From Yellow Dot to Glowing Sun : The Magic of Indian Contemporary Art

2011-06-29T22:30:00.000+05:30

Effects of Kashmir conflict comes alive in youngsters’ art

WEDNESDAY, 29 JUNE 2011 14:20 SRINAGAR IZHAR ALI

The two-decades of conflict have left an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of Kashmiri youth. This was evident from the paintings and writings of young participants exhibited on the concluding day of a two-day workshop-cum-exhibition titled - my K" Art workshop at Kashmir University here on Tuesday.

The workshop-cum-exhibition was organized by Kashmir Art Quest, askaboutk.com, Gayoor Art Foundation in collaboration with Dean Students Welfare, Kashmir University.

The youngsters, most of them in teens, expressed their thoughts in images and drawings while others penned them down in poems and prose on blank sheets of paper.

“My painting represents the bloodshed of innocents in the Valley last year. It shows the significance of Ghanta Ghar that remained in news for flag hoisting and processions,” an artist, Hilal Khan told this correspondent, while displaying his painting of the historic Ghanta Ghar secured with blood stained barbed wires.

On the top of the clock tower is the Indian flag while on the bottom lies the green flag.

“Last year protesters would assemble at Ghanta Ghar and hoist green flags. The authorities would instantly remove them. These were the sequences of last year’s unrest which I have tried to depict in my painting,” Khan adds.

Moonis, a student has depicted the pain, agony and helplessness of the people of Kashmir vis-à-vis the conflict in his painting. The painting divided into two parts shows the sunrise and sunset denoting hope and hopelessness, as the dark faces in the middle of the painting signify the people of Kashmir who are caught in chaos and confusion.

“My painting is related to the killings of Kashmiris by the Indian forces. Kashmiris have been living under occupation and oppression since centuries. We have been subjected to illegal occupation by India since 1947. My art reflects the suffering of Kashmiris,” says Moonis.

The painting with spools of barbed wire in the bottom ends with colorlessness.

Fatimah Ali, another participant has highlighted various issues related to the ongoing conflict in Kashmir in her painting. From blood stained chess board to the distorted image of Kashmir. From cultural attack to the helpless hands of the people, she has packaged the image of the conflict using a variety of colors and newspaper cuttings.

Mir Suhail, a cartoonist has depicted the suffering of a common Kashmiri with the image of a man holding a broken gun in his hands. The man in the image has blood flowing through his nose and hands.

“The gun is the sole reason for all the problems. Last year or even during the Dogra rule, Kashmiris have been massacred with these weapons. So as an artist, I want an end to this gun culture,” says Suhail.

“Militancy is over now but the military is now creating problems. Let’s give peace a chance,” he adds.

Adil Abbas, another artist has presented erstwhile Kashmir in three parts administered by India, Pakistan and China. Drawn over yellow background signifying prosperity, Adil’s painting has a mixture of Kashmir’s diverse culture and rich traditions.

“Jammu and Kashmir is torn and burnt down in three pieces. The color red signifies the relentless bloodshed in the state,” he says.

Zahoor-din Lone, a student of Music and Fine Arts has shown Jammu and Kashmir entangled with wire as colorful flowers inside the state are bleeding. On the right and left of the state are two hands of the people who are trying to cut the barbed wire and pull out the arrows to get rid of the pain.

In another painting with dark background, an artist has shown Kashmir locked down with chains with its besieged people, while the UN has been blindfolded.

Some artists have also displayed peace, communal harmony, handicrafts and rich culture of Jammu and Kashmir in their paintings.

Syed Mujtaba Rizvi, another student had used light colors to signifying hope, optimism, peace and prosperity in his painting.

“The shades of grey may not necessarily be bad. We need to accept the differences in opinion and others' right to have a say. I have used colors as an indication of a peaceful resolution to the Kashmir issue,” says Rizvi.

The organizers expressed satisfaction over the success of the exhibition in which over 40 artists participated.

“The aim of the exhibition was to provide a platform to the young artists to showcase their talent. At the same time, we want to make society aware about the importance of art that plays a vital role in cultural evolution,” the organizers said.

2011-06-29T22:24:00.001+05:30

BBC hosts Britain's public art collections online

27 June 2011

This masterpiece by Edward Burne-Jones, titled "Laus Veneris," 1873-78, from the collection of Laing Art Gallery, is viewable on the BBC's new Your Paintings website. It is also currently part of the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition "The Cult of Beauty.

Works by John Singer Sargent, John Constable, and Andy Warhol are among the 200,000 paintings in a national collection owned by British taxpayers. Some of this art trove resides in small publicly-funded collections and others exist in relative obscurity, either stashed in museum storage or on the walls of a government building. Now a new online art gallery will host digital images of paintings from Britain's public collections.

The BBC's "Your Paintings" website, developed over six years with the Public Catalogue Foundation, currently displays online about 63,000 artworks - the first batch to be digitized.

Treasures tucked away in various corners of the country - like Pissarro's 1906 landscape of west London, which is housed in a history center - will now be seen by a wider public.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/

A vast range of artists are already included in the Beta version of the site, from Francis Bacon to Alfred James Munnings, Canaletto to Rossetti, and numerous lesser known artists.

2011-06-29T22:18:00.000+05:30

Art in Aisle 5: Barcodes Enter Expressionist Period

Design Barcodes Inc. (man, skyline); Vanity Barcodes LLC (3)

Some proposed barcode designs, from left, depict a hand mixer, jelly beans, skyline, school bus and trousers.

By SARAH NASSAUER

Package design has become so artful, it has come to this: Even the barcode, the style runt of product labeling, is getting gussied up.

Beer, granola, juice and olives are sporting barcodes that integrate famous buildings, blades of wheat and bubbles into the ubiquitous black and white rectangle of lines and numbers. Consumer-goods companies hope these vanity barcodes will better connect with customers.

The trend is popular with smaller companies, and even one of the world's largest food companies, Nestle SA, is trying out vanity barcodes on its smaller brands.

When Sixpoint Brewery planned to launch a line of canned beer this year, the Brooklyn, N.Y., company set out to fashion the perfect can design. It soon realized, "you need this big, ugly barcode so people can scan them," says Shane Welch, president of Mad Scientists Brewing Partners LLC, which owns Sixpoint. "I thought, why can't we do our own custom barcode?" Launched last month, the silver cans bear a barcode that integrates the Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers.

A handful of companies that specialize in making vanity barcodes have cropped up in recent years, though some companies create them in-house.

More companies are choosing specially designed vanity barcodes on their grocery and drug store products. Sarah Nassauer shows us some of them.

Some vanity-barcode designs aim to be elegant, others quirky. Design Barcodes Inc., a Tokyo-based ad and design firm, created barcodes with lines that look like water flowing over a waterfall or the rails on a train track. Yael Miller, co-owner of Vanity Barcodes LLC, in Lakewood, N.J., says one of her favorites is a hand mixer design she created to look as if the barcode is mixing up the numbers below it.

Some companies are hesitant to tinker with the barcode, says Steve Rosen, co-founder of Pacarc LLC, which distributes Japanese products in the U.S. and is the exclusive U.S. partner of Design Barcodes. If a barcode doesn't scan it could "really put the retailer in a pinch," says Mr. Rosen. A manufacturer might have to reprint all the packaging. He says Design Barcodes' products are tested before going on the market.

Barcodes are what allow retailers to track products through their stores and change pricing without needing to retag every item. Alan L. Haberman, a supermarket executive from Massachusetts and the person credited with bringing the barcode, formally known as the universal product code, to retail prominence, died last week.

Every retail barcode number in the U.S. and 107 other countries is assigned by GS1, a nonprofit standards organization created in the early 1970s when barcode technology entered the retail landscape. A company applies to GS1 for a barcode number specific to that company. It then creates (or hires a firm to create) the barcode to match that number.

Adding a vanity barcode can be expensive because new packaging is needed.

Nestle has gradually included vanity barcodes when redesigning packaging or launching new products. The company started in 2008 with smaller brands and those that don't come in many flavors (and therefore require fewer barcode variations). Nestle's Juicy Juice Sparkling Fruit Juice Beverage, which comes in three flavors, has bubbles rising up from its barcodes. Its Skinny Cow low-calorie dessert line is currently rolling out barcodes shaped like a cow's spot.

Bear Naked granola added a blade of wheat grass growing out of its barcodes during a package redesign in 2007. Bear Naked is currently owned by Kellogg Co.

Food manufacturer GLK Foods LLC had initial concerns that tinkering with its barcodes could interfere with their ability to scan, says Ryan Downs, vice president of the Bear Creek, Wisc.-based company. Ms. Miller of Vanity Barcodes, who is also a principal at branding and design firm Miller Creative LLC, suggested GLK add an olive tree to the barcode of its Verdi Italian-food line. After testing, the olive-tree-adorned barcodes scanned properly.

Since then, GLK has also added olives to the design of its mobile barcode, a different type of ID increasingly being used on consumer products. Shoppers are able to snap a picture of the code with a smartphone and automatically be directed to a website about the product, a coupon or a marketing campaign.

Breaking Out of the Box

View Slideshow

Verdi LLC

Verdi topped the barcode on its olive packaging with an olive tree.

On a barcode, "there are certain things you can change, certain things you can't and then there is sort of a gray area," says Ms. Miller. For a scanner to read a barcode it usually needs to be about a half inch high, blank space is needed on either side, and the lines can't be made out of some colors the scanner can't see, like red, yellow or orange, she says.

GS1 tests barcodes in a small lab in Lawrenceville, N.J., that is filled with new and old flat-bed scanners, hand-held scanners, and overhead scanners. For a fee, GS1 gives each barcode a grade—A through F—based on how consistently it scans. Many of the vanity-barcode designs go against GS1 guidelines, says Jon Mellor, a spokesman for GS1's U.S. arm. For instance, some new designs are shorter than the organization recommends, even though they may scan the product information accurately, he says. Still, GS1 doesn't object to vanity barcodes because its role is to help companies create the barcodes they prefer, he says.

Meanwhile, Walgreens Co.'s Duane Reade chain likes the vanity-barcode concept so much it added classic New York scenes like the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge in a barcode design to the packages of its store-brand products in 2009. The vanity barcodes aren't meant to scan.

"It's not functional, and it's not intended to be. It's being used as a unique design element," says Paul Tiberio, senior vice president of merchandising and marketing for Duane Reade.

The simple rectangular barcode, which the cashier swipes at the checkout line, is still on the back of each package.

Corrections & Amplifications

Design Barcode Inc. is a Tokyo-based ad and design firm that creates artful barcodes for consumer products. This article misstates the company name as Design Barcodes.

2011-06-29T22:15:00.000+05:30

10 Creative Bar Code Designs

On this day in 1974, Clyde Dawson made history as the first consumer to buy a product that had been scanned into a till by its Universal Product Code. The product was a $0.67 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum purchased at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The UPC went on to become more commonly known as a “bar code.”

Now ubiquitous in the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, the bar code has not changed visibly in the past three decades — a boring monotone patch around which packaging designers must maneuver. Many don’t realize, however, that as long as a bar code is still scannable, you can have tons of fun with creative designs. Although popular in Japan, custom bar codes for product packaging haven’t gone significantly mainstream in the west, except for a few notable examples, such as Amazon’s Kindle packaging.

We’d like to see more bar code creativity, so to celebrate the UPC’s birthday, we’re taking a look at 10 brilliant designs from experts in the designer bar code field — Japanese company Design Barcode and New Jersey-based branding and packaging design agency Miller Creative‘s Vanity Barcodes.

http://mashable.com/2011/06/26/creative-bar-codes/

2011-05-21T00:58:00.002+05:30

The Rutting Bull: Jerry Saltz On Picasso At Gagosian, New York

By Jerry Saltz · May 20, 2011

“Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’Amour fou,” the rapturous, vagino- maniacal show of more than 80 Pablo Picasso works at Gagosian, is a love story. It tells a tale of a devouring monster, a goddess and doormat, frenzied sex, and abject cruelty. The woman of the show’s title is Marie-Thérèse Walter, called “the greatest sexual passion of Picasso’s life,” “endlessly submissive and willing,” the sumptuous voluptuary who surrendered to his sadomasochistic demands. He himself once called her “a slice of melon,” and she said of herself, “I always cried with Picasso. I bowed my head in front of him.” L’Amour fou” was curated by John Richardson and Diana Widmaier Picasso, granddaughter of the artist and Marie-Thérèse. Widmaier Picasso once told a British paper that her grandmother talked of their “secrets,” some of which have been widely reported. Richardson (in his acclaimed three-part Picasso biography) says that Picasso enjoyed “the perverse pleasure of denying [Walter] the release of orgasm.” Yet Walter herself rhapsodized, many years later, that sex with Picasso was “completely fulfilling,” describing him as “very virile.”

