‘Many Indias’ in one exhibition: An ode to indigenous art forms in the country

Source The Indian Express
Different genres that represent harmony within the diverse culture of India will all come together in an upcoming art exhibition that will showcase tribal forms like Gond, Kalamkari and Madhubani. Organised by Must Art Gallery and AK Gallerie, the week-long “Many Indias” art show will run at Visual Art Gallery from August 26 to August 31. “Indigenous tribal artists from all over India will showcase the language of 12 different genres of folk and tribal art of the land,” said curator Alka Pande. “The theoretical underpinnings of the writings of Ramachandra Guha, Arjun Appardurai and Dipesh Chakraborty, cultural historians like Jyotindra Jain, Sirish Rao, Gita Wolf and Ayyappa Paniker led me to conceive the idea of the show,” she added.
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Get set for PondyPHOTO fest starting tomorrow

Source The Hindu
Mark your calendars from August 27 to September 11. PondyPHOTO 2016, the second edition of the festival organised by the PondyArt Foundation, is back at the Old Port on the southern end of the boulevard. Apart from workshops, film screenings, community outreach initiatives and cultural performances including a rock concert, the fest will exhibit 400 large-format photographs this year. Kasha Vande, Festival Director, in a press release issued on Wednesday, noted that the festival is themed on ‘water’ and aims to build social awareness on the evolving relationship between water and human beings, economic development and climate change.
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Interior Design Russie

Source Interior Design Russie

Delhi confidential: Art Connoisseur

Source The Indian Express
While Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi’s animal rights activism is common knowledge, she also shares a passion for arts. Stacked in a corner of her office in Shastri Bhawan are more than three dozen framed Gond paintings. The minister has recently bought them from painters Bhajju Shyam and Dinesh Shyam, who were trained under renowned tribal artist Jangarh Singh Shyam. Maneka, who was Minister of State for Culture in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, is an admirer of Jangarh Singh and often buys and gifts the late artist’s paintings to people close to her.
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The search for future Modernists

Source Livemint by Elizabeth Kuruvilla
Christie’s decision to showcase contemporary Indian artists has been influenced in large part by the increasing interest being shown by Western museums in Indian artists. If Tate Modern has an ongoing retrospective of Bhupen Khakhar, a retrospective of Nasreen Mohamedi concluded at the Met Breur in New York this June. While the Guggenheim showed Gaitonde in 2014-15, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles exhibited Zarina in 2012, while The Art Institute of Chicago has shown Jitish Kallat and Nilima Sheikh in the past five years. “We felt this is the moment (to bring them in again),” says Klein. And especially since the auction was happening in New York. While Pakistani art does well in London, Klein points out that New York is where Indian art has many more serious buyers, both high quality trophy piece collectors as well as younger American collectors looking at the contemporaries, who look at South Asian art as growth markets. Having decided to hedge their bets with the contemporaries, Christie’s has been careful not to exaggerate the prices. The estimated prices for some works are considerably lower than the prices that the artists realized in auctions during the golden period.
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Bhupen Khakhar attaqué à la Tate : toute l’Inde en défense

Source Asialyst par Franck Barthélémy
Le 30 mai, Mark Hudson, qui a du voir quelques tableaux en avant-première sur son ordinateur, écrit pour le Telegraph un article mièvre qui décrit quelques tableaux, en avouant à demi-mot ne pas vraiment avoir les clés pour les lire. Le lendemain, Jonathan Jones, donne son avis : l’exposition est nulle. En quelques centaines de mots, il explique qu’il ne comprend pas comment les œuvres de Khakhar ont pu passer les portes de la Tate. Et bien sûr, il ne recommande pas l’exposition qu’il qualifie de mauvaise utilisation de l’espace du musée. Il lui donne 1 étoile sur 5. La discussion aurait très bien pu s’arrêter là. Après tout, qui lit les critiques d’art dans les grands quotidiens ? Celle-là, quelle qu’en soit sa teneur et sa nature, aurait très bien pu passer inaperçue. En Europe, sans aucun doute. En Inde ? La communauté artistique s’en offusque et se vexe. Dès l’article publié, les réactions (et les insultes) s’enchainent sur le site du Guardian. Salman Rushdie, ami de l’artiste, s’en mêle et conseille des lectures à Jonathan Jones.
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Singapour, le nouveau terrain de jeux de l’art contemporain

