Indian Art Views

Calender Art

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 07:02:00 +0000

From thematic group shows to grand solos, 2010 is packed to the brim with art

It will be recalled as the recovery year. The first few months of 2009 were not the best for Indian art, with the prices swinging towards the lower end of the graph and galleries reluctant to showcase major shows, but the post-monsoon art season brought relief with the red dot again finding a place alongside artwork. And as the New Year rings in, the art frat hopes that the upswing will continue. Each of them is at it, planning a calendar that will interest art aficionados.

2010 will begin with a bang. Veteran artist Krishen Khanna will showcase a retrospective at Lalit Kala Akademi on January 23, comprising artwork from the 1940s till now. Before that, however, head to the same venue for a solo show of Jayasri Burman. Organised by Art Alive Gallery, the exhibition titled “The Mythical Universe” will include paintings and sculptures that will draw from Indian mythology.

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After travelling to London, “Dream Villa” , a series of photographer Dayanita Singh will be exhibited in India at Nature Morte on January 15. The colour photographs had Singh travel to different cities to explore how night transforms what seems ordinary by day into something magical. Following his 2008 retrospective, photographer Raghu Rai will present his series of photographs of musicians at Lalit Kala Akademi on February 25. Even as Parul Vadehra, director Vadehra Art Gallery, sifts though his images, she will send invitation cards for solo shows of the artist couple Anju Dodiya in January and Atul Dodiya in March.While Atul will be reconfiguring his shop shutters from 3D objects to oil on canvas,

Anju’s series “Necklace Of Echoes” in charcoal and watercolour will reflect on mortality.

International artists too will continue to make an appearance in Indian galleries. Gaurav Assomull of Marigold Fine Art will have acrylic on paper by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Henri Matisse at his gallery in DLF Emporio and Nidhi Jain of Ragini Art will bring to India works of US-based artist Siri Khandavilli in August. Renu Modi, who celebrated the 20th anniversary of Gallery Espace, will host an exhibition featuring the works of Tejal Shah and Chinese artist HanBing in March. “This will be in the form of a dialogue between the two artists. Bing will present performance art piece,” notes Modi.

At Pallette Art Gallery, Rohit Gandhi is shortlisting artwork of Riyas Komu, Pakistani artist Faiza Butt and Italy-based Serena Scapagnini, among others, for a group show “The New Order of Beauty” that will be held in February, and in the same month Gallery Threshold will have Girish Sahane-curated “Legacy: A Vanguard” that will comprise work of Prabhakar Barwe and the influence he had on subsequent generations through the work of Madhu Imartey, Prajakta Palav, Parag Tendal and Yashwant Deshmukh.

Another group show will mark the inauguration of Latitude 28 gallery in Lado Sarai on January 18. Bhavna Kakar has got 18 artists to work on the theme “Does Size Matter”. The 1,500 sq ft gallery will open with Manjunath Kamath’s set of 12 gauches from the series titled “Small Lies” and Jayashree Chakraborty’s work — a 10x12 ft scroll juxtaposed with a 2x2 inch scroll. N Pushpamala will have a large print juxtaposed with postcard size photograph of 6x4 inch titled Lady riding a Bicycle. “This depicts the coming-of-age of women in India,” says Kakar.

Just before tourists visit the Capital for the Commonwealth Games, in August-September, Talwar Gallery will present a retrospective of Rummana Hussain, comprising sculptures and installation from the post-Babri Masjid demolition months. During this time, Religare arts.i will exhibit a group show curated by Gayatri Sinha featuring 20 contemporary artists and Sunaina Anand of Art Alive will have in her gallery recent works of Thota Vaikuntam. “The solo is much awaited,” says Anand. The art enthusiasts have a lot to note in their dairies through the year

By - Vandana Kalra
Indian Express

10 Indian artists who shaped the noughties

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:56:00 +0000

Tyeb Mehta

The man who celebrated Mahishasura and torched a new high at Christie’s with Times of India’s Celebration. Celebration, like the Shantiniketan triptych done a decade earlier, drew inspiration from the Charak festival, the spring festival of the Santhals. However, unlike the Santiniketan triptych that juxtaposes life and death, the work focused on the celebratory aspects of the festival and life itself.

The painting did not mark so much of a shift in emphasis, but a culmination of an experience. Images of torture and carnage, while not forgotten were instead transcended. They form the very stuff from which this Celebration derived meaning: as in alchemy, the dross had become gold. Celebration fetched a high of $317,500, in 2002—therein beginning Tyeb’s tryst with destiny, in the world of auctions.

M F Husain

The face of Indian contemporary art, living in exile since 2006, after his Bharat Mata bombed at an exhibition in Delhi. Yet, Husain’s best period was his early and middle ones. His Mahabharata, Ganesha and Mahabali series being the fountainhead of contemporary reality. Often using the presence of a group of women and elephants to heighten the importance of the central figure, the structure of the grouping accentuated the monumental character of the individual figures he chose to represent.

While surrealistic juxtaposition and displacement of associated symbols heightened the ambiguity of his pictorial world, Husain frequently invested the human form with an archaic and timeless feeling. He depicts them as if abstracted from time and renders them along with the signs and symbols. However, what arrests the eye is the nature of sensual reality he transformed with zeal. Sex, if seen as a final analysis, took an abstract form, viewed as an element within the equation — an instrumentation for seeking and establishing identity.

Bose Krishnamchari (Artist curator)

HE is India’s Vik Munz. His ideas are simple—as an artist curator-he goes wild, picking and choosing from the nation’s artist’s studios—and in every endeavour he tries to reflect his process of discovery and an eclectic elegance. Curating for Bose Krishnamachari is about a sense of play and a cohesive focus-in which one work reverberates into the next, to create “a residual effect.”

Guest curator at ARCO Madrid, with 20 years of work behind him, Bose handles crating in the context of a philatelic feel. Straightforward, forthright and now a face of BMB Gallery in Mumbai, his shows like Double Enders and National Highway have proved that curating is not merely gathering works to reflect a bazaar, but discovering and reflecting resonances beyond the obvious.

T V Santosh

Known as India’s Zen monk, Santhosh's untiring search for an understanding of the state of world politics, war and media is expressed most effectively in his paintings and installations. Reconstructing ideas from a science fiction film, the evocative Last Supper or even Hitler’s dogs, Santos uses his signature style of turning a positive photographic image into its negative and creating paintings and installations that have an eerily surreal quality.

In his paintings, he deliberately eliminates the details of anything specific or local in the image and the subject takes on a much grander scale and, like most of his recent works, addresses the universal concerns of war, terrorism and violence.

His art leaves a lasting impression on its viewer and implores the audience to re-evaluate the politics of war and terrorism — a plea to identify the real enemy.

S H Raza

The abstractionist who lives in Paris and has recently finished a show in London. “The English name they've given my show is The Five Rays of Raza, But for me, my work represents ‘panchtatva' or the five elements’.” It was in the 1970’s that Raza began his sojourn into the world of the Bindu.

In a strictly formal sense, Raza's style seems to bear some relation to the Abstract Expressionist work of Frank Stella and Jasper Johns. However, while these artists were part of a theoretical discussion on the Formalist movement, Raza's work addresses a more spiritual context.

The circle becomes less of a graphical component and more of a focal point representing concentrated energy. This concept has age-old precedents in meditative aids such as yantras and mandalas. And age has caught up with Raza, in a quaint departure from his usual. Raza confessed to Muzaffar Ali, at his birthday bash at Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi, two years ago, that he wanted to marry a 19-year-old Bengali girl.

Jogen Chowdhury

The master of the contour. The most successful practitioner from the Bengal School. The satirist who creates folds out of skin. Jogen Chowdhury smiles as he creates and viewers can sense that his mood is lighthearted, even as he plays with the human figure. His lines are bold and free and his canvases in particular show a simplification of composition with a deceptive depth in textural terrain. The brilliant colours associated with the rural folk art traditions of Bengal appear in his work as two-dimensional linear forms set as bold planes of background colour replace his earlier sculpted human forms. Characterized by his elongated, caricature figures and preference for highly decorative surfaces, Jogen’s art draws equally from the natural and the psychological.

Sometimes a work can be a curious mix of still life and movement that contributes to an almost hypnotic effect. Jogen had once said: “There is also a tremendous power in the stillness of an object. A force that is no less than apparently an object in great speed. Stillness is a form of a speed while not in force. It has the possibility of the force in a different form.”

Sumedh Rajendran

Most intriguing was his show Chemical Smuggle at Vadehras in Delhi. He combines materials and compositions with an intricate élan. At the Christie’s Asian Contemporary and Chinese Art Auction, Hong Kong, 2008, his work went for a whopping HK$271,500 / ($34,955).Titled Promised and Them, the two wooden and steel sculptures had about them an elegant restraint as well as a gravitas of metaphoric moorings.

Deeply philosophic and equally at ease with literary contexts, it was his project for Khoj entitled Pseudo Homelands exhibited at Lahore, which made people sit up and take notice. His explanation ranked of wit and the insight of T.S. Eliot. “In landscapes marginalized by the hierarchy of power structure, negotiation is a mere theatre. In this maze of divisions and subjugations, that we tend to perceive as social harmony is only unexplained tragedies.” His titles too must be read in the context of what he wishes to state. But Sumedh becomes participant and observer. Betrayal Flush, More Dead Than Alive and Some Hard Hunger—each title is a personification of deep contemplative ideologies and thoughts.

Some Hard Hunger reflects a dog with an open jawline—the barrel shaped object that shapes the jawline is what entices the powerful relief sculpture, dealt with the phenomenon of a stifled and angst ridden urban existence—the paradoxes of patterns in the living and those who merely exist .

Subodh Gupta

He made Indian steel bartans fashionable. From his human skull called Very Hungry God to his Three Monkeys-Subbed Gupta invited viewers into his signature of vessels for Indian art. Almost like entering a vast Indian kitchen in perpetual, dizzying motion, his medium of towering tiffin bartans became the Subodh signature. His installations, typical of his deceptively simple works made of everyday objects, manages to refer to stereotypes of Indian life, rapidly changing routines in a global economy, and key historical cross-cultural exchanges.

International writers say Subodh Gupta's post-modernist ideas channel far-ranging influences from Marcel Duchamp, Josef Beuys, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. However, his artistic vocabulary is firmly rooted in the vernacular of everyday India. Gupta - appropriation artist — ironically states, “I am the idol thief. I steal from the drama of Hindu life. Hindu kitchens are as important as prayer rooms. These pots are like something sacred, part of important rituals, and I buy them in a market. They think I have a shop, and I let them think it. I get them wholesale.”

Pushpamala

She is India’s most successful women artist for her ability to exploit the genre of her own portrait in her works. Her first solo (outside India) at Bose Pacia, New York was in 2004, before which she held her audiences with Phantom Lady or Kismet (1996-98). Shot mostly in night time Mumbai, the series has a rich, film-noir atmosphere and a surreal, Bollywood-style narrative structure that can be reshuffled for different showings. Pushpamala N. is chief actor as well as director, and she has a charismatic on-camera presence.

She played both the sisters in Phantom Lady with aplomb, and brought the same qualities to Golden Dreams (1998), a kind of woman-having-a-nervous-breakdown tale of romance and entrapment that concluded with the heroine holding an invisible opponent at gunpoint. She played with tints — the original black-and-white prints were hand coloured, giving them a slightly antique look, as was true of the 10 pictures in The Anguished Heart (2002), and a story of lost love that might have come straight from a Satyajit Ray film.

Jiten Thukral and Samir Tagra

The most happening duo on the auction scene-collaborating for the past 9 years. Jiten Thukral and Samir Tagra address issues in urban India through a variety of stylistic devices and media. Drawing from pop culture, history and street life, they present a graphic theatrical element in their works. Be it in the form of sculptures, paintings and installations, aesthetically speaking their works have a very 'un-Indian' and distinct leitmotif.

According to them their ‘un-Indian’ aesthetic has come naturally. When they look around everything is inspired, influenced and pursued with ‘un-Indian aesthetics’. They were trained as communication designers, their education being a mix of art and design principles. Observing and creating have become a part of their routine. The titles of their works have an edge of dramatis personae-Pscho Acoustics-01,Vector Classics,2005, Phone Now + 91 114174 0215- this is the reality of an urbanesque urge.

7 Jan 2010
Uma Nair
Economic Times

Aashu Maheshwari - One of the artists i would like to mention herein is "Jitesh Kallat" and his contribution to Indian Art.Also would mention Anju Dodiya and Atul Dodiya for their immence contribution to Indian Art.

Comic Book Art Glorifies Hindu Goddesses and Gods

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:34:00 +0000

Hindu Gods' Avatars On the Page

JANUARY 7, 2010
By ARNIE COOPER
Los Angeles

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art may have the Western U.S.'s largest assemblage of South Asian art, but for the next several weeks the permanent collection, featuring sculptures dating back to the Bronze Age, will be supplemented by a decidedly modern art form: the comic book.

"Heroes and Villains: The Battle for Good in India's Comics" is, according to curator Julie Romain, the first show of its kind in the country. Ms. Romain, an art historian and UCLA graduate student specializing in Medieval Hindu sculpture, says the goal of the exhibit is to demonstrate how India's artistic legacy of heroic narratives and archetypes has been embraced by comic-book creators.

Consider the first image you encounter in the introductory "teaser" section of the 54-piece exhibition: a Virgin Comics cover depicting Rama, the avatar (or incarnation) of the god Vishnu, shooting what appears to be an electrically charged bow and arrow set against a scintillating orange background.

