The market is hot for modern Indian art

Source Apollo by Emma Crichton-Miller
In 1947, in the turbulent aftermath of Partition, six young men in Bombay – Krishnaji Howlaji Ara, Sadanand Krishnaji Bakre, Hari Ambadas Gade, Maqbool Fida Husain, Francis Newton Souza and Sayed Haider Raza – united to form the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). With leftist leanings and a desire to forge a new idiom freed from imperialist influences, they turned for inspiration to international modernism – above all, Picasso, Kandinsky and Klee – alongside South Asian high art and folk traditions. By the early 1950s they had been joined by Krishen Khanna, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde and Mohan Samant, while Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta and Akbar Padamsee also became closely affiliated with the group. Souza laid down their principles in a 1948 manifesto: ‘Today we paint with absolute freedom for content and technique, almost anarchic…’
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India Art Fair 2019: The Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) displays an exceptional collection

Source Architectural Digest by Avantika Bhuyan
It is this newer way of looking at existing collections that forms the heart of the curatorial philosophy at MAP. Founded by Abhishek Poddar, the institution is all set to be the largest private art museum in southern India, with a growing collection of over 15,000 works of art, dating from the 12th century to the present. To be housed within a state-of-the art space in Bengaluru, with an auditorium, a research library, education centre, storage, and a specialised art research and restoration facility, the museum’s holdings have been categorised into six key areas: modern and contemporary, photography, folk and tribal, popular art and textiles, craft and design, and pre-modern art. However, the team at MAP seeks to look beyond these categories to trace and map relationships between artistic disciplines. “At the India Art Fair, MAP will explore this curatorial strategy — combining photography and painting, as well as what’s previously been considered as ‘low art’ and ‘high art’, or ‘contemporary art’ and ‘tribal art’,” says Gaskell.
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Why this edition of the India Art Fair might be its most exciting yet

Source Vogue India by Avantika Bhutan
From the headlining artists, including the iconic Chinese artist-activist, Ai Weiwei, and Icelandic-Danish artist, Olafur Eliasson, to performance art interventions by Mithu Sen, Yasmin Jahan Nupur and the freshly-instituted “Young Collectors’ Programme”, there’s a lot that’s shaking up the India Art Fair 2019. A few themes spill over from last year too, like having 70 per cent of the space reserved for Indian galleries, and the rest for the ones from abroad. With quality trumping quantity, the list of exhibitors has witnessed a slight cut—from 78 in 2018 to 75 this year. One will also see a host of international galleries make their debut this year, including Neugerriemschneider from Berlin and the Sokyo Gallery, Kyoto. Here are six reasons why you cannot miss IAF 2019.
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Direction l’Inde

Source Art Price
Le Marché de l’Art indien révèle une forte croissance au cours des derniers mois. Le produit de ventes annuel de 2018 affiche en effet une hausse de +29% par rapport à l’exercice précédent, soit une croissance bien supérieure à celle des autres acteurs asiatiques, exception faite de la Corée du sud. Un peu plus de 1 400 œuvres d’art se sont vendues en Inde au cours de l’année 2018, ce qui s’avère très peu pour satisfaire la demande intérieure, en témoigne un taux d’invendus particulièrement bas de 7%, tandis que la moyenne mondiale dépasse les 30% d’œuvres invendues. Le résultat annuel des ventes aux enchères s’élève, lui, à 72,5 m$, plaçant l’Inde en douzième position mondiale du Marché de l’Art, derrière l’Australie.
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The upcoming Chennai Photo Biennale promises to be a treat

Source The Hindu by Rohan Manoj
What do we see through a glass darkly? Mere reflections, or a façade hiding an eldritch realm that lies just beyond our ken, populated by demons plotting to invade the material world and devour all mankind? The ancient Chinese believed the latter, dubbing these creatures the ‘fauna of mirrors’ — and this concept has been adopted as the title for the second edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB). “It’s not a theme as such,” says artistic director Pushpamala N., who views it in broader terms, “as a metaphor for photography itself, a mirror portal that creates another world.” A parallel world that is “familiar yet strange, perhaps friendly and intimate, sometimes mysterious and hostile — but always magical.”
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Behind the Mask: Artist Pushpamala N on her new exhibition