For decades, no one knew of Walter or that she was Picasso’s mistress from 1927 until around 1937. Not only was she his submissive sexual conquest, artistic muse, psychic victim, and mother of his daughter; she’s the fleshy subject of some of his juiciest paintings. Picasso said she saved his life. And it’s true that from the moment she appears in his work, in early 1927, his art gets plusher and more immediate, catapulting him out of Cubism, paving the way for all his subsequent efforts. Marie-Thérèse is the fertile inspiration that made Picasso Picasso after Cubism.

They met on January 8, 1927, when she emerged from the Paris Métro to shop for a blouse with a Peter Pan collar. (You can see that collar represented in a number of the paintings here.) Picasso “accosted me,” she said. Then he hit her with the pickup line, “I’m Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together.” He was 45. She was 17 and had never heard of him. Yet days later, she went to his studio, and they began their mad love.

At Gagosian, Walter is recognizable by her shock of blonde hair, her classical Grecian profile, shaved pudenda, blouse falling off rounded shoulders, lavender skin, ample breasts, and curving form. In some works, she holds a key to a cabana; in others, a beach ball. Often we see her asleep, head thrown back in postcoital stupor, cheeks flush, body supple, blissed out. Sometimes this sleeping Venus looks like an extraterrestrial squid, legs and arms splayed, hair standing like antennae. The Marie-Thérèse paintings show Picasso creating a topography of desire. (In one work that’s not on view here, she pulls a flower from her anus.) Strip away the feminine mystique and macho narrative, however, and you see Picasso reinvigorating his work, reaching within himself, and turning, once again, to do battle with his friend Matisse.

More: http://magazine.saatchionline.com/magazine-articles/artnews/the-rutting-bull-jerry-saltz-on-picasso-at-gagosian-new-york

Point to point

2011-05-07T01:16:00.001+05:30

Point to point

SHAILAJA TRIPATHI

Artist S.H. Raza tells Shailaja Tripathi that he is happy to be back in a country that abounds in traditions and rich heritage

Living amongst us, painting amidst us, we can now truly claim the celebrated artist S.H. Raza to be our own. Not that the Indian sensibilities ever left his canvases or that the love for his land faded away with time. It was, in fact, in France where he lived for 60 long years, that he embarked on the ‘bindu' and the ‘panch tatva'. While he became a life-long student of this philosophy, to the world and people at home keenly watching Indian contemporary art, the image became one of the most endearing of its times.

But now even the physical distance of 4600 miles has been done away with. The iconic artist returned to India last December, and celebrated his 89th birthday recently in his newly bought house — two floors in a plush building — in Safdarjung Development Area in New Delhi. His health might have played a spoilsport in the last couple of months — severe chest congestion was followed by a fall which subsequently led to hospitalisation and a fractured left femur bone from which the artist is yet to recover completely — halting his plans to roam around the country, visit his friends, but the joy and contentment in his spirit is intact.

Eminent artist S.H. Raza at his New Delhi residence.
Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

His wish of being a Hindi speaking and tax paying citizen of India has been granted. And now, as he gradually inches towards recovery, the artist talks of his plans of visiting Mandla, his hometown in Madhya Pradesh, besides Rajasthan, West Bengal and South India. “I was lucky to have had a house by the sacred river Narmada. We could see it from our house and we bowed to her every morning. What luck I had! I think I have another seven-eight years left and I want to visit all these places as soon as I get alright,” says a beaming Raza. Explaining why he chose Delhi over Mumbai for his permanent place of residence, he adds, “Delhi is well-connected. I have many friends and it's easier to travel from here.”

He is seated in his wheelchair against the backdrop of a canvas bearing the drawing of a cross in pencil. While the cross-laden canvas is meant to be a gift for a dear one, the new set of paintings which will be showcased at Vadehra Art Gallery in November this year will have sketches and patterns in ink inscribed with the words ‘bindu' and ‘avartan'. “Besides all this, I have taken up another project which is ‘Apna Ghar',” he says.

Raza had left India in 1950 after winning a scholarship to the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and lived in Paris for more than 60 years. “I fell in love with a French artist. We went to the same arts school and trained under the same professor. Her parents were scared that I would return to India after marrying her, so, I stayed on.” His wife, Janine Mongillat, died after a prolonged illness in 2002 leaving him alone and further fuelling his desire to come back to his roots.

The recipient of Padma Bhushan had set up Raza Foundation in 2001 and now, the Foundation is in talks with the Delhi Government to set up a museum within the city, housing the seminal collection of Indian contemporary art of the Raza Foundation.

Before he left for France, Raza together with M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza, K.H. Ara and V.S. Gaitonde, was in the process of arriving at a new visual language that was essentially rooted in Indian sensibilities. The artists, who called themselves the Progressive Artists Group, wrote a new chapter in the history of modern art of the country, which had just attained independence. “People at that time made fun of us. Many didn't agree with our philosophy. But today if you look back, in which other groupwould you find Gaitonde, (Akbar) Padamsee, Souza, Kishen Khanna,” says the artist in response to a question regarding the significance of the group today.

Remind him about the auction world — his acrylic on canvas ‘Saurashtra' created auction history last year when it sold for Rs.16.42 crore at a Christie's auction and now hangs in the Kiran Nadar Museum in Saket — and he sounds dismissive when he opines, “People don't know what is Raza up to, or any other painter, but they know how much his painting sold for. Painting is not done to earn money but to research art. A lot of people have forgotten that today. Your art has to be true, only then it will have some value.”

2011-05-01T00:28:00.002+05:30

Neelam Raaj | April 30, 2011

Indian presence in Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is often called the Olympics of the art world. The city's palazzos and pavilions see artists - and nations - vying to impress a notoriously hard-to-impress audience. In 2007, Subodh Gupta's pots-and-pans stainless steel skull Very Hungry God was positioned by the Grand Canal and catapulted him to the global stage. This year's event, the 54th Venice Biennale, which will open to the public on June 4, is India's breakout year.

VENETIAN AFFAIR:

Praneet Soi, who divides his

time between Amsterdam and his

native Kolkata, will create an onsite mural

for Venice while New York-based

Zarina Hashmi's work tackles

the concept of 'Noor' or divine light

For the first time in decades, India will have a national pavilion (Indian artists such as Subodh Gupta, Riyas Komu and Nalini Malani have shown here but not under a national umbrella). In an exclusive interview, TOI-Crest caught up with Ranjit Hoskote, the man who has been constantly on the move ever since he was appointed curator of the India pavilion last August. Shuttling between Mumbai and Utrecht, the two cities where he has been living over 2010-2011, and Venice and Delhi, Hoskote has been hard at work coordinating with the Lalit Kala Akademi, artists, and with the production team. "Sudden questions pop up, like when electrical facilities pop up in the middle of a mural and we have to make a calibrated deviation from the plan, " says the 42-year-old who wears quite a few hats. A poet, cultural theorist, translator (he's put the launch of his latest book, a translation of the work of 14th-century Kashmiri saint-poet Lal Ded, on hold), he admits that this curatorship is quite a high-pressure job. "Since this is, in effect, our first initiative in Venice on such a scale, we have had to invent protocols and mechanisms for everything. Many people in the art world labour under the delusion that curators lead glamorous lives. What they don't see is the behind-thescenes work, the hard work of negotiation, design sessions, extended meetings, diplomatic discussions, the nuts and bolts of it!"

Despite a very vibrant art scene, this is the first time India has a pavilion at the116-year-old Venice Biennale. Did you want the debut to make a statement?

India has had an exhibition presence at previous editions of the Venice Biennale, especially during the 1950s and early 1960s, routed through the Embassy of India in Rome. But after a showing mounted by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations during the 70s, India has been notably absent. Also, after the Biennale reorganised itself substantially at the end of the 90s, we may now see it as a constellation that speaks of a new world order, with greatly transformed regional equations. Within this new constellation, it was important for India to have, for the first time, a professionally curated exhibition commissioned, very appropriately, by the country's National Academy of Art, the Lalit Kala Akademi. So yes, it is vital for me, as curator, that India's debut should mark a strong symbolic statement - in the choice of artists, the complex histories and entanglements they embody, and their place in a newly unfolding narrative of artistic practices that develop across multiple locations.

Venice is quite the European cultural bastion. What does this mean for Indian art?

Venice is also still very much the symbolic centre of global contemporary art. It means that we have to attend more responsibly to our status as a cultural power that is taken seriously. The time to celebrate the market uncritically is over. The time to overrate price and reduce artists to lifestyle brands is over. We now have to view our art as something that has powerful critical insights to offer on the layered experience of the present, and to address it through the appropriate optic of knowledge. That is the lesson we have to learn. But I'm afraid we are not going to learn that lesson just yet. There is so much we have to unlearn before we get there.

The pavilion is somewhat menacingly titled Everyone Agrees: It's About to Explode.

My eye fell on this sentence, from a text by an anonymous group of theorists called The Invisible Committee, which was shared with me by Mriganka Madhukaillya of the Desire Machine Collective. It was one of those fortuitous, magical moments. The sentence holds a reservoir of multiple meanings. It could speak of a society whose confident energies, simmering discontents, plural and productive articulations are all set to explode. It could speak of an art scene that is on the point of explosion in all directions. It could speak, also, of a cluster of ideas about location, identity, subjectivity and post-postcolonial, transcultural shape-shifting, whose time has come.

You've chosen four artists - printmaker Zarina Hashmi, painter and video artist Gigi Scaria, mixed media artist Praneet Soi, and The Desire Machine Collective, made up of the husband-and-wife team of Mriganka Madhukaillya and Sonal Jain. Why didn't you choose some of the more established names?

As I said, it was important for me to make a strong symbolic statement about contemporary Indian art. My argument is that contemporary Indian art is defined by multiple horizons of meaning and value, and not only by the yardstick of the market.

So, instead of having a vast number of artists to illustrate the booming art scene in India, or merely replicating the conventional wisdom of the art market, I chose four powerful positions, each of them conceptually rich and robust in expressive power. While some of these positions have been incorporated into the ranking system of the gallery world, they have not been neutralised by it - and they enjoy the critical acclaim that correctly attends truly dynamic practices that keep transforming themselves instead of settling into anxious formulae. It was also important for me to point to the variety of locations from which contemporary Indian culture is produced, and that it is reducible neither to place nor medium nor generation.

Zarina Hashmi incarnates, for me, a subjectivity profoundly shaped by the trauma of the 1947 Partition, by the experience of diaspora, and concerned with an exploration of epiphany and illumination. Praneet Soi's transcultural practice allows us to look at the transformation of the studio into a series of fluid situations, shaped through interactions with diverse collaborators, research modes, and a transition among disparate economies of image-production. Gigi Scaria, a Kerala-born artist who has lived and worked in New Delhi for over a decade, reflects on the processes and demands of internal migration, travelling among diverse psychic landscapes, social textures and interpersonal asymmetries. The Desire Machine Collective, based in Guwahati, signal the emergence of a vibrant contemporary art scene in the north-east, a part of India that is often regarded as quite separate from the mainstream - they combine their own work in film and public art projects with the conferences and workshops they organise through PeriFerry, a platform based physically on a barge moored on the banks of the river Brahmaputra.

In this sense, the India pavilion is, for me, a laboratory to test out various conceptions of cultural citizenship, of a cosmopolitanism that is not exclusively based on the metropolitan condition. I use the Indian Pavilion as a laboratory to investigate the idea of India. Through the four artistic positions presented there - as well as through the three associated conference platforms that will follow, in India - I bring into play the many claims and counter-claims, the extensions of conceptual boundaries and the multiple locations within the subcontinent from which artists now work, as ways of opening up the idea of the nation-state. Cultural citizenship, rather than national identity, is one of the key themes that I am exploring through this experiment.

What are the works that will be on display?

There are seven works in all. I have chosen three existing works by Zarina Hashmi - Home is a Foreign Place, Noor, and Blinding Light. We have produced a 35 mm film version of an earlier work by Desire Machine Collective, Residue, and a new recension of Praneet Soi's slide-projection-based work, Kumartuli Printer. The new works that I have commissioned are a mural that Praneet Soi will paint onsite, and a threescreen video installation by Gigi Scaria, called Elevator from the Subcontinent.

There has often been the discussion that Venice, with the national pavilions, is an obsolete model. Two years ago, you wrote a column in The Times of India arguing against a national pavilion which you said was an outdated idea. Now that you are curator, have you changed your mind?

My argument, in that text, was polemical and intended to draw attention to the possible dangers of the national pavilion format, and of interpreting the logic of national pavilions literally rather than creatively.

