Indian life and culture, framed by outsiders and natives

Source Boston Globe by Cate McQuaid
“Seeing the Elephant” features mostly non-Indian artists contemplating India. “Looking In/Looking Out,” drawn from the extensive collection of Umesh and Sunanda Gaur, spotlights works by Indian artists. The elephant in the room is British imperialism. Western outsiders’ gaze shaped perceptions of Indian culture for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, framing it as exotic, alluring, hot, and dirty — as “other” in enticing and off-putting ways.
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Indian Artists take the spotlight at 'Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art'

Source New Kerala
India is set to celebrate contemporary indigenous and vernacular artwork as part of 'The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' from November 21 at the Queensland Art Gallery, Australia. Director, Chris Saines, said in a statement, "A diverse range of Indian artworks, from major installations to contemporary forms of indigenous and vernacular art, would be among the works by over 80 artists and artist groups from more than 30 countries across Asia and the Pacific."
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Global Recognition for Bose, Riyas

Source The New Indian Express
Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, well known Mumbai-based Malayali artists, co-founders of Kochi Muziris biennale, the only one of its kind in the country, have been ranked among the top 100 most influential people in contemporary art world by leading British magazine ArtReview. The vintage London-based publication’s latest issue features Krishnamachari and Komu in its list of ‘Power 100’ for their contribution to contemporary art by organising the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) which completed its second edition earlier this summer.
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Why F.N. Souza matters

Source Livemint by Sanjukta Sharma
Francis Newton Souza lived the last years of his life in a New York apartment, the floors of which had risen with the debris of forgotten canvases, art tools and unremarkable stockpiles of everyday life. Around this time last year, Mint Lounge published a moving piece by Goan writer and journalist Vivek Menezes about his visit to the artist in that apartment in the late 1990s, and how, while helping to clean up the space, he stumbled upon a painting by the other great Indian modernist painter V.S. Gaitonde. “Gai” had signed it, and presented it to Souza.
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Resurrecting the Rajah of High Kitsch

Source The New Indian Express by Sangeeta Cavale Radhakrishna
A vision long in the works, the Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation has recently been set up in Bangalore. The founders hope to make it at par with the Monet Foundation and the Rembrandt Research Project. It is the lifelong dream of the reclusive Rukmini Varma which has finally been realised. “It is going to be the single point of verification of authenticity of originals and lithographs,” says the managing trustee, gallerist Gitanjali Maini who is also the CEO of the Trust. Shivaswamy is the honorary secretary while Rukmini Varma will be the chairperson of the Board of Trustees. Her son, Jay Varma, an artist, has been nominated as trustee.
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The passports of paintings

Source Blink by Aditi Sriram
1947 is a significant year for India in more ways than one. Art created prior to that year is labelled ‘modern,’ and work produced after is ‘contemporary,’ explains Nishad Avari, associate specialist in South Asian Art at Christie’s. He is standing in the centre of Gallery VI, which houses over $5 million worth of art by FN Souza, SH Raza, MF Husain, Akbar Padamsee, VS Gaitonde and Ram Kumar, to name a few. They are some of the artists featured in the 73 lots, or pieces, up for auction. I attend the opening reception, so the atmosphere is relaxed and inviting, even if the air conditioning is unnecessarily strong. People walk in to either admire or to decide what to buy. Avari smiles a greeting at the former while escorting the latter through the exhibition and answering their questions.
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Madhubani artist Shiv: I'm a Paswan, and I will vote for Paswan

Source Catch by Shadab Moizee
Elections are not just about politicians. They're about people and issues. And what will really drive their vote. Catch is, therefore, starting a 'People of Bihar' series, which will daily capture what different impact groups across the state are feeling. This is true insight on the Bihar election: up-close and hyper-personal. Shiv Kumar Paswan is an artist. More specifically, he has mastered the art native to his home district - Madhubani painting. The 23-year-old needs to use crutches to walk because of his physical disability. But he has never let that interfere in his life.
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India Inc's artistic acquisitions

Source Forbes India by Jasodhara Banerjee
Our family resided in Kolkata, where I spent my childhood. Art and culture was all around. My family had a collection of Indian miniatures and my job, as a young boy, was to catalogue them. Although I didn’t like the tedious work, it built an awareness of, and association with, art. I think this is when my love affair with art began. The art world, to me, reflects a hotbed of intellectual issues: Every piece of art deals with politics, philosophy and emotions, and is an attempt to grapple with meanings. When I moved to Mumbai, I discovered the need to decorate my walls, and that’s when I first bought my paintings.
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Amrita Sher-Gil Self-Potrait Sold for 1.7 Million Pounds in London

Source NDTV
A rare self portrait of modernist painter Amrita Sher-Gil created in 1931 sold for 1.7 million pounds in London at an auction by international auction house Sotheby's, which posted sales of over 4.9 million pounds. The Modern and Contemporary South Asia Art auction, which was part of the Indian Art Week in London set new records for four artists Gagendranath Tagore, Prodosh Das Gupta, Gieve Patel and Nasreen Mohamedi, auctioneers said today.
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Indian artist Khakhar’s paintings fetch Rs 1 cr in New Zealand