Source The Indian Express by Vandana Kalra
Less than a month before the Chennai Photo Biennale opens on February 22, its artistic director Pushpamala N is both preoccupied and excited. “When photography went digital, people said photography is dead but it is proliferating in so many different ways,” says the Bengaluru-based artist. A reflection of her own oeuvre, she has chosen not to have a single overarching theme for the Biennale in its second edition. The title “Fauna of Mirrors” is an old Chinese myth that proposes an alternate universe and Pushpamala says she “will argue around the myth to see the practice of photography as a mirror reflection of modern life, creating a parallel world of images — familiar yet strange, perhaps friendly and intimate, sometimes mysterious and hostile — but always magical.”
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Amar Kanwar ou l’art de présenter le monde comme il ne va pas

Source Le Monde par Roxana Azimi
Amar Kanwar est sérieux. Résolument sérieux, dans chaque propos, dans le moindre geste, même lorsque, consciencieusement, il sucre son thé à l’excès. Regard triste, voix grave, l’artiste indien n’est pas là pour amuser la compagnie, mais pour documenter le monde comme il ne va pas. Depuis vingt ans, il a fait de la violence, physique, psychologique, sexuelle, étatique, le cœur d’une œuvre filmique politiquement engagée. A partir du 12 janvier, il expose à la galerie Marian Goodman, à Paris, une envoûtante installation vidéo conçue comme une parabole, sans indication de lieu ou d’époque. L’histoire fictive d’un mathématicien célèbre qui aurait choisi de s’isoler au fin fond de la forêt pour mieux percer, dans l’obscurité, le mystère des grandes questions philosophiques.
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Jitish Kallat’s deeply-reflective third solo at Galerie Templon, Paris marks his return to painting

Source Architectural Digest by Shaikh Ayaz
Kallat’s new show, titled ‘Phase Transition’ that opened at Galerie Templon, Paris on January 12, once again reveals his fixation with closing the distance between order and disorder, myth and time, and the conceptual and gestural. If you find references to his own work in the current exhibition, Kallat is quick to point out that there may be remnants of “earlier discarded paintings,” suggesting a continuity of themes that any artist returns to time and again.
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Delhi’s Gallery Espace morphs into a miniature studio with Manjunath Kamath’s new show

Source Architectural Design by Uma Nair
Strongly influenced by folk and traditional art forms as well as literature, the imagery in Kamath’s current body of work, that includes drawings and a terracotta platter reflects a decorative and narrative quality akin to Indian and Persian miniatures. Unfolding Moon attempts to unveil the unseen and unsaid, without losing its playful and mysterious quality. The rendering of characters is very close to those seen in fables, and within the pictorial space we see a mosaic of memories. Manjunath is meticulous in placement and creates a myriad mapping of deeper resonance. It’s like Moghul Persian Islamic and Indian design dynamics interlinking to create a mosaic of world cultures.
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India Art Fair: In capital form?

Source The Hindu by Elizabeth Kuruvilla
Despite a few bumps along the way, including a majority stakeholder moving out, the 11th edition of the annual contemporary art fair is forging ahead — with 75 participants, curated walks and more. The India Art Fair seems to be in a state of flux. About a year and half after the MCH Group, which runs the prestigious Art Basel, acquired a majority 60.3% stake in the fair, it is ready to sell. Significant cost-cutting measures after losses the group incurred led to the axing of the regional art fair initiative, under which it had bought IAF. There’s a lot to take in. A brief guide on what you must not miss at the 11th edition:
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India Art Fair 2019: Exhibitions to See

Source Ocula by Kanika Anand
India Art Fair runs from 31 January to 3 February 2019, with IAF Director Jagdip Jagpal highlighting the inclusion of talks, walk-throughs, screenings, live events, and performances, including Word and Hopes, Yasmin Jahan Nupur's six-hour performance that interrogates the boundaries between spectator and performer. A series of seven collector's masterclasses will also take place, with advice on buying at auction delivered by head of sales for South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art at Christie's, Nishad Avari, on 3 February. Supported by curator and researcher Sitara Chowfla, this edition will be more focused and better integrated with parallel exhibitions across the city. Here is a selection of shows to see in and around New Delhi during the fair.
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Outsider Art Fair New York 2019

