Parvati and is a Hindu temple.  The most dominant religion in India today is Hinduism.  About 80% of Indians are Hindus.  It is a complicated and colorful religion with a vast gallery of gods and goddesses.  I had to refer to Louise Nicholson’s practical explanation: “Hinduism is an elusive religion, and difficult for non-Hindus to understand.  It has no single sacred text, no dogma, no single prophet, and it demands no formal congregational worship; nor are the faithful obliged to go to the temple, tackle its abstract philosophy, follow specific rituals, or know its sacred language, Sanskrit.”

It seems to me to be a way of life based on individual needs, interpretations, preferences.

The 330 million gods and goddesses are all various aspects of the one universal supreme God (most of the time…)  As best as I can describe, the three main aspects of God, the Trimurti, are Brahma as creator, Vishnu as preserver or protector, and Shiva as destroyer or judge. They “come into being from age to age” on a need basis in diverse forms.

What I found fascinating was the direct, active relationship of people with their chosen deities.  Waking them up for morning prayers with little bells, bathing, dressing and feeding them, singing lullabies at the end of the day – and how about the puja of throwing butterballs at their statues to seek favor or sweeten their disposition:

Devi with butterballs at the Thiruparankundram temple

At the extraordinary 6th century rock-cut Thiruparangundram Temple just south of Madurai the atmosphere was the most unspoiled, the most sacred I encountered during my trip and I would highly recommend anyone visiting the area not to miss it.  It also had a school for boys training to be priests, the future guardians of humanity’s ancient traditions.

Class of young boys training to be priests

To be continued:
Art and culture tour of India- Part 4: Chennai/Mahabalipuram

Chennai/Mylapore

I left Los Angeles for India at the civilized time of 4PM and landed twenty-two hours later at 3:30 AM in Madras, which recently reverted to its historical name of Chennai, and is the capital of the South Indian State of Tamil Nadu.  The time difference between India and Los Angeles is 13 ½ hours, so the arrival was a comfortable 2 PM my time but oh, that jetlag caught up with me a few hours later after a restless nap of three and a half hours.

Trying to get on the local time zone, I asked the hotel for a wake-up call at 9 AM as I ambitiously scheduled an excursion for the afternoon to visit the 7th century Kapaleeswarar Temple in Mylapore (‘land of the peacock scream’) in the southern part of the city, and in the evening a Bharata Natyam dance recital.

Kapaleeswarar Temple

Kapaleeswarar Temple detail

Legend has it that Goddess Parvati, the divine consort of Lord Shiva (a primary Hindu deity,) did penance at Mylapore taking the form of a pea-hen, to appease him for having been distracted by a peacock.

Though the commonly held view is that the temple, dedicated to Shiva and Parvati, was built in the 7th century CE, the architecture appears to be 300–400 years old. The scholarly view that accounts for the discrepancy is that the original temple was built on the shore and was destroyed by the Portuguese, while the current temple further inland was built by the Vijayanagar kings during the 16th century.

Kapaleeswarar Temple entrance

Street scene in front of the Temple

The Kapaleeswarar Temple is a “living temple” in fact a living holy place of sacred rites, swirls of incense, worshippers and pilgrims.  It is forcefully announced by its gopura, the gate-pyramid tower, covered with statues of flamboyantly painted deities, warriors, kings, dancers, animals and plants.

The culture-shock of the vivid images and exuberant garish colors, upon first encounter on this first day, was enhanced by the intense, chaotic life of India surrounding it. Indeed a fitting introduction, complemented afterwards by a brief exposure to a Bharata Natyam dance festival.  Dance plays a vital role for Hindus. They dance for their gods, they dance the stories of their gods, and their gods dance too. Shiva danced the world into existence and is called Lord of the Dance – one of his many names.

The Bharata Natyam dance-form originated in Tamil Nadu and is held as the national dance. Accompanied by classical Carnatic music it derives its inspirations from the sculptures of the ancient temple of Chidambaram.

