L’Inde s’invite au Musée d’art contemporain

Source Lyon Info
Du 24 février au 31 juin 2011, le Musée d’art contemporain accueille l’exposition Indian Highway IV, un panorama dressé par 31 artistes indien de l’art contemporain dans leur pays. Un véritable road movie faisant référence aux problématiques indiennes actuelles. Elle cohabite avec l’exposition Always All Ways de Pascale Marthine Tayou. Après Londres, Oslo et Herning, Indian Highway s’installe pour plus de 5 mois à Lyon. Après Lyon, l’exposition Indian Highway rejoindra Rome, Moscou, Singapour, Hong-Kong, Sao Paulo avant de s’achever à Delhi.
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What Good Is Political Art in Times Like These?

Source The Art Newspaper by Ben Davis
The tradition of avant-garde political art always looks silly when stacked against the needs of live political movements. (See Julia Bryan-Wilson's recent book "Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era" for some examples of just how foggyheaded the gestures of even the most politically engaged "art workers" were during the late-'60s.) But given the long decline of left-wing movements over the last 30 years, the conversation about what it means to be a "political artist" has of late become completely compacted into the question of artistic practice itself.
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Anselm Kiefer: "La nature de l'art est de se mettre en danger"

Source L'Express
Rien à voir avec l'Inde, en apparence. S'interroger sur les origines, mettre le mystère au centre de l'œuvre, laisser la nature accomplir son cycle, la faire participer à l'alchimie des douleurs, des couleurs. Certaines peintures d'Anselm Kiefer ont à voir avec ces autels spontanés que l'on trouve à la croisée de chemins en Inde. Une simple érection, une tension attention portée déposée au sol sur la terre, mère nature. Anselm Kiefer fait œuvre il pose et dépose ses questions, nos questions et nous emporte à la croisée des cultures, des croyances, des aspirations, des simples sentiments, émotions, perceptions physiques de l'esprit présent en chaque parcelles, racines, rochers ou autres protubérances humaines.
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Not Too Crafty

Source Indian Express by Georgina Maddox
More stunning than the party, however, were the artwork from the exhibition, “Vernacular and the Contemporary”, curated by Annapurna Garimella, that are fabulously mounted at the Devi Art Foundation. The show is still up and continues to generate discussion. Earlier this month, critic-curator Nancy Adajania spoke about what was “Contemporary” about these artwork . But to cut back to the past for a little, it was over a glass of wine, on that January night that photographer Ram Rehman remarked how extraordinary the exhibition is and wondered aloud why our modern and contemporary artists have not plugged more into India's rich tradition, instead of turning to the West for inspiration. Pondering this one could raise a question -- Are leading contemporary artists giving craft the wide berth and preferring instead to plug into popular culture or the traditions of High Modernism from Europe and America because craft comes with the baggage of being decorative and anti-intellectual?
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L'art tribal indien émerge sur la scène internationale

Portrait Jangarh Singh Shyam et son épouse.
Source Le Monde par Julien Bouissou
En Inde, la place des aborigènes n'est plus au Musée de l'homme, dans ces reconstitutions où les mannequins en cire, vêtus de costumes traditionnels, sont assis autour du feu devant leurs maisons traditionnelles. Les voici désormais au-devant de la scène artistique contemporaine indienne, avec des œuvres qui se vendent dans les galeries d'art et les musées du monde entier. L'émergence de l'art tribal indien coïncide avec la prise de conscience du sort tragique des populations tribales. Au moment de la colonisation britannique, leurs forêts étaient décimées pour construire, notamment, le réseau de chemins de fer. Après l'indépendance de l'Inde, beaucoup d'entre eux ont été expropriés par des entreprises minières. Aujourd'hui, ils sont victimes d'une guerre qui oppose le mouvement d'insurrection maoïste à l'armée indienne. La voix des populations tribales indiennes, longtemps étouffée, renaît grâce à la peinture. Au même moment, la Cour suprême a reconnu, dans un jugement rendu le 5 janvier 2011, les discriminations dont ils ont été victimes : "L'injustice faite à la population tribale indienne représente un chapitre honteux de l'histoire de notre pays. Il est temps de réparer l'injustice qui leur a été faite."
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Pris dans la toile

Source Sita Devi of Jitwarpur

Magie du web, celle de ressusciter le passé, d'attraper dans sa toile, de mettre à la lumière des écrans et de rendre possible simultanément la conservation et la divulgation de micros informations essentielles. Comme cette xerox copy d'un article du Times of India de 1969, copie de l'un des premiers hommages dans la presse à Sita Devi.