Among these was the danger of trying to 'represent' the nation through some form of heavy-handed regional or constituencybased quota system, and the pressure that this would place on the curator. The other peril that I pointed out was that artistic practice is increasingly moving away from the nation-state as unit of cultural measurement, and assuming fluid, entangled, transcultural, hybrid forms.

I am happy to say that the commissioning body for the India pavilion, the Lalit Kala Akademi, made it absolutely clear from the very beginning of this project that I would not be subjected to any kind of pressure in my curatorial work, as to choice of concept and artist. And the Akademi has supported me completely in this.

As to the critical engagement with the nation-state, the national pavilion becomes the ideal setting for such a revisiting of the idea. As I have said, the pavilion can be opened out and turned into a laboratory in which to test out notions of how we belong, and to what we belong - what does it mean to subscribe to a notion of cultural citizenship, to be related to a dynamic set of ideas concerning India rather than the textbook image of a territory.

The site of India's pavilion is the Arsenale, a sprawling complex of docks and warehouses. It sounds architecturally arresting.

PERIFERRY TO CENTRESTAGE:

The Desire Machine Collective, based

in Guwahati, signal the emergence of a vibrant

contemporary art scene in the north-east.

'Residue', a video shot at an abandoned thermal

power plant, was shown last year at the

Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. (Top) Gigi Scaria's

installation is called 'Elevator from the Subcontinent'

The Arsenale is the former ship-building yard and weaponry production centre of the Venetian Republic, as it used to be for centuries, a great trading and maritime power controlling the Mediterranean, until it collapsed under Napoleon's attacks and was eventually annexed into the newly formed nation-state of Italy in 1866. The Arsenale is a fantastic place, redolent of history, grotty, with exposed concrete and unfaced brick walls, huge columns, vast empty bays. I never cease to marvel at how this ruin-like space is transformed, with each edition of the Biennale, into the magical stage where some of the most inspiring contributions of contemporary global art are presented.

How seriously does China take cultural platforms like Venice?

China takes its soft-power initiatives very seriously. The Chinese presence in Venice, as in most other centres and off-centres of the global art scene, is substantial. Their pavilion has been curated by the Beijing aesthetician Peng Feng and is titled Pervasion of Chinese Flavours. Its project is to weave traditional Chinese aesthetic conceptions with contemporary idioms of practice, a tendency that is prominent in contemporary Chinese art. That said, China cannot wish away the fact that, when art oversteps the boundaries laid down for it by the state, the official reaction is tumultuous. China has recently embarked on a campaign of persecution against the artist Ai Wei Wei, who has expressed himself firmly on behalf of cultural and political openness. This has generated enormous dismay and protest across the global art scene.

2011-04-29T02:04:00.000+05:30

India gets its second international art fair

IANS, Apr 27, 2011, 12.53pm IST

New Delhi|

Kochi-Muziris Foundation

NEW DELHI: After the success of the India Art Summit in Delhi, the scene of action in contemporary art is shifting south with the announcement of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012, a mammoth exposition of international contemporary art, in Kerala.

A statement issued by the Kochi-Muziris Foundation Tuesday said the fair would be held in the Kochi port city on the scale of international art fairs.

A brainchild of Riyas Komu and Bose Krishnamachari -- two Kerala-born leading contemporary artists who left their native shores years ago, the biennale will showcase the best of Indian and international contemporary art with discussions, education sessions and corollary events themed on art. It will be modelled on the India Art Summit and the global art fairs.

The fair will be partnered by the Kochi-Muziris Foundation, a non-profit trust formed in 2010 that aims to highlight cosmopolitan legacy of the modern metropolis of Kochi.

The biennale will be spread across multiple venues in Kochi town and the adjoining port city, which was known as Muziris in early history.

The works on display will be a multimedia panorama of conventional art, films, installations, sculpture, new media and performance art. The biennale will also create a platform for debate by introducing ambitious contemporary international visual art practices and theory to India, showcasing new Indian and International art, and enabling a dialogue among public, artists, curators and visitors.

"The regional contemporary art from Kerala will occupy a pride of place," the foundation said in its statement.

The exhibition will try to create linkages between the tangible built heritage of the ancient Jewish settlement of Muziris, which has been continuously inhabited since the pre-Christian era, and visual arts by using public spaces, heritage buildings and other non-traditional venues to display art.

The ancient port city of Kochi was once known for its busy spice trade and was the landing ground of the first Dutch settlers in southern India. It was also home to Jewish traders. The ancient town of Mattancherry in Kochi was the nerve centre of pepper and cardamom trade.

According to the organisers, the art fair is proposed to attract national tourism, cultural interest and promote social cohesion to project Kochi as a heritage and art tourism destination.

The event will be supported by the Kerala Tourism department, local and national stakeholders and creative industries.

2011-04-29T02:00:00.001+05:30

Showcasing the rich art forms of India

KAUSALYA SANTHANAM

This book celebrates the presence of the divine even amidst the mundane and the material in our country. It showcases popular, devotional art in India and also metal icons, masks, sculptures, puppets, and ritual objects of divinities from this country as well as from Thailand, Nepal, Tibet, and Indonesia, as displayed in the Museum of Sacred Art, Radhadesh, Belgium.

REFRESHING

It is an effort to show “how contemporary artists continue to create visual representations of Hindu divinities in new and refreshing ways.” Radhadesh being “a spiritual community belonging to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON),” it is only natural that a majority of the paintings in the book should be on Lord Krishna.

A separate section is devoted to the art of the Hare Krishna movement which was also influenced by Italian art and Russian artists. The clarity of photographs, especially that of the beautiful old castle where the museum is housed, is such as to transport the reader to the museum. Also included are brief biographies of the artists.

J. Bhagawati, Ambassador of India to Belgium, Luxembourg, and the EU, in his preface, mentions how the collection “reflects the rich multiple art forms of India.” In her foreword, Chistiane De Lauwer, Curator (South Asia), MAS/ Ethnographic Museum, Antwerp, says she was struck by the lack of knowledge in Belgium about one of the world's most ancient and rich cultures. So, she went on to study Indian art, language, and religion. The museum and catalogue grew out of the need to spread awareness on Indian spiritual art.

Unlike in the West, the genre of spiritual art is still vibrant in India, says Martin Gurvich, Director, Museum of Sacred Art, in his introduction. The museum's focus is on living art forms rather than historical pieces, and so most of the pieces are from the 20th and 21st centuries.

In her essay on the “Living Traditions in Indian Art: The Divine Image,” Tryna Lyons describes how spiritual art is found everywhere in the country and goes on to speak of the art and artists in various regions. Among the beautiful photographs featured from the museum collection are the ones of Lord Krishna with Radha, with gentle-eyed cows, with the gopis on the river bank. Gold-leaf worked paintings in the Tanjore style and Mysore style; the pichhavais (cloth hangings) from Nathadwara in Rajasthan; paintings on cotton and paper by artists such as B.G. Sharma and Indra Sharma; inlay work on wood from Karnataka; beautifully proportioned bronzes of Tamil Nadu; eye- catching Madhubani paintings from Bihar; and rod puppets from Indonesia also find a place. In all, a catalogue that compresses the essence of the museum exhibits and communicates the spirit of popular and contemporary Indian spiritual art to the West.

2011-04-27T02:11:00.002+05:30

Gaitonde Painting is Top Seller at Pundole Auction

BY CHELNA KHATAU APR 22ND 2011 AT 6:00AM

NS Bendre's Mother and Child

An untitled painting by India's master abstract artist VS Gaitonde was the top-selling lot at the Pundole Gallery's inaugural art auction. The art sale, held at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai on April 20 raised a total Rs.11,51,70,000. And Lot 11, the Gaitodne, sold for an impressive Rs. 2.97 crore, almost Rs. 70 lakh more than the pre-sale upper limit of Rs. 2.20 crore.

The Gaitonde and 19 other works sold were from the NCPA's collection, which included works from Jamshed Bhabha's private art collection as well. An auction highlight was the staggering price achieved for a landscape by Bhabha. The 1945 painting, estimated to sell for between Rs. 50,000 - Rs. 70,000, went for Rs. 15.4 lakh.

Also, a world record was set for a NS Bendre painting. His 1980 oil on canves of a mother cuddling her child (aptly titledMother and Child) sold for Rs. 99 lakh.

Bids came in from India as well as the United States, Hong Kong, Japan and Europe.

2011-04-25T00:40:00.003+05:30

A home for Jehangir's collection

Saloni Doshi | April 23, 2011

The magnificent collection of Jehangir Nicholson finally finds a home.

ONE FOR THE ALBUM: Nicholson, who liked to introduce himself as RK Laxman's Common Man, with his wife Dina. It was after her death in 1967 that he took to collecting contemporary Indian art seriously.

On the evening of April 11, the doors to the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation's first exhibition, Six Decades: Celebrating the Bombay Artists from the Jehangir Nicholson Collection, opened at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai.

It was an important moment in the history of post-colonial Indian art. Finally, one of India's most passionate collectors was being given the respect and space he deserved in a gallery named after him. The works on display represent only a sliver of a collection that consists of close to 800 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints acquired from 1968 to 2001 of 250 Indian artists. The oldest artwork dates back to 1930.

The current exhibition showcases works of Bombay artists such as Sadanand Bakre, Prabhakar Barwe, MF Husain, Francis Newton Souza, Adi Davierwalla, Tyeb Mehta, HA Gade, VS Gaitonde, Bhupen Khakhar, Jitish Kallat, Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Nalini Malani, Akbar Padamsee, Homi Patel, Sudhir Patwardhan, Gieve Patel, Piloo Pochkhanawalla, SH Raza, Jehangir Sabavala, Laxman Shreshtha, Mohan Samant and B Vithal.

DINING OFF ART: Artworks lined Nicholson's dining room at his Worli bungalow, Westmore.

The Jehangir Nicholson Collection tells the story of contemporary Indian art. What was perhaps most important to the pint-sized collector was to collect works from different phases of an artist's life so that he had a record of the artist's progress and passage. He wasn't happy just to have one token work from every important artist. The works of Raza and Laxman Shreshtha's shifting phases, for instance, are dramatically evident in the collection, as Nicholson bought them steadily from the forties onwards. As art critic Ranjit Hoskote says, "These paintings demarcate a rich universe of concern, revolving as they do around the relationship between an ironic human consciousness and a vast cosmos that speaks to it in polyphonic voices and signs ablaze with mystery."

Jehangir Nicholson or Jangoo Bhai, as he was fondly called by his close friends (1915-2001 ), was born into a wealthy Parsi family that had established itself in the raw cotton trade. He grew up to take charge as director of the family's cotton selection and purchasing agency, Bruel and Co. However, Nicholson himself was a trained chartered accountant, and among his many social roles was Sheriff of Bombay, a post that he held for one year, and advisory board member to the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA). Tragedy struck in 1967 when his beloved wife Dina passed away. They had no children.

It was grief that made Nicholson embark on his voyage as a collector of contemporary Indian art. Devastated by his wife's death, he began to fill the vacuum in his life with things of beauty. In the '60s, art was not fashionable, nor was it pursued as a hot investment. Paintings and sculptures of local artists were not thought to be worth more than a few hundred rupees. Recalls Laxman Shreshtha, "In the 70s, when art collector Bill Chaudhary bought Souza's master work Death of a Pope (now in the Nicholson collection) for one thousand rupees, Souza made a statement that he earns more money than the prime minister."

More: http://www.timescrest.com/culture/a-home-for-jehangirs-collection-5264

2011-04-23T09:45:00.004+05:30

TIFR to exhibit rare artwork assembled by Homi Bhabha

Express news service

Posted: Apr 22, 2011

The famous, breath-taking Husain mural, "Bharat Bhagya Vidhata". Painted in 1964, the most spectacular work in the most amazing collection...

Mumbai Homi Jehangir Bhabha has always been remembered as one of the founders of modern science in India. But many do not know that he was also an artist in his own right. Not only was he passionate about paintings, music and literature, he is known to have mastered the arts to perfection.

In a fitting tribute to its founder, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is, for the first time, bringing together a rare collection of painting and sculptures, to be exhibited for the wider public. Consisting of over 250 artworks, the collection was assembled by the first two directors of the institute, Bhabha and MGK Menon, between the early 1950s and 1970s. Of this, the exhibition titled ‘Homi Bhabha and modern Indian art: the collection of TIFR’ at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), will showcase over 130 paintings and sculptures.

