Another art of the storyteller

Source The Boston Globe by Cate McQuaid
“Painted Songs & Stories: Contemporary Pardhan Gond Art From India,’’ a sparkling show at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College, marks the first American exhibition highlighting the art of the Gond peoples of central India. Vibrating with brilliantly patterned mythological imagery, the exhibit also touches on familiar questions about the commercialization of indigenous art.
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“The European Enlightenment is over”

Source The Art Newspaper by Cristina Ruiz
Indigenous peoples, economic migrants, the vanquished, dispossessed and marginalised take centre stage at the latest edition of the Sydney Biennale (until 1 August). “The aim of this biennale…is to bring work from diverse cultures together…on the equal playing field of contemporary art, where no culture can assume superiority over any other,” said artistic director David Elliott at the inauguration of the show.
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Une hydre nommée Mumbai

Source Hart International par Simon Delobel et Valerie Verhack
La découverte des productions récentes d'artistes indiens par les amateurs occidentaux ne peut généralement s'effectuer que par la visite des grandes expositions de groupe qu'organisent à leur tour les institutions publiques. Si l'invitation de certaines galeries de Mumbai aux grands-messes du marché de l'art (comme Project 88 à la Frieze Art Fair de Londres en 2009) constitue une alternative certaine à ce véritable problème, le procédé révèle cependant aussi toutes les limites de cette intégration. Plus vaste que New York, Mumbai ne compte pas encore autant de galeries mais le rêve indien existe autant que l'américain. Alors avis aux amateurs, quelque soit votre budget, n'hésitez pas: Mumbai vaut mieux que Dubaï!
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Get ready to pay Rs 100 cr for a single work of art

Source Business Standard by Kishore Singh
As confidence for Indian modern art returns, prices will rise in the same proportion as they did in the last decade.
What are we to make of the sale of just two artworks at auctions this year equalling the size of the entire Indian market? Pablo Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust last week became the world’s highest-priced artwork when it was auctioned by Christie’s for Rs 478 crore, beating Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture Walking Man I that was auctioned earlier in the year by Sotheby’s for Rs 468 crore. That the Indian art market is terribly undervalued hardly needs reiterating. But when it fell from Rs 1,500 crore in 2008 to about Rs 800-900 crore currently, the signals it sent out were not just about the low value attached to Indian artists but, more importantly, about the shortage of good art in the market.
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Speculators may be poised for return to art market

Source Livemint The Wall Street Journal by Anindita Ghose
A rebound in valuations in the modern Indian art market appears to have brought speculators back into the fray. According to the latest report by London-based art market research firm ArtTactic Ltd, which surveys 96 key players in the Indian art market every six months, the perception of speculation is on the rise after a significant drop in May 2009, when the Indian art market was at an all-time low.
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The Indian art market can reach its peak in 2010

Source The Financial Express by Garima Pant
The Indian art market has recovered remarkably. I believe that it is probably one notch ahead of where it was before the financial meltdown shook the global markets. The Indian art market should be able to reach its peak within this year itself. And it’s the old timers who are proving their mettle. Buyers and collectors are going in for modernists like SH Raza, for whom the market has come up. There has been incremental growth for contemporary artists as well.
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Picasso sets new art auction record: $106.5 mn

Source India News Magazine
New York, May 5 (DPA) A 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso sold Tuesday night in New York for $106.5 million, a new world record auction price for a work of art, the Christie's auction house announced. The oil painting, Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust), has Marie-Therese Walter, the artist's mistress in reclining and also in a bust. Picasso included his own profile in the blue background. The winning bid came by telephone from an anonymous buyer. The price had been estimated at $70 million to $90 million before the sale, and bidding began at $58 million. The auction price topped the record set in February of $104.3 million for a Giacometti sculpture. That work, titled Walking Man I, sold in London at Sotheby's auction house.

Tulips and Art-Indian Art Market

Source Max Profits Investment by Viktor Vijay Kumar
Culturally Indian art is more on the quieter side of creative search. Whereas western art and especially U.S. art revels in shock value, and the use of crass product-marketing culture to decimate the fine difference between commerce and art. Pickled cows and sharks, self portrait in own blood, artist canning his own shit, diamond studded platinum skull mould, or the Piss Christ photograph, ad infinitum can shock a society but can not last as abiding aesthetic creation. I think art here has less to do with communion with spirit rather it is the use media to create brand value through shock for the artist. We know media picks up more on sensational news and with instant communication it is easier to propagate an art work which sensationalizes. It brings in focus sensory rather than spiritual. In the year 2004 I visited Andy Warhol exhibition in Museum Kunst Palast Dussaeldorf. Looking at giant silk screen works sitting lonely in mega size halls, I realized the unitary influence of consumerism in American society and how Warhol through his art put a mirror to it. Mass takes away personal spaces and robotizes our responses to life. Unfortunately use of crass mass Pavlovian culture to decimate the fine difference between consumerism and art has also emerged. Japanese artist Takashi Murakami has turned art into a factory product marketed more like Wal-Mart turnovers. I am sure art will survive it for it is pedigreed to be different than the mass produced mass consumed products.
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L'Inde sera avec la Chine le marché dominant

Source Le Journal des Arts par Roxana Azimi


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Francis Newton Souza Revealed & Celebrated at Christie's in June

Source Art Daily
Francis Newton Souza was born in 1924 in Goa, India. Raised as a Roman Catholic, he attended St Xavier’s, a prestigious Jesuit school in Bombay. In 1940, he enrolled at the Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay. After the Second World War, the Indian Independence movement revived and his painting became increasingly political, a development he claimed led to his expulsion from art school. In 1947, Souza co-founded the Progressive Artists’ Group. Their goal was to find a powerful new artistic expression, distancing itself from established academic traditions. The initial political content of the artists’ work gave way to a sensuous eroticism which provoked the disapproval of the art establishment. This attitude may have prompted Souza’s decision to move to England in 1949 following an invitation from the British High Commissioner to exhibit there.
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