Source Galerie Hervé Perdriolle
L'Outsider Art Fair de New York a connu une forte fréquentation grâce à l'intérêt croissant des américains pour les artistes outsider. Nous avons eu le plaisir de croiser sur notre stand Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, David Byrne et d'avoir notre galerie citée dans le New York Times.
The Outsider Art Fair in New York has enjoyed strong attendance thanks to the growing interest of Americans for outsider artists. We had the pleasure of meeting on our stand Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, David Byrne and having our gallery quoted in the New York Times.
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No Subodh Gupta works at India Art Fair, artist to also give JLF a miss

Source Business Standard
Leading contemporary artist Subodh Gupta, a regular at the India Art Fair, will not be part of the annual show this year and will also skip the Jaipur Literature Festival, where he was scheduled to speak, organisers of the two events said Tuesday. Gupta, whose works have been represented in the past by both Indian and international galleries at the India Art Fair (IAF), was accused of repeated sexual misconduct by several women who made anonymous complaints in December last year. The high profile artist had denied the allegations, saying they were entirely false and fabricated.
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Filling Art History’s Feminist Gaps

Source Hyperallergic by Sharmistha Ray
Two museum retrospectives that opened this past December by women artists on opposite sides of the world — Judy Chicago in Miami and Navjot Altaf in Mumbai — offer further proof that histories have far too often suppressed less than convenient truths for art worlds patronized and dominated by men, whether they be the United States, India, or anywhere else. Both exhibitions address important feminist perspectives on history and language, systems of knowledge and formal issues, revealing the contemporaneity and urgency of these ideas.
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Archive of a dancer who created modern dance on its own Indian terms

Source The Asian Age by Sunil Kothari
Chandra had a flourishing dance career. But she was not satisfied with performing Bharatanatyam with the mythological themes and songs. It was on 30th December that I was asked to inaugurate an archive of renowned dancer Chandralekha. Sadanand Menon, who is the managing trustee of Spaces at 1 Elliot ‘s Beach Road, Besant Nagar and looks after the Spaces and Chandralekha’s archival material, books, photographs, reviews, writings, video recordings of her works, interviews and several other things, had asked me to inaugurate the Archive Building. He had also asked me to speak about Chandralekha as I was one of her oldest friends. She was known as Chandra to all her friends. Her close friend and associate was the well-known painter, designer and multi-faceted artist Dasharath Patel. His paintings, ceramics, photographs and several other materials are also being looked after by Sadanand. As a matter of fact, Sadanand, Dasharath and Chandra worked together. Sadanand had also curated an exhibition of photographs, paintings, ceramics, etc. for National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. A documentary film is also made by Iffat, a filmmaker from Jamia Millia.
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Voices from South Asia

Source The Pioneer
Art galleries are everywhere, but there’s a lot more beyond that world. The India Art Fair has become a pilgrimage of sorts for art lovers in the country as well as abroad offering insights into cultural landscapes and initiating dialogues on various states and cities. This year the fair aims to discover modern and contemporary art from South Asia, presenting 75 exhibitors from 24 Indian and international cities. Featuring a diverse selection of contemporary art galleries from across India, the fair will also continue its tradition of presenting works by leading modernists like FN Souza, Tyeb Mehta, Raja Ravi Varma, Akbar Padamsee, and Ram Kumar.
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McClung Museum Opens Exhibition Featuring Art from Indigenous Communities in India

Source by The University of Tennessee
Indigenous artistic traditions of India are on display at the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture as part of its new exhibition, Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from Indigenous Communities in India. The exhibition opens February 1 and will remain on view through May 19. Many Visions, Many Versions presents the work of contemporary artists from four major indigenous artistic traditions in India. The exhibition features approximately 80 paintings and a film created by 24 significant Indian artists including Jangarh Singh Shyam, Jivya Soma Mashe, Sita Devi, and Swarna Chitrakar. Many Visions, Many Versions explores the breadth and variety of cultural traditions in India, revealing a dynamic aesthetic that is deeply rooted in traditional culture yet vitally responsive to issues of global concern.
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Movement JIVYA SOMA MASHE & CRISTIAN CASTELNUOVO