Source The Good Life par Natacha Wolinski
Singapour, au sortir de l’aéroport, est une forêt de grues. Partout se construisent les immeubles de verre et d’acier qui miroitent comme des Ray‐Ban anodisées. Ici se gagnent des hectares sur la mer, sur la forêt tropicale et sur le ciel, comme si la ville‐État de 647,8 km2 se piquait d’une soudaine expansion céleste. Singapour, îlot urbain situé à l’extrême sud de la péninsule de la Malaisie, s’épuise en rêves de grandeur. Elle a fait de son port le deuxième de la planète après celui de Shanghai. Elle a fait de son centre d’affaires la quatrième place financière du monde. Elle a fait de ses habitants les Suisses de l’Asie, avec un ratio de millionnaires (près de 1 million sur 5,4 millions d’habitants) qui ridiculise ceux de Hong Kong, du Qatar ou du Koweït. Devenue un hub pour le négoce et la finance planétaires, Singapour se projette déjà ailleurs et nourrit des visées autrement plus stratégiques. La ville se rêve désormais en plaque tournante des arts et de la culture pour toute l’Asie du Sud‐Est.
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After Christie’s Saffronart, DAG Modern takes auction route in India

Source The Financial Express by Kunal Doley
After Christie’s and Saffronart, another art house, DAG Modern, is taking the auction route in India. Clearly, art auctions are no more the preserve of the West. The trend continues. Last year, Saffronart, a premier auctioneer with deep Indian roots, appointed Hugo Weihe, a former international director of Asian art at Christie’s, as its new CEO. The development was seen as a rightful moment for Indian art to further shine on the global map and came just a couple of months before the auction house’s 15th-anniversary sale that totalled about R82.60 crore. Now, another art house, DAG Modern, is taking the auction route. Clearly, art auctions are no more the preserve of the West.
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Christie’s: Lifting Fallen Angels

Source Barrons by Richard C. Morais
It’s the bane of collectors. They go to sell a painting at auction, but the bids come in below the work’s reserve price, and it fails to sell. In art industry parlance, the work has been “burned,” and now it’s hard to unload, even at a steep ­discount. Artists can experience a similar kind of scorching. If faddish enthusiasm for an artist suddenly moves on to some other ephemera du jour, and the prices for his or her works tank, it’s virtually impossible for the artist to make a comeback. ­­­­No one wants to make a market in an artist who has ­already left a group of collectors holding the bag. Enter Deepanjana Klein, international head of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, who is wading into this largely ignored universe of burned works and artists, trying to revive ­interest in the “fallen angels” of India’s contemporary art scene. Her experiment will take place at Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary auction on Sept. 14.
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An Indian Summer at Artcurial

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Seven artists and authors who inspired India

Source News Nation
India is celebrating 70th year of Independence. Although India is much older, but in this post independence era, the new India has been going forward leaps and bounds on the shoulders of giants who have managed to inspire every Indian through the generations. To celebrate India’s 70th Independence Day, every day, we will bring you seven such people from a different sector. Today, Young @ 70: Seven artists and authors who inspired India.
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Fields of sight: Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad

Source Open democracy by Stuti Kakar
A project where urban life intersects with rural landscapes — the collaboration between photographer Gauri Gill and Warli artist Rajesh Vangad takes the audience to places beyond their imagination, on a visual trip away from cityscapes. Creating a dialogue between two people from different walks of life, this hybrid creation amalgamates photography and indigenous Warli painting.
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