And if you take a closer look—at the fine print above the title—you'll recognize the name Deepak Chopra, who apparently isn't just focused on love, god and wrinkle-free skin. Ms. Romain says Dr. Chopra is one of the "visionaries" (his son Gotham was one of the founders), along with the Indian film producer Shekhar Kapur, responsible for "conceptualizing the idea of retelling Indian myths." Originally called Liquid Comics, the company owes its new name to an infusion of funds from Sir Richard Branson.

But enough about new-age gurus and billionaire industrialists. Best to focus on the art—which isn't difficult when you consider the next piece. It's another Virgin Comics cover, this time spotlighting the story of the female divinity Devi, the Sanskrit word for goddess. Clad in skintight black leather from neck to boots, the contemporary version of the mother goddess has been transformed into a modern-day superhero. Only unlike Wonder Woman, Devi can also be seen (albeit in more modest attire) immortalized in a ninth-century sandstone sculpture in the adjoining Gallery of South Asian Sculpture.

"This would probably be on the outside wall of a temple in a niche. It's an icon that's worshipped, but it also depicts this climactic scene in the Devi Mahatnya, the origin story of the goddess, where she conquers the evil demon Mahisha, who takes the form of a buffalo. In a way, this is like the first comic-book story," Ms. Romain says, laughing.

Whether cartoon aficionados agree is debatable, but one thing is certain: When compared to their American counterparts, Indian comics constitute an entirely different beast.

Says Ms. Romain, "I think the big difference with these comics, especially the earlier ones, is they're stories about divine heroes and deities who are part of a living tradition, which in this case is Hinduism."

This is one reason the show also includes a series of storytelling paintings, called Paithan, named for the region in central India where they originate. The 19th-century paintings in this small collection were used by traveling storytellers. "This is probably the closest parallel to the comic book, because it's a sequential narrative," Ms. Romain says.

While the LACMA exhibition focuses on the two main Hindu deities, Rama and Devi, one of the messages you'll come away with is that the comics reflect, as Ms. Romain suggests, "an extension of [Hindu] practice, culture and tradition."

Not that all of them ignore their American counterparts. For example, once in the show's main exhibition space, visitors will instantly recognize the familiar red-and-blue human arachnid portrayed in a 2004 cover from Marvel Comics' "Spider-Man: India" series.

In fact, Ms. Romain says: "You see more and more a similarity to American comic books and also a retelling of iconic American superheroes. Basically the entire story of Spider-Man and Peter Parker has been lifted and inserted into an Indian context." So instead of Peter Parker it's Pavitr Prabhakar. Aunt May becomes Auntie Maya and Mary Jane Watson is Meera Jain.

One could say the history of Indian comics has come full circle since its relatively recent beginning in the 1960s. For apart from a lone strip, "Daabu," created by Pran Kumar Sharma in the early part of that decade, Indian comics unfolded largely with reprints of "The Phantom" and "Superman." These were sold to Indian newspapers by Anant Pai, a newspaper executive credited for launching the Indian comic-book industry.

In the summer of 1967, Mr. Pai was watching a television quiz show and became disturbed because none of the contestants knew the name of Rama's mother, yet they could answer correctly a question about the Greek god Zeus. Add to that the burgeoning popularity of American comics in the subcontinent and Mr. Pai (or "Uncle Pai" as he is best known) decided it was time for India to stake its own claim to the genre.

Later that year he launched his Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories) line with an adventure series about Krishna. Today the company sells about three million comic-book reprints a year in more than 20 languages. Its offshoot, ACK Media, supplies a range of new media from audio books and films to mobile-phone applications. This is a far cry from the early print-only days, when the art resembled the typical Indian calendar prints from the 19th century.

A reprint of a 1975 ACK cover depicts Valmiki's Ramayana. Valmiki, an ancient poet, is believed to have written the original Ramayana in the fifth century B.C., the standard text known throughout India. For the uninitiated, the story outlines Rama's adventures, notably his quest to rescue his wife, Sita, who's been kidnapped by an evil demon, Ravana, with multiple heads.

No doubt Mr. Pai saw his endeavor not just as a moneymaker, but also as a way to educate the young. The inside cover used the slogan "The route to your roots."

Ms. Romain notes that these comics were not only used to educate Indian schoolchildren but also collected by Indians abroad who hoped to foster their foreign-born kids' connection to the myths and epics of their heritage.

"That's still happening today. I've talked to a lot of families here who say, 'Oh, I have a bunch of these in my closet that my son used to read.' That's the real draw, and that's why I think they continue to be really popular. These are being reprinted all the time."

—Mr. Cooper is a writer based in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Which artists make the most money

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:33:00 +0000

Despite big falls in the art market last year, where some prices fell by 40%, the last two years has never been so good for some artists and the owners of their works, according to Artprice, a research provider.

Top place went to Damien Hirst, whose works sold for a total of €134.7m between June 2008 and June 2009, according to the latest data from Artprice.

Second was the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, a US painter of African descent whose work raised a total of €31.7m in auctions over the last two years. His top hammer price was for 'Boxer', which sold for €10.7m at a Christie's auction in New York in November 2008.

Third place went to US artist Richard Prince who achieved auction turnover of €24.2m during the period. His top hammer price was €4.7m paid for "Overseas Nurse", sold at Sotheby's in London in July 2008.

Although Hirst came in at number one, his position was largely swayed by his September 2008 Sotheby’s auction, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever. Since then prices have fallen by more than 40% for his signature spot and butterfly paintings, according to Artprice.

The September sale, which began on the same day that investment bank Lehman Brothers was declared defunct, raised £111m through 218 lots and set a record for a single-artist auction.

Hirst, who last year ranked 238 in last year's Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune of £235m, sold the two most expensive contemporary works of 2008 at the auction, including The Golden Calf, a calf preserved in formaldehyde, for $18m, and The Kingdom, a tiger shark persevered in formaldehyde, for $17.2m.

Below are the top ten biggest money makers of the art world during the 12 months to June 30 2009, according to Artprice.

1. Damien Hirst (UK) Auction sales turnover: €134.7m Lots sold: 381 Top hammer price: €11.6m

2. Jean-Michel Basquiat (USA) Auction Sales Turnover: €31.7m Lots sold: 47 Top hammer price: €9.4m

3. Richard Prince (USA) Auction sales turnover: €24.2m Lots sold: 61 Maximum auction price: €4.7m

4. Jeff Koons (USA) Auction Sales Turnover: €23m Lots sold: 110 Top hammer price: €3.5m

5. Peter Doig (UK) Auction sales Turnover: €12.2m Lots sold: 41 Top hammer price: €3.1m

6. Fanzhi Zeng (China) Auction sales turnover: €11m Lots sold: 42 Top hammer price: €1m

7. Xiaogang Zhang (China) Auction sales Turnover: €10m Lots sold: 39 Top hammer price: €2.3m

8. Takashi Murakami (Japan) Auction sales Turnover: €8.1m Lots sold: 271 Top hammer price: €2.3m

9. Anish Kapoor (India) Auction Sales Turnover: €6.7m Lots sold: 31 Top hammer price: €2.1m

10. Chen Yifei (China) Auction Sales Turnover: €6.6m Lots sold: 21 Top Hammer Price: €3.8m

7 January 2010 - Tara Loader Wilkinson
http://www.wealth-bulletin.com

Nicholas Roerich @ NGMA

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 07:57:00 +0000

New Delhi: The Ministry of Culture, Government of India & National Gallery of Modern Art celebrate Indo-Russian Cultural Relations by mounting a special exhibition titled “Nicholas Roerich: An Eternal Quest” at Jaipur House, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, that will be on view till April 11, 2010.

The exhibition showcases 75 works taken from The International Centre of Roerichs, Moscow, and other leading museums in India. The prolific Russian artist Nicholas Roerich made India his home in the latter part of his life, and is today counted amongst the great Indian masters such as Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and Jamini Roy.

Nicholas Roerich was an extraordinary personality, a unique individual, having an immense thirst for knowledge, and a deep appreciation of beauty in all forms. A trained painter and lawyer, also archaeologist, ethnographer, geographer, poet, historian, philosopher, scientist, traveller, fighter for peace, defender of cultural values of all nations, Roerich throughout his life, devoted himself to the ideal of the common good of mankind.

Says Prof Rajeev Lochan, Director, NGMA: “Roerich’s outlook of the world was unique, based upon the knowledge of the fundamental laws of Existence. He was convinced that by increasing the level of masses’ spiritual culture, one could transform life on earth and defeat ignorance, vulgarity, exploitation and wars. In his own words “Where there is culture, there is peace”. Being convinced of the transforming power of culture, Nicholas Roerich devoted himself not only to artistic, but also to educational activities.”

Roerich’s lifetime work comprises around 7000 paintings and sketches, which can be found in famous museums and private collections all around the world. His early works bear strong influences of his Russian heritage. Based on Russian themes and legends, the panoramic Russian landscapes, history and folk art, he travelled extensively, first in Russia, later in Europe and America, before realizing his long cherished dream to come to India. Drawn inexplicably to the vast mountain ranges of the Himalayas, like no other painter, Roerich was able to grasp and depict the subtle-most shades, hues and tones of the mountains, and their ethereal transparency. He was proclaimed the ‘Master of the Mountains’. He sensed the subtle spirit and harmony of the mountains, their solemn, mighty essence and significance for humanity as the symbol of the purest, highest aspiration towards beauty and knowledge. ‘Treasure-house of the Spirit’ – thus Roerich used to call his beloved Himalayas.

The legacy of Roerich is a joint Russian-India cultural heritage. The National Gallery of Modern Art thanks the lenders to this exhibition, The International Centre of the Roerichs, (ICR) Moscow, Russia, The International Roerich Trust, Naggar; Allahabad Museum; Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery; Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh; Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi; for their generous loans of paintings. These, along with the collection of NGMA aim to recreate the magic of the spirit of Nicholas Roerich: An Eternal Quest.

A wide variety of prints, portfolios and memorabilia have been specially created towards the exhibition. Special films on the life and work of Nicholas Roerich will be screened daily. The exhibition would be on view till April 11, Tuesdays to Sunday, 10-5 pm at the Jaipur House wing of the National Gallery of Modern Art, India Gate Circle, New Delhi. A definite must see!

Three Generations

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

New Delhi: Trained under the able guidance of artist Kanchan Chander; school student Nehmat Mongia, college student Pallav Chander, teacher Anita Kumar and homemaker Guneet Kumar exhibit their recent artworks for the first time in The Dawn; a group exhibition of more than 80 paintings & drawings from April 1, 2010 to April 4, 2010 at the Open Palm Court, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

Says Kanchan Chander, “Each of my students has their own artistic style and through this exhibition, I have tried to provide them with the essential professional exposure in order to broaden their horizon. The exhibition offers a lot of variety for the viewer - portraits, landscapes, aboriginal art and interesting calligraphic abstracts.”

The pattern of display and presentation of the exhibition highlights an assortment of divergent themes. For instance, twelve-year-old Nehmat Mongia’s paintings are reminiscent of the skill exhibited by master tantric artists like Sohan Qadri and O.P Sharma. This young prodigy, a Modern School, Barakhamba Class VII student, says, “All my works have been inspired by the Australian aboriginal contemporary art and reflects an inspiration that pre-dates European colonization. My work is based on traditional culture.” Her works like The Australian Bindi, The Dots Say A Lot, The Target, Bandit, Captured Soul and Chakraview are mythical representations of the landscape, hunting and foraging life-styles that the aborigines once followed.

A similar sensitivity towards art can be seen in the forty-six year-old real estate consultant Guneet Kumar’s canvases whose works “have been derived from my own personal experiences.” Her paintings in watercolours are so meticulous in their detailing that the viewer gets a sense of teeming, burgeoning life in it. For instance in Purity, through her portrayal of a lotus, she conveys the hope a person should have even during the dark phases of life while continuing to believe in the goodness of God. In yet another work titled Serenity and Solitude, she wants the viewers to connect with themselves and bring out their inner strength. The Monument series are a result of her various trips to Safdarjung Tomb with her friends.

As for the England-born forty four year-old calligraphic teacher Anita Kumar, “I started learning calligraphy since I was eleven and slowly converted that style into my art.” Inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs calligraphic style, Anita Kumar’s artworks on first glance appears semi-abstract but as one further delves into the paintings, one sees the letter ‘Om’ beautifully drawn in bold and subtle colours. While in her ‘Mindscape’ series, she tries to depict the wavering mind of a person that always dwells in the past, present and future; in the ‘Devotion’ series, the artist skillfully portrays Lord Ganesha and Buddha through her acrylics on canvas.

If calligraphy style is Anita’s forte, then human face, is the solitary focal point in nineteen-year-old theatre actor Pallav Chander’s canvas. A final year student of BA Programme from Delhi College of Arts & Commerce and a self taught artist, “Since the age of ten, I have been acting in theatrical plays and what caught my attention was the varied emotions a person could express through his/her facial features– be it anger, happiness, jealousy, love, joy – all can be expressed and seen through your facial expressions. This urge to portray the human emotions on canvas thus became my motto.” Some of his acrylics, pastels, charcoal and ink portraits depict the innocence of a girl child named Eshna playing on the street, the trepidation experienced by a person walking through the hospital ward to fight his Dyslexic Journey, the fervor of religious festivities in Durga Puja and to the joy on being at a Reunion.