Madurai

The Meenakshi Temple in the heart of Madurai

Meenakshi Temple gopura

My next day started very early in order to catch a regional flight south to Madurai, primarily to see the famous Meenakshi Sundareswar Temple.  This was the first of many hour-long flights during my tour and it was a rather easy experience.  Arriving at 9:30 AM gave me a full day to explore pure Hindu culture and lifestyle in a town with a history that goes back over 2,500 years. It is a most fascinating “Temple City” and among the oldest continuously inhabited in India – but still blissfully undiscovered by tourists.  I was picked up by a driver and had a guide, Prabhu, to take me around the town, its markets, alleyways and temples.

Upon my arrival I got a fragrant garland of jasmine to adorn me and enhance my day. The city is often referred to as the “City of Jasmine” a flower exported all over the world to perfume factories due to its special sweet scent.

Stories, tales, legends accompany most things in India. Legend goes that Madurai was originally a forest known as Kadambavanam. One day a farmer who was passing through the forest saw Indra, the supreme ruler of the gods, worshipping a self created Lingam, a representation of Shiva, under a Kadamba holy tree.  He immediately reported this to King Kulasekara Pandya, who ruled this area at that time. The King then built a great temple at that location and developed a Lotus shaped city around it. On the day the city was to be named, Shiva blessed the land and its people and divine nectar was showered on the city from his hair. The city was henceforth called ‘Madhura’ which means ‘Sweetness’ in Tamil. Later the name evolved to Madurai.

To be continued:
Art and culture tour of India- Part 3: Discovering vital elements of faith in Madurai

The impetus to start this blog came from my need to share personal perspectives and information after our tour of the Middle East last March, a Eudaimonia “human flourishing” experience.  My account of that tour started and briefly paused in Jordan where what we saw was creativity, generosity, and a positive anticipation of the future under a popular ruler.  I haven’t covered yet the wonders of Damascus, the excitement of Beirut, the marvels of the United Arab Emirates, or Qatar’s inspiring focus on culture.  I plan to resume my stories very soon though have to rethink our assessments in light of the events that began in Tunisia on January 14 and set off great turning points in the region and quite possibly in world history.  Watching them unfold these past weeks, after having been sensitized by our exposure to the region, got me thinking about the filters we use when we travel.  Though hard to avoid the political undertones when visiting foreign lands, my filter, and this blog’s focus is art, architecture, cultural travel, and the arts of living, demonstrated by the name I chose for this site: Art Experience.  I don’t believe that aiming to share interesting, inspiring, positive encounters and information is frivolous, it is just a slice of life.  However, I do remember with concern the many wonderful individuals we met, the friends we made during our tour, a tour that probably could not have taken place had we planned it for this year.  All of us who participated  wish them peace and stability.  

My last bulletin was about our snowy, twinkly holiday stay in NYC, and my lengthy absence from posting is due to having been on the road again.  An unexpected opportunity presented itself and I couldn’t resist: India.  I had every intention to cover my adventures but barely had time to even sleep on the intense one month, hop-hop-hop trip, covering south to north: Chennai/Madras, Madurai, Bangalore, Mumbai/Bombay, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Agra, Varanasi and Delhi.  Now, back home and nearly recovered from major jetlag, I will try to describe my experiences of India “recollected in tranquility.”

I traveled with Louise Nicholson, a British art historian and author currently living in New York.  She is an authority on India where she spent her honeymoon in 1980 and has since returned more than 200 times accompanying travelers and doing research for books and articles.  Most of her 27 books are about India, including the National Geographic Traveler, and she was also associate director for the acclaimed six-part TV series The Great Mughals.  Over the next few weeks I will quote her often and try to share the many remarkable things she exposed me to in a country most often described as: “Chaotic, bamboozling, intoxicating, crazy, exasperating, squalid, daunting, overwhelming – India is all these things, and more.” (Intro in the Lonely Planet)

The high season for visiting India is from October to February.  In April summer kicks in and it gets progressively hot and humid, and July to September is the monsoon.  My month of February and a week of March had pleasant weather; even a bit cooler at times than I expected.

