Indian-origin sculptor Anish Kapoor joins UK's millionaire list

Source The Times of India
Turner prize-winner Indian-origin sculptor Anish Kapoor, whose giant sculptures adorn squares from Chicago to Nottingham, has joined the ranks of UK's super-rich artists with a multi-million pound fortune. 55-year-old Kapoor made a 17 million pounds of profit in 2008, taking the fortune he has made from his art to £40 million, new company accounts showed. Mumbai-born Kapoor now plans to add a 5 million pounds country house in the Berkshire downs to his assets. He will be included in The Sunday Times Rich List when the 2010 edition comes out, the first specialist sculptor to appear, joining artists such as Damien Hirst and Lucian Freud.
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Christie’s Sees Art-Market Recovery After 24% Decline in Sales

Source Bloomberg By Scott Reyburn
China will provide an increasing proportion of buyers at Christie’s auctions of 20th-century Western art, said Dolman.
“Chinese clients were buying and underbidding Impressionist and modern works in New York in May,” said Dolman. “It’s already happening.”
Clients from Greater China (Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China) were among the Internet bidders who secured 14 percent of all Christie’s successful lots. Online purchases increased 40 percent on 2008, said the auction house.
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La percée des artistes indiens dans l’art actuel

Source La Libre Belgique par Guy Duplat
L’Inde est un acteur majeur de l’art contemporain. Preuve chez Saatchi.
Nous avons vécu en Belgique un automne chinois avec Europalia. A Londres, la très belle galerie Saatchi montre que l’art contemporain indien est tout aussi passionnant. Le "artoholic" comme se définit le collectionneur Charles Saatchi, continue ainsi ses expos thématiques à succès dans son nouveau, immense et superbe musée de Chelsea (entrée gratuite). Ses premières expos (sur l’art chinois et l’art proche oriental actuels) ont attiré un million de visiteurs au total ! Cette fois, Saatchi montre les Indiens qu’il achète et affectionne, sous le titre martial de "L’empire contre-attaque".
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Anish Kapoor prévoit de construire la 'tour olympique' de Londres

Source Artclair
Anish Kapoor a présenté son projet pour la « tour olympique » voulue par le maire de la capitale anglaise, Boris Johnson. Pour un coût de 15 millions de livres financé par le magnat de l'acier Lakshmi Mittal, cette tour doit faire plus de 400 pieds de haut. Si le nom du gagnant du concours n'a pas encore été annoncé, Kapoor semble le grand favori.
Un tour d'acier spiralée haute de 400 pieds (120 mètres) conçue par Anish Kapoor est en passe de gagner la compétition architectural pour un monument qui doit être l'emblème des Jeux Olympiques de Londres en 2012.
Selon le souhait du maire de Londres, Boris Johnson, cette tour est censée être la nouvelle Tour Eiffel de la capitale anglaise. Dotée d'un budget de 15 millions de livres (17,3 millions d'euros), cette œuvre architecturale doit devenir un passage obligé des touristes à Londres. Elle sera financée par le magnat indien de l'acier Lakshmi Mittal, l'homme le plus riche du Royaume-Uni.
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Osian's Art Fund: The Broken Paddle

Source Forbes India by Dinesh Narayanan, Elizabeth Flock, Shloka Nath
Flamboyance and grandeur marked out Neville Tuli as India’s best-known art messiah. Today the collapse of his fund has revealed he got it all wrong.
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Une hydre nommée Mumbai

Source Art par Somon Delobel et Valérie Verhack
Une galerie ferme: la crise a-t-elle encore sévi? Bien au contraire! Deux nouvelles ouvrent leurs portes. Le capitalisme, processus de destruction-création, s'accorde à merveille avec la conception indienne du samsara. Création, conservation, destruction: ainsi se doit d'aller l'éternel cycle des existences. Bodhi Art, la galerie qui porta l'art indien aux plus hauts sommets des marchés primaires et secondaires de l'art contemporain international, n'existe plus à Mumbai que sous la forme d'un espace de stockage. S'y retrouve une gigantesque collection accumulée au cours de cinq années d'existence où se côtoient ceux dont les noms sont aujourd'hui connus de tous: Atul Dodiya, Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Sudarshan Shetty. Allez à Mumbai, demandez aux galeristes des informations concernant Bodhi Art, ils vous regarderont l'œil malicieux et se tairont. Bodhi Art restera la sublime victime d'une crise qui pourtant n'effraie guère les défenseurs de l'art contemporain dans la richissime capitale du Maharashtra.
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Indian art: A taste for Saatchi's hot favourites

Source Telegraph By Colin Gleadell
ArtTactic measures the confidence its subscribers have in the future of particular markets, and says that its confidence indicator for modern and contemporary Indian art, which had reached a high of 82 points in October 2007, fell to its lowest point of 20 in May 2009. However, its last reading, taken in November 2009, showed an uplift to 49 points. In the interim, prices for the market leader, Subodh Gupta, have stabilised, though at slightly lower price levels, and for Atul Dodiya's next show to be held in March at the Vadehra Gallery in New Delhi, prices have been reduced to less than $100,000 each. That show, tellingly, has already sold out.
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Pre-modern Indian art or commerce ?