Allô Elisabeth ? Ici l’Inde

Source Poptronics
Du nouveau entre les oreilles sur Poptronics : « Allô Elisabeth », comme son nom l’indique, a un rapport (lointain) avec une certaine émission radiophonique d’antan. Sauf que la Macha de Poptronics, c’est la critique Elisabeth Lebovici, et que les conversations qu’elle met à disposition des pop’internautes, ce sont celles qu’elle a, via Skype, avec des correspondants, amis de son réseau d’artistes et critiques tout autour du monde. Une autre manière de parler d’art aux confins de notre planète occidentalo-centrée, une autre façon aussi de témoigner, avec les moyens technos du bord (et les bruits de fond du réseau…).
Pour entamer cette série de conversations par delà les fuseaux horaires, c’est l’Inde qu’Elisabeth appelle, en la personne d’Anne Maniglier, journaliste et photographe, qui, depuis New Delhi, revient sur « India art Summit ». La troisième édition de la foire d’art contemporain indienne a eu lieu, au sein d’un centre d’expositions, toujours à Delhi, du 20 au 23 janvier, avec 84 galeries présentes. Le boom de l’art contemporain indien et des collectionneurs est-il toujours d’actualité depuis la crise financière de 2008 ? Qu’en est-il des rapports entre les mondes de l’art indien et français, alors que deux expositions d’art contemporain vont ouvrir très bientôt en France, l’une à Lyon (« Indian Highway IV », à partir du 24/02 au Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon), l’autre à Paris, au centre Pompidou (« Paris-Delhi-Bombay », à partir du 25/02) ?
> écouter l'entretien entre Elisabeth Lebovici et Anne Maniglier

Akbar Padamsee Masterpiece From 1960 to Lead Sotheby's Indian Art Sale in New York

Source Art Daily
Sotheby’s sale of Indian and South East Asian Art on 25 March 2011 will be led by one of the most important paintings by a modern Indian painter ever to have appeared on the market. Untitled (Reclining Nude) is one of the highlights of Sotheby’s Asia Week series of auctions in New York and carries an auction estimate of $500/700,000. It was acquired by the current owners from the artist over 50 years ago and has never before appeared at auction. Sotheby’s presented the painting to collectors at the recent Indian Art Summit in New Delhi – the first time it had been returned to India since 1960. It will be on view in New York from the 18th March.
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Prices Rocket Back to Boom Levels At Christie's $99 Million Post-War and Contemporary Sale

Source The Art Newspaper
The red-hot Christie's evening sale of postwar and contemporary art on February 16 raced to $99,190,888 (£61,380,500), marking the highest London result in the category since June 2008 — the apex of the last art boom. The total annihilated Christie's $61.1 million result from the same sale last February. The sale was powered in part by the previously unrecorded, six-foot-square Andy Warhol "Self Portrait" from 1967 that sold to Larry Gagosian for a staggering $17,441,892 (£10,793,250), over an estimate of £3-5 million. The sale featured 15 other offerings that broke the million pound mark, and 28 that hit over one million dollars.
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An Ascendant Indian Art Scene Gets Its First Biennial

Source The Art Newspaper
Tomorrow, organizers in India plan to announce the creation of the emerging economic giant's first-ever major art biennial. Set to debut in 2012, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale will take place in port city of Kochi in the Kerala province on the southwest coast of India, and in neighboring Muziris, known for a rich historical heritage that reaches back to the days when it was a center for spice-trading with the Roman Empire.
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Comic Book Brings New Life to Dalit Icon