Concludes Kanchan Chander: “The exhibition is conceptualized as a dialogue of varying visual sensibilities, thoughts, beliefs, passion, struggle and understanding that reflects not just the artist’s individual preoccupation with the idea and material but also is indicative of their involvement, their interaction with each other, reactions to surrounding events and various skills and techniques that all of them have learned and explored throughout their artistic journey.”

The top ten collectors on our list by Milton Esterow

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:44:00 +0000

Last fall, after the London contemporary-art auctions were surprisingly upbeat and were followed by lively auctions of Impressionist and modern art in New York, a dealer told me that the sales went so well because "everybody got tired of being depressed and started spending money to feel good again."

How good is the feeling in the art market now that a Picasso has been sold for $106.4 million and a Giacometti for $104.2 million—both at auctions—and even higher prices have been reached in private sales?

"We're genuinely surprised about how robust the market appears to be," said Edward Dolman, chief executive officer of Christie's. "It's not just the top end of the market that is strong. It has much more depth than we've seen in recent times." Neal Meltzer, a private dealer and former head of contemporary art at Christie's, put it this way: "The art market has become a market other markets look to, to see what the wealthiest people look to."

Other comments:
"It's more mature," said a dealer.
"It's smarter," said another dealer.
"The universe keeps growing," said a curator.
"It's still a little crazy," said a collector.

William Ruprecht, Sotheby's CEO, said, "As things get better, people with wealth come back into the art market and it gets better faster than the overall economy. And when things deteriorate, our business deteriorates even faster than the global economy. It's faster on the way up and faster on the way down."Auction houses see things differently than galleries, according to Michael Findlay, director of Acquavella Galleries in New York.

"They have a few nights a year for their major auctions," he said. "We have people who are looking and shopping and buying and we are buying and selling all year. The auctions represent a tip of the art market visible to the press and the public. We are aware of a surge and an ebb, but it's not as high a contrast as the way auction houses see it, because our businesses are different. It all depends on the material. It's the same market—things are getting better, but we just look at it in a different way."

Howard Read, co-owner of Cheim & Read gallery, said, "We've come out of the lowest point. There's more activity not only in lower-priced works of up to $50,000 but also in seven-figure works."

Collectors, dealers, auctioneers, museum directors, curators, and consultants were interviewed by ARTnews correspondents in 22 countries for the 20th annual ARTnews 200 and the Top Ten, our lists of the most active collectors.

"China continues to be unbelievably important," said Ruprecht. "The growth in wealth and interest in art in many categories is quite remarkable. They have become very active all over— in Hong Kong, New York, Paris, London. They're buying art, houses, diversifying their assets."
Dolman agreed. "The growth is exponential," he said.

There are, of course, many kinds of collectors, as Walter Benjamin, the critic and essayist, wrote many years ago. "Moreover, in each of them an abundance of impulses are at work," he wrote.
What are the impulses today? Findlay, who has sold works to many of the ARTnews 200 and the Top Ten, said, "There's a love of art, a desire for social prestige, and a hankering for investments. They may go in with a mercenary gleam in their eye but wind up loving art. Connoisseurship sometimes follows."

Milton Esterow is editor and publisher of ARTnews.

The auction duopoly under pressure

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 17:34:00 +0000

Source: Artprice

The art market recovered its momentum in the first half of 2010: + 71% in auction revenue from Fine Art alone! This fact has been quickly seized by the auction houses who are now predicting annual growth in 3 figures in order to reassure a still hesitant market.
In line with this market trend, the historical duopoly, Christie's and Sotheby's, have posted first-half revenue figures up 67% and 140% respectively versus their Fine Art revenue for 1H 2009. In a dynamic market context, these figures seem perfectly natural. Nevertheless, when compared to the duopoly’s growth figures in previous years, the picture does not look quite so rosy.

For example, the latest combined revenue figure for the two auction houses is 25% lower than in 1H 2007 and 20% below the combined 2008 figure. Compared to 1H 2006, i.e. before the market started its final ascension in 2008/2009, the auction revenue is only 9% up for Christie's and 0.5% up for Sotheby's. Moreover, although the two auction houses have posted market share gains, these gains are substantially dependent on “major” auction results: more than 340 hammer prices above the $1m line, representing 62% of their combined sales.

Between 2002 and 2008, the Christie's and Sotheby's duo never left more than 30% of the Fine Art auction market to their competitors. Since July 2008, this figure has been rising and in 2H 2009 the combined market share of the competitors amounted to 46% of global auction revenue.

While the Chinese auction houses account for most of this increase, the other Western auctioneers have not managed to take advantage of the gradual dilution of the duopoly’s market hegemony and the emergence of a highly globalised art market.

Phillips de Pury et Luxembourg, in constant decline since 2001, is today the number 5 auction company in the world behind the Chinese giants Poly and China Guardian. Phillips, acquired by Bernard Arnaud and his LVMH group between 1999 and 2003 to compete with Francois Pinault’s control of Christie's, has not generated more than 4% of the global market share since 2002. Today, the Russian Financial holding Mercury controls the auction house founded by Harry Phillips in 1796. The aggressively seductive strategy adopted by Phillips de Pury & Company (e.g. a sale entitled “SEX” was organised in March 2010) does not appear to have had the desired effect: In 1H 2010, the English auctioneer was responsible for only 2% of global art auction revenue.

In France, the situation is hardly any better: apart from the scandal that hits the historic Hôtel des ventes Drouot, the French auction companies have once again lost market share this year. The first French auction house in the global ranking is Artcurial, in ninth position behind the Austrian company Dorotheum and a long way behind the Chinese and English houses. In 2006, there were 6 French auction houses in the global top 30; today there are just 3.

China is the big winner from the global art market crisis with 5 auction companies in the world’s top 15 and a market share that is steadily growing.

In the second half of 2010 it is just possible that the two global giants, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, will manage to re-affirm their domination… after all, their fine art revenue in 1H 2010 was better than their combined total for 2009. But if they do, it will be against what now looks like a well-established global trend.

Shifting Focus

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 17:36:00 +0000

New Delhi: Moving ahead from the age-old debate of whether photography can be termed as ‘art’ at all and the photographer, an ‘artist’, photography has found its rightful place in the dominant perception of today’s contemporary art scenario. In an era of fast paced ‘digital’ innovation with an ever increasing focus on technologically advanced equipment and high-end sophisticated gadgets, Shifting Focus, the Photography Residency being presented by KHOJ International Artists’ Association which is on till October 30, 2010, aspires to evoke the timeless ‘magic’ of photography and to extend its space to re-instill the intuition in making photographs.

The four selected photographers-in-residence are Mansi Bhatt (Mumbai), Ajay Talwar (Delhi), P Madhavan and Edson Dias (Goa). The work done during the residency will culminate in a show that will be on at Khoj Studios, S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi from October 27, 2010 to October 30 2010.

Says Pooja Sood, Director, Khoj International Artists’ Association: “By bringing together photographers with diverse backgrounds and art practice as artists-in-residence for the month long duration, the residency attempts to create a bond of shared experiences through exciting exchange of ideas and technical skill, and endeavors to cultivate a broader, more inclusive perception of photography in the realm of art.”

Envisioning its role as an experimental space to foster alternative ideas, artistic exchange and dialogue, the residency aims to assist and facilitate a deviant discourse on photography, from the ‘mainstream’ to that of the ‘alternative’.

In pursuit of alternative photographic processes, Shifting Focus seeks to investigate the vast potential of image-forming possibilities while demonstrating varied and often, untried means of making images. It promotes freedom to shift focus from using conventional methods and their intended purposes to that of discovery and exploration through practice of imagination and skill and thereby pushing the boundaries of photography.

Shifting Focus strives to bring into focus that which escapes and eludes the ultimate ‘camera obscura’ – the human eye, as though opening a parallel universe to us; and restore the powerful and awe inspiring mystery of life!

Brief Profiles of Photographers-In-Residence

P. Madhavan and Edson Dias: Part of the collective, Goa-Centre for Alternative Photography (Goa-CAP)

Visual artists P Madhavan and Edson Dias have been experimenting with pinhole cameras - from inventing their own cameras to documenting hidden sub-cultures - for years.

They say: “During this residency, we shall seek to use the pinhole camera as performance, installation, image making, and research to achieve conversation between object, space, movement, and time.”

P.Madhavan

Madhavan is a social photographer and alternative photography artist educated in Paris and New York. As an Indian Foundation for Arts (IFA) fellow working and experimenting with the art of daguerreotype in India, P Madhavan’s social images are widely exhibited in the public spaces all over the world. Madhavan has taught photography to the under-privileged children in India and has a credit of conducting more than 300 successful workshops (In association with Plan International, Christian Children Fund, and DFID). Under the aegis of these workshops, around 2000 children and youth have been trained in social photography.

Edson Dias

Born in 1970 in Panjim, Goa, is a fine art photographer greatly involved in black and white photography. Dias has been experimenting with pinhole and other silver based imagery for more than half a decade and has exhibited widely in Goa.

Mansi Bhatt

Mansi Bhatt was born in 1975 in Gujarat, India. She attained a BFA in Painting at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai. Recent exhibitions include Nynan Kismarra organized by Chatterjee & Lal at the Jehangir Nicholson Gallery, Mumbai, 2006 (solo), The Gallery at the Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburgh, 2007, and 1st Anniversary Exhibition, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai, 2007. She lives in Mumbai.

Functioning within the mode of performative photography, the work of Mumbai based artist Mansi Bhatt often lends itself to sculptural and cinematic transformation. During this residency, she wishes to undertake an explorative journey into the unknown and face the challenges therein. She says: “I hope to confront the dark and the fear of the unknown, being able to break it apart, survive through and endure while being responsive to the surroundings and people around and with minimum manipulation.”

Ajay Talwar

An amateur astronomer for two decades in India, Ajay Talwar is a prolific transient sky events astro-photographer. He has been instrumental in building one of the earliest Dobsonian telescope in India, India’s largest telescope, photographing all the Messier Objects and exhibiting in a travelling exhibition, writing an observation planner and making the Astronomical Calendar for 2010, amongst other activities.

Ajay travels with his telescope and photographic equipment all over India to dark locations, shooting pictures of the night sky. To capture the photons from far away deep sky objects, he travels to remote locations. One of his recent travels was to Indian Astronomical Observatory at Hanle, Ladakh, which until recently was the world’s highest observatory. He says: “In this residency, I aspire to undertake work that would essentially be a bridge between science and art.”

Tyeb Mehta, Souza lead auction stakes at Christie’s

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:06:00 +0000

Source: News One

New Delhi, May 26 (IANS) The early masters of Indian contemporary art and the progressive group of artists like Tyeb Mehta, F.N. Souza and Akbar Padamsee are high on the auction stakes at the Christie’s sale of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art in London June 9.

The most significant work which will go under the hammer is an untitled painting by Mehta of a figure sitting on a rickshaw painted in 1984. Estimated at 1,200,000 pounds (Rs.88,630,184), it is one of the key works to have come to the market in this decade, Christie’s said in a statement Thursday.

The sale also includes another rare and early work by Mehta dating to 1961, which was exhibited in a seminal show of Indian Art in 1962, curated by the English art critic George M. Butcher.

The work estimated at 250,000 pounds (Rs.18,468,410) posts the well-known influence that post war master Francis Bacon had on Souza. The demand for Mehta was highlighted this spring when ‘Bulls’, a diptych painted in 2005 set a world auction record at 1.7 million pounds (Rs.125,569,391) at Christie’s in New York.

A selection by paintings by F.N. Souza is another high point of the auction.

After the landmark success of the sale of works from the Francis Newton Souza Estate (an archive of works managed by the family of the artist) in 2010, Christie’s has put 54 selected works by Souza on sale, including 45 from the family archives. The most valuable lot of Souza’s work offered for the first time in over half a century is from the private collection of an English gentleman.

‘Landscape’, painted in 1958, is the most crucial of the lot painted during the high point of Souza’s career.

The work, a large format painting, illustrates the inherent tension between nature and civilization using savage brushstrokes and a fiery palette. It is estimated at 500,000 pounds (Rs.36,932,174).

Another important lot on sale is an untitled work by Akbar Padamsee painted during the artist’s tenure in Paris in 1955. Sourced from the private collection of the famed contemporary art dealer Yvon Lambert, it is estimated at 400,000 pounds (Rs.29,551,882).

The auction house said ‘international appeal of this category (early contemporary artists) continues to grow with participation from buyers in Singapore, Hong Kong, UAE, US and Europe’. The sale as a whole expects to raise in excess of 4 million pounds (Rs.295,518,823).

Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary South Asian Art at Christie’s, said the focus was on Indian art this year in the international market.

‘This sale presents one of the most exciting groups of contemporary South Asian Art ever to be offered in a auction,’ Mehta said.

‘The international art world continues to deepen its interest, understanding, appreciation and support of South Asian artists, with this year’s Venice Biennale featuring the first-ever Indian Pavilion and institutions like the Centre Pompidou currently showing ‘Paris-Delhi-Bombay…’, featuring three Indian artists while Musee Guimet is holding a solo show of artist Rina Banerje.’

Concept drives contemporary Indian art

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:12:00 +0000

Source: Times of India

Concept is driving contemporary Indian art to probe new frontiers beyond the conventional formats.

"There is a new interest in conceptual discourse in art in India. The thought processes going into a work of art is much more serious and theoretical now because India is functioning in the global realm," curator and critic Heidi Fichtner, said in an interview.