“It was Bhabha who set the tone for acquisitions, securing a set percentage of the institute’s yearly budget on art. He was a connoisseur of the highest rank. One of his paintings was recently sold at an auction for Rs 14 lakh. The exhibition will showcase the highlights of one of the most important collections of modern Indian art in existence. Though the TIFR art collection has a well-established reputation among the academic community, the works have rarely been viewed by a wider public. It’s only fitting that a substantial part of the collection be showcased,” said Kishore Menon, public relations officer, TIFR.

“The artwork being showcased is one of the finest produced in the post-Independence period and it’s fantastic that Mumbai will get to see one of the country’s greatest collections,” said Mortimer Chatterjee, the curator.

The art collection boasts of some of the largest numbers of work by K H Ara, V S Gaitonde, Krishen Khanna and K K Hebbar. It also includes Tyeb Mehta, Baburao Sadwelkar, Badrinarayan, M F Husain and Jehangir Sabavala. The exhibition at NGMA will be inaugurated on Sunday and will be open to the public Monday onwards.

“TIFR is the only scientific institute in the country which has such a rare art collection. It also highlights Bhabha’s contribution to arts and his attempt at a synthesis of arts and science, which is reflected in his ideas and the institutions he created,” said professor Spenta Wadia, convener of the TIFR endowment fund, who has been overseeing the collection.

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article1696047.ece?homepage=true&sms_ss=email&at_xt=4daa546334f373b9%2C0

2011-04-17T10:09:00.002+05:30

Rooted in the every day

SHIVAJI K. PANIKKAR

With his latest series “Frontal Narrative Sculptures” exhibited during the recent Chennai Art Summit, sculptor S. Nandagopal looks back at his four decades in the art world.

Sculptor S. Nandagopal's “Frontal Narrative Sculptures” uses commonly found articles like ladles, hooks and cleavers in a series of whimsical yet interesting bronze and copper works. Nandagopal continues to blend the ancient with the modern as he infuses figures from Hindu mythology with his innovative style.

“Frontal Narrative Sculptures” was hosted by Artworld as part of the Chennai Art Summit last month. During a conversation before the exhibition, the sculptor traces his artistic journey of 40-odd years.

The art scene in the 1960s and 1970s in Madras had been vibrant. As a young art student in the Madras Art College and later as a young professional, what were the sources of inspiration you gathered from the local and international art scenes that enabled you to develop a personal sculptural language?

I studied at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Madras in the 1960s and 1970s when the Madras Movement was at its height. It was a marvellous place. I owe much to its curriculum, setting and remarkable ethos. It had an excellent craft section where I used to spend a lot of time. It had some of the most renowned craftsmen in the state: ironsmiths, goldsmiths, furniture designers, textile weavers, dyers and so on, working and teaching alongside artist-instructors in painting and sculpture. There was an arrangement by which one doing painting, for instance, could go across and work in the sculpture section or in the ceramic workshop, textile design section or in the workshop of any other master craftsman. I would therefore move around in the workshops and observe the craftsmen at work, assist them sometimes or go over work in progress in the workshops and studios of craftsmen, painters or sculptors I looked up to. I knew very little about art those days but I could react to its workmanship no matter what medium and could be quite carried away by it.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s when I was there, a number of painters and sculptors were doing outstanding work. There was so much interaction, initiative and upsurge that I felt some of it happening inside me too. There was an important movement on. Notable among those I personally empathised with were the sculptor P.V. Janakiram, and the painters Reddeppa Naidu, L. Munuswamy and A.P. Santhanaraj.

I am particularly indebted to a school of drawing my senior colleagues and teachers had developed. It consisted of a line as soft and spontaneous as a Japanese brush stroke and just as free. With that they had developed a figure drawing that was so structured that it could do such complexities as an elephant-headed presence or a monkey-mannered wind-borne spirit or one that could multiply its limbs, head and body at will or issue out into configurations of calligraphic signs. That drawing remains with me and nourishes me still. It is that which activates my sculpture. On the international front, I have studied the work of abstractionists David Smith, Anthony Caro and Michael Puryear but remain a figurative sculptor as I believe that “Man will remain Man's greatest subject”.

Can you describe/characterise the major shifts that have come about in your sculptural articulations in the last four decades?

Like most sculptors of the Madras Art Movement, I began my career as a painter before I took to sculpture full time. My early work was inspired by folk and iconic sculpture and “frontality” was a key element right from the start. There were, of course, a few instances where I ventured into third dimensionaliy but I was unhappy with it as I felt it reached a dead end. The 1960s were a turbulent time in the Indian art movement when a synthesis of the West and the East was pursued relentlessly. Reviewing my work in Art International, the critic Phyllis Granoff gives an insight into my early work: “Nandagopal's sculptures are often large but perhaps their most obvious characteristic is that they compel the viewer's attention in two strikingly different ways. They first impose themselves as objects isolated in space and then invite a close-up reading of their numerous surface details. This remarkable synthesis of large imposing external shape with intimate playful surface detail Nandagopal himself relates to India's ancient artistic tradition, both folk and courtly.

The 1970s saw a consolidation of “frontality” and “linearity” in my sculpture. The late Dr. Mulk Raj Anand's view on my work at this stage gives you some idea. “The vision of Nandagopal conjures up images which are startling with their twists and turns of the figure. The sensation of the onlooker has to yield to deeper realisations of the subterranean currents of our age and transition. The aesthetic of Nandagopal's sculpture is in the disharmony which compels the overflow of emotion. Beneath the outer form with the violent gestures one can see the shadows of delirium of the human soul.”

The 1980s saw a subtle change coming into my sculpture. The critic and theoretician late James Josef commented on the element of lyricism that was creeping into my work. “The medium and workmanship in which Nandagopal has excelled has a lineage and history in mainstream world sculpture from which he has certainly taken his lessons. But it was the developments in Madras and especially the developments in pictorial figuration which really launched Nandagopal.”

From the early 1990s and into the new millennium, my work has taken on a new phase: the narrative element. Geeta Doctor sums it up aptly: “He calls them ‘Frontal Narrative Sculptures'. This however gives no idea of the exuberant quality of Nandagopal's series of copper and brass pieces. They soar and leap into space with all the power and grace of a traditional piece of South Indian art, whether chiselled on stone, as they are at Mahabalipuram or the exquisite bronzes of the Chola period. Yet they are rooted in the every day.”

As a sculptor, you have done very large to very small sculptures. What are the formal, technical and other considerations while undertaking such different projects in different scales?

My work varies from very small sculptures to monumental ones. My work at Priyadarshini Park, Mumbai, commissioned by the National Centre for the Performing Arts, is 20 ft tall and the Garuda at the headquarters of the Transport Corporation of India Ltd in Gurgaon in 15 ft tall. As they were to be placed open to the skies, they had to be made of a material that would not corrode. Hence both sculptures were fabricated from stainless steel, which is a wonderful material for outdoor purposes. When it comes to interiors, I prefer to work with copper and brass, which when polished and coated with a polyurethene film lasts for a very long time.

Shivaji K. Panikkar is an art theoretician and has served as head, Department of Art History and Aesthetics, M.S. University, Baroda.

2011-04-17T00:17:00.002+05:30

TOI: Valay Shende paints dark side of the India progress story

Neelam Raaj | April 16, 2011

Valay Shende's deeply political art smoulders with the still-warm ashes of farmers who have committed suicide.

Shende's dabbawalas, who are made of clock dials to denote their punctuality, and his table sculpture are displayed at a Helsinki museum.

He's often been compared to Subodh Gupta. And like the bartan boy from Bihar, sculptor Valay Shende uses everyday Indian motifs such as tiffins, scooters, cars and cattle. But the similarity between the two men of steel ends there.

The 31-year-old Shende is quite the angry, young artist. One who burrows into the interiors of Vidarbha in Maharashtra to meet the families of debt-ridden farmers and comes back to make an eight-seater, silver-plated dining table to mock the rich. The poignancy lies in the salt-and-pepper shakers which contain the ashes of Narsinglu Rukmawar, a farmer who committed suicide. The table is currently on display at the Helsinki art museum as part of the show Concurrent India along with an untitled work depicting the ever-punctual Mumbai dabbawala made of clock dials, and the traditional tiffin boxes replaced by "hungry stomachs".

More: http://www.timescrest.com/culture/valay-shende-paints-dark-side-of-the-india-progress-story-5219

2011-04-11T22:50:00.002+05:30

Go-Go Gauguin!

NEW ORLEANS , Louisiana -- 07 April 2011

"Fleurs dans un vase avec partition musicale" by Paul Gauguin.

(Rau Antiques)

"Aline," charcoal sketch, by Paul Gauguin.

(Rau Antiques)

(ArtfixDaily.com)

Gauguin lovers usually recall the lush landscapes and voluptuous women that Gauguin painted using his trademark bold brushstrokes and muted colors during his self-imposed exile in Tahiti that began in 1891.

Others may or may not know that Gauguin was involved in a quarrel with van Gogh in Arles, France, with whom he was staying in 1888 for nine weeks, when van Gogh's ear got sliced off.

Regardless of Gauguin's temper, and whether or not he chopped off van Gogh's ear, clearly Gauguin's artistic talent shaped him into the Post-Impressionist master that serious art collectors vie for at high profile auctions. The recent retrospective at the Tate Modern that ended in January,helped spur a renewed interest in his body of work.

Rau Antiques in New Orleans, the country's largest gallery of antiques and fine arts from the 18th and 19th centuries, has two impeccable Gauguin works in its inventory.

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin's artistic career really took off after his job as a stockbroker came to an abrupt end in 1884, following the Paris stock market crash of 1882. He had painted in this free time, and in his early, formative years of painting, Gauguin formed an alliance with Camille Pisarro and Paul Cézanne in the early 1880's. Gauguin even exhibited in the Impressionist exhibitions in 1881 and 1882.

This wonderful still life below, "Flowers in a Vase with a Musical Score" (1874-1876), was created during a time when painting had been a hobby for him. Without the worry of the financial uncertainties that shaped his decision to pursue art as a full-time career, this example of his work is very classic yet colorful and fluid-a born master of the canvas. A vivid blue vase is full of pale pastel and white flowers nearing their peak, with several stems at the base of the vase, either in the process of being placed in the vase, or having been left there. The vase is set on top of many sheets of music. The overall tone is soft and romantic.

It is in this composition that the viewer can discern the technical proficiency that attracted the attention and admiration of fellow artists including Camille Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh and Edgar Degas. It was Pissarro who convinced Gauguin to enter a painting to the Salon of 1876. Pissarro and Degas were so taken by his work that they invited Gauguin to exhibit at the 1879 Impressionist Exhibition and subsequent exhibitions thereafter. Pissarro took Gauguin under his wing, schooling him in the Impressionist technique, of which the current work is a perfect example.

"Fleurs dans un vase avec partition musicale" is an outstanding still-life displaying Gauguin's remarkable eye for composition. Thickly-layered paint and luminous colors, hallmarks of Gauguin's distinctive style, are used to their utmost effect in this remarkable oil.

This painting is accompanied by a letter of authenticity by The Art Loss Register and is featured in the Wildenstein catalogue raisonné on the artist. Paintings by Gauguin hardly ever become available for acquisition. This particular work was executed early in the artist's career, and is indescribably rare since he created so few compositions during this period.

Another seminal work that Rau Antiques is offering is entitled "Aline" and is a chalk and charcoal sketch on paper of his daughter (1884; $495,000). Bold strokes outline the body, but then become soft and shadowy. With her back turned to the viewer, Aline appears shy and reserved. One wonders what she is thinking.

Admirers of Gauguin can view these two works, and other masterpieces by Gauguin's contemporaries, at Rau Antiques in New Orleans' French Quarter, the country's largest antiques and fine arts dealer. Founded in 1912, Rau Antiques has remained a family owned business and has been tapped to source some of the world's most unique art treasures for private collections and museums.

www.rauantiques.com

2011-04-02T17:43:00.003+05:30

Running of the 'Bulls': A $2.8 Million Record

By STAN SESSER

Tyeb Mehta's 'Bulls' commanded the second highest price ever for a work of Indian contemporary art at Christie's Wednesday.

Nine years ago, the Indian artist Tyeb Mehta set a record when his triptych painting called "Celebration" sold at a Christie's auction for $317,500. It was the highest sum ever paid for an Indian painting at an international auction and an early milestone in a market boom for contemporary Indian art.

On Wednesday, a painting by Mr. Mehta, who died in 2009, set another record, bringing in almost nine times the price of the 2002 sale. His diptych "Bulls" sold for $2.8 million at Christie's. The only contemporary Indian art work that has sold for more is a geometric painting by artist Syed Haider Raza, which sold for $3.5 million last June.