Source The Tribune
India's modern artist Bhupen Khakhar's two rare paintings, found at an Auckland basement, went under hammer at an auction in New Zealand, fetching over Rs 1 crore by a compatriot, media reported today. Auction house Cordy's put the distinctive works by Khakhar last night after they were found in an Auckland basement. Both the paintings have been sold for 119,595 New Zealand dollars (Rs 51,44,565) each. The paintings depicting a red elephant and the interior of a Hindu house were bought by a local Indian man present at the auction.
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The power of ideas in art

Source Forbes by Kishor Singh
Beginning with the Bengal ‘School’ of revivalist art, a number of movements were set into motion in centres as far apart as Kolkata (then Calcutta), Chennai (then Madras), Mumbai (then Bombay), Baroda and New Delhi. Each helped in the emergence of varied tropes of art practice that have resulted in the diverse idea of modern art in the 20th century. While some were facilitated by ideologies, others were merely gathering points with little or no agenda. Each provided the stepping-stones for a vibrant culture of art practice that has remained in prevalence.
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How not to lose of what little is left behind

Source Daily O by Shaguna Gahilote
Traditions and culture cannot be put in a box, more so because, when you mummify them, it is then that they decay, rot and die. Why these traditions have lasted so long, is because they were vibrant, they were adapting and changing with the time, they were relevant to the daily life of people. Even sites which did not find a place in the daily life of people, died a slow death. Perhaps the ancient temples lost and later found in a dilapidated state are an example, and the recent ones would be the museums and cultural centres, losing out to malls, if we do not adapt them to the needs of the times.
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Indian Contemporary Vernacular Art in USA

Several exhibitions dedicated to Indian Contemporary Vernacular Art in American Universities:
"Birth of the Painted World: Jivya Soma Mashe and the Warli Tradition" curated by Dr. Stephen Hirshon, Robeson Gallery Penn State University Pennsylvania USA Sept 25 – Nov 19, 2015
"Painted Songs & Stories - Contemporary Gond Art from India" curated by John Bowles, Radford University Art Museum Virginia USA Sept 3 – Oct 25, 2015
"Recent Indigenous Art of India" curated by Aurogeeta Das and Dr. David Szanton, William Paterson University Galleries New Jersey USA Nov 2 – Dec 11, 2015

The tribal art paradox

Source DNA by Gargi Gupta
But over and above these, the Ganga Devi episode reveals the more fundamental paradox of Indian tribal art. Traditionally, these paintings were part of the artists' daily lives — they decorated their walls with them, re-touched them when they became faint and when they had completely worn out, the walls would be repainted and covered again with art. This changed in the 1960s, when under the likes of arts administrator Pupul Jayakar, artists J. Swaminathan and Bhaskar Kulkarni, and American anthropologists Raymond Owens and David Szanton, those like Ganga Devi were persuaded to switch to paper. That gave their art-works longer shelf-life and mobility, and brought prosperity as well as new identity as artists.
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With All Its Art and Soul

Source The New Indian Express by Pallavi Rebbapragada
Amit Sood, who heads the project, says museum visits didn’t feature in his growing up years in India. “Extract whatever you can out of art, there is no age, no community, no class barrier that stops you,” he tells the world. The project has enriched itself with material from 10 new partner institutions from India: Salar Jung Museum, Victoria Memorial Hall Kolkata, Dastkari Haat Samiti, Devi Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, Kalakriti Archives, Heritage Transport Museum, Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres & Ashrams, and the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute.
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Breaking The Mold: Artist's Modern Miniatures Remix Islamic Art

Source NPR by Bilal Qhreshi
As a young art student at Lahore's National College of Arts, Shahzia Sikander says she was fascinated by miniature paintings. And while she acknowledges it was a strict and "craft-oriented way of working," she saw miniatures as a language to say new things. For her graduate thesis, she created a miniature painting that broke the mold: a scroll that was 13 inches tall and 5 feet long and featured more than a dozen interconnected illustrations. More importantly, it was a deeply personal piece depicting the daily life of a modern Pakistani woman.
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“The Indian Frida Kahlo” Tops Sotheby’s Asian, Islamic Art Sale Plans

Source by Marck BeechBlouin Art Info by
A self-portrait by the modernist painter Amrita Sher-Gil, who is sometimes billed as the Indian Frida Kahlo, is one of the highlights of Sotheby’s London’s annual Indian and Islamic Week sales. Sher-Gil, who died in 1941 aged 28, is considered as one of the mother of Modern Indian art. Like Kahlo, with whom she shares Hungarian heritage, Sher-Gil was a rebel who broke barriers in art and life. With about half her 174 documented works in that brief career held by the Indian National Gallery of Modern Art, few appear at auction.
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