Fichtner, the programme director of the Seven Art Gallery Limited in the capital, works with concept artists across different media.

Fichtner said leading galleries in India were promoting artists who could hold their own in the international framework.

"At international art fairs, Indian artists have to compete with foreign artists who have more theoretical and conceptual grounding," she said.

Concept art as a mainstream artistic genre gained currency in the late 1990s when a talented young group of artists like Subodh Gupta, Atul Dodiya, Bose Krishnamachari, Shilpa Gupta, Riyas Komu, N. Harsha, T.V. Santosh, Jitish Kallat, Mithu Sen, Bharati Kher and several others began to work on "concepts or ideas" - both realistic and abstract - in multi-media.

Vadodara-based Japanese artist Shinobu Mikami's works are grounded in a personal concept of change.

Mikami, who studied art in Japan and France before coming to India, uses glass, fabric, language, drawing and experimental memory to create delicate translucent shapes, nebulous landscapes and shadowy figures on paper, canvas and three-dimensional objects.

"Glass as a medium attracts me because of its presence and absence. It helps me create intimate images," Shinobu Mikami, a student of sculpture at Vadodara (Baroda) in Gujarat, said in an interview.

Her glass works include a broken drinking glass in which the cracks fan out like tentacles of a spider and the shards lie in abstract abandon. Mountains of blasted glass powder fringe her landscapes of glass.

Comparing Indian and Japanese concept art, Mikami said: "Indian art was still more grounded in figurative drawing and manual interventions unlike Japan where contemporary art was totally conceptual and driven by high-technology."

Chennai-based artist Ganesh Selvaraj's new series made of paper shreds from old magazines rely on the notions of time, infinity and artist's personal experience of the world.

"The concept of the series is seed, which can represent an idea, a thought or the centre of the flower. Each shred of paper is a seed," Selvaraj said.

Selvaraj is preparing for its next project which is an "ambitious plan to drive a public carrier - either a truck and or an auto-rickshaw in Chennai to interact with his audience - the people".

"It is a human art project I am thinking of," he said.

Asim Waqif, who teaches at the Delhi School of Architecture and Planning, uses bamboo, rope and hi-tech micro-electronics for his installations to "link the old with new -tradition and technology".

"I am taking a bamboo installation using traditional tying techniques and fitted with sound and touch sensors to Art Hong Kong, an international art fair in Hong Kong in September," he said in an interview.

Nearly 260 galleries from 38 countries will take part in the fair.

"My work speaks of the constant desire for newness which often makes one forget the importance of vernacular systems that were there before. I am trying to break the barrier and making people respond to the old systems with the help of electronics," Waqif said.

Indo-Brazilian artist Vijay Patchineelam, who will also be exhibiting at Art Hong Kong, creates books. Crafted stylistic books, books with open sheaves and spread-eagled books in monochrome are symbolic of the consistency that the artist uses as his concept.

"I think colours distract viewers from the real work of art," the artist says.

Artists Subhdarshini Singh, a former health journalist, uses medicine and health as her concepts for her art.

"It is a new concept and there is nothing like it in India. The first medical art dates back to 15,000 years in rock caves located in the South of France," the capital-based artist said.

Alvida, Maqbool Fida: M.F. Husain, Free at Last

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:21:00 +0000

by Shuddhabrata Sengupta on http://kafila.org

Like possibly several other children growing up in the kind of lower-middle class metropolitan households that attempted to reconcile their aspirations towards culture with their frugal habits in the 1970s and1980s in Delhi, my first introduction to the art of our time was the framed print of a Husain painting. We had no television. And my parents had no gods. The only icons in our modest house were two framed pictures – an inexpensive N.S. Bendre, (Lalit Kala Akademi) print of a few women at a well and the reproduction of a Husain painting, possibly detached lovingly and carefully from an Air India calendar, possibly featuring the kind of goddess image that incensed the zealots who made it impossible for M. F. Husain to live out his final years in India.

The occasional bus ride to the National Gallery of Modern Art in the company of an enthusiastic (and wanting-to-be-enlightened parent) would yield a glimpses of more paintings, and then, again, there would be more Husains – bold, galloping horses, faceless angular, cheerful, dancers, myths, entire histories. My eyes would travel to odd corners of the paintings, where there were sometimes more interesting, if quieter things going on, at a slight remove from the central drama of the bold strokes that dominated the pictures.

On one such trip, I think it was my mother who pointed out to me a gaily, madly painted fiat, with a jolly (but gaunt) Santa Claus at the wheel, turning the circle of India Gate. “Look”, she said, “there goes the artist – M.F. Husain, he drives his car without chapels and shoes on his feet.” I think I must have been ten, but at that time, it did feel to me that if this was an artist, then to live the life of art must be an incredible freedom, literally footloose and fancy-footwear-free. What a jolly, fantastic, cheerful, ramshackle car, what a great burst of light of a beard, what a halo of hair ! That combustible locomotion of form and colour seemed to transport M.F. Husain, even then, in and out of my understanding of liberty like an automobile turning circles on a roundabout, not necessarily going anywhere, just happy to be alive, excited to be well-fueled and mobile.

Now, decades later, when I mumble ‘artist’ to the question ‘occupation ?’ asked curtly and almost invariably on arrival at airport immigration desks, that sense of liberty embodied in Husain’s drive-away grace, which made such a profound impression on my ten year old consciousness, still comes to the rescue of my ravaged forty-something mind under the bleak light of all those situations where one is asked to account for oneself under duress. I come away from all such encounters with my dignity intact. I never thought I would ever be an artist, but now that I am called out as one, I suppose one must make the best of being what it takes to be an artist. In my life-time Husain was one of those who invested the vocation of art with the artless grace of whimsy and liberty. For that alone, regardless of what I may think of the entire body of his work, I am grateful. I am sure I am not alone in my gratitude.

Husain could only have become who he did in the world of art. Art and sport, and to a lesser degree film and politics (which are both heavily mired in dynastic compulsions) are perhaps the only spheres of activity in our harshly, pathetically hierarchical society where a young man or woman can come, literally out of nowhere, like Husain did, paint billboards for a living and still (very rarely) make it eventually into a sustained presence in the limelight, touching the eyes and minds and senses of millions of people. It tells us something about the world we live in when we realize that when all else has failed, it is art, for whatever it is worth, that has sometimes lived up to its promise of being a tiny quasi-democratic, half-egalitarian island, where the wild-card of unexpected energy and talent can still upset the best laid plans of privilege and the easy habits of power. That is why we need art in our hollow society, to still keep a door half-ajar to the anonymous practitioners of today who might yet make us turn and think again about life tomorrow.

Last morning, Husain turned the corner of mortal existence. He steered the wheel of the incredibly colorful automobile of his life down a one-way road where we can no longer see him, nor follow him. He is, in a sense, free at last. And we, the ungrateful people of the country which made it impossible for him to die with dignity and honor in the city he loved, should be grateful that he will no longer have reason to blame us for his humiliation. Now we have the opportunity, as a society, to think a little carefully, for a while, about what fools, what philistines we have been to have lost his company while he was alive.

In my godless, unbelieving upbringing, the divine came calling, only occasionally, courtesy M. F. Husain. If there is a lasting, enduring affection that I have for the incredible vitality of the traditions that some people simplify by calling ‘Hindu’, it is to some measure the responsibility of Maqbool Fida Husain. His love for the stories of Ganesh and Durga, for the figures of the Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana took me into territories that the piety of countless Amar Chitra Kathas and the saccharine soap of Ramanand Sagar could never enter. He nudged me into an understanding of the fact that the traditions they call Hindu (because they are obsessed with names where the nameless is more appropriate) are richer, more ambiguous, laden with more secrets and stories and magic, laughter and desire than anything that any fart in saffron robes or khaki shorts and black cap can ever pretend to know or feel. He showed me lila, play, and made it the stuff of goddesses, and occasionally of gods. The goddess who rode the monkey’s tail, the resplendent but austere strength of the sky-clad goddess astride a tiger, these were worth more their weight in faith, fida, then the sermons of a million dharam sansads. He made me understand that one can say ‘maqbool’ (I accept) to ‘fida’ (faith) even when one is sustained most actively by doubt. My atheist soul’s abiding affection for the beauty of faith, and particularly for the faith of my ancestors, is partly by way of boyhood brushes with the reproductions of Maqbool Fida Husain.

If today, I turn to the Mahabharata or the Ramayana like an automatic reflex when thinking of a difficult ethical question, it is thanks to artists like Husain, to poets like Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and to their affection for, claims on and deep, abiding, subversive respect for the dense forests of all our traditions.

It is thanks in part to this barefoot farishta, this strange white bearded, halo-haired namesake of the martyred bride-groom of Karbala, that I made peace with being born, at least fractionally, nominally Hindu. And contrary to what the censors in saffron might think, it was this lesson in liberality that also made me think that Salman Rushdie has a right to be read, that Taslima Nasreen has a right to be listened to, and yes, that even those handful of moronic cartoonists of Denmark whose work says more about their limitations than it does about their sense of humor, have a right to be seen, and if necessary, laughed away. God, or the gods, if they are in heaven, must be laughing loudest at our reluctance to laugh with them. Husain, if he is in the corner of heaven specially reserved for those accused of heresy on earh, must be laughing too.

In the end, Husain won his Karbala, even when he lost in battle. His horses, like the good horses of Imam Husain, will keep riding, even after their rider has dismounted. It is the VHP, the RSS, the BJP and every pompous holy-honcho who held forth on Husain’s heresies that stand defeated today. Their vision of culture, ‘samskruti’ ( to be said with a sufficiently upturned nasal twang) is in tatters and in need of having to be salvaged by a petulant contortionist with hunger-management issues and dreams of private militias. Their vision of politics is articulated by those who dance (and not, I have to say, very well) to display their mourning. Their morality is held hostage at the hands of mining mafias. Their poet-laureate is comatose and was never a good poet anyway, and he was a worse statesman than he ever was a poet.

The fools who harangued Husain will fade into the obscurity of the footnotes of art-history text books as miserable examples of what a society should never do to artists. Among them will be people like a cardiac surgeon (Dr. Togadia, of the VHP) who saved fewer lives than he helped take away, a third rate painter of sentimental kitsch (Raghu Vyas) who stoked the early protests against M F Husain at Arpana Kaur’s gallery in the Siri Fort Institutional Area in Delhi (perhaps as a means to offload ballast from the sinking ship of his artistic career) , and the geriatric cartoonist-turned-cartoon (Bal Thackeray) with a reported taste for lukewarm beer (never trust a man who can’t take his beer cold!)

Behind them will be the entire massed ranks of the Sangh Parivar, as faceless and featureless as figures in a Husain painting. Their contribution to culture, their addition to the sum total of intelligence, amply representable by the great Bharatiya contribution to Mathematics – Zero. Paradoxically, In bidding farewell to M.F. Husain, we are also saying good riddance to those who baited him. Now that their object of hate has left the building, they don’t quite know what to do. Their harrumph and bluster has turned into a deflating whine. Some of them have even appeared on television to express their contrition, pretending that they meant him no harm, actually, while filing hundreds of cases in courts across the country. No, it wasn’t terrorism-by-court-notices, it was just a rash of art criticism, wrapped in the language of legalese.

Central to their enterprise and their discomfort was the fact that Husain deployed a visuality and an iconicity that was instantly processable. Whether it was the vigorous Gaja-Gamini on the walls of the Azad Hind Dhaba on Ballygunge Circular Road in Calcutta or the murals on the interiors of an Airport, Husain’s images were never very demanding. They did not need much work to be done to be read by their viewers. They were deceptively simple, straightforward, often striking, sometimes banal. Even a fool in a pair of khaki shorts and indignation leaking from his groin could (mis)read them, easily.

Unfortunately for the Hindutva with a hard-on brigade, contemporary art in India has moved on from where Husain Sa’ab stood, and stayed standing. This was more than evident in the last major survey exhibition of contemporary art from India featuring Husain’s work – the Indian Highway roller coaster that began its journey at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2009. There, Husain was represented by work that seemed both monumental and dated. Around him, was a plethora of work, some exceptional, mostly interesting, some indifferent, but all of which, spoke a language more reticent in terms of figuration than did Husain.

The knikker-critic can neither get this language like he thinks he ‘gets’ Husain, nor is he capable of being provoked by it. It will seem way too distant and cold to him. Not enough images, not even gods, not even much by way of nakedness. Which is why, in a minor footnote to the Husain saga, we have seen a sad Sunday-painter called Dr. Pranav Prakash exhibit a set of embarrassing and cringe-worthy paintings featuring images of a ‘naked’ Husain, to the great delight of the fringe of the Hindutva warriors. (Some even rallied in support of his right to ‘freedom of expression’). Lest I be misunderstood, it needs to be said here that I would never grudge fools the right to express themselves, freely. How else would we know who they were? Prakash’s naked Husain painting is a strange mirror-pastiche of Husain’s style, revealing in all its mediocrity, how much in awe and debt it is to the very object of its derision.

Contemporary Art is way too distant and aloof from the knicker-critic’s world. Husain got his goat, because in a sense Husain spoke his language, even if to turn his world upside down and inside out. Husain was his secret self. The one who actually enjoyed and loved the world of the puranas and the epics, rather than the one who merely took sterile pride in them. The Hindu far right hated Husain, because most of all it hated the delight of what it meant to be an inheritor of the Hindu worlds it ran away from. It hated its own humanity. Husain was a far better claimant to that magical legacy of a universe of colours, enigmas and stories than any Pracharak or Sarsanghchalak could ever be.

