Antoine de Galbert voit rouge

Source Paris Match par Elisabeth Couturier
Traditionnellement, le monde de l’art est constitué avant tout de créateurs et de regardeurs. Entre les deux, il y a des passeurs – musées, galeries, critiques, intellectuels. Mais aujourd’hui, avec l’argent qui déferle, il y a trop de monde entre ces deux grands blocs. Et on ne sait plus qui fait quoi. Des masses financières colossales modifient les règles du marché de l’art. Quand je vois que des gens achètent un tableau d’un jeune artiste quasi-inconnu 20 millions d’euros, soit dix ans de budget de la Maison rouge, je dis qu’il y a quelque chose qui ne tourne pas rond !
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Yvon Lambert Slams Art Speculators

Source ArtNet
“It’s like day and night,” Lambert told the paper when asked about what the art market was like when he began his gallery in 1966, as compared with today. Lambert lamented that even 20 years ago much was different, with major changes having been brought forth by the internet’s ever-increasing penetration into the art space. Previously collectors would come into his gallery to engage with the work and there were always questions about collecting and living with art in general, he recalls. Now, discussion, if any, often turns towards potential monetary return. “You can’t ignore speculation any longer,” Lambert said, adding that art advisers had in many ways replaced the discursive role of the gallerist. But, he continued, when people, “come here and want to make an investment, I send them to the bank.”
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A house divided: AGM goes inside India's cultural tensions

Source Mississauga by David Paterson
In August 1993, a group of activist artists known as the Sahmat collective simultaneously opened the same exhibition at 17 cities across India. Called Hum Sab Ayodhya (meaning We are all Ayodhya) the exhibition was supposed to be a peaceful, if dramatic, reaction to events eight months earlier in which a 500-year-old mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya had been destroyed by rioting Hindu nationalists. Instead, the exhibition created uproar. Accusations of blasphemy by the Hindu right wing led to a police raid, a debate in the Indian parliament and criminal charges, which were later dismissed. The episode was one more skirmish in the culture wars that have plagued India's myriad communities since Partition in 1947 and an example of the Sahmat collective's willingness to wade deep into those troubled waters. That mix of passion and politics is the driving force behind a new exhibition at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India since 1989 draws on the Delhi-based collective's two decades of art to create a double-sided show where the vibrancy – even joy – in the works contrasts with the strife that birthed many of them.
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Talking art - Global curators meet at Kolkata hub

Source Business Standard
The Experimenter Art Gallery in Kolkata is bringing together ten curators - including Polish curator Adam Szymczyk who will direct Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany in 2017 and Riyaz Komu, the co-founder of Kochi Muziris Biennale, which held its first edition in 2012 - for a two-day meet starting July 25. "Curatorial practice in India is at a crucial juncture and it is important to talk about its current state and its future development, especially through conversations between curators who are pushing the boundaries of contemporary art," say organisers. While curators will give presentations and hold discussion amongst themselves, the second day will culminate in an open session where artists, thinkers, collectors, writers, other curators, filmmakers, gallerists and other individuals from the arts will interact with each other.
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Art's identity crisis

Source The Times of India by Nergish Sunavala
A certificate can make a work worth millions and without it, it's virtually unsaleable. With so much at stake, the "proof" itself is being forged. And the problem isn't limited to one dealer or auction house. Tyeb Mehta's son Yusuf, for instance, was recently asked to verify an authentication certificate which was supposedly issued by the Tyeb Mehta Foundation that he is a trustee of. The family found that it was fake, and is now considering ways to make the document tougher to replicate by using a hologram.
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Warlis get intellectual property rights

Source DNA by Shailendra Paranjpe
The intellectual property rights of the Warli artistes would be protected henceforth. The Registrar of Geographical Indications at Intellectual Property Office at Chennai has granted the status of proprietor of the Geographical Indications(GI) for this art to NGO Ayush which is working for welfare of Warli tribe. Anyone who sees a typical painting or printing on any cloth material is aware of the design in Warli paintings.
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The artist as a journalist

Source Livemint by Sanjukta Sharma
Visually resembling political posters, these are trenchantly satirical works, drawn with amazing sophistication of line and craft which he mastered himself. A Chittaprosad sketch from the 1940s is a predecessor to the best comic art post-1950s. Incidentally, Chittaprosad did not get admission to the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. Along with the Progressive Artists’ in Bombay, who surmounted geographical limitations and looked to the modernist West perhaps more than any other artists of the time, Chittaprosad evolved his own aesthetic and chose to immerse in his immediate political surroundings—and in the poverty and deprivation of the time. He chose to remain unaffected by market forces, and remains representative of the period in which he painted.
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India at Art Basel 2014

Source DNA by Ashiesh Shah
Amongst the blue chip names of the global art world was also a section dedicated to Sudarshan Shetty's work. Both SKE and Galerie Krinzinger came together to present a large installation of Shetty's iconic a wood and porcelain vases and plates as well as a piece of video work. 14 Rooms, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach, on the other hand, consists of 14 mini-performances created by artists including Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono and Damian Hirst, each in a small space behind mirrored doors, open one door, and there's a performance.
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Les œuvres de leur Moulin