I flew from Los Angeles via Dubai.  I chose Emirates, the airline we took last year to the Middle East.  About seventeen hours from LA to Dubai and then after a comfortable and short layover, on to Chennai, gateway to India’s Southeast, another three and a half hour flight.  Emirates is considered the world’s most successful airline and is now the largest.  Well deserved success story. Which other airline offers passengers great food and service, French champagne in soothingly generous quantities, the choice of 600 radio and 150 television stations, tons of new release movies from around the world, seats that convert into flatbeds in business-class, and even limousine service to and from the airport?  They have my loyalty wherever they fly even though my flight back was less pleasant, crowded with many crying children, and included a baffling fifteen minute bus-ride when transferring in Dubai to the LA flight at three in the morning…

 To be continued: Art and culture tour of India – Chennai and Madurai

An epicurean pilgrimage should include the art of shopping for food.

Chelsea Market is a well-known destination in west-Chelsea, a super hot area and the current art capital of New York with over 200 galleries, and with lofts out of Architectural Digest.   Transforming part of the former National Biscuit Company factory complex, Vandeberg Architects created a long interior arcade of food stores and restaurants, carefully festooned with the detritus of a lost industrial culture. After touring the Chelsea galleries, having a stroll in the urban oasis of the High Line park, a pleasant Saturday ritual is dropping down to the Market to graze and sample, or to stock up on artisanal cheeses, fresh baked crusty breads and great meats, and then having a drink or staying for dinner at the very happening Buddakan, the second wave of Stephen Starr’s well-orchestrated “shock-and-awe campaign” to take culinary Manhattan.  The Food Network is next door but not accessible unless one knows someone who works there. 

Visitors can sign up for tours of the Market that take approximately 3 hours and include tastings (Foods of New York Tours.)

For another seriously aesthetic food experience in the neighborhood Morimoto would be hard to beat.  Owned by Food Network “Iron Chef” Masaharu Morimoto and Steven Starr, it was designed by Pritzker-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Opposite Morimoto across 10th Avenue, also in the Chelsea Market complex is Del Posto, a decadent Italian restaurant owned by fellow “Iron Chef”, Mario Batali.

Eataly – Mario Batali’s homage to Italian food

End of August last year Mario Batali, with partners Joe and Lidia Bastianich, opened the grand, ambitious, sprawling (50,000 square foot) homage to Italian cuisine, Eataly at 200 Fifth Avenue, a comfortable walk from the Chelsea Market along 24th Street.  Touted as the largest Italian food and wine marketplace in the world, it includes thematic shopping areas, multiple restaurants, a year-round rooftop beer garden and microbrewery, and a cooking school.

Grand Central Market, inside the wonderfully revitalized Grand Central Terminal, is full of fun and interesting food items like hard-to-find spices, specialty coffee beans, fresh fish, and gourmet chocolates. Grand Central also offers first rate eating in scenic restaurants while watching the world go by, overlooking the 80,000 square foot Main Concourse under the famous “night sky” ceiling.

View of the Main Concourse at Grand Central Terminal from the Metrazur restaurant

We’ve enjoyed Bellinis at Cipriani Dolci, but Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur on the east balcony and Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse on the north and west balconies also have great views and great reputation for food, while New York’s beloved 90 year old landmark, the Oyster Bar & Restaurant remains the best reason to miss your train.

Grand Central Terminal can also be an art destination. The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Arts for Transit program encourages the use of public transit by presenting visual and performing arts projects in subway and commuter rail stations – to be addressed in another series of posts one day.

While I’m in this geographic area I absolutely need to describe one more key restaurant discovery.  A couple of blocks east of Grand Central is Sakagura, one of the top sake bar/restaurants in the country.  After hard to find, forbidding access in the basement of a nondescript office building, entering the space is like being transported to Japan, to an authentic izakaya, Japanese pub.  There are more than 200 kinds of sake!  Authenticity and quality define the food as well (no sushi.)  The sprawling multi-page menu offers cleanly executed Japanese dishes, most served in small portions and meant to be shared.  The whole experience is ritualistic.  We were lucky to have the help of a real New York foodie acquaintance, Lisa Mamounas who runs Culinary Insiders, where she combined her love of art and love of food into a foodie-networking organization.