Today, Husain has attained what the Sanskrit scriptures sometimes call ‘Kaivalya’ - that unique freedom, that exceptionality, that carries with it a tinge of isolation, a shade of autonomy, a sliver of loneliness. A trace of this radical autonomy is visible in an early photograph of Husain taken by the critic Richard Bartholomew, which came to light for a generation that had never known it in the exhibition of Bartholomew (Senior’s) work put together by his son, Pablo. In this photograph, Husain can be seen on a rooftop (is it the rooftop of the Naaz Hotel in Old Delhi?) with the domes of the Jame Masjid in the background. It seems to be a clear, Delhi winter morning. Husain is in his prime, a man possessed of his delight in what he is doing. In the company of a friend (Richard) in a context he loves, but somehow, detached, distant, at a slight remove. Like an angel on a rooftop, absorbed in Kaivalya.

Who can touch that space ? No bigot can ever hope to grace a foothold in that sunshine. He is free of the bigot, but the bigot will be haunted by him, until his movement dies its necessary death. And yet, without him, culturally, the bigots will be rudderless. They can never taste the Kaivalya, the radical autonomy that is Husain’s by right. They will no longer know what to hate, whom to harass, whom to harangue. And without being able to hate, harass and harangue, they will be nothing, mere shadows of their petty fitful selves. Husain never needed them, but they needed him. They needed him, ever so badly. That need will erode them like nothing else can. That is why Husain, our ever youthful bridegroom of many forms and colours, lost the battle, but won Karbala. Yazid is only a decrepit wall for pilgrims to throw stones at forever in a little known corner of Damascus. There will always be a conversation that you can kick-start with a Husain horse, just as soon, there will be a time when people will ask “Togadia? Who?”

And now that we are no longer required to sign petitions to defend M.F. Husain, an honest and long overdue critical assessment of his work may actually begin. Now will be the time to think about how artists are trapped by repetition and the endless affirmation of themselves in their work. Now will be the time to understand and reflect on how a ‘star-system’ in matters of culture reduces even the most interesting artist to a cardboard cut-out. Now will be the opportunity to think about how and why we have elegies and obituaries aplenty, but so little by way of discursive and critical engagement. Now will be the time to remember that too great a proximity to power can distort the perceptions of even those who appear as the most innocent and playful of artists. Now will be the time to recall the irony in the fact that Husain, who himself fell victim to the shenanigans of a fascist mindset, had at one time, during the nightmare called the Emergency, saw it necessary to paint Indira Gandhi, its architect, as Durga, the victorious goddess. Now is the time to understand that Husain’s innocence was not innocent. Now is the time to remember that Husain loved cinema, but made two incredibly bad feature films (‘Gaja Gamini’ and ‘Meenaxi’). Now is the time to reclaim M. F. Husain as a grandfather, as uncle, as the stranger you make friends with on a long train journey, as the man who tells you the most wonderful stories and then stumps you with the narrowness of his world. As the angel and the buffoon, the faristha and the funtoos, all at once.

Now is also the time to remember that he was not the only Indian artist who felt compelled to leave India because of the images he had made. Few people, especially the kind of cultural liberals who signed endless petitions on his behalf ever remember that the coteries around the Indira Gandhi who Husain painted as Durga made it virtually impossible for the Nirod Mazumdar who painted her astride a donkey to live and work in India for many years. Now is the time to acknowledge that when it comes to the humbug of censorious intentions, the RSS and the Sangh Parivar do not have any monopoly. The Congress, the Left, Gandhians, Muslim and Christian zealots have all made calls for bans and harassed artists and writers.

Perhaps it was this realization that ultimately made Husain choose the bleak freedom of exile over the fulsome humiliation of continuing to hold on to the fetish of Indian citizenship. He said it was because of ‘logistical reasons’, because of the way his work needed to be done, but no one could mistake the fact that what drove Husain away ultimately was not just the hatred of the Hindu far-right, but also the opportunistic and cynical indifference of the so called liberal centre, which in time honored Congressi fashion chose to buckle and prevaricate rather than take a clear stand. In doing so, it revealed a malaise that is deeper than the fissures of political divisions. The sickness of the compulsion to play safe rather than fair.

In a delightfully mischievous poem called ‘Duronto Asha’ (Audacious Hope) another white haired, white bearded eminence, the other gaunt Santa Claus of my bilingual boyhood, Rabindranath Thakur, speaks of his impulsive desire to stop leading the sedentary, safe life of those accustomed to too much self-affirmation of their own identities. Rather than content with being a milksop bhadralok Bengali, Rabindranath, suddenly and impulsively declares his true desire by saying - ‘were I much rather an Arab Bedouin – lost under the desert’s open skies’. I am reminded of this as a way of squaring the circle of how we can reconcile ourselves to the fact that Husain, in his final years, in choosing to base himself in Qatar rather than Delhi or Mumbai, was perhaps exercising elements of the ‘were I much rather an Arab Bedouin’ option.

The only time I ever met Maqbool Fida Husain (spotting him from the window of DTC bus number 408 turning the circle of India Gate at the age of ten doesn’t really count as an encounter) was a few days before the opening of the ‘Indian Highway’ exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London in the early December of 2008. A large mural sized painting by him was being installed. He sat, with a tall thin paint-brush in his hands, adding the very last finishing touches. People went up to to him and made polite conversation. My comrades and I in the Raqs Media Collective, were installing not far away from him. We were introduced. There were ‘adaabs’, a few smiles. I took the pictures you see with this post. We went back to our work, he went back to his. Our fishing boat signalled to his ocean liner, like ships that cross each other in the ocean’s night. We acknowledged each other’s presence and drifted apart, as ships navigating entirely different courses must. Still, it was good to have seen the lights glitter on this nearly century old vessel. It was good to have sensed the rattle of its engines and turbines, to see its tall mast and take one’s bearing from its prow.

A little later, his daughter, who was looking after him, asked us, and several others, whether we had seen him. Husain had disappeared. A search party was quickly put together, and a little while later he was found, under the open sky of Kensington Gardens. His daughter was relieved. She told us, as a ninety something man, Husain was in good shape, sharp in all his responses, lucid. The only thing that worried her sometimes was the fact that he would sometimes get up and start moving, as if in a straight line, and walk as long as he could without getting tired, without stopping, and that this worried her about him getting lost, or hurt while absently crossing a busy road.

When the news of his death sunk in, I was reminded of his walk-about ways. He just got up, left. Stretched his canvas. Sorted his paints, started working, stopped, and then got up and left again. The pettiness of nations, the smallness of the minds of those who speak loudly on behalf of nations, could never hold back his final moves. Or, as he said laughing, playfully invoking and twisting Iqbal in an television interview not so long ago when the interviewer painfully and persistently asked him yet again, why he had chosen Qatar over Hindustan, – “Hindi hain hum, vatan hai, sara jahaan hamara’.

The canvas of the open sky was always waiting for the bedouin with the paintbrush in his hand

Tyeb Mehta continues to rock the international art market

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 09:59:00 +0000

After flooring the buyers at Christie’s auction, his work now fetches great price in online auction

Tyeb Mehta continues to rock the international art market. After the highest price his untitled work of a rickshaw puller fetched at Christie’s summer auction on 9 June, another untitled work by him fetched a high price in online auction.

His Untitled (Kali) was sold at the SaffronArt online auction on Thursday for $1,317,161, three times its high estimate. Measuring 30x24 inches, it is considerably smaller than the one sold at Christies, which measured 58¾x47 inches

This is one of the three Kali paintings by Mehta. It is interesting to note that despite its strong subject matter, as opposed to its rather beautiful counterpart at Christie’s, it still sold higher than any expectation.

An undisclosed bidder punted an unprecedented $1 million through a mobile phone, though he was not the winning bidder. In all, there were 23 bids on Mehta, whose reserve was $2,87,360 to $4,02,300. Earlier, at the Christie’s auction, Mehta’s Untitled (rickshaw puller) sold for $3,238,103. It was sold to an ‘international’ first-time buyer, indicating that Western collectors may finally be awakening to the gap in the prices of paintings by Indian masters, as opposed to their counterparts in China.

This was the highest ever paid for a Mehta painting and the second highest paid for an Indian artist. That record is still held by SH Raza’s Saurashtra, which sold in the same sale last year for $3,486,965.

A healthy 52 per cent of lots in the SaffronArt sale went over high estimate, showing that the appetite of rich collectors is still strong. There is a growing sentiment that important pieces of Indian art are becoming a valuable asset class in themselves. Their soaring prices at international auctions continue to solidify their legitimacy as viable investment propositions.

Temple riches conjure a Louvre in Kerala

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:36:00 +0000

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Louvre in Paris, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Vatican Museums in Rome could just find themselves rubbing shoulders with a new competitor in the world's top league of museums. Fittingly, the likely new kid on the block is the former princely state of Travancore, now southern Kerala, which had relations with practically every part of the world through many centuries, from Egypt to Portugal , Rome to China, and France to Arabia.

If and when that happens, the museum will have a tongue-twister of a name for global tourists - the Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple Museum, Thiruvananthapuram. The lengthy name itself could lend it that special flavour, as in the case of museums like the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, in Spain's Basque country, or the Philbrook Museum of Art, Oklahoma. The astonishing find of a mountain of gold coins, diamonds, ruby, emerald and vaults-full of antique jewelry at the Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple here over the past week has triggered calls for a museum on the lines of a Musee du Louvre in Paris or the British Museum, displaying the sheer magnitude of the wealth of the Travancore kingdom that was dedicated to the temple's Vaishnavite deity. And what more, unlike a Louvre that has its fame somewhat anchored to 16th century Florentine artist Leonardo da Vinci, Thiruvananthapuram's Sree Padmanabha Swamy Museum could draw in the crowds for the fame of one of its own - Raja Ravi Varma , of Travancore's Kilimanoor palace who was known for his fusion of Indian traditions in painting with European academic art. That is not to speak of the voluminous ornaments that have just been discovered in the cellars of the temple. "Future generations must see it, and that is the duty of this generation", says AR Udaya Varman, Kerala's director of museums, who feels the state capital deserves a museum on the lines of the Louvre or the British Museum, given the incredible array of antique ornaments in the Padmanabha Swamy temple's vaults. "Some of the finds in the temple are historical items like coins of ancient times, and other such artifacts. Some of these are not essential items for temple rituals and can be displayed for future generations to learn history and for research purposes", Varman told ET. Local MP Shashi Tharoor is another supporter of the idea of establishing a museum to display the temple's glittering collection of exclusive antiques. One of the Supreme Court observers in charge of making an inventory of the Padmanabha Swamy temple treasures, CS Rajan expressed his first-hand experience of viewing the ornaments as "indescribable". Not everyone is in support of implementing the museum idea immediately. "There is no sense in saying let us move it to a museum. Let us first have a museum on the lines of the Louvre before displaying the temple finds. Let us wait patiently until that happens", says historian MG Sasibhooshan. The manner in which Kerala has leveraged ordinary resources to do the extraordinary, like matching the developed world on parameters like literacy and infant mortality despite a low per capita income, is proof that the state should not be underestimated in aiming for the skies. Shortly after Paris introduced the novelty of free cycles across the city, a near-similar service was rolled out in Thiruvananthapuram. A contender for the Louvre could just be the next surprise for Paris from Thiruvananthapuram.

JOE A SCARIA,ET BUREAU

Source -

Osian's Neville Tuli | A Fading canvas by Archna Shukla

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:57:00 +0000

Source: Indian Express

The early 2000s were a fascinating period. The economy was galloping at a rate of 7-8 per cent, stock markets were attracting global investors, real estate was booming and disposable incomes were rising. Hawkers of all hues—from those selling soaps to fizzy drinks, exotic cheese to wines, insurance policies to reckless money-making ideas—were busy exploiting opportunities in this exciting environment.

In the middle of this euphoria was brewing an interesting experiment of transforming art, hitherto considered a preserve of the super rich, into an accessible and consumable product for the emerging rich. Neville Tuli was the man behind this movement. A young Punjabi who had moved back into the country after studying at Oxford and the London School of Economics, Tuli was a trained economist with no background in arts. But he believed India’s art and cultural history presented a unique opportunity to build a distinctive growth and development model around it. Materialism through creativity was the motto with which he stormed into the Indian art scene around the mid nineties. Between 1995 and 2000, he curated grand exhibitions, launched a charity platform, HEART, to promote art and its education, published a much celebrated book, The Flamed Mosaic, on Indian contemporary art. In November 1997, he held the country’s first independent auction without any assistance from international auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s in which Raja Ravi Varma’s The Begum’s Bath was sold for Rs 32 lakh, the maximum an Indian contemporary work had fetched in any auction till then.

By early 2000, Tuli had emerged as the brightest star on the Indian art firmament. In 2000, he launched the Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art Pvt Ltd (OCA), a unique corporate body that housed India’s first indigenous auction house, an archiving, research and documentation centre, a wealth management service, and a film house. OCA soon acquired a film festival, an art journal, picked up sponsorship of a team in Durand Cup Football and in 2006, it launched Osian’s Art Fund, India’s largest art fund thus far. Osian’s corporate journey riding art panned out beautifully over the next few years. In the financial year that ended March 2003, Osian’s total revenue was Rs 20 crore and profits Rs 2 crore. In 2005, the revenues had soared to Rs 100 crore and profits to Rs 10 crore. In 2006, a US-based hedge fund, Venus Capital Management, picked up a 5 per cent stake in Osian’s for around Rs 11 crore, valuing it at around Rs 225 crore. Two years later, a Dubai-based private equity company, Abraaj Capital, picked up 9.4 per cent stake in the company for Rs 80 crore, shooting its valuation to more than Rs 800 crore.