Mr. Mehta, Mr. Raza and a handful of other Indian artists, including the late Francis Newton Souza and Maqbool Fida Husain, who is still painting at the age of 95, are reviving interest in contemporary Indian art after demand slowed during the recession. "It's the same pattern as China, but delayed," says Hugo K. Weihe, Christie's international director of Asian art. "India is geared to be second to China in Asia."

Behind the rebound are wealthy Indian buyers—some living in the U.S. and the U.K.—who are taking increasing interest in the art of their native country. Mr. Weihe estimates the market for contemporary Indian art is "half from India, plus a large chunk of nonresident Indians in London and the U.S., and to a lesser but growing extent, Westerners."

More... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576217033052549772.html?KEYWORDS=STAN+SESSER

2011-04-02T17:34:00.004+05:30

Friday , March 18 , 2011

Politics with an edge on canvas - No longer a spectator to suffering, artist protests through paintings

SOMAK GHOSHAL

Shuvaprasanna in front of one of his works to be displayed at CIMA Gallery from March 18 to April 14. (Aranya Sen)

Painting and politics go hand in hand for the artist Shuvaprasanna, whose exhibition of recent works opens at CIMA Gallery on Friday. Apart from a set of flora and fauna executed in the artist’s signature style and some portraits of Tagore and Gandhi, there are a number of large-format paintings in this show based on political themes.

In one, prominent leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) are seated around a table bearing a corpse, presumably of an iconic leader from a bygone era, draped in the familiar red cloth. The menacing edge of the work is heightened by the fact that all the leaders have their left hand missing.

In another, a lady in a white sari plays the flute as she is trailed, like the piper of Hamelin, by a group of men and animals.

Although the inspiration behind these works may be pretty obvious, the artist prefers to qualify his art somewhat differently.

“I am not a politician,” says Shuvaprasanna, “though I am a firm believer in democracy”. With a successful career spanning several decades, he has seen West Bengal go through many ups and downs. “For years, the people of this state were almost unwittingly reconciled to political tyranny,” he says. “Very few had the courage to criticise political power.”

Shuvaprasanna says that he has made many “journeys” as an artist, experimenting with styles and soaking in a range of influences from the life around him.

He has been a spectator to suffering from his earliest years. As a child, he spent hours at his physician father’s consulting chamber, sketching portraits of the patients who gathered there each day. Later, he was much taken by expressionist art that flourished between the two World Wars. The works of George Grosz and Emil Nolde held a singular appeal for him.

Shuvaprasanna’s friendship with the German writer and artist, Günter Grass, also proved to be a turning point in his life. “Grass encouraged me to speak out against injustice,” he says, “though I have always protested against oppression of any kind.”

He mentions that he had participated in a protest march, along with a handful of other intellectuals, after 18 Ananda Margis were burnt to death in broad daylight in 1982 and also after a gruesome assault on three women in Bantala in 1990.

“But nobody took much notice then,” he says, before adding, on a hopeful note, that the situation is changing now. “But the ambience is such that the good people are seldom able to express themselves fully and freely,” he rues.

Although Shuvaprasanna acknowledges the influence of contemporary events on his work, his goal, he says, is to create art that transcends the limits of time and place. “The ultimate aim of great art, such as Picasso’s Guernica, is to reach a level of sublime abstraction,” he explains. “I am always haunted by a sense of sadness and dissatisfaction regarding my work in spite of the popularity of my paintings.”

2011-04-02T17:25:00.001+05:30

Padamsee''s ''reclining nude'' sets Rs 6.3 cr auction record at Sotheby's

Indian modernist painter Akbar Padamse set a new auction record with his untitled work fetched Rs 6.3 crore (USD 1,426,500) in a New York sale by Sotheby's on March 25.Padamsee's 10x3ft painting of a reclining nude drawn from his 'grey period' of work in the 1959-60 when the artist returned to India after an eight-year-old stay in Paris was sourced from a private collection in the United State, reported the auction house.The sale was part of the Modern and contemporary South Asian Art held in New York on March 25 which realised a total of USD 4,028,250.Padamsee's work gains prominence as there are only three other works of the artist in the grey series. One was bought by artist M F Husain which has been subsequently lost and the remaining is with artist Kishen Khanna and filmmaker Bal Chhabda.The Untitled (Reclining Nude) had travelled to North America, where it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Montreal in 1960 and subsequently entered a US private collection where it had remained until now.

MutualArt.com: Masterpiece by a renowned artist...or a 5-year-old child? You be the judge

2011-03-27T17:43:00.003+05:30

Masterpiece by a renowned artist...or a 5-year-old child? You be the judge

Before beginning to read this article, please look at the images above. Which was drawn by a child and which by a well-known Abstract Expressionist? The answer lies a few paragraphs down.

How often have you heard people describe artworks by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko or Cy Twombly as drawings that a 5-year-old child could have made? The answer is probably, very often. But is this true? Can children produce art whose perceived quality, as least by widespread artistic circles, matches that of renowned artists who sell their art for millions of dollars?

Boston College psychologists Angelina Hawley-Dolan and Ellen Winner’s research, recently published in the journal Psychological Science, seeks to answer this question. When comparing artworks created by a child or even a monkey to that of an acclaimed artist, whether non-aficionados like a particular artwork or not, they can usually identify it as the product of human creativity.

To further understand this study and its significance on our aesthetic behavior, MutualArt.com spoke with Hawley-Dolan about how people evaluate the skill in those who paint or sculpt non-representationally.

Here’s the answer to the question: The image on the left was drawn by 4-year-old Jack Pezanosky. The image on the right shows a work by Abstract Expressionist Hans Hoffman.

What led you to research this and what significance does it play in psychology?

We began by asking ourselves - how do people evaluate abstract art, “pictures of nothing”? People have little difficulty judging the skill of artists who make representational paintings, but evaluating skill in those who paint or sculpt non-representationally is far more subjective. Works by 20th century Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, or Cy Twombly have often been likened -- sometimes pejoratively, sometimes positively -- to children’s paintings. Though critics such as Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times assert that the scribbles of Twombly are distinct from those made by children, the superficial similarity between abstract expressionist works and markings by preschoolers has led to embarrassing confusions. For example, in 2007, 5-year-old Freddie Linksy duped the art world into paying large sums for his ketchup paintings. In 2005, three paintings by chimpanzee Congo sold for over $25,000 each -- fetching more than did paintings by Warhol or Renoir.

You ask what the significance of this research is for psychology. Psychologists attempt to understand all aspects of human behavior. Aesthetic behavior is universal and goes back to the earliest humans. This research shows that even people untrained in art can recognize that abstract art (so often disparaged as meaningless and without skill) has intention and planning and thought behind it that distinguishes it from the superficially similar scribbling of children and animals.

What were your hypotheses?

1. In all conditions (no label, correct label, and incorrect label) we predicted that both art students and non-art students should choose professional works at an above-chance level in response to both the judgment question (which one is the better work of art) and the preference question (which one do you prefer). We reasoned that even though people think that works by abstract expressionists are indistinguishable from those by children and nonhumans, in fact, differences can be perceived, people see more than they think they see, and works by professionals are more highly valued.

2. That works should be chosen more often in response to the judgment than the preference question because judgments of quality should be responsive to perceived skill, whereas preferences are more idiosyncratic.

3. Compared with non-art students, art students should choose the professional works more often in response to both the judgment and the preference questions, because of art students’ presumably greater experience analyzing images. They should also be more likely than non-art students to show consistency between preferences and judgments because their preferences should emerge from their analyses of the works.

4. Labels should affect judgments more than preferences. Correct labels should increase the frequency of choosing professional works in response to the judgment question, but incorrect labels should fail to depress such choices.

Artworks by (from left) Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, Philip Guston, Sam Francis

Please describe the methodology.

We paired 30 abstract paintings by famous artists with superficially similar paintings by children or animals (monkeys, chimps, gorillas, elephants) and asked people which they preferred and which they thought was better art. To find out if it mattered whether people knew who had made the works, we presented the first set of images without labels, and the rest with either correct (monkey as monkey, artist as artist) or reversed (monkey as artist, artist as monkey) labels. Half of the participants had no art training; half were trained in studio art.

Images of which artists did you select and why?

The professional works we chose for our study were painted during the Abstract Expressionist movement (which entered New York City beginning in the mid to late 1940s). We included the following artists in our experiment:

Karel Appel

Gillian Ayres

James Brooks

Elaine de Kooning

Sam Feinstein

Sam Francis

Helen Frankenthaler

Philip Guston

Hans Hoffman

Franz Kline

Morris Louis

Joan Mitchell

Kenzo Okada

Ralph Rosenborg

Mark Rothko

Charles Seliger

Theodoros Stamos

Clyfford Still

Mark Tobey

Cy Twombly

We chose these artists to represent our abstract expressionists because they are among the most famous artists of this movement. We chose artworks that were entirely non-representational and that were representative of the artists’ styles, but not their most famous works.

By which attributes did you match the paintings?

We matched the paintings with a team of artists and psychologists. We matched the paintings by attributes such as similarity in color, medium, line quality and brushstroke. Images had to be similar in at least two of these categories. We matched these in a holistic, qualitative way.

What are some of the most interesting results?

Turning to the results, all participants preferred and judged as better the artists’ works at a level significantly above chance. Thus, despite the common cliches of the cynics, people can see the difference! Second, labels had only a minimal influence. Art students were completely unaffected by labels - their responses were the same no matter which labeling condition; undergraduates untrained in art were influenced by labels only when asked for their judgments. Correct labels boosted their choice of artist for “which is the better work,” but most interestingly, reversed labels did not depress their choice of artists’ works below chance. That is, they resisted choosing the animal/child works even when these were falsely labeled as by an artist! Third, and importantly, when people selected the artists’ works, they were far more likely to justify this choice by referring to the mind behind the art than when they chose works by children and animals. Thus when selecting a painting by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, they said that the work looked intentional and planned; when selecting a child or animal work, they said that the liked the colors or brush strokes.

What is your analysis of the results?

We conclude that we know more about abstract art than we think; we recognize the mind behind the art; and the world of abstract art is more accessible than we realize. If we were to speculate about why and how people can tell the difference our reasoning would be the following:

In abstract expressionist paintings, the appearance of realistic objects is entirely neglected: the style (use of color, space, figures) becomes the content of the piece. The art historian William Chapin Seitz points out that an abstract expressionist’s style is created by the process by which the paint is applied, the formal elements of the composition, and the relationship of the elements (Seitz, 1983). In addition, he comments, “nonobjective painting, like that of the primitive, is built directly of lines, strokes and areas.”

A commonly heard claim is that the works of Abstract Expressionists look much like the scribbles and finger-painting of young children (see the film, My Kid Could Paint That). In addition, people have been deceived into spending lots of money on paintings by a chimp (which are of course non-representational) thinking that the work was by a rising abstract expressionist. But our study shows that people can, in fact, tell the difference between a child’s lines and strokes and those in a work by an abstract expressionist – if the two works are paired side by side. And this is NOT due to recognizing the different materials that a child might use vs. a professional artist, because our images were presented on a computer screen, and it was not possible to determine whether the colors were from cheap poster paints on newsprint or fine oil paints on canvas.

The finding that people were much more likely to talk about seeing intentionality, planning and “mindfulness” in the professional than in the child or animal paintings shows us that people are perceiving, perhaps unconsciously, the difference in the mind of the child/animal vs. the mind of the professional artist.

If you think about it, this makes a great deal of sense. Let’s consider the statement by abstract expressionist painter Hans Hofmann who said that art is “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak” (Hess, 1952). This statement indicates how much deliberation goes into an abstract painting (clearly considerably more than what a child or chimp would engage in). Mark Rothko’s use of color layering is not random: it is patterned and planned. So are the drips of a Jackson Pollock. Hans Hoffman’s book Search for the Real discusses the “push/pull color theory” where spatial dynamism is created not only by lines and shapes, but also by the interplay of light, color, space and shape. The spatial relationships among all these aspects create visual intrigue, volume and even movement. These tensions create a visual story, or a visual language. In short, as any artist or art historian knows, abstract expressionists were deliberately experimenting with spatial relationships, color tensions and pictorial structure.

By recognizing more planning and intentionality in the professional artworks, participants were able to recognize a “visual language” or artistic “footprint” within the content of the artworks made by professionals (in contrast to the more random markings made by children, apes, and elephants). What we are seeing in this study is that people are, perhaps unconsciously, picking up on this visual genre of art as having a structure, a method. People can pick up on the interplay of space, color and shape that Hoffman describes. People are responding to the fact that there are some images, out of all the images we show them, that have a pattern, expression, a visual language, even an intonation that the other images (child, monkey images) do not. While we might like one style, or “language” better than another, we can see and detect a structured visual language in the professional works. The people in our study saw the deliberations of the artist’s mind.