Source The Economic Times by Dr Rashmi Poddar.
The first decade of the second millennium has been witness to an unprecedented surge of interest in contemporary art as well as its important
companion, modern art. Much has been critiqued, discussed, debated, written and opinionated by specialists and dilettantes alike.
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The price of new contemporary talent

Source The Economic Times by Anders Petterson.
The auctions that followed in September 2009 showed further evidence of recovery. However, the positive signals were largely coming from the modern
Indian market. Contemporary Indian art seemed to be struggling to find a position in the auction market, as the auction value of Indian contemporary art fell from $11.7 million in September 2008 to $884,900 in September 2009, a 92.5% drop in total transaction value.
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Slowdown ensured creative destruction

Source The Economic Times by Ranjit Hoskote.
For galleries, the recession has brought about a return to core competencies for some, after their desperate boom-time attempts at representing all generations and idioms. For others, such as Pundole and Chemould Prescott Road, it has offered an opportunity to extend the field of the contemporary to include the dazzling work of artists of tribal or rural background. Yet others, such as Chatterjee & Lal, have improvised platforms where classical and contemporary works may be juxtaposed, proposing alternative ways of approaching Indian art history.
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First day, first show

Source : Business Standard by Kishore Singh
Today is judgement day of sorts for Kiran Nadar. In the evening, as the chatterati of the capital cross over the Yamuna to its east bank, they will come to build — or break — the reputation of the card-playing wife of the founder of HCL Corporation. She will discover whether the ambitious Kiran Nadar Museum of Art will prove to be the proverbial albatross, or a memorial to the art she has been collecting, mostly unknown to her friends, for over two decades.
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To buy or not

Source : Business Standard by Kishore Singh
When is it all right to buy from an auction, and why is a gallery better at other times?. Ever since auction houses started taking interest in Indian art, they have tended to be treated like a public record of an artist’s worth. But — and this is unfortunate — both media and sellers have been inclined to record the “highest” prices as a sort of benchmark for artists. Yet, how valid is this?
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Confessions of a collector !

Source : Indian Art Review by Kapil Chopra
Let me start with a true story on the importance of collectors in the Indian contemporary space. I was invited by my very good friend Swapan Seth, who is maybe the most prolific collector of contemporary art in this country today to view a panel discussion that he was part of.
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Jivya Soma Mashe bags Prince Claus Award

Source : Press Trust of India
Renowned Warli artist Jivya Soma Mashe has bagged the prestigious Prince Claus Award for his contribution to Warli painting. On behalf of the Prince Claus Fund, the award will be presented to him by the Netherland Ambassador Bob Hiensch on January 13. The award will be accompanied by a cheque of 25,000 Euro (about Rs 17.5 lakh), a release said. "Mashe honoured for his creative reinvention of an art vocabulary that was disappearing, for his vivid representation of the Warli vision of nature and culture in equilibrium, for highlighting the contemporary relevance of local forms of knowledge, and for his significant contribution to the culture and development of the tribal people," the release quoted the jury of the awards as saying.

Flashback 2009: Indian art shines across the globe

Source : The Art Trust
Even as India undergoes a phenomenal transformation as the country develops financially, and new cities escalate into modern metropolises, contemporary Indian art is thriving globally in acknowledgement of its rising stature. A series of international exhibitions in 2009 provided a timely glimpse of its power and depth. We look back at the select shows in this broader context and celebrate its global march.
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Ces artistes qui percent les murailles

Source : Le Point par Caroline Puel
La crise ? Elle ne semble pas l’affecter. « C’est vrai que les prix du marché de l’art ont baissé en un an, reconnaît Zhong Biao, de retour des Etats-Unis, mais une bonne base est maintenant assurée ! » L’une de ses peintures s’est envolée à 76 000 euros le 22 novembre, lors d’une vente aux enchères organisée à Pékin. Elle valait 5 000 euros lorsqu’il l’a achevée en 2002... Zhong Biao fait partie de ces artistes très doués dont la cote a grimpé progressivement et ne risque donc pas de s’effondrer.
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Expositions 2010, l'année fastueuse

Source : Le Figaro
«Autres maîtres de l'Inde» , 30 mars-18 juillet, au Musée du quai Branly. Ni bouddhistes ni musulmans, les Adivasi («premiers habitants» en sanskrit) cultivent encore dans les campagnes indiennes des traditions et un art animiste propres. Une vitalité hors caste encore jamais présentée en grand à l'étranger.
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Caught on Canvas

Source : Times of India by Anupama Chopra
The 75-year-old self-taught hoarding painter who once ran Studio Balkrishn and worked with the likes of Manoj Kumar and Nasir Hussain, is now reduced to recreating posters of classic Hindi movies - Mughal-e-Azam or Mother India perhaps - for the occasional collector who drops by his tiny suburban studio in Mumbai. Sometime in the early 1990s, digital technology rendered Vaidya's occupation obsolete. "Once upon a time, there were 30 to 40 men working under me," he says ruefully, "those men are now watchmen or drivers. All that is left are the memories."
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