Alongside the riches, Tuli had also built goodwill among India’s art aficionados. Investors in his company, for instance, included industrialists Kumar Mangalam Birla, Gautam Thapar, Shiv Nadar, banker Pramit Jhaveri, well known entrepreneurs Jaithirth Rao and Sanjeev Khandelwal, among others. Equally high-profile individuals, such as former culture secretary Muthusamy Varadarajan, investment banker Pulak Prasad, economist Dr Meghnad Desai and Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation’s director Ashok Alexander adorned OCA’s board.

In the past two years, however, Tuli’s world has turned upside down. His publishing business has shut down, the film festival is in a state of limbo, the football sponsorship is gone, the art fund is in the tank, and OCA itself is in a financial mess. A majority of his original board members have left the company (most of them refused to speak on the issue while a few spoke on condition of anonymity). In 2009-10, Osian’s income was a mere Rs 44 crore and it had piled up losses of Rs 101 crore. According to the provisional figures provided by Tuli, in the year ended March 2011, his income was Rs 52 crore and losses Rs 35 crore.

The failure of the art fund massively dented Tuli’s equity in the market. A closed-ended fund with a lock-in of three years, the much publicised fund had raised a little more than Rs 102 crore from high net worth individuals. Tuli, from various public platforms, said he expected the fund to generate 30-35 per cent returns. “Of course, there were no written guarantees but we were assured the fund will give returns higher than regular asset classes,” says a Delhi-based investor Sharat Jain.

Between 2006 and 2009, India’s flagship stock index Sensex clocked more than 60 per cent in returns, real estate on average locations rose 40-60 per cent in value, while gold went up more than 85 per cent. Two years after the fund matured in 2009, Jain has received only 85 per cent of the Rs 10 lakh principal he had invested in the fund.

Looking back, it seems Tuli tried to achieve too much too fast in a space too small. Within five years of setting foot into the corporate world, he had spread himself thin across many diverse segments, many of which were almost non-existent then. The auction house, itself the first of its kind in India, was the primary revenue generator and was used to foster all the new initiatives. Besides, Tuli was building an inventory at a rate and prices that shocked everyone. A Bloomberg report dated May 24, 2006, cites a scene at a Sotheby’s auction held the previous day: “Neville Tuli, founder of the auction house Osian’s in Mumbai, bought at least four contemporary works in an hour from his front-row seat yesterday, nodding continually until his rivals dropped out.” The report says Tuli paid 310,400 pounds for an untitled Francis Newton Souza painting, bidding it up from a top estimate of 150,000 pounds, and 48,000 pounds, almost seven times its top estimate, for a work by a Sri Lankan artist.

It isn’t just paintings Tuli was betting his money on. A Times of India report published on April 4, 2006, says Osian’s spent close to $5 million to “bring back priceless Buddhist thangkas and buy iconic posters of Marilyn Monroe, Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney”. Tuli says he was collecting the art work for the proposed Osianama project, which he describes as India’s first integrated museum complex for film, arts and the environment. His detractors say he was simply indulging himself and also, in the process creating a false euphoria in the market.

In November 2009, Tuli told a publication that Osian’s owned 265,000 pieces of original art work and memorabilia valued at around Rs 800-1,000 crore. Its current value at cost is around Rs 400-500 crore and Tuli admits in liquidity terms it could be even less.

Wrong Stroke

According to various estimates, between 1995 and 2005, arts sales in India had grown from Rs 50 crore to around Rs 800 crore. Indian artists such as M F Husain, Tyeb Mehta, V S Gaitonde, and Souza were selling for several crores of rupees and market pundits were forecasting a massive rally in the coming years. In 2011, the market has grown to a mere Rs 1,200-1,500 crore. “Though there is a lot of potential for art markets to grow keeping in mind the huge wealth creation happening in India, art even today is a fringe segment when compared to other asset classes such as equity, real estate or gold,” says Amit Sarup, president, Religare Art Initiative. Liquidity is the biggest challenge in the art market, observers point out.

Tuli was taking giant steps on this shaky ground. His art fund is a case in point. Between 2005 and 2008, some half-a-dozen art funds were launched but most raised around Rs 20-25 crore with the exception of one that raised Rs 40 crore. In contrast, Osian’s had collected more than Rs 102 crore. “Put together, all these funds raised around Rs 250 crore in a market of around Rs 800 crore. They gave investors hopes of giving around 25-30 per cent returns over three-four years, which meant at the time of maturity, the art funds would have been the biggest sellers in the market. The market wasn’t mature enough to handle big sales at one go. Besides, anybody should have guessed that bulk sales would beat prices down,” says Rishiraj Sethi, director, Aura Art Development Pvt Ltd, a Mumbai-based art house.

The financial meltdown in 2008 worsened this already precarious situation—liquidity dried, investors disappeared from the market, prices plummeted and the virtuous cycle art had entered was ruptured. Most funds could not honour their commitments. But Tuli, thanks to his high profile undertakings, attracted sharpest scrutiny.

Tuli entirely blames the economic crisis for his debacle. He says the art fund couldn’t pay back investors on time because of the “total meltdown in the liquidity of the art market, the massive fall of prices (in excess of 50 per cent) and fall in volumes and confidence across the world and India. This triggered many investors failing to honour their commitments made in 2008.”

Observers, however, say there is more to Tuli’s woes. Besides reckless buying and hoarding of art work and expansion at a furious pace, his peers say that Osian’s business structure was flawed with each segment being intricately involved with the other. It is alleged that his fund bought and sold art work from Osian’s own auction house and his other associates, while he himself played a lead role across all his ventures.

Tuli refuses to be defensive on the issue calling it a case of “false conflict”. “All pioneering activities have to have conflicts of interest otherwise they would never take off, because you need the merger of certain expertise to happen so that a certain threshold of infrastructure is built to share that new market with the public,” he says.

Osian’s pricing strategy and even the calculation of the net asset value of the units of the art fund have drawn criticism. The net asset value was calculated based on an Art Index that Osian’s launched with business daily The Economic Times (ET) in 2006. The index followed the art prices of 51 top contemporary artists whose art work comprised 81 per cent of the then organised market. Critics say it wasn’t a fool-proof methodology but to be fair to Osian’s, there was no other benchmark available, nor were there any regulatory indicators to plug seeming loopholes, a situation that still exists. Osian’s, however, may have violated an ethical boundary in the arrangement. ET’s parent Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL) is a stakeholder, albeit small (1.6 per cent), in Osian’s. Besides, BCCL is also one of the largest art collectors in the country and has been actively buying and selling art work for several years. Tuli’s detractors see a serious conflict of interest in this arrangement. Tuli doesn’t agree. “Their (BCCL’s) role was just a platform for awareness building, no interference at all in data collection and analysis,” he says.

Never say die

The allegations and their denials aside, Tuli admits to having made mistakes. “In retrospect, I included too many diverse non-profit making activities placing immense burden on the auction house. When the market melted, Osian’s having a huge debt, suffered the most,” he says.

He is bitter but retains his spunk and is eager to begin afresh. “Osian’s last auction was in June 2010 when I took the decision to start the reconsolidation of all the divisions of Osian’s, stop all activities apart from the research and digitisation of the knowledge base and only when all outstanding financial obligations are fulfilled will we start the auctions with a new specialised yet integrated institutional structure.” He hopes to restart his auction operations by December 2011 and to repay art fund investors by the end of this month.

“We will be making profits by 2012 once the restructuring of activities and debt is complete,” he asserts.

India's own biennale

noreply@blogger.com (Aashu Maheshwari) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 05:01:00 +0000

gulfnews : India's own biennale

Kerala is on a mission to provide people an intellectual lever to appreciate global art forms, their creativity and manifestations.

Temple drums. Rock music by a band named Avial. Contemporary artists trying to bring their works to a bustling Kochi. And what better platform than the Kochi-Muziris Biennale?

Brainchild of curator artist Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, this international art festival, organised by the Kochi Biennale Foundation and to take place in Kochi and Muziris in 2012, will be the first of its kind in India.

This non-profit endeavour will spread across various historical venues in and around the two cities with the aim of being a catalyst for regional growth and economic development.

Krishnamachari says: "In the spring of 2010, Komu and I were approached by the department of cultural affairs, government of Kerala, to initiate a large-scale festival of contemporary visual arts in the state."

After the creation of a non-profit organisation and support from the leading lights of the Indian cultural establishment, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale was conceived. This non-commercial art exhibition will offer artists, curators and spectators a vital alternative to museums and cultural spaces, whose institutional inertias do not allow them to respond with immediacy and flexibility to art's developments.

"The biennale aims at providing people an intellectual lever to appreciate global art, its creativity and interdisciplinarity, its expressions and manifestations in different forms. Art crosses language barriers and becomes a pivot in creating an environment for discourses and dialogues across different social groups and opens the minds of the people to a different view of the world," Krishnamachari says.

Muziris, situated at the mouth of the Periyar and overlooking the Arabian Sea, was a bustling Indo-Roman centre of maritime trade between the 1st century BC and the 5th century AD. Along with being connected to the lives of great personalities such as Adi Sankara, Kannagi and St Thomas, this seaport was also a popular tourist destination for the Arabs, Romans, Portuguese, Dutch and English. However, this flourishing port city was wiped off the map due to floods or earthquakes.

It is this legacy that the biennale will try to rediscover and invoke. Muziris is now being restored to its former glory by the government of Kerala's Muziris Heritage Project.

Already, several comparisons have been drawn between the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and other biennales, such as the one in Venice, but organisers want this project to develop an identity of its own.

"Comparisons can only be drawn in terms of the similarities in the cultural bearings and geographical and topographical layout. Both the places have a lot to do with the waterworks that form the arteries of the cities. The difference lies only in the fact that while one has a long tradition, being the first biennale ever, the other is new and has a long way to go," Krishnamachari says.

The event can also not be compared to other visual art displays around the world, such as the Shanghai Art Fair.

"This is a non-commercial project, unlike art fairs. Both showcase the best of contemporary national and international visual art, but the difference lies in the contexts and relevance to the project and place," Krishnamachari says.

With its various exhibitions, seminars, artist-in-residency programmes, performances, conferences, discussions between artists and the public, and educational activities, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale aims reach out to the greatest possible number of visitors. It also includes on its agenda the introduction of new artistic impressions — from paintings, installations, sculptures, video, digital and new media, to performing arts.

"We have the best team working with us. Right from Vikas Dilavari and Radhika Desai, architects and conservation specialists who are working on the restoration of Durbar Hall, to our entire staff, team members and trustees. All believe in the vision that the Kochi Biennale Foundation has taken up and are diligently working towards making this vision a grand success. The board members are distinguished personalities from all faculties. There are representations from the state and central government as well."

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012 hosted its official declaration by former education minister M.A. Baby on February 17 in the presence of ministers, senior government officials, senior artists, scholars, critics and the public.

The event was held at the Durbar Hall ground. Avial, one of the most popular rock bands in India, known for its unique mix of Malayalam folk and rock, played at the inauguration. Then there was the traditional panchari melam, an ethnic percussion ensemble performed during temple festivals in Kerala, by Padmashree Peruvanam Kuttan Marar, supported by 150 artistes in a live audio-visual drumming concert. By bringing both the traditional and the modern side by side on stage, the event was a fitting inauguration to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012.

The biennale has an impressive line-up of talent. "We are still in the process of finalising the names," Krishnamachari says. "We will have about 65 artists from about 45 countries. We are in talks with several national and international artists. With the intrepid spirit of the artist in mind, we call on our audiences to think creatively, embrace new ideas and consider Indian and international art and culture in all its beauty and complexity."

Besides the Vernissage [opening] and the art shows, the event will host workshops, lectures, debates and educational programmes for children in and around Kerala. Supplementing them will be slide and film shows, guided walkthroughs and marathon interviews with artists. There will also be entertainment programmes for those inclined towards other arts "such as cinema [films on arts], music [concerts] and literature [reading sessions]", Krishnamachari says, adding that the focus throughout would be on providing an opportunity to showcase talent and culture.

"The focus with a commercial agenda totally changes the fundamental schema of an event, which is meant to be much larger in terms of aspiration and intellectually more discursive."

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale fills this gap at a time when the Indian art scene and artists are being recognised and Asia is being looked at as a region of artistic importance. "What better way than having your own biennale, where international and national artists, institutions, curators, critics and art-loving corporations converge on a single platform?" Krishnamachari says.

He and Komu call it a fulfilment of their dreams. "This is definitely our dream project. And we are thankful to the Kerala government for offering us this responsibility. As citizens of this country, we seek to reflect the new confidence of Indian people who are slowly, but surely, building a new society that aims to be liberal, inclusive, egalitarian and democratic."

The time has come, Krishnamachari feels, to tell the story of cultural practices that are distinct to the Indian people and local traditions, practices and discourses that are shaping the idea of India.

"As artists and curators, we aspire to pave a way for showcasing contemporary Indian art manifestations alongside the best of international contemporary visual arts and its practices, and in the process shift towards a more democratic and open ethos for the Indian arts," he adds.