Written by MutualArt.com staff

India's Most Expensive Artworks

2011-03-27T13:12:00.013+05:30

India's Most Expensive Artworks

Nice List. 27 of India's most expensive art works, including one sculpture - Soni

Yet: “A Picasso can go for more than $100 million so where are we at just $3.5 million for a Raza?” - Kiran Nadar

	S.H. Raza
Title	Saurashtra
Size	78 x 78 in
Medium	Acrylic on Canvas
Year of Painting	1983
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2010

Price	Rs 16,51,34,000

	F N Souza
Title	Birth
Size	48 x 96 in
Medium	Oil on board
Year of Painting	1955
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2008

Price	Rs 11,25,00,000

	S. H. Raza
Title	LA TERRE
Size	74 x 74 in
Medium	Acrylic on Canvas
Year of Painting	1973
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2008

Price	Rs 10,87,90,000

	Arpita Singh
Title	Wish Dream
Size	287 x 159 in
Medium	Oil on Canvas
Year of Painting	2000
Sale Channel	Saffronart
Year of Sale	2010

Price	Rs 9,56,21,000

	S H Raza
Title	La Terre
Size	78 x 78 in
Medium	Acrylic on Canvas
Year of Painting	1985
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2010

Price	Rs 8,88,03,000

	Tyeb Mehta
Title	Untitled
Size	59 x 47 in
Medium	Oil on Canvas
Year of Painting	1984
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2008

Price	Rs 8,20,00,000

Artist Name	Tyeb Mehta
Title	Falling Bird
Size	60 x 48 in
Medium	Acrylic on Canvas
Year of Painting	1999
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2010

Price	Rs 7,23,98,000

Artist Name	Tyeb Mehta
Title	Mahisasura
Size	59 x 48 in
Medium	Oil on Canvas
Year of Painting
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2005

Price	Rs 6,95,00,000

Artist Name	Bharti Kher
Title	The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own
Size	55 x 108 x 77 in
Sale Channel	Sothebys
Year of Sale	2010

Price	Rs 6,90,30,000

Artist Name	Amrita Shergil
Title	Village Scene
Sale Channel	Osian's
Year of Sale	2006

Price	Rs 6,90,00,000

Artist Name	F N Souza
Title	Untitled
Size	63 x 41 in
Medium	Oil on Canvas
Year of Painting	1962
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2010

Price	Rs 6,56,19,000

	S H Raza
Title	Tapovan
Size	62 x 74 in
Medium	Acrylic on Canvas
Year of Painting	1972
Sale Channel	Sotheby's
Year of Sale	2006

Price	Rs 6,56,00,000

	VS Gaitonde
Title	Untitled
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2006

Price	Rs 6,54,00,000

	F N Souza
Title	Lovers
Size	48 x 72 in
Medium	Oil on Masonite
Year of Painting	1955
Sale Channel	Saffronart
Year of Sale	2005

Price	Rs 6,54,00,000

	M.F. Husain
Title	Battle of Ganga and Jamuna : Mahabharata
Size	74 x 107 in
Medium	Oil on Canvas
Year of Painting	1972
Sale Channel	Christies
Year of Sale	2008

Price	Rs 6,50,00,000

	F N Souza
Title	Untitled
Size	36 x 48 in
Medium	Oil
Year of Painting	1950
Sale Channel	Christie
Year of Sale	2006

Price	Rs 6,40,00,000

	F N Souza
Title	Man with the Monstrance
Size	36 x 24 in
Medium	Oil
Year of Painting	1953
Sale Channel	Sotheby's
Year of Sale	2006

Price	Rs 6,40,00,000

Artist Name	F N Souza
Title	Red Curse
Size	70 x 45 in
Medium	Oil on Black Stain
Year of Painting	1962
Sale Channel	Christie
Year of Sale	2010

Price	Rs 6,08,00,000

	S H Raza
Title	Climate
Size	70 x 60 in
Medium	Acrylic on Canvas
Year of Painting	2005
Sale Channel	Saffronart
Year of Sale	2007

Price	Rs 6,04,00,000

	Tyeb Mehta
Title	Untitled
Size	59 x 47 in
Medium	Acrylic On canvas
Year of Painting	1993
Sale Channel	Sothebys
Year of Sale	2006

Price	Rs 5,87,00,000

Mint: The museum of ‘wow’

2011-02-21T01:20:00.003+05:30

The museum of ‘wow’

How one collector’s showpieces might make the country’s largest museum of contemporary art accessible to all kinds of art lovers

The first work one encounters on entering the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is artist Bharti Kher’s lifesize elephant sculpture. The Skin Speaks a Language Not its Own, which depicts a fibreglass elephant down on its knees with over 100,000 sperm-shaped bindis arranged in whorls on its skin, made auction history at Sotheby’s in London in June when it sold for around R

7 crore.

More...

http://www.livemint.com/2011/02/11204809/The-museum-of-8216wow8217.html?h=B

Arab News: Art Manifesto: M.F. Husain

2011-02-19T09:37:00.004+05:30

Art Manifesto: M.F. Husain

By MARIAM NIHAL, LIFE.STYLE@ARABNEWS.COM

Published: Feb 16, 2011 17:44 Updated: Feb 16, 2011 17:44

Call him “the Picasso of India,” “the Sultan of Art,” or “the most controversial figure of majestic paintings,” Maqbool Fida Husain remains to be what he is.

If art is architecture then he is the architect. If art would take form of a profound man, he is the only intellectual born to take shape of it — justifiably so.

A thousand words cannot do justice to the man, but only reflect his unblemished spirit. Although no one can judge the character of the art manifesto, having lost his mother when he was as young as one and a half years old, he worked arduously to make his own mark and beginning. His character speaks or paints volumes, of pure and subdued truth, much like his art. A man of dignity, gifted with a strong mind bearing humble feet, he is proudly Indian.

"He is a compassionate man, and his close ones marvel at his charismatic disposition," said one of his family members. Sheikhs of the Arab world, such as Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai, among many others, love his inimitable, almost startling real life resemblance of horses on canvas. Yet, there is more to the man than meets the eye. The world respects him for his affable splendor and the magic his hands spread on a canvas. His paintings are equipped to dazzle, engage and absorb you. And, if you listen, his art will talk to you.

A story told by every artist is depicted on canvas. But, what makes him irresistible, are his knowledge and passionate reverence for his country, art and the universe. He is famous for being the "oldest at 97," that I predict is a faulty assertion for he is at his prime. The vivacity of his soul bears resemblance to his knowledge of history but also emanates the endurance of the progression of the world and what his soul carries forth with it. His life now seems to celebrate his constant marking of milestones in history.

Through the eyes of a painter

Husain was born in Pandharpur outside Mumbai in 1915. The artist, whose works have sold for more than figures can value, earned money painting cinema hoardings in his humble beginning in Mumbai. In 1947, his first exhibition was conducted at the Bombay Art Society where his painting, “Sunhera Sansaar,” was shown. His paintings were then showcased in a series of exhibitions all over India from 1948 to 1950 and in the art galleries of Prague and Zurich in 1956. In 1966, Husain was awarded the Padmashree by the Government of India. His first movie, “Through the Eyes of a Painter,” was released in 1967, was shown at the Berlin Festival and won a Golden Bear. Inspired by Amrita Sher-Gil and George Keyt, he turned to fine art in the early 1940s, incorporating Indian and Western thoughts. He then traveled to Europe and New York where he owns a great platform and is known for his photography and filmmaking.

The world is his canvas

Hussain’s large diptych from the Hindu epic, “Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12,” sold at Christie's South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale for $1.6 million in early 2008 and engraved his name in a world record. He held a solo exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Massachusetts, US, in 2006 and 2007. According to the New York Times in a sale in September 2008, Christie's described Husain's "Ritual" as "profoundly Indian in scope by referring to traditional sculptural forms, hinting at the colors and structure of miniature painting and drawing from the vibrancy of folk art while at the same time tying village and pastoral themes to those of Indian mythology."

The painting sold for $1,022,500. Achievements by the undaunted painter, includes “Padma Shree” (1955), “Padma Shree” (1966), “Padma Bhushan” (1973), “Padma Vibhushan” (1991), and “Raja Ravi Varma” award from the Indian Government. "The Sao Paulo Biennial in 1971 saw him a special invitee along with Pablo Picasso."

"There is a famous story from the Arabian Nights — Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves — but I am painting Ali Baba and 40 horses. I am the master of one-liners," said Hussain, quoting Ghalib (a famous, misunderstood Indian poet of his time, yet endlessly revered after his death). With his heart in the right place, living through harsh realities doled out to him, he infuses life with humor and flamboyance, occasionally.

An art collection of cars

Husain's collection of cars is a global phenomenon and hits a soft spot with car lovers. A Bentley, a couple of Jaguars, a Ferrari, another Mercedes, a Rolls and now the Bugatti Veyron — bear in mind that it is one of only five in the Middle East and bears his initials! Of course, it is also just one of the fastest road-legal cars in the world, with a top speed of 431.07 km/h.

There is an intriguing showcase and a multimedia installation he is set to finish by March — a 40-minute sound and light performance that brings his work to life. Five horses cast from Murano glass, around six and eight feet tall, will be paired with five of his favorite cars — Bugatti Veyron and a Rolls Royce Phantom, being two of them — on a rotating platform. One of the pieces will be a sculpture of Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines and the ninth-century aviator, Abbas ibn Firnas. "I want to show how form follows function," he explained.

Art is always dangerous

Husain was "hounded out of India," as per popular sensationalists, after a set of controversial paintings depicting mythological deities in the nude stirred havoc in the minds of the religious conformists. He then graciously accepted Qatar's offer of citizenship promised by Qatar's Sheikha Mozah. The works in question, which a few Indian art critics insist were never really nudes at all, were in fact created in 1970 and are in sync with antediluvian Indian artistic tradition. The scandalous complaints filed against him were dismissed by the Delhi High Court in 2004, but a “Hindu Personal Law Board” offered a dishonorable $11.5 million reward for his death in 2006.

You may take Husain out of India, but you can never take India out of him

Reading one of his interviews, he mentioned it is "mohabbat" (love) that matters to him now. After the explicit controversial, shame-game, people have played against him, it is only through this phrase, that one can delve deeper into the artist’s soul. His art may be significantly the highest value for money, but what is imperative in his existence is that he, himself, is priceless because he is timeless.

"There is no ban on me, I can return to India any time," he said, adding that his lawyers are fighting the three cases (reduced from a devastating figure of 900), but has no intentions of returning for at least another two or three years.

The art of using astounding abilities to create immortal paintings often brings greater results than a conventional genius. Genuine intelligence brushed with strong master strokes of unconventional but also enlightening vision helps make him unforgettable. Famous words of Nehru, on the night when India gained independence, gives voice to the souls of Husain: "When an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."

Restricting his soul to belong to India would be unfair because he embodies the soul of art that transcends borders of any nation, tradition and religion. Change is in the air. If this era is about revolutionary change, then there is a figure of art we must go back to for retrospect.

The figure, undeservedly controversial, stands tall, famously barefoot always, in the pure form of Maqbool Fida Husain.

...And we have ignition! Relaunch!

2011-02-15T18:30:00.003+05:30

After a hiatus of over 3 years, I am inspired to return to my blog on Indian art. There is no other field that I have loved more, and I get drawn back to it, irrespective of what I do or where I am...

So, here we go again... Along with interesting articles and news items, this blog will also cover reviews of artists, shows, galleries and exhibitions, cover people - artists, buyers, gallery-owners...and so on...

Let's roll!

The Economist : A proper temple

2007-07-24T22:32:00.001+05:30

Giving Indian modern art the museum it deserves

Jul 14th 2007

THE new Kolkata Museum of Modern Art, or KMoMA, is anything but unambitious. It is intended to be India’s answer to the Tate Modern, the Guggenheim and, of course, New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The brainchild of the chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and a determined group of artists, collectors and assorted Indian-art lovers, it will present both international and Indian art from the 18th century to today. Its opening, in five years at a cost of well over $100m, will, its backers hope, confirm India’s role on the world stage of contemporary art, not just as a new country to plunder, but as a centre for critical debate, creative experiment and art-historical study.

To help the museum meet these grand goals, next week Sotheby’s will hold an auction in New York on behalf of KMoMA, selling modern and contemporary Indian art.

The timing is impeccable. With collectors in a buying frenzy and the search for ever newer artists intensifying, Indian contemporary art is the latest craze in the international art market. A few years ago it was Chinese art that was at the centre of attention. International curators, museum and gallery directors, auction-house specialists and eager investors descended on Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, thrilled by the prospect of exploring uncharted artistic waters. Leading figures of the Chinese avant-garde have since graduated to international contemporary sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury, and are found in museums and private collections around the world. Those hungry for the new are now setting their sights on India.