One of Lisa’s greatest pleasures is bringing chefs and artists together for collaborative projects; like uber-chef, uber-restaurateur Daniel Boulud with artist Vik Muniz resulting in 24 artworks for Bar Boulud, or pastry chef Dominique Ansel with artist Will Cotton creating a highly complex ribbon candy headpiece that became the subject of several Ribbon Candy Portraits executed in oil on linen.

Finally, after dwelling at length on the art of food, here is food as art redux:

Will Cotton - "Ribbon Candy Portrait"

Will Cotton "Cotton Candy Katy"album cover for Teenage Dream

For an exhibit at the Mary Boone Gallery in Manhattan, Will Cotton painted portraits of models wearing lollipop tiaras and landscapes with gingerbread houses buried in snow banks of fluffy white icing.
Last summer he became a pop-culture phenomenon after transforming the Candy Land board game into the setting for singer Katy Perry’s hilariously over-the-top “California Gurls” music video in which the scantily clad singer traipses through a dream-world of Cotton’s works, past gummy bears and across licorice tightropes, before ascending into cotton-candy clouds.

He currently has an exhibition at the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, running through February 26, showing a new body of work that merges portraiture, landscape painting, and decadent fashion.  Created with the help of fashion designer Cynthia Rowley, and with his pastry chef collaborator Dominique Ansel, it represents Cotton’s interest in the role of bodily decoration as a signifier of status and taste.

Creative Time, a New York based nonprofit with a mandate to present innovative art in the public realm, partnered with the Upper East Side restaurant Park Avenue (Winter) for a series of seasonal artist-chef collaborations. Throughout 2011, four artists—Marina Abramovic, Janine Antoni, Paul Ramirez Jonas and Michael Rakowitz—will collaborate with Park Avenue’s Executive Chef Kevin Lasko.

Launching this new series is Volcano Flambé, a multi-sensory culinary intervention by renowned performance artist Marina Abramovic that leads diners through the physical and spiritual relationship the body has with the ingredients of the dish and the situation in which one experiences them.  A unique take on a traditional Baked Alaska, Volcano Flambé exists in three parts: an exclusive take-away collection of Abramovic’s Spirit Cooking Menus; a recorded reading by the artist guiding diners through the experience of the dish through sound; and the decadent dessert itself, set ablaze as it is served. Calling upon all the senses, the work takes diners on a journey of hot and cold, soft and hard, dark and light, and sweet and savory.

Marina Abramovic with Kevin Lasko

Volcano Flambe

Marina Abramovic’s Volcano Flambé will be available at Park Avenue (Winter) through March 20, 2011.

And concluding my posts on yet another wonderful stay in NYC, I wanted to add an item I consider fitting with the subject of the art of food.

“…smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose….”
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

This past December, New York’s Museum of Art and Design has opened a new Center of Olfactory Art, headed by former New York Times “smellocrat” Chandler Burr.  It features special atomizing machines that release “the work of art.”  Let’s see whether boundaries of olfactory interface can be extended to include the aroma of food.

Hard to wrap one’s mind around twinkling lights and holiday spirit when it is 82 degrees in Los Angeles and I am looking out the window at my garden in exuberant bloom but I wanted to write a little more about our stay in New York City and address again the topic of food as art, art as food.  An amazingly vast subject and my small contribution will be in two segments.

New Yorkers are serious about food and the range of cuisines is impressive.  Food being an integral part of celebrating the holidays we did partake – though never need an excuse when in NYC.