Source The Wall Street Journal by Tripiti Lahiri
Artists Durgabai Vyam and her husband Subhash Vyam, who belong to the Gond tribal community and live in Madhya Pradesh, agreed in 2008 to work on the book for Navayana, an eight-year-old Delhi-based publishing house that focuses on caste issues. Mr. Anand says the book is meant to be “a small conversation beginner” and says that even today many Indians don’t actually know very much about Ambedkar, especially in comparison with non-Dalit Indian leaders. In his closing essay, Mr. Anand draws parallels between Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar—noting they both took train journeys where they experienced acts of discrimination that clarified for them their place in existing social orders.
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Carnet de voyage en ligne

Catherine Clément est actuellement en Inde, d’où elle tient quotidiennement ce carnet de voyage que La Règle du jeu a le plaisir de publier.
...Delhi, vendredi soir, 21 heures 30, suspendus à CNN, nous voyons la place Tahrir exploser en cris libérateurs. “Breaking news, Moubarak steps down”. Dans la même pièce où je suis aujourd’hui, en I989, de la chute du mur de Berlin, j’étais suspendue aux nouvelles; sur Doordarshan, l’unique chaîne de télévision indienne, l’information avait tenu vingt secondes et l’image, un peu moins...
> suivre le carnet de voyage sur La Règle du Jeu

Mumbai’s hip gallery spaces are hard to beat

Source CNN by Deepika Sorabjee
All grouped in South Mumbai, and mainly in Colaba, we can truly claim the start of a veritable art district, like the East End of London or the Chelsea Art District in Manhattan. Unlike New Delhi, where one drives long distances from one colony to another, or from one mall to another, the art experience here is holistic. In the first month of the year, I took in a Sudhir Patwardhan show at Sakshi; debated the politics of his works over a machiato at Indigo deli; chatted with the charming Mort Chatterjee and Tara Lal about the restoration of artworks at the Taj Hotel post the 26/11/08 fires; caught Anita Dube at Lakeeren, Ranbir Kaleka at Volte, before Max Streicher’s monumental bobbing horses at Gallery Maskara. With time left to buy neon yellow kolhapuri chappals on Colaba Causeway, I had a conversation over Café Samovar’s kebabs and chai, after joining the busloads that alight at Jehangir Art Gallery. All this while Mumbai’s National Gallery of Modern Art in the same area, lies fallow till the powers that be in New Delhi decide on what handouts we get. Mumbai’s private gallery spaces have stepped up admirably to keep the art scene here vibrant on their own steam. You don’t even need a car, it’s all walkable, like a living urban dream.
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En Inde, l'amour est un programme politique

Source Le Monde par Julien Bouissou
Où est l'amour en politique ? Dans les programmes électoraux, jamais une ligne ne lui est consacrée. La promesse d'amour a pourtant le potentiel de séduire des milliers d'électeurs, notamment les couples en difficulté. Sri Sri Kumar, un jeune maquilleur de cinéma à la fine moustache, a créé, en 2008, le Parti des Indiens amoureux, pour que tous les Roméo et Juliette d'Inde puissent enfin se marier. Car, dans le pays, les mariages intercastes mettent en danger l'honneur des familles, et certains parents sont allés jusqu'à tuer leur propre enfant pour échapper à l'humiliation. "Comme les intouchables, les couples intercastes sont exclus de la société. Il faut leur réserver les mêmes quotas, leur garantir des emplois et des logements", avance Sri Sri Kumar.
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For Guy Ullens, the dream of a Chinese art museum “is over”

Source The Art Newspaper by Cristina Ruiz
The Belgian foodstuffs baron Guy Ullens is to hand over the management of his contemporary art gallery in Beijing to “long-term partners” and divest himself of the institution. He will also sell in stages the extensive collection of Chinese contemporary art amassed with his wife Myriam, with the first 106 pieces to be auctioned by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong on 3 April. Once he has done this, he says he intends to spend more time on his charitable education work in Nepal and return to collecting young artists, with his focus now on Indian rather than Chinese artists. When asked if he would continue to collect Chinese art, Ullens said: “I don’t want to keep going in the same area,” adding that he was interested now in Indian artists and had recently purchased his first piece by Bharti Kher.
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The museum of "wow"