This biennale promises to appeal to the common man — the man on the street, the young college student, the bored teen in a classroom and the housewife who knows nothing about visual arts.

"The biennale is for artists, the arts industries and the common man as well. Arts and culture form a fundamental part of an open, enlightened society and give a unique insight into understanding global interactions. A biennale is not limited to gallery spaces where a common man will seldom have the courage to open the door and explore art. It takes place in a larger and a more open setting, where a proactive engagement of the locals and visitors is encouraged through participation, attendance and volunteering," Krishnamachari says.

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale will be a forum for learning at various levels, across different social groups and gender. This will be achieved through a range of rich educational programmes. Through this, it hopes to further invigorate the city and engage local citizens, visitors and artists in education, alliances and cooperation through its various activities and projects.

Studies have proven that engagement with arts and culture affects positive changes not just in personal development but also in the society at large. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale aspires to be the raison d'être towards creating a better social eco-system.

"This is just the beginning. Numerous artworks, varied ways of expression, different countries, all showcase the diversity of the real world. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale aspires to give a new view of, as described in the title of Aldous Huxley's book, ‘a brave new world'," Krishnamachari says.

Bose Krishnamachari

Born in Kerala in 1963, artist and art activist Bose Krishnamachari’s diverse artistic and curatorial practice include drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, furniture, design, installation and architecture. His artistic endeavours plumb creative depths to give contemporary Indian art a novel direction.

Krishnamachari, who at present works in Mumbai, has exhibited in several important solo and group exhibitions, including ‘Gateway Bombay’ at the Peabody Essex Museum (2007), ‘Indian Highway’ at the Serpentine Gallery, the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Norway, the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark and the Lyon Contemporary Art Museum.

His curatorial projects include the seminal exhibition ‘The Bombay Boys’ (2004), the travelling project ‘Double-Enders’ (2005), LaVA (Laboratory of Audio Visual Arts) (2007) and ‘guest curator’ at the Indian pavilion of ARCO-Madrid (2009).

In 2009 Krishnamachari created Gallery BMB in south Mumbai with a vision to bring the best national and international art to India.

Riyas Komu

Riyas Komu, born in Kerala in 1971, has had his critically acclaimed works exhibited extensively in India and abroad, which include several key works that focus on the political and cultural history of Kerala. His works are part of the larger narrative of the making and unmaking of artistic influences.

In 2007, he was one of two artists from India to be selected by curator Robert Storr for the Venice Biennale. Recent exhibitions include shows at the GEM Museum for Contemporary Art (The Hague, The Netherlands, 2009), The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (Oslo, Norway, 2009), the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art (China, 2009) and the Gwangju Emerging Asian Artists Exhibition (Korea, 2010).

He is the first Indian artist to have held a solo exhibition in Iran (Azad Art Gallery, 2010). Significant works focusing on football include ‘Mark Him’, with the Indian national football team, and ‘Left Legs’ with the Iraqi national football team (2008/2010).

Later this year his work will be exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, as part of their India Exhibition.

Linda George is a writer based in Thrissur, Kerala.

MF Husain reaps posthumous ‘acceptance’ through a plethora of art shows

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:57:00 +0000

Source: Wall St Journal

Celebrating Maqbool Fida Husain seems to have become rather trendy for the art community. Apart from a plethora of exhibitions dedicated to the late maverick, the printing press is running overtime to churn out books on him. These include Pradeep Chandra’s MF Husain: A Pictorial Tribute and Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India, an anthology of essays by Yoda Press.

A recent India-Bangladesh exhibition, ‘dedicated’ to Husain at Mumbai’s Museum Art Gallery, appears to be piggy-backing on the dead artist by showcasing 56 artwork that are not even remotely related to Husain. The logic behind this week-long ‘summit’ dedicated to Husain and prominent Bangladeshi artist Mohammad Kibria, is, that the two passed away within two days of each other. However, other exhibitions, which are showcasing Husain’s work, include shows at the Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), Vadhera Art Gallery in Delhi and Pundole Art Gallery in Mumbai.

Given that Husain was living in exile, is it too little too late? “With a phenomenon like him, something like this was bound to happen. He never stopped being celebrated; even when he was in exile. We must ask ourselves if Husain would be proud of the show that is dedicated to him? Would he support the artists clubbed together in the so-called tribute, or would he cringe?” says Dadiba Pundole, owner of the Pundole Art Gallery, that has an old association with Husain. Back in 1960s, the painter had his first solo exhibition here. The Pundoles also had their own tribute to the maestro. “It was a small show that we did for our own satisfaction, more like a ‘selfish’ exhibition,” says Dadiba.

Roshini Vadehra of Vadehra Art Gallery, agrees. “Husain was the only living artist, who was celebrated with a solo at the National Gallery of Modern Art in1993. My father (Arun Vadehra) pursued the Ministry of Culture to host this exhibition with a bit of difficulty, but we are glad we did it while he was alive,” says Vadehra, who is also showcasing works by Husain at their Defence Colony Gallery.

The Delhi Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition at the DLF Emporio. It was at DLF Centre, where Husain began his public art career as a struggling artist. “We had been talking about doing a film and a large exhibition on Husain for 2012. It is a pity that he passed away before we could have the show,” says Kishore Singh, Head of exhibitions and publications, DAG. The show features about 50 works from the1940s and the 2000s, some of which have been sourced from private collectors like Kiran Nadar. DAG is the only gallery to have hosted Husain’s artwork at the India Art Summit this year. The works on display will include the seminal Karachi VI, a self portrait with horses, that speaks of Partition, a brilliant paper work on Gandhi and a bold image of the Indo-China war.

Completing the retrospective are archival photographs from artists like Krishen Khanna, Gopi Gajwani and late photographer Habib Rahman. They will also showcase films made on him and by him. “The fear factor kept people away from having exhibitions, but we entirely believed in his freedom of expression. What can we do if Husain has become a brand,” adds Singh.

Payal Kapoor of Arushi Arts in Greater Kailash, is also hosting what she calls, a tribute with a difference. “I have a Husain horse, which forms the center-piece of the show around which I’ve arranged the works of the Modern Contemporaries. Husain always said that one should encourage new talent,” says Kapoor, whose exhibition features works by Paresh Maity, Arpana Caur, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Roy Thomas, A Balasubramaniam, Jagannath Panda and Riyas Komu. Unfortunately, none of these artists, with an exception of Padamsee, have made work with Husain in mind.

Reacting to the posthumous love being showered on Husain, Kapoor says, “It is sad but true. The psyche of the buyers and collectors is usually driven by the availability of artwork, the quantity of which decreases once an artist passes away.”

Singapore Museum nominates 5 Indian artists for art prize

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 04:21:00 +0000

New Delhi - 30th August 2011
Source - PTI

Five artists from India — Atul Bhalla, Prabhavathi Meppayil, Ravi Shah, Sheba Chhachhi and Shreyas Karle — have been nominated by the Singapore Museum for a $45,000 art prize.

The artists’ works are part of a total of 130 artworks from 24 countries that are vying for the triennial Signature Art Prize, set up in 2008, which recognises significant works of art from the Asia-Pacific region’s contemporary art.

Two leading art professionals, Suman Gopinath and Pooja Sood, have nominated the artists whose works span different mediums such as installation, print, mixed media and photography, and discuss issues such as environment concerns.

“The Prize recognises and highlights the best in this region’s contemporary art developments in recent years,” says Tan Boon Hui, Director Singapore Art Museum.

“It demonstrates Singapore Museum’s role in uncovering ground-breaking artworks of lasting significance to our region, and profiling them to an international audience or art lovers, critics and collectors,” adds Boon Hui.

The Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) Foundation is funding the Signature Art Prize.

Apart from India, entries have also been received from Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea), Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

A shortlist of finalists would be announced on October 1 while the winners

Jehangir Sabavala's world was deceptively serene

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 07:12:00 +0000

Ranjit Hoskote, TNN | Sep 3, 2011, 07.06AM IST

Jehangir Sabavala invoked, in many of his landscapes, a homeland lost to historical vagaries and recoverable only in dream. It was easy for us, as viewers, to be seduced by the beauty of this imagined homeland: To lose ourselves among its windswept strands, crystalline lakes and cloud-hidden mountains. What called us back to an engagement with the anguish and uncertainty of this deceptively serene world was the figure, which, in Sabavala's art, was often the exile crossing wastelands in quest of anchorage; the solitary pilgrim following an elusive star; or the sorcerer conjuring up new geographies of forest and stream in defiance of the brutality of circumstance.

During the last ten years, and certainly following the lifetime retrospective of his work at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and Delhi (2005-2006), Sabavala has come to be identified with the gracious ease of success. But success had not, in fact, come easily to him. Through the 1970s, and later in the 1990s, he had been charged with being an elitist painter dedicated to romantic evocations of alternative worlds, out of touch with what some of his contemporaries were pleased to regard as the 'real India'. Fortunately, these criticisms have been set in perspective as the strength and relevance of Sabavala's art have become more apparent.

To paint as Sabavala did was not to be escapist, a charge routinely levelled at him during the 1970s, but to address the human predicament in a manner that dramatised the paradoxical vulnerability and resilience of the individual. It was a situation that the artist knew well. He was a member of the heroic first generation of postcolonial Indian artists, who turned their gaze, trained in the academies and ateliers of Paris, to a newly emancipated society in need of sustaining myths. These artists were prepared to commit themselves to an uncertain future because they believed that art could transfigure experience, restore a lost dimension of awareness to everyday life, and to transmit subliminal realities into the domain of consciousness.

In addressing their own dilemmas as well as those of their compatriots, the artists of Sabavala's generation did not simply create a new set of pictorial languages. They also took up a specific stance towards the role of art in relation to social transformation. Some, like M F Husain, became the playful chroniclers of the great Indian narrative of transformation. Others, like Tyeb Mehta, dedicated themselves to the creation of archetypal images that spoke of the cataclysms of a society divided against itself. And Sabavala, over the six decades of his painterly career, chose to develop and deepen a body of images that had close linkages with the thrum of the subcontinent yet opened up vistas of reverie and meditative silence.

Through the 1950s, he worked to make his paintings legible to his viewers, adapting the Cubism of his Paris training to the harsh light, the bright colours and the visual hyper-abundance of India. Through the 1960s, when he made his breakthrough discovery of what I have elsewhere called the visionary landscape, he bestowed on the rivers and mountains of India an 'auratic' radiance, an otherness that liberated them from the regime of time. And through the 1970s and 1980s, as his palette grew more muted and austere, he seemed to be responding to a history of loss by evoking the elements as the ultimate home of the homeless. The sky, during his paintings of the 1990s, is the wanderer's chosen roof. In many ways, the expansiveness of Sabavala's paintings during the last 20 years reflects the compelling 360-degree awareness that he exhibited.

To be a painter, for Sabavala, was never to be the resident of an ivory tower. He believed that the life of the studio should constantly be replenished by encounter with the broader currents of society and culture. In conversation, he was constantly and genuinely attentive to the lives and practices of others, whether they were artists, poets, critics, architects, politicians, gallerists, or auction-house professionals. The world, to him, was not only a reservoir of images; it was also a place to be enjoyed for its music of surprise and revelation.

Similarly, his acute knowledge of the secondary and tertiary art market did not grow from a fascination with the market as a source of opportunities; rather, the market was a theatre of impulses and outcomes for him, to be analysed and enjoyed for its own sake. If Sabavala has ever wanted a motto, he would perhaps have chosen Socrates' dictum, 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' And life, to him, was not confined to the breath of a singular self, but stood for the complex polyphony of a society understood in all its amplitude, which made the existence of that individual self worthwhile. This awareness will be his lasting gift to those of us who had the privilege of knowing him.

In the '40s when he was at JJ School of Arts, his drawings were framed. They were very realistic academic studies which we were told to look at carefully. He often used to exhibit in Bombay. I remember going for his shows. He had a cubist way of conceiving an image. It remained with him for all his life. He had a kind of meditative approach to his medium-the way he would apply paint and conceive a figure. There was a controlled manner in which he approached subject matter and a certain serenity and balance that one saw in his work. - Atul Dodiya

He was an immensely kind individual. Besides his unforgettable elegance, something I will always carry within me is the many conversations we've had about new media and installation art, etc. Despite the fact that his own work had very little to do with these developments, he was always curious about where contemporary art was headed. - Jitish Kallat

He was a definite guide. Till date, I had been consulting him regularly on matters of art and my work. What I admired was the artisanal quality of his painting. Sabavala worked in a small studio. The way he laid out his colours before he started painting was something I admired. And I tried to have that quality, tried to be as organized. I used to admire the monochromatic underpainting. Then he would glaze it. This is an old technique that was used in a contemporary way by him. The old masters did it. - Mehlli Gobhai

He was an artist who was passionately committed to his vision. He lived through times when the concept of art had changed dramatically. But he was never swayed away from his own central vision. He was extremely generous in his willingness to talk to younger artists, to give his comments on their work. - Gieve Patel

He was a senior painter whose contribution to modern Indian art was noteworthy. I am saddened to learn of his demise, my condolences to his family and the art fraternity who will greatly miss him. - SH Raza

GENERATION IN TRANSITION. NEW ART FROM INDIA

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:56:00 +0000

Nandini Valli Muthiah, Iconic poet and Father, 2008,from the series Fancy Dress, courtesy of the artist

03.09 - 06.11

The Generation in Transition exhibition presents the artworks of a young generation of artists of Indian origin, living and working in India, as well as in America and Europe. It is the first extensive showcase of contemporary art from this region presented in Central Europe in recent years. For about twenty years now, India has been experiencing an enormous economic and technological development, which has had a substantial impact on social structures. This change, with its positive and negative aspects, is frequently reflected in the works of contemporary artists, especially in those of the youngest ones who have grown up in these interesting times of transition.