Source Libération par Dominique Poiret
Depuis 2007, les trois associés italiens de la Galleria Continua accueillent dans l’immensité des hangars désaffectés d’une ancienne papeterie, installée dans le petit village de Boissy-le-Châtel (Seine-et-Marne) de grands noms de l’art contemporain en taille XXL. Depuis l’automne, deux volumineuses pièces (Cave et Intersection, 2012) de l’artiste anglo-indien Anish Kapoor se dressent au cœur de l’ancienne salle des machines. Deux sculptures monumentales, comme de gigantesques globes de rouille et d’acier. En contrepoint, une autre œuvre plus minimaliste, The Earth (2012), sphère d’un bleu Klein, masque un vrai trou d’un mètre de profondeur.
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L'Inde retrouve le goût de l'art

Source La Tribune par Art Media Agency
Le marché contemporain et moderne semble retrouver une dynamique positive. Il devrait retrouver ses plus hauts niveaux d'ici deux à cinq ans. Dans un rapport publié en mai, ArtTactic s'intéresse de près au marché de l'art contemporain et moderne indien, qui connait actuellement une forte croissance. Alors que le niveau de confiance des acteurs du marché de l'art indien affiche son niveau le plus haut depuis 2007, le marché contemporain et moderne semble retrouver une dynamique positive. La réussite de la vente aux enchères organisée par Christie's à Mumbai en décembre 2013, ayant totalisé plus de 18 M$, semble avoir été perçue comme un signal de la croissance potentielle du marché de l'art indien.
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Tara Books opens a new page for tribal artists in India

Source The Christian Science Monitor by Stell Simonton
Many folk artists in India don’t read and write, Wolf says. But they respect books. And book royalties allow them to receive continuing payments in contrast to the one-time payment for a single painting. Wolf was born in India, married a German man, and taught comparative literature in Germany. Unhappy in that pursuit, she moved back to south India in 1994. She had a young son and was dissatisfied with the available children’s books. She wanted to see bold illustrations that showed children the world of India, and she enlisted friends who were writers and designers to help create them. She was also active in the feminist and anti-caste movements. Five years ago she turned Tara into a worker-owned collective. At Tara “we gravitate toward reversing entrenched power,” she says. “Art brings out the complexity in people’s lives.” It doesn’t present people as numbers or problems. It allows for a much wider exploration of humanity, she says.
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Madhya Pradesh: Priest 'sacrifices' wife at temple

Source Hindustan Times
A priest killed his tribal wife who was half his age in the name of sacrifice in Bagulamukhi temple in Kurara village of Dindori district. The incident occurred on Saturday night when Satyanand, 50, tied his wife Manju Shyam, 24, with a rope and killed her ostensibly to seek the blessings of Goddess Bagulamukhi. The victim Manju Shyam is from the family of famous tribal painter Jangarh Singh Shyam who lives in Patan village under Dindori police station. The incident came to light on Sunday evening when the victim’s father Jai Jodhan Singh got a call from the suspect. The real identity of the priest is yet to be ascertained as he was living in the name of Satyanand in the temple. The residents of nearby villages claimed the priest came to the village about four years ago and started living in the temple without disclosing his real identity. Mayank Singh Shyam, son of Jangarh Singh Shyam, who lives in Bhopal, while talking to Hindustan Times on the phone said, “We are shocked by the incident. This is height of brutality.
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As fakes unnerve India’s art market, the trade is pushing for an antiquated solution

Source Quartz by Girish Shahane
The reaction of those in the art industry, such as Ashish Anand of Delhi Art Gallery and Arun Vadehra of Vadehra Art Gallery, was to suggest the setting up of an official regulatory body and authentication committee. It is curious how Indians, who never tire of holding forth about the incompetence and corruption of government, seem always to conclude that the solution to any intractable problem lies in the setting up of a government committee.
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When it comes to plagiarism, the more things change, the more they remain the same in Bollywood

Source Quartz by Aseem Chhabra
Last Saturday evening before the screening of the new Bollywood film Ek Villain, I ran into a young friend at the theater in Astoria, Queens. “I hear it is a good film,” she said. And she cut me off, when I tried to respond “But you know…” “I know, I know it is a copy of a Korean film,” she said. “But I hear it is very good.” My friend was referring the ultra-violent Korean thriller I Saw The Devil (2010) directed by Kim Jee-woon. When the trailer of Ek Villain was released in May, many people pointed out it resembled the revenge and gore filled plot of ISTD. But director Mohit Suri denied the accusations. “The two stories are not similar, as the characters come from two completely different worlds,” he told the press. “I don’t get the confusion around it. The thing is Suri has made changes in his film – adding Bollywood melodrama, the backstory, romance between the male and female lead, and most importantly, songs. Ek Villain is a sappy, silly, loud film, and it lacks the punch and the edge-of-the-seat thriller element of ISTD.
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