Source Livemint by Anindita Ghose
The KNMA opened its new premises at DLF Place, Saket, with a grand party during the India Art Summit last month. Art world moguls were in attendance, as were politicians such as Sheila Dikshit and P. Chidambaram. The museum had been operating temporarily out of the HCL campus in Noida over the last year. Nadar’s husband Shiv Nadar is the founder of HCL. Nadar’s private venture makes for the largest museum of contemporary and modern art in the country. Open 8 hours a day, six days a week, at no entry charge for visitors, her initiative is at the vanguard of a new brand of cultural philanthropy in India. She is preceded by art collectors Lekha and Anupam Poddar, who run the non-profit Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon. The foundation was established in 2008, and its multi-level exhibition space hosts well-curated rotating exhibitions. But it is the location of Nadar’s museum —in a shopping complex with thousands of visitors everyday—that works to serve Nadar’s vision. She puts it simply, as she walks us through the art she’s been collecting for close to 20 years: “I want art to be accessible to the public.”
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Manish Arora réssuscite Paco Rabanne

Source Paris Match par Lucie Dancoing
Un nouveau jour se lève sur la mode occidentale. Le couturier indien Manish Arora va redonner vie aux collections de prêt-à-porter féminin de Paco Rabanne. Le styliste ibérique avait sacrifié ses créations en 2006 pour s’adonner avec passion à la peinture et au design. Par ses couleurs psychédéliques et ses motifs bariolés, Manish Arora va ressusciter la maison de couture futuriste créée en 1965. Le «John Galliano de l’Inde» présentera cette nouvelle ligne en octobre prochain, lors de la Fashion Week parisienne. Il poursuivra cependant son idéal de beauté en s’investissant dans sa propre marque, qui rayonne à l’international depuis plus d’une décennie.
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Jivya Soma Mashe - Nek Chand

Pour ceux qui n'avaient pas eu l'occasion de voir le magnifique dialogue entre les peintures de Jivya Soma Mashe et les sculptures de Nek Chand à la Halle Saint Pierre voici un lien vers une présentation en images de cette exposition.
For those who had not had the opportunity to see the magnificent dialogue between the paintings of Jivya Soma Mashe and the sculptures of Nek Chand at the Halle Saint Pierre here is a link to a slide presentation of this exhibition.
> view Jivya Soma Mashe / Nek Chand show

7 days in Delhi an excellent set of videos with Pushpamala N, Gigi Scaria, Vivan Sundaram, Sarnath Banerjee, ... You can discover Pushpamala N on the video see above and the other ones on Third Ear

Don't call it tribal art

Source The Times of India by Neelam Raaj
"Don't call it tribal art, " says Garimella who curated the show along with her team at Jackfruit Research and Design. "The term vernacular is more apt as it signifies a traditional art language without the limitations that terms like folk, tribal or native have. " That's how the title Vernacular, in the Contemporary emerged. Craft and contemporary are not "two different worlds", says Garimella. "Though the artists showing at Devi have a committed engagement to traditional knowledge, they are also influenced by the world around them. " For example, Anwar Chitrakar's graphic novel-style patachitra deals with the Maoist movement in Lalgarh. A tailor in Kolkata before he turned to patachitra (a Bengal tradition of storytelling through painted scrolls), he begins his narrative with a question: Lalgarh-er Maobadi na Maobaddider Lalgarh? (Are Maoists from Lalgarh or does Lalgarh now belong to the Maoists?) The 20 painted folios depicting the plight of the Santhal tribals and critiquing politicians are a search for answers. Anwar's familiarity with popular culture is evident in details such as the number 420 written on the pocket of a prisoner.
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Jean Pigozzi, oisif hyper actif