There has, of course, always been Indian art and there have always been Indian-art collectors. But in the past the market was a largely local affair. In 1995, looking for new areas to develop and recognising the early signs of resurgent Indian wealth, Christie’s started to nurture a fledgling market. As Yamini Mehta, head of modern and contemporary Indian art at Christie’s in London, says: “There wasn’t a foundation for an art market then...what we were trying to do was to establish a benchmark.” International collectors, meanwhile, were still scarce; a punitive tax regime made it difficult to bring contemporary art into or out of the country.

Since 2000 all that has changed. Taxation has eased, wealth has grown and rich Indians, both at home and abroad, have increasingly sought to buy contemporary art. This demand has in turn encouraged younger artists to travel and find recognition abroad, joining the international artistic elite who, while grounded in their local traditions, share ideas overseas.

In response, new collectors from Europe, America and beyond have begun to take keen interest. This spring the Tate Modern staged an exhibition of work by a glamorous Indian modernist, Amrita Sher-Gil, who died in 1941, aged 28. The Gulf Art Fair in Dubai this year included many Indian artists, including Jitish Kallat, a young favourite. The director of this year’s Venice Biennale, Robert Storr, invited the 36-year-old Riyas Komu, a rising star in Mumbai, to be part of his main exhibition. And the Arts India group, run by two America-based brothers, Prajit and Projjal Dutta, recently opened a flagship contemporary gallery in Larry Gagosian’s former spot on Heddon Street in London.

The sales figures in New York, Dubai and, increasingly, London, reflect the surge of excitement around Indian art. An Indian sale at Christie’s in New York in 2000, which featured modern and contemporary work as well as traditional Indian art, achieved a total of $600,000. So far this year Christie's sales of modern and contemporary art in New York, London and Dubai have together topped $21m. At the Christie's sale in New York in March, a painting by Tyeb Mehta, an established artist from Mumbai, broke the $1m barrier.

As Zara Porter Hill, head of Sotheby’s Indian art department, suggests, it is a sign of KMoMA’s importance to both artists and collectors that so many have donated works to the benefit sale next week. Both Riyas Komu and Tyeb Mehta have given pieces: Mr Komu offers a steel sculpture reddened by car paint, estimated at $12,000-18,000; Mr Mehta presents a forbidding green, black and white image of the Goddess Kali, transformed from a local deity into a universal image of strife, estimated at $400,000-600,000 (pictured). Also featured are a lusciously coloured canvas by Bose Krishnamachari and “The Child”, a haunting painting by Yusuf Arakkal. It is hoped that KMoMA will at last give these artists a proper shrine—and pulpit.

Sotheby’s auction to benefit the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art is in New York on July 17th.

DNA : Meet Tyeb Mehta’s successor

2007-07-15T23:35:00.001+05:30

His grandson artist Ali Akbar, who suprisingly wasn’t influenced by the famed painter to take up art!

Turning artist is hardly surprising when you have an artist as reputed as Tyeb Mehta for a grandfather. But Ali Akbar Mehta is quick to dispel the notion that it was his grandfather who influenced him to take up art.

“Not really. I was born in Mumbai but brought up in Delhi for the first 10 years of my life. In fact, I always wanted to start an animation studio but since we did have enough institutes on animation, I got myself enrolled at the JJ School of Arts. And it was my stint at JJ that made me turn to art,” he asserts.

But he admits that it’s great to be the grandson of Tyeb Mehta. “I am proud to be a part of his family and as an artist it gives me great pleasure to share the same platform with him. Moreover, having an artist of his calibre around us is such a privilege,” he affirms.

What is even more interesting is that both grandfather and grandson have painted individual canvases for an upcoming charity auction being organised by the NGO Khushii. While Ali Akbar’s painting is about relationships and hope and is yet to have a name, Tyeb Mehta’s painting doesn’t have a name at all.

“The painting does not have a name. It’s just a human face but then again, I thought a human image would go well with this project,” explains Tyeb.

As far as their inspirations are concerned, Tyeb insists that there is no such thing called inspiration in real terms. “What I look for is something that would move me or surprise me,” he notes. Ali Akbar, for one, is inspired by life and its situations. “It could be a milestone or even a social condition, say the rains and the riots,” he elaborates.

However, ask them about art in India today and the duo agrees that Indian art has definitely come a long way - mainly because art can today be considered as a career option as opposed to earlier when it was frowned upon. “That said, those who t ake up this profession for quick fame will live lavishly only for a while and not in the long run,” warns Tyeb, adding that many Indian artists today do exactly what you’d want him or her to do instead of using their own imagination.

That brings us to their future shows and both admit that work is still on; only in Tyeb’s case, he’s taking things easy. “I have never planned a show in my career. I always work when I feel like it and whenever I am ready, I put up a show,” smiles Tyeb.

Lastly, what is it like for Tyeb to see his works fetch humungous amounts of money? “Well, there are many other great artists in the industry, but it feels great to know that your work and your art are appreciated. Nevertheless, my works fetching such sums has nothing to do with me; once the collector buys the work it’s totally up to him and at what price he wants to sell it. So it’s all based on chance,” he signs off.

p_vidya@dnaindia.net

Business Standard : Art for a cause

2007-07-15T23:27:00.000+05:30

K S Shekhawat / New Delhi July 14, 2007

With the season's first charity exhibition kicking in, it's time to examine what keeps them ticking.

For some time now Bollywood beefcake Salman Khan has been making news as a painter, but Saif Ali Khan? Aishwarya Bachchan? Vijay Mallya? Or for that matter the Indian cricket team, Praful Patel or Parmeshwar Godrej?

Last year, Ratan Tata picked up the brush and, with artist Laxman Shreshtha, did his bit with oil on canvas in an effort that went on to be auctioned for Rs 70 lakh (I know � blame it on the spirit of charity!). There�s something about art and charity that seems to go together, and as the season kicks off this weekend, it is with another charity exhibition for art.

Art for Prabhat is not new. It started in 2001 in a small way and has been an annual event since, though it got larger last year. This year, it seems to have set its sights even higher, though the money it hopes to make from it � Rs 10 lakh � might appear laughably small to those who surprised themselves by bagging more in the kitty than they had even wildly hoped for.

What�s creditable about the Art for Prabhat exhibition (July 15-17 at Habitat�s Visual Arts Gallery) is that the works � or a majority of them � have been made on paper that has been created by children as part of its �trash to cash� programme. Children at the Delhi-based NGO Society for Child Development convert the debris collected in its backyard into paper that is then made available to artists and art colleges. �What�s special about it is the people who�ve made the paper,� says Prabhat director Madhumita Puri.

With 113 artists having contributed to the effort, the exhibition features works by those who may not be as well known as, say, those participating in the Khushii auctions, but that doubles up as an advantage: it showcases several artists into a mainstream fold at a very public platform (a great time to invest, therefore, in new talent) and prices are contained within the Rs 25,000-4 lakh band, these even for better-established names such as Anjolie Ela Menon, Jatin Das, Laxma Goud, Manisha Gera Baswani, Thota Vaikuntam and Yusuf Arrakal.

It�s not strictly charity, of course � the artists get 60 per cent of the proceeds, so for them it�s pretty much like any other show. �And why not?� asks an agitated artist who for reasons of correctness must remain unnamed, �why is it that every time money has to be raised, artists are asked to donate their works, as if we have no requirement for money ourselves.� Ouch!

But then, frankly, �art for charity� is long dead and buried, even though Khushii�s Harveen Kapoor rises to their defence. �The artist community is very supportive,� she insists, �they are the nicest people.�

But if artists are demanding their spoils in the charity art market, to an extent rising prices in the art market have been responsible for this, though just as culpable are greedy fundraisers who want to make money without spending any. They earn the ire of artists and, often, also of collectors who do not want to spend large sums in the guise of charity that isn�t.

In this milieu, the Khushii auction (October 28 at the Turf Club in Mumbai) is at least as organised as it is, well, well-meaningly extortionist. Its winning formula is to pair India�s leading artists with celebrities, translating into great media PR on the one hand, and into a hands-down money-spinner on the other.

Reason it out for yourself: with family or senior colleagues from the company (of which the founder or CEO has �painted� a work), it�s imperative that they bid or at least increase bids in an effort to �save face�. If that seems far-fetched, it does explain why so many works sold at the Delhi auction found their way into the market soon after at rock-bottom prices!

Even so, at least the artists had reason to be happy. With the strong bidding for what were, after all, mostly mediocre works, even at 25 per cent �the artists almost reached their reserve prices�, reminds Kapoor. It has to be seen whether Khushii�s Mumbai auction will go the way of the Delhi one, or whether Mumbai�s more mature art market will have more substance and less frenzy, but till then the more modest Art for Prabhat exhibition, at least, is kicking off the season with options that are affordable. For that alone, maybe we should say Amen.

The Times of India : Look, who's buying?

2007-07-15T23:23:00.003+05:30

13 Jul 2007, 0000 hrs IST,Deepika Sahu,TNN

In Gujarat, young professionals seem to be investing in art.

Art and money? Puritans might have scoffed at the combination a few years ago. But youngsters in post-liberalisation India find 'art for art's sake' idea too cliched. Thanks to the tremendous growth of Indian art market in recent years, many young people are now looking at art as a means of investment.

"Most of our buyers are below 35 and their number is increasing . Due to a rise in disposable income, youngsters are now ready to put their money in art. We prepare a portfolio for buyers according to the amount they are willing to invest,'' says Khanjan Dalal, owner of a leading art gallery in Ahmedabad.

Undoubtedly, the 'quick moolah' factor is the reason. Sample this - a 15"X 20'' work by late Bhupen Khakar used to fetch Rs 30,000 in 2002, and today the same work will fetch you Rs 15 lakh.

Chaitya Shah, a student of final year BBA programme, spends his spare time studying about art and artists. He is slowly building up his modest art collection. "With my pocket money, I invested in works of young artists two years ago," says Shah, adding, "Shares and mutual funds don't excite me. The best part of investing in art is that one can enjoy the work and it can give high returns as well."

Says Shvetal Nanavati, a young entrepreneur , "I believe in investing in different set of assets. Art is one of them and I am happy about the fact that it will give a decent return in due course of time." His collection includes works by Amit Ambalal, Haku Shah and Yashwant Shirodkar.

Talking about the growing number of young art buyers, Hitesh Rana, owner of a Vadodara-based art gallery, says, "These days 70-80 per cent of buyers are young professionals or entrepreneurs. They are willing to take risks. Older people are not keen to buy works of art at a higher price. The Internet has also played a vital role in this as there are more choices and options available to art buyers."

Senior artist Vrundavan Solanki feels, "This is the golden phase of art all over the world. Most of the queries regarding my work are now coming from young buyers. Increase in income and growing awareness about art has brought in the change of buyers' profile."

The burgeoning Indian art market has even taken artists by surprise. But, then, not many sound happy about the 'number game' . Karl Antao, a leading sculptor says, "Art has become the flavour of the season. There are many youngsters who are even buying drawings by MSU Fine Arts students for Rs 1,000-2,000 and then reselling them. Lots of people are now making a quick buck by buying works of Indian artists and selling them abroad."

Gallery owners also feel buyers should do their homework "before investing their money . They should be able to distinguish fake art from real. Simply going by the names is not an exciting idea," says Rana. It's the same old story - don't invest if you don't understand. Says Antao, "Whenever you are buying art, you should be able to understand the language of the artist. Therein lies the true investment."

Moneycontrol.com : MF Husain holds art show in US

2007-07-15T23:18:00.000+05:30

MF Husain is in self-imposed exile, living outside India even as he faces legal charges back home. However, the 91-year-old artist still remains active as he works in London and in Dubai, where he has been living for the past few months. His next cinematic venture, a comedy, is expected to take off this October. He is now in the United States, having staged an exhibition featuring his paintings on the Mahabharata in Boston.

'Of Images and Illusions', an exhibition at the Tamarind Art gallery in Manhattan featured five young Indian artists but the centre of attention was the Guest of Honour at the opening reception - MF Husain. The veteran artist has now lived overseas for over a year since facing legal action in India. But Husain maintains he is living outside India voluntarily.

Artist, MF Husain told CNBC-TV18, "Anytime I can go, there is no restriction. Normally, I used to come out. For the last 50 years, I�ve worked in New York, I�ve worked in Paris, in London. At the moment, I�m working in Dubai. I�m building a museum there. I�m building a museum in London also. This is the thing. No restrictions whatsoever."