Source :CENTRO FOTOGRAFICO CAGLIARI presents: Movement JIVYA SOMA MASHE & CRISTIAN CASTELNUOVO Per la prima volta in Sardegna il maggior esponente della pittura tribale indiana Warli in una mostra di pittura con fotografie di Cristian Castelnuovo. Dal 16-01-2019 al 14-02-2019 Vernissage Mercoledì 16 Gennaio 2019 dalle 19.00
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British anthropologist to call on old friends

Source The Hindu by S. Harpal Singh
“My time among the Raj Gonds taught me not only to love the Adivasi way of life, but also how to rethink my career and my purpose in life,” he sort of summed up about his extensive work among the ethnic tribe. Apart from the research work which went into the making of the book co authored by Professor Haimendorf — Tribes in India: Struggle for Survival — Mr. Yorke made 11 anthropological films about India for the BBC and many other television channels, according to the note.
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What Is “Outsider” in Unthinkable Times?

Source Hyperallergic by Edward M. Gómez
Northern California’s Creative Growth Art Center, which introduced such crossover outsider-to-contemporary-art-market stars as Dan Miller and the late Judith Scott, will show drawings and totem-shaped ceramics by Dinah Shapiro, works whose compositions seem to emerge organically and construct themselves. From Paris, dealer Hervé Perdriolle will showcase boldly colored, oil-on-wood nature scenes by the Moroccan Ali Maimoune, which bring to mind the earth-honoring spiritualism of the paintings of the late Jamaican Intuitive Everald Brown (1917-2003). Perdriolle will also feature meditative, pencil-on-paper drawings by the singer Paban Das Baul, a mystic minstrel from the Indian state of West Bengal.
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Conjured Language | Exhibition

Source India Today by Latika Gupta
Conjuror's Archive' at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi (between December 4, 2018 and January 12, 2019), focusing on the work of Jangarh Singh Shyam, is the first retrospective of a contemporary Indian folk artist. Shyam, who hailed from Madhya Pradesh, is credited with the genesis of the Gond painting tradition. But curator Jyotindra Jain points out that the term 'Gond' itself is a misnomer, as Shyam belonged to the Pardhan tribe, whose pantheon of deities and mythologies were the subjects of his art.
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The lanuage of undoing: at the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial

Source The Hindu by Bansie Vasvani
Since its inception in 1993, the Asia Pacific Triennial (APT) held in Brisbane, Australia, has been a venue for collective identity and enabled artists from Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific regions to develop dialogically. Artists have pushed boundaries to challenge the status quo both externally and within the context of their own communities to constantly redefine what it means to be from a specific culture. In the 9th edition of the APT, on at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) and Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) until April, artists chosen from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh subvert conventions and advance the limits of their own chosen forms.
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When art rises for a cause at the Kochi Biennale

Source The Week by Job Rinol
$ The 108-day-long art festival, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, takes a noble turn. To chip in with its bit towards rebuilding Kerala post the floods, the Kochi Biennale Foundation launched Art Rises for Kerala (ARK)—an exhibition of works from renowned contemporary artists which will later be auctioned. The artworks will be exhibited from January 5 to 17 at Kochi Bastion Bungalow from 10am to 6pm. The auction will be held on January 18 at the Grand Hyatt, Bolgatty island in Kochi. The auction is being held in collaboration with Mumbai-based auction house SaffronArt, in an effort to bring the national and international art community to aid and fund those affected by the cataclysmic flood of last year. This will be the first of its kind held in Kerala and all the auctioned money will be directed to the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund.
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India’s most prominent art collector and her mission to make culture public

Source Sunday Guardian Live by Bhumika Popli
Her own taste in art has matured significantly over the years. She says, “There were certain artists in the ’70s and ’80s who used to make very pretty, beautiful works. But today, while I still have those works, I feel that I will not go and look to acquire such works. If I like a painting I don’t necessarily go by the public choice. I look at the paintings quite personally. I also buy works which I feel might fill a gap in my collection. There was a time when the Bengal School was not properly represented but I built up a collection and now I have very good Bengal school collection. That happened because I felt the collection is not well-represented.” Her focus nowadays is on collecting tribal art, sculptures and miniatures which she thinks have been largely ignored by the mainstream: “Tribal and miniature arts need our immediate attention.”
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Born rebel