I am very fond of Eleven Madison Park and loved its new “interactive” menu that just gives a minimal grid of sixteen ingredients to “offer an experience in which our guests can enjoy the inherent surprise of a tasting menu, while still maintaining some control.”  With no descriptions other than the ingredients, diners are encouraged to take an active part in the various dishes discussed with their knowledgeable servers and the cooks.  I think it is also one of the most beautiful rooms in the city of many beautiful rooms.  Well deserved, this past year the restaurant has been presented with some of the industry’s highest awards and anointed one of the world’s 50 best.

Eleven Madison Park has a Michelin Star, as do some of our other favorites, the Gotham Bar and Grill, Gramercy Tavern, the River Café and SHO Shaun Hergatt.

The “legendary” three Michelin star Le Bernardin is not my favorite.  Who knows why it hasn’t captured me, and since I was brought up with “if you cannot say something nice, don’t say anything” I will stay with not saying much, though I need to mention why we cancelled the previous time we were in NYC.  When confirming our reservation, the reservationist pointed out that our table was “reassigned” at a specified time.  Hmm.

So we went to Daniel (also three Michelin stars) where the fabulous food, perfect service, and stunning setting always enchant.  And I will share a story about our Daniel experience also: after ordering our meal we saw a plate of sweetbreads served at the next table.  We asked our waiter how come we didn’t see it on the menu as we would have ordered it.  A courtesy plate arrived soon after!

When in NYC we seldom miss the Museum of Modern Art, and always include lunch at Danny Meyer’s The Modern.  Overlooking MOMA’s sculpture garden it is another superbly scenic restaurant, great food, great service, handsome people.

This time we went after watching a performance of “Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on ‘Ode to Joy’ for a Prepared Piano,” created by the artist duo Jennifer Allora (b. 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971), who have been named the United States representatives for the 2011 Venice Biennale.

It was the ninth in MOMA’s Performance Exhibition Series which was begun in 2009 to bring installations documenting past performances, live re-enactments of historic performances, and original performance pieces to various locations throughout the museum.  Blending sculpture and performance, Allora-Calzadilla carved a hole in the center of a Bechstein piano, creating a void in which the performer stands to play the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – a structurally incomplete version as the hole in the piano renders two octaves inoperative.  For MOMA’s atrium the performer leaned over the keyboard and played upside down and backwards, while moving with the piano across the vast space herding observers around.  The imperfections of the performance underlined the contradictions and ambiguities of a melody that has long been invoked as a symbol of humanist values and national pride.

Another wonderful lunch spot after visiting MOMA, shopping or walking in Central Park is BG, Bergdorf Goodman’s recently refurbished seventh-floor bar and restaurant.  Kelly Wearstler, the California design doyenne, turned BG into a “contemporary tribute to the social salons of a bygone age” with silk wallpaper and a soft color palette.  One can also linger at the bar which has an impressive cocktail menu, and fantastic views of the Park.  Definitely the place to go, skipping the Oak Bar that, much like the Plaza, will never be what it used to be.  Gave it two tries since it reopened and there won’t be a third.

Indeed, we spent most of our time midtown and I’ll add another warm experience for a cold winter evening: a bowl of chicken soup with fluffy matzoh balls and a corned beef sandwich at the Carnegie Deli (sorry, I do love it) after a concert at Carnegie Hall, or a brisk walk down from the ever handsomer, ever more invitingly transformed Lincoln Center (if able to resist Bar Boulud.)  The New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff described architects Diller Scofidio & Renfro’s restrained renovation: “If all art represents, in part, psychological struggle with the work of our parents’ generation, then the Lincoln Center project is more a gentle, probing examination than an effort at outright obliteration.”  Still, preservationists and landscape architects spoke out against plans to change the dimensions of Philip Johnson’s reflecting pool, the position of Henry Moore’s sculpture within the pool, and the removal of renowned landscape architect Dan Kiley’s travertine “urban forest” planters, but as work winds down on the $1.4 billion project, on the world’s largest performing arts center and home to thirteen arts institutions, what is important is the enhanced visitor experience, both inside and out.

(Diller Scofidio & Renfro designed the popular and successful High Line elevated urban park in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District; they also recently won the commission for Eli Broad’s new museum next to Gehry’s Disney Hall downtown Los Angeles; and the firm is designing an inflatable meeting hall for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington that is due to open in 2012.)