While the cases against Husain were filed over the alleged obscene depiction of Hindu deities in his paintings, the artist is confident this attack on art will be shortlived. Husain says, "Nothing has happened. I don�t feel sad. Because this is modern art, it takes time. When the Impressionists came after the Renaissance, the whole society revolted against them. I�m just taking it as a work of art. That�s all. People could interpret it any way, they�re all free, it�s a democracy in India."

Even as Husain faces legal charges in India, he is working on a project for the Indian government to mark the 60th year of independence, depicting India through the eyes of an artist. It will be unveiled in New York this September.

His work may attract controversy, but there�s no controversy over the fact that MF Husain is India�s most high-profile artist and the right choice to chronicle on canvas, the 60 years of the country�s independence.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya

Globandmail.com : India through unblinking eyes

2007-07-15T23:13:00.001+05:30

As much a political-science lesson as an art show, Hungry God squarely confronts the issues of the subcontinent

SARAH MILROY
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

July 11, 2007

The current exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Hungry God: Indian Contemporary Art, is a success, though a diminutive one.

Excerpted from the much larger exhibition that opened last year in Beijing, the touring exhibition was whittled to its current state (just five of the originally 12 artists) by AGO head of programming Bruce Ferguson.

On the whole, it appears he has wielded his penknife masterfully, striking from the Toronto show some of the work that looks from the catalogue to be weaker and less resolved. What we get is the core, and it has real resonance for Canadian viewers who share India's post-colonial legacy, with the attendant discontinuities of privilege that arise from it. This exhibition directs your attention squarely at the social conditions of the subcontinent, and as a critic evaluating it I found I had to keep my wits about me. Is this good art or good political science? Having an interest in both, I found myself vacillating back and forth between two different kinds of satisfaction.

The standout work in the show, quite literally, is Jitish Kallat's 422-centimetre-high black lead sculpture of a boy holding an armload of hardcover books. Instead of shoes, his feet originate in crude shed-like structures, which seem to root him to the ground. Kallat has said the image is drawn from the street life of Mumbai, where the artist lives. There, young street children can be found peddling books in the midst of blistering afternoon traffic jams, often quoting verbatim learned quotations about the novels as they make their sales pitch. The irony, of course, is that almost all impoverished Indian children are deprived access to education. In this work, Kallat gives them their books, and a full belly too; The boy's soft flesh swells above the waistband of his track shorts. This is a monument to the possible.

In Kallat's other work in this show, titled Death of Distance (2006), the artist turns an analytical eye on the economic system underpinning these social inequities. A giant rupee coin, cast in lead, stands upright, the size of a man. On the wall behind it, lenticular panels tell two tales; the first, the death of a 12-year-old Calcutta school girl who committed suicide when her mother denied her one rupee's worth of food (valued at about two cents); the other, a news report about the launch of the One India plan, providing further benefit to the already privileged users of cellphones in India.

Starting last year, users can place calls anywhere on the subcontinent for just one rupee a minute. With the increased volume of calls, the telephone company has become even wealthier, while normal citizens, like the mother in Calcutta, are left behind in the dust. I can't say this is a particularly gratifying work of art from an aesthetic standpoint, but, coupled with the other work by this artist here, it left a strong impression.

Of the artists in Hungry God, Subodh Gupta is the best known on the international stage, known largely for his compilations of shiny stainless-steel cookware, which he displays sometimes in piles and sometimes on racks. This show includes one such work, Curry (2005), an orderly inventory, one presumes, of the vessels required in the making of this famous traditional dish. In contrast to a typical home, with its funky, cobbled-together domestic accessories, Gupta's display conjures the institutional sterility of the hospital or restaurant kitchen, evoking an urban rather than a rural space.

Here, Gupta appears to reflect on the new twin gods of Indian society, commerce and consumerism, paying homage to their powers to seduce. His large painting, installed nearby (from his series Idol Thief), presents a slightly blurred field of vision; a pile of pots and pans seen in extreme close-up. As viewers, we can't stand back to take the measure of where we are; instead, we are mesmerized by the lustrous surfaces and their dazzling newness. Decorative, highly coloured or shiny surface treatments have always been a feature of sacred Indian art. Gupta similarly relies upon the visual allure of these objects to fix our attention on his society's current obsessions.

Tallur L.N. is also showing work the brings old and new worlds into collision. Harvesting abandoned wooden religious carvings that he finds in his native coastal region of Karnataka, he retools them as contemporary artworks. In one, a crudely carved wooden tiger appears on a cart above a stack of Indian daily newspapers, making (to my eye) a rather pedestrian point about our collective indoctrination by the media.

His other sculpture in this show is more successful. A roughly carved human figure, barely discernible from all the insect damage and ravages of weather, appears in a silver gilded palanquin fitted out with black velvet cushions, as if prepared for a holy procession.

Around its abdomen, the artist has placed a shiny bronze girdle, a startlingly new contrast to the degraded wooden carving. These are presumably intended as acts of restoration and re-imagination, but with their jokey titles (this one is called Bulimia - God knows why), I was inclined to see them as sight gags.

My favourite pieces in the show, though, are Bharti Kher's dizzying large-panel works arrayed with bindi dots, which she applies to the surface in surging, swirling patterns. Traditionally, the bindi was applied to the skin of women's foreheads using fresh ground pigments; the resulting mark designated a woman's caste and marital status.

Today, its traditional significance has been diluted to the point where it has become a fashion accessory. Bindis are now available commercially in the peel-and-stick format Kher uses to make her art.

In these multipanel works, she seems to unleash them in a flood that overflows the strictures of hierarchy and decorum. The dots and multicolored and many-sized, suggesting a maverick multiplicity.

Most bindis are round, but these days even these ancient modes are up for revision. One panel, from her triptych Itch, Scratch and Raw (2006), is covered with bindis in the unmistakable shape of human sperm. As a design for female adornment, it is more than a little surprising in this still restrictive society, but Kher jumps on it. Appropriating this male fertility symbol, she makes of it a churning sea. Nature and culture collide in a free-for-all. A new world is in gestation.

Hungry God continues until Oct. 7 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto

Business Standard : No more romancing it

2007-07-15T23:08:00.000+05:30

Prerna Raturi / New Delhi July 7, 2007

Kolkata is getting ready for its first engagement with an art auction house.

Kolkata has decided to regain its position as one of the prominent hot-spots for art in India, albeit commercially this time.

In another three months, the city will be home to the first art auction house in eastern India. A brainchild of R S Agarwal of the Emami Group and Chisel Crafts, the parent company of Kolkata-based Aakriti Art Gallery, the auction house will hold its first auction this December.

There was clearly a need for such an outfit here. �West Bengal has contributed a lot to the Indian art scene, but no younger or contemporary artist from the state has had a chance to feature in an auction house, except the odd Chittrovanu Mazumdar and Jogen Chowdhury,� laments Vikram Bachhawat, director, Emami Chisel Art.

Also, with Christie�s and Sotheby�s representations in India confined to Delhi and Mumbai, there was no one to check the art scene in Kolkata.

Bachhawat feels even Baroda has started to garner more interest among art circles, perhaps because of its proximity to Mumbai. But now with a significant number of art collectors based in Kolkata, the newly formed company will have a good chance of acquiring good art from the region.

For Agarwal, the idea was a personal passion he wanted to invest in. An art collector himself, Agarwal boasts of a sizeable collection of Ganesh Pyne, Ganesh Haloi, Shyamal Dutta Roy and the likes. But the initiative goes beyond personal interest � the auction house makes good business sense, too.

The house will hold live floor as well as online auctions. The buyer will enjoy the benefit of 12.5 per cent waiver from value-added tax (VAT), since it has not been implemented in the state.

Also, when art investment funds coming into India consider liquidating their art after the mandatory lock-in period, the auction house hopes to be a window where they can offload their art works. With four auctions slated in a year, the company hopes to make Rs 50 crore in the first year, and Rs 200 crore by 2010.

But what about art itself? Is it really that easy to get your hand on good art that easily? While agreeing that it is a challenge, Bachhawat reveals that the Aakriti Art Gallery has a moderate-sized collection of its own.

Moreover, the selection of art is going to be almost foolproof. �Our aim is to make this a professionally managed auction house. A piece of art will get entry only if it is considered a �must� for the auction,� he says.

Committees at three levels have been formed for the purpose. The selection committee, which will be responsible for selecting art from various sources � leading galleries, collectors and artists themselves � will comprise of artists such as Chhatrapati Dutta and P Tulsyan.

The expert committee, which will judge the art pieces for their value, authenticity and auction viability, has art critics and art historians such as Pranab Ranjan Ray on its panel. The advisory committee will comprise old art collectors and experts such as the Bangalore-based K Kejriwal and K N Mimani, ex-chairman, Ernst & Young; this committee will look at brand-building exercises for the auction house.

Apart from that, an in-house authentication department will also verify art collections for their value and auction possibilities; living artists will be contacted to re-authenticate works, and experts will authenticate the works of artists who are dead.

The auction house will start accepting art consignments for the first auction in October. It will also feature major works by Sayed Haider Raza, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Manjit Bawa, Ganesh Pyne, Ganesh Haloi, M F Husain and so on.

The major attraction, however, will be an 8 ft x 12 ft oil on canvas by Shyamal Dutta Ray, which very few people know of. The auction house also plans to host a big sculpture auction next year.

The 14,000 sq ft area will also house two sister divisions; a publication division that will publish books, art journals and so on. An art investment division in the same premises will not only guide buyers through investments, but will also act as an art bank that will have a corpus fund for future investments on behalf of the company. There will also be a section for an art library and archives.

Designed by Mumbai-based architect Hafeez Contractor, the auction house will be furnished by Chisel Crafts (an arm of Chisel Art), which has been known for exporting furniture to Hollywood who�s-who. The company also designed furniture for the Harry Potter movies. The entire initiative will cost the Emami Group Rs 30-50 crore.

Hindustan Times : India’s first world-class art museum coming in Kolkata

2007-07-15T22:58:00.000+05:30

Indrajit Hazra,

New Delhi, July 06, 2007

France has the Louvre, America MoMA and Britain, Tate. For all the buzz that Indian art has been making across the world, we still lack a world-class international art museum. If everything goes according to plan though, five years down the line, the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art (KMoMA) will fill the void.

On July 14, auction house Sotheby’s will place some 90 works of art by 70-odd artists including Tyeb Mehta, Somnath Hore, Ram Kumar, Jogen Chowdhury, FN Souza and Ganesh Pyne, under the hammer in New York. The proceeds of the sale — expected to be between Rs 10 crore and 20 crore — will go to the KMoMA kitty.

According to a McKinsey feasibility report, a whopping Rs 570 crore is needed for a first-tier museum. But as Dadiba Pundole of Mumbai’s Pundole Art Gallery, and consultant to Sotheby’s says, "The amount expected is minuscule. It’s really about creating a buzz."

Rakhi Sarkar of Kolkata’s Centre of International Modern Art, and Managing Trustee of KMoMA, agrees. "I have been travelling in Europe and now in America and the response has been incredible, not only from galleries but also from governments."

This will be the first time that private players and the government will partner in a mega cultural-artistic project.
"In other countries, the state takes a great deal of initiative and interest in culture. Sadly, that’s not the case in this country. And when the government does get interested it takes over, choking any artistic enterprise," says Pundole.

KMoMA trustee and artist Jogen Chowdhury agrees, "To get one thing moving you need to fill up five forms. Bureaucracy can be extremely constricting. Private participation in art happens everywhere else, so why not here?" So why need the government at all? "Issues like permissions, insurance and country-to-country exchanges make government participation necessary," says Chowdhury.

Sarkar underlines the fact that West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the chief patron of KMoMA, is extremely enthused about the project. "During his first term as chief minister, Buddhadebbabu was quite appalled that the travelling Picasso exhibition could not be hosted in Kolkata due to lack of proper facilities," she says. "KMoMa will not only provide worldclass infrastructure for such exhibitions but it will actually facilitate in bringing them here under one roof."

The Bengal government has already provided a 10-acre area in Rajarhat near Kolkata for the project. And there is talk of the proceeds from the sale of land that had earlier been sanctioned to KMoMA coming handy.

Help has been sought from the Centre. Culture Minister Ambika Soni has given a verbal assurance to Sarkar that New Delhi would chip in. KMoMA, to be designed by a yet-to-be-commissioned international architect, will have three wings catering to 18th century-contemporary art from India, the West and the Far East, and another wing dedicated to research, conservation and curatorial practices. "It will cater to the best of world art, visiting shows and even cultural experiences that include food," says Sarkar.

So if things go well, you may not have to go all the way to the Munch Museum in Oslo to view Edvard Munch's The Scream or to the Prada in Madrid for those masterful Goyas. You could simply go to Kolkata for your dose of art.