The title of the show is borrowed from the title of a photographic series by Anay Mann, who makes portraits of his contemporaries – “an urban generation that is constantly seeking to define itself”, trying to find their place between local tradition and history, and the more and more globalized and technicized reality they live in.

Over the last ten years, contemporary art from India has become very popular. Big group exhibitions have so far been shown in Europe, the United States and China. Private galleries – mostly from Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore – have built a local art-market and became important players on the international scene. Non-commercial organizations - such as KHOJ and the SARAI Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi and 1 Shanti Road in Bangalore, as well as art-schools are opening up spaces for independent ideas and projects.

The show in Poland concentrates on young artists (including some from the diaspora) in an attempt to grasp the state of mind and spirit of their generation. At the exhibition are to be found not only previously existing works, but also projects created especially for the show. The exhibition presents a wide range of artists, with different concerns and modes of artistic expression. These have been configured in several important themes: tradition/ritual/costume; portraits; city/change/architecture, society; science and technology in art; politics/identity/social activism; and Polish-Indian cultural relations. Contemporary ideas are expressed through both traditional and modern media: photography, film, video installation, sculpture, drawing, painting and animation.

Artists invited to participate in the exhibition: Jaishri Abichandani, Prayas Abhinav, Ravi Agarwal, Ashish Avikunthak, Sarnath Banerjee, Devendra Banhart, Ansuman Biswas & Jem Finer, Nikhil Chopra, Baptist Coelho, Shezad Dawood, Rohini Devasher, Gauri Gill, Shilpa Gupta, Tushar Joag, Vishwas Kulkarni, Swati Khurana, Anay Mann, Rakhi Peswani, Prajakta Potnis, Prasad Raghavan, Gitanjali Rao, Akshay Rathore, Malik Sajad, Sharmila Samant, Mithu Sen, Charmi Gada Shah, Tejal Shah, Yashas Shetty, Bharat Sikka, Janek Simon, Praneet Soi, Kiran Subbaiah, Anup Mathew Thomas, Navin Thomas, Nandini Valli Muthiah

Following its presentation in Zachęta, the exhibition is be shown in the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius.

curator Magda Kardaszcooperation: Anna Tomczak, Magdalena Komornicka, Sebastian Gawłowski

strategic partner Centrum Dobrego Obrazusponsor of the exhibition PERI

partner of the exhibition British Councilsponsors of the gallery: Lidex, Netiasponsors of the opening ceremony: Mandala, DeLonghi, Kenwwod, A.Blikle, Freixenet, Kinga Pienińska

media patronage: Gazeta Wyborcza, AMS, TOK FM, Polityka, The Warsaw Voice, Stolica, Art&Business, Artinfo.pl

Auction house gears up for week of Asian art sales

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:30:00 +0000

By Reuters Sunday, 4 September 2011 5:02 PM

Precious jade, modern masterpieces, museum-quality furniture and rare ceramics and porcelain are among thousands of art objects on offer during Christie's Asia week sales in September.

The four days of auctions, which are estimated to take in in excess of $50m, begin September 13 with the South Asian modern and contemporary art and the Indian and Southeast Asian art sales.

The Indian sale is led by a Maqbool Fida Husain's "Sprinkling Horses," a large oil-on-canvas painting estimated to sell for about $1m.

The auctions conclude with a $19m sale of rare Chinese ceramics and works of art.

In between, there will be sales of Japanese and Korean art, jade carvings, and property from the collection of Xu Hanqing, a prominent Chinese banker and government official who became known as an accomplished calligrapher.

Asian art, which officials say is a key driver in the global market, has seen strong activity in the past half-year, and the market - and collectors' - enthusiasm for Asian art has only grown.

Tina Zonars, Christie's international director of Chinese ceramics and works of art, said the auction house held high expectations for the series of sales featuring art from China, Japan, Korea, India, the Himalayas and South East Asia.

Its most recent Asian art week in March realised its highest total ever in New York, which she called a testament to the "remarkable strength of this market."

Christie's president of Asia, Francois Curiel, recently affirmed that its long-term strategy was to continually reinforce its presence in Asia.

Other highlights of the sales include Emperor Qianlong's Chunhua Ge Tie rubbing, two sets of boxes containing five albums each of rare ink-on-paper Chinese calligraphy, estimated to sell for about $1.2m at the Xu Hanqing sale, which is expected to total some $7m.

The two-day sale of Chinese ceramics and works of art is led by a Ming dynasty bronze figurine of Vairocana, expected to fetch $1m to $1.5m.

A large, rare white jade covered vase from the Quinlong/Jiaqing period is estimated at $750,000 to $1m, while Kim Whanki's "Landscape in Blue," the top lot of the Korean art sale, carries a $2m estimate.

Highlights from the sales will be on view at Christie's Rockefeller Center headquarters in New York for one week starting September 9.

Sotheby's Asian art sales are schedule for September 13-15.

Whose gaze is it anyway?

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:33:00 +0000

DNA - Anupa Mehta | Sunday, September 4, 2011

Jehangir Sabavala was a distinguished man. His oeuvre was as elegant and understated as his persona. His demise on Friday morning was sudden but not surprising, as he was ailing. He leaves behind a legacy of fabulous works, many styled with an almost European sophistication of palette and application. He is one of few Indian painters to have systematically documented a copious body of work - eponymous publications offer a wealth of insights into his work.

That evening, at the opening of an exhibition titled Staging Selves: Power, Performance and Portraiture curated by Maya Kovskaya at his gallery in Mumbai, artists and others paid respect to the painter by observing a minute's silence. It seemed like a fitting tribute: the show must go on.

And the show in question is a many layered, finely nuanced presentation. Featuring works by several artists from India, China and Iran, who, according to the curator, make it part of their practice to "question, problematise and blur the artificial binary between the staged and the documentary to investigate power relations implicit in the pretension of representation."

On the strength of this strong conceptual ground, the curator seeks to bring together artists with diverse sensibilities and very different areas of concern on the strength of the fact that their work questions the way perceptions are established, and the inequities of power that imbue the gaze with the strength to do so.

Peripatetic lensman and activist Samar Singh Jodha's work, titled, Whose Wealth? Whose Commons? cast light on the lesser known plight of the workers who built the infrastructure required for the games in record time. Jodha says, "An estimated US$80 million was saved by contractors by denying workers the legally mandated wage through a long sub-contractual chain that diminished accountability with every link."

The artist employs a striking visual narrative to reveal a poignant tale. Images are cast on concrete blocks and light boxes. However, as the artist points out, the work transcends its immediate context to become a larger story of a society at odds with itself in that national pride and international recognition is sought at a high cost extracted from its own people. The artist-photographer captures both, the grit and the grime within the games with his planned and staged portraits of those who live on the margins of all that they help to create.For the rest, catch the show online if not in Mumbai.

On another note, coming up in November are two new art fairs that aim to reach out to many more people through their online presence and unusual marketing activities. India Arts Festival and India Art Collective, the new entrants on the Indian art circuit, are all set to give India Art Fair, slated for New Delhi in January, a run for its money.As wonderful as it is to see such initiatives take flight, one can't help but wonder about basic problems of infrastructure and audience development, among key issues assailing the arts sector.

— The author is a published writer and an independent arts consultant

Colours of the past

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:36:00 +0000

The Hindu - Divya Kumar

LAUNCH Of Artrends, a coffee table book takes you back in time to an era of remarkable dynamism in Indian art

A rich slice of Indian art history came to light with the launch of the coffee table book Artrends at Cholamandal Artists' Village recently.

The book puts together all the issues of a unique contemporary art journal (also called Artrends) that was brought out by a visionary group of artists in Madras between 1961 and 1982. The result is 400 pages filled with 203 artist profiles, 650 images of artworks, and reams of in-depth, brutally honest analysis that takes you back in time to an era of remarkable dynamism in Indian art.

“This collection fills a major gap in recording the history of contemporary Indian painting and sculpture,” said N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, speaking at the launch. “It offers a critical but loving insight into those formative years of Indian art when issues such as national identity in the wake of Western influences were a burning concern among discerning contemporary artists.”

“For those interested in Indian art and art history, and also their intellectual as much as aesthetic and stylistic underpinnings, this is an invaluable link to a transformational phase in Indian art,” he said. “I was struck by the evolution of Indian modern art in the minds of the editors of Artrends,” said Jennifer A. McIntyre, Consul-General of the United States, who released the book. “While the focus in the 1960s was on the influence of American and European modern art on Indian art, by the 1970s and 1980s there's no doubt that Indian modern art had come into its own.”

The journal was brought into existence 50 years ago by the Progressive Painters' Association (PPA), a group of the city's most eminent artists lead by the late K.C.S. Paniker, visionary principal of the Government College of Fine Arts, and the founder of Cholamandal. “This launch is the perfect opportunity to pay homage to Paniker, truly a man ahead of his times,” said P.M. Belliappa, president, Association of British Scholars (ABS), who presided over the event.

“The idea of starting the journal came about because we had no support for art in the media back then, and very little support from the public,” said senior artist S.G. Vasudev, speaking at the launch. “Paniker believed that we needed a magazine to talk about artists — local, national and international. That was his vision.”

He and other senior artists such as V. Viswanathan and K.V. Haridasan reminisced about the hours spent working on the journal as art students, manually typing out the articles, and then sitting in the printing press all day, putting it together.

Putting together the book was an equally labour-intensive job. “It has been quite an arduous task,” said sculptor S. Nandagopal, who was closely involved in bringing out the book. “We needed to retype all the pages, and rework all image plates individually. But once the book was ready, it was all worthwhile.”

The book, priced at Rs. 1,500, is the result of a collaboration between Cholamandal Artists' Village and Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi. “The launch of Artrends is an important event in the annals of Lalit Kala, as we've funded the publication of such a comprehensive work on art for the first time,” said Rm. Palaniappan, regional secretary of Lalit Kala Akademi.

M. Senathipathi, president of Cholamandal Artists' Village, commended Nandagopal and his team, and Palaniappan for a job truly well done. The evening ended fittingly enough with Mr. Ram inaugurating a remarkable exhibition of the works of many of the Madras Movement masters who are featured in Artrends. The exhibition will be on at the Cholamandal Centre for Contemporary Art for two weeks.

Husain’s paintings fetch $4.7 million at New York auctions

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 04:48:00 +0000

A collection of over 20 paintings by legendary artist M.F. Husain fetched $4.7 million at auctions held at the prestigious Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York.

An auction held on Thursday at Sotheby’s of 11 masterpieces by late Husain fetched a total of $557,500 with one of his paintings Man with Sitar selling for $146,500.

However, proceeds from the Sotheby’s auction paled in comparison to those generated at Christie’s two days ago, where a single Husain work was sold for $1.14 million.

At the Christie’s sale, Sprinkling Horses went under the hammer for $1.14 million, one of the highest amounts ever paid for the late master’s work.

It was among the 13 paintings that were auctioned at Christie’s sale of South Asian modern and contemporary art.

The 13 paintings were sold for a total of $4.2 million.

Eleven Husain paintings were on sale at Sotheby’s, which presented Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art including Indian Miniature Paintings as part of its week of Asian art auctions.

A legendary artist, whose work often landed him in controversy, Husain passed away in June this year. He was among the first and few artists from India to be in the ‘one million dollar club’

His Empty Bowl at the Last Supper was sold for $2 million in 2005, which was at that time the highest sum ever paid for a work of modern Indian art.

In 2008, Husain’s Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata fetched $1.6 million, setting a world record at Christie’s South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale.

Two new museums for India

noreply@blogger.com (Visions Art) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:19:00 +0000

Bihar and Kolkata plan major spaces

By Gareth Harris | Web only

Published online 5 Oct 11 (Museums)

http://www.theartnewspaper.com

Coming in 2014: the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art

BIHAR. India’s sub-standard state museum infrastructure is set to be enhanced by plans for a new museum in Bihar, east India, scheduled to open in 2015. The museum will be built on a 13-acre site in the state capital Patna and focus on Pataliputra, the ancient predecessor of Patna. The principal funder, the state of Bihar, has hired UK culture consultancy Lord Cultural Resources to develop the masterplan for the museum, which has an estimated budget of $80m. “Great figures of ancient India—Buddha, Mahavir and Ashoka as well as scholars and poets of the court—will be featured in the museum, which will focus on the contribution of what is now Bihar to Indian and Asian civilisation,” says Barry Lord, co-president of Lord Cultural Resources.

Meanwhile, an ambitious new museum of modern art in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) is now scheduled to open in 2014. The 552,300 sq. ft Kolkata Museum of Modern Art (KMoMA) will rise in Rajarhat, a suburb of the city, housing a collection of Indian art dating from the 18th century to the present day. Sections devoted to far eastern and western art are also planned. “KMoMA’s content will be built and programmed by joining hands with museums [from the] region, major museums across India and some of the finest museums abroad,” says Rakhi Sarkar, managing trustee of KMoMA and director of the Kolkata-based commercial gallery Cima.

The estimated $82m budget for KMoMA will be funded by a tripartite public-private partnership between the Indian government, the government of West Bengal and the corporate sector.