To be continued with a few more art and foodie stories from NYC in a couple of days.

“Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway”

“It’s About Looking!” The installation of the Last Supper at the Park Avenue Armory

One of the highlights of the art season in NYC was visionary filmmaker Peter Greenaway’s 45 minute immersive multimedia installation at the Park Avenue Armory that just concluded on January 6.  Based on Leonardo da Vinci’s 1498 Last Supper, Greenaway created a theatrical illusion to provoke new ways of seeing Leonardo’s masterpiece with evocative soundtrack by composer Marco Robino.

Last year I had the opportunity to see the actual Last Supper at a rare private visit of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.  An unexpectedly emotional experience.  I’m also a fan of Peter Greenaway’s ever since his very first feature film in 1982, The Draughtsman’s Contract, and am aware of his long-term project launched in 2006 called 10 Classic Paintings Revisited, in which through a fusion of film, digital wizardry and installation, he plans to explore and interpret masterpieces by Michelangelo, Picasso, Rembrandt, Veronese, Raphael, Velasquez, Monet, Seurat, and even Jackson Pollock. Many are works in progress, and of the few that have been executed this is the first one presented to North American audiences.  It was also my first chance to discover Mr. Greenaway’s approach and see his insight into one of the most celebrated works of art in a highly contemporary context.

“Greenaway’s pioneering use of digital media and new technologies creates a dynamic encounter of old and new forms of visual communication and explores the concept of visual literacy for audiences today,” stated Kristy Edmunds, Consulting Artistic Director of the Park Avenue Armory.

In the exhibition catalogue Peter Greenaway stated: “We have had two thousand years of Western painting and only 115 years of cinema.  Both are supposedly in the business of delivering ideas by making pictures, by making images…  Supposing we try to hold a dialogue between the two?  To mingle and share and cross-refer their vocabularies, so to speak.”

The Armory’s soaring 55,0000-square-foot Drill Hall offered an unparalleled environment to experience this tour de force.  The installation included a meticulously detailed “clone” of the fresco set within a life-size recreation — its proportions exact to within a fraction of an inch – of the nearly 4,000-square-foot apse and cupola of the Refectory of Santa Maria Delle Grazie. The enclosure, exact footprint of the Refectory, had at its center a three-dimensional version of the table from the painting, solid white as were the plates, cups, decanters, and food, but illuminated from within thus acquiring a dramatic and spiritual quality.

Peter Greenaway used technology, light and sound to bring to life the Last Supper’s historic context, the architecture, its composition and perspective, underscoring details and relationships, enhancing colors to reverse the clock on the decay of its surface.  It made us contemplate, it made us look.

Departing from the “Refectory,” visitors encountered another multimedia exploration based on Paolo Veronese’s monumental late-Renaissance painting, The Wedding at Cana.

The Wedding at Cana at the Park Avenue Armory, NY

A shorter version of the digital extravaganza of light and sound presented at the 2009 Venice Biennale and projected onto, and around, a full-scale replica of The Wedding at Cana that covers the great rear wall of the Benedictine refectory on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, exactly where the original hung from 1563, when Veronese finished it, until 1797 when Napoleon had it taken down, cut up and sent to the Louvre where it remains.

Like the original, the replica measures nearly 24 feet by 33 feet; it captures textural details and brush strokes, and appears to include even the seams of Napoleon’s segmentation.

The Wedding at Cana at San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

The Wedding at Cana in situ is an experience that has not been available for over two hundred years, and Greenaway’s vision in Venice was a very different experience from the de-contextualized Armory version – I’m told by those who have seen both.  I found it a bit analytical, didactic and lacking mystery – but even this abridged version made me think about the artist’s choices, his message, his style and superb sense of color, and his influence.

The show inaugurated the first full season of programming by the Park Avenue Armory since it began reinventing itself as an unconventional arts center three years ago.

To be continued . . .