Source DNA by Ornella D'Souza
Also on view are press clippings that announce his initial shows, and both critique and hail his unorthodox, controversial style. Mentionable is the 1948, art historian Dr Hermann Goetz's essay in Marg which he titled 'Rebel Artist FN Souza', that discusses why Souza was such a non-conformist and showed all the promise of being a genius, despite having "shocked many who cannot imagine a green or blue-red human body… or … the frank statement of sex which is sublimized not by suppression but by association and interplay with the experiences of the soul." Even art critic Geeta Kapur in her 1978 book, 'Contemporary Indian Artists', recalls how the Souza readily associated with Communist Party because "being by temperament a fighter every pang of humiliation he felt as an individual or as a 'native' roused him to retaliation and attack. He converted his fighting spirit into revolutionary politics..."
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How the Indian everyman became a subject of art

Source Scroll In by Urmi Chanda-Vaz
But the Company was more interested in the subjects than the rulers. For the first time, the everyday and the everyman became a point of artistic interest. Local trades, occupations, attire, crafts, bazaars and festivals – everything was frozen in artworks. “To see kings and queens in their courtly settings, or gods and goddesses in theirs, we have our miniature paintings to go to,” said Shilpa Shah, who, along with her husband Praful Shah, put together the TAPI collection. “But where do you go to see the ordinary Indian humbly plying his trade 200 years ago? For this, you need the Company paintings. Before photography, it is [the] paintings patronised by the British that provide an authentic and unparalleled window into India’s past.”
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On the dotted line

Source The Hindu by Shailaja Tripathi
The book is the result of my 15-year association with Jangarh and about seven years of research on his life and work after his death. Most importantly, my own small archive on Jangarh, which I built over two decades, comprising conversations with him, rare photographs and a number of insightful anecdotes about his life and work, formed the basis of the book. With regard to the myths and legends pictorialised in his paintings, I regularly consulted several Pardhan artists and his former associates in Bhopal over the years to obtain the versions that Jangarh improvised on in his work. Mark Tully’s chapter “The Return of the Artist” in his book No Full Stops in India served as a primary source for his life in the village before coming to Bhopal, and his relationship with his mentor, the artist J. Swaminathan, at Bharat Bhavan, a modernist multi-arts complex in Bhopal where his muse was moulded. Exhaustive archival exploration of at least 150 paintings, drawings and murals from various collections and sites led me deep into the wondrous world of this matter of image and imagination.
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Art exhibition, In the Land of Downside Up, celebrates 52 years of Birla Academy, Kolkata

Source Indulge by Sharmistha Ghosal
The Birla Academy of Art and Culture will be celebrating its 52nd year with a special art exhibition curated by cultural theorist and art critic Nancy Adajania. The upcoming exhibition, titled In the Land of Downside Up: Adbhut Lok, will showcase art works steeped in satire and black humour. Adajania has shortlisted works of a number of Indian contemporary artists, who employ satire to depict the current socio-political fabric of the country and the world in general.
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6 ARTWORKS THAT MUST BE EXPERIENCED AT THE KOCHI-MUZIRIS BIENNALE 2018

Source Verve by Shubham Ladha
For the first time, The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is being helmed by a female, queer curator, whose work is entrenched in socio-political causes and reflects inclusivity and resistance in face of the idea of ‘power’. From starting the Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association in the ‘80s — which was about separating art from commercial influences — to making art with themes of feminism and erotica, Dube’s ideals form the foundation for this time’s biennale. There are more female and queer artists than before, all coming from different, diverse backgrounds, putting the fair on the global map. The theme too, tries to address how in an age of hyper-connectivity, we are left more alone than ever, but are working towards solidarity. Photographs, paintings, installations and infrastructures; western Kochi is bubbling with creativity, here are the artworks that caught our attention in unsuspecting ways: > read more

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Une publication partagée par Kochi-Muziris Biennale (@kochibiennale) le 16 Déc. 2018 à 10 :12 PST