Source Le Figaro Madame par Jean-Sébastien Stehli
En 1989, Pigozzi découvre l'exposition Magiciens de la terre, organisée par le Centre Pompidou, présentant des artistes contemporains venant de pays hors des circuits classiques de l’art (Europe, États-Unis, Japon). C’est le déclic. « À l’époque, raconte-t-il, l’art africain se résumait à ce que l’on voit au Metropolitan Museum de New York – masques de bois sombre, chiens constellés de clous, bijoux en or, etc. – et aux souvenirs bon marché vendus à l’aéroport de Mombasa. Mais à Paris, j’ai vu des tableaux qui auraient très bien pu être signés par un artiste en vogue, installé dans un loft à Brooklyn. » « On s’est retrouvés un matin au Café Beaubourg, se souvient André Magnin, avec qui Pigozzi a constitué cette collection qui compte aujourd’hui plus de 12000 oeuvres. La collection a prêté des oeuvres à 200 musées et institutions à travers le monde, du Guggenheim à la Tate Modern, en passant par la Fondation Cartier.
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The Art of Investment

Source India Today by Nirmala Ravindran
"Oh my god, artist Sudarshan Shetty is dead," scream shocked young students at the entrance of the India Art Summit (IAS) in Delhi. They have just chanced upon a tilting statue with an epitaph that reads: Sudarshan Shetty 1961-2010. The bronze-coated, 40-kg figure, tilted at 45 degrees, balanced by coins in an adjoining box connected by a pulley, is the 49-year-old Shetty's take on everything, from the state of Indian democracy to contemporary art. "So it worked," says an excited Shetty, as more reactions poured in.
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Hermès International : cap sur l'Inde avec une grande boutique à Bombay !

Source Boursier.com
Hermès International chercherait-il à damer le pion à LVMH en Inde ? Le célèbre sellier de la rue Saint-Honoré, qui bataille contre la montée dans son capital du no1 mondial du luxe, compte en tout cas être la première société au monde à ouvrir une grande boutique de luxe en Inde... Ce "bateau amiral" devrait ainsi ouvrir dès le mois de mai prochain, au coeur du vieux Bombay, dans un quartier extrêmement prestigieux, affirme ce matin le quotidien 'Les Echos'. Le rez-de-chaussée abritera le magasin lui-même, sur 350 mètres carrés, une très grande surface pour une boutique de luxe et la première de ce type en Inde. A cela s'ajoutera un étage présentant le savoir-faire de la maison Hermès et des expositions d'art, précise encore le journal économique.
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Superman to promote safe sex message

Source Indian Express
Fictional superhero Superman is now promoting the message of safe sex through an art exhibition here aimed at spreading AIDS awareness and sex education among youth in India. A new exhibition featuring oils on canvas by artist duo Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra addresses the themes of safe sex practices and increased sexual activity among Indian youth against the backdrop of traditional perceptions of sexuality. "Superman is every girl's man. He wears latex and saves the world. He is a larger than life character and we have used him as a metaphor to promote safe sex," says Jiten Thukral.
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unExhibit

Generali Foundation presents unExhibit on view 4 February – 17 July 2011. The premise of an Exhibit was “no objects, no ideas”: an exhibition composed of colorful panels loosely suspended in space so that visitors could amble between them. This formal decision to do without exhibits and make the display subject of the show can be traced back to a series of attempts in modernism to expand painting into space or to elevate the display to the status of a subject in itself.
Image : Willem Oorebeek, "Vertical Club," installation view, 8th Triennale India, New Delhi, 1994, detail.Courtesy the artist. Photo by Aglaia Konrad.
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Touching upon the tribal instincts

Source The Art Trust
The Business Standard art writer Kishore Singh, in one of his columns, while depicting tribal art as ‘the next big thing’, has noted: “Precious little has been done so far to position the talented tribal artists alongside their more illustrious ‘urban’ contemporaries (in terms of respectability and value), or create dialogue to bridge the condescension, which keeps apart one school of artist from the other. However, with international collectors now discreetly buying into this segment of the art market, things might change soon.” That indeed seems to be happening!
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The decade in art

Source Livemint by Anindita Ghose
Most importantly, this was the decade when the creature called the Indian art collector came into being. Up until this decade, serious collectors of Indian art such as Emmanuel Schlesinger and Charles Herwitz had been European or American. Collectors such as Anupam Poddar, Kiran Nadar and Rajshree Pathy are promising additions functioning outside the market realm. Poddar’s 7,500 sq. ft non-profit Devi Art Foundation is in effect India’s first contemporary art museum. And the good news is that the Indian government is working to make this sort of philanthropy tax efficient.
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