Why the India Story is a success story

Source Verve by Ranjabati Das
Putting the spotlight on Indian design, and with a promise to ‘Revive Reinvent Relove’ quintessential Indian aesthetics, this mega event, that’s rooted in its ‘made in India’ philosophy, took over the sprawling grounds of Swabhumi heritage centre in Kolkata last week. The India Story (TIS) 2016 is an initiative conceived by Madhu Neotia, spearheaded with the help of food entrepreneur Abhilasha Sethia, co-initiator and trustee of Neotia Arts Trust, and curated by designer Nil. “India is so vast that there are many possibilities to explore and it’s only going to get bigger with every passing year. This year we had 70,000 visitors and despite being a ticketless event, the crowd was really good. We could have done it in New York or Toronto but we didn’t want to deprive the people of Kolkata…this is our gift to them and the city,” says Neotia.
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Resistance Through Reconstruction: “Staging the Past” at Art Heritage, New Delhi

Source Blouin Art Info by Paroma Mukherjee
Resistance has become a way of life in Iran and a long period of censorship (especially during the fall of the Shah and the war) has resulted in artists working around the harsh political and social realities. Azadeh Akhlaghi and Babak Kazemi, two Iranian photographers, are showing their work, presented together as “Staging the Past” at Art Heritage, Triveni Kala Sangam in Delhi. Both artists have faced restrictions of the political regime and their individual responses in their artistic expression are a reflection of the socio-political situation in Iran.
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This is how Sangita Jindal and daughter Tarini Jindal Handa are promoting contemporary art

Source Vogue India by Gayatri Rangachari Shah
From setting up the 10-acre-large arts village Kaladham in the JSW township in Vijayanagar to starting Art India, the country’s leading magazine for contemporary art, Sangita Jindal is a patron whose engagement with art goes far beyond the act of acquiring. A champion of Indian art for more than a quarter of a century, as the chairperson of JSW Foundation, the non-profit arm of JSW (a colossal steel and energy conglomerate run by husband Sajjan), Sangita proactively promotes heritage as well as contemporary art. “Art is not a vanity project for her,” observes Shireen Gandhy, director of Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai.
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Review: Bringing Tribal Art Into the Mainstream Arena

Source The Wire by Deborah Thiagarajan
Tara Books’ editors Gita Wolf and Arun Wolf took the opportunity to create discussions and dialogues with the artists about their relationship to the museum and the exhibitions they have installed. Along with their interviews and interactions with the artists, they put forth arguments that indigenous peoples in India need to be projected on an equal footing with other artists and art forms, and that their rich individual and community resources and knowledge need to be recognised and encouraged so that much of their traditional wisdom will be preserved and passed on to future generations. Museums, they say, have a major role in projecting indigenous art and artists into the mainstream and for creating opportunities for them to experiment and connect their art to the world around them. As they rightly noted, the world of tribes is swiftly changing and this too needs to find a place in their work and how their work is perceived.
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Sonal Singh on India's developing art landscape

Source Femina
“I would argue that there is already a global market for Indian art. We have been selling in this category in New York and London for almost twenty years and see ever increasing interest in the category from all collectors, regardless of where they are based. Many of the artists included in our inaugural India sale are increasingly shown in major museums and institutions around the world. For example, there will be a major retrospective of V.S. Gaitonde’s work at the Guggenheim in New York this year.”
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Plus jamais seul

Source La Maison Rouge

Plus jamais seul, Hervé Di Rosa et les arts modestes, poursuit le cycle des expositions de La maison rouge consacré aux collections privées. Après Arnulf Rainer en 2005 et Jean-Jacques Lebel en 2010, la fondation invite pour la troisième fois un artiste à mettre en regard son travail avec les œuvres et objets qu’il a collectés. Figure incontournable de la scène artistique et acteur majeur de la Figuration Libre, Hervé Di Rosa (né à Sète en 1959) s’est engagé à partir des années 1980 dans la reconnaissance de l’art modeste qu’il définit lui-même comme « proche de l’art populaire, de l’art primitif, de l’art brut mais ne s’y réduit pas. Il est autant composé d’objets manufacturés que d’objets uniques, pour la plupart sans grande valeur marchande mais à forte plus-value émotionnelle. Les amateurs se retrouvent au-delà du regard critique, de la notion du bon ou du mauvais goût, de la rigueur esthétique, dans un sentiment de bonheur éphémère et spontané, aux parfums de souvenirs d’enfance et de plaisirs simples et non théorisés ».
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Souza’s Depiction of Christ’s Burial Fetches 80 Times 1998 Price at Sotheby’s Auction

Source The Wire by John Elliott
London: Sotheby’s on Tuesday dispelled some of the gloom and uncertainty emanating from a poor Christie’s $3.8m auction of South Asian art in New York last month when its annual London auction yielded sales totalling £4.02m – $4.90m – at the depleted pound’s current post-Brexit level. The top lot was a memorable depiction of Christ’s burial by Francis Newton Souza titled ‘The Deposition’ that sold for a hammer price of £1.30m – £1.57m ($1.92m, Rs12.78 crore) including buyer’s premium. The hammer price was just over two to three times a surprisingly low estimate of £400,000-£600,000. The tragic but colourful painting – of Christ’s body being moved by his followers – was last sold in 1998 for £12,000 by London’s Grosvenor Gallery. In a demonstration of the surge in top prices since then, its value has risen 80 times in the intervening 18 years (after adjusting for inflation).
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Les icônes urbaines du street art

Source ArtsixMic par Laurélia Torno
Contemporain, éphémère et terrain de prédilection des graffitis, pochoirs, stickers, affichages, yarn bombing et autres installations, les icônes urbaines du street art quittent les murs de nos rues pour envahir à leur manière le MAC Lyon pour cette fin d’année 2016 avec comme représentants Charley Case de Belgique, Jaz d’Argentine, Kid Kréol & Boogie de La Réunion, Addam Yekutieli aka Know Hope d’Israël, Reko Rennie d’Australie, Saner du Mexique, Teck d’Ukraine, Elliot Tupac du Pérou et Wenna de Chine, l’universalité de l’ensemble de ces artistes permettant de confronter et de fondre des univers éloignés et variés. Le commissariat de l’exposition a été confié à Julien Malland, plus connu dans le monde du graffiti sous le nom de Seth et apprécié pour son ouverture au monde et au dialogue artistique, et à Hervé Perdriolle, promoteur de la Figuration Libre, cofondateur de l’Art Modeste au début des années 90 et passionné d’art indien représentatif des cultures populaires et tribales qu’il a exposé en France.
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WALL DRAWINGS - ICONES URBAINES EN IMAGES

La Fondation Cartier au Printemps de Septembre

Source ArtsixMic par Jean-Marc Lebaupin
Depuis 1984, date de sa création, la collection de la Fondation Cartier s’est enrichie au fil des expositions, rassemblant aujourd’hui quelques 1400 œuvres et réunissant environ 300 artistes originaires du monde entier. Faite d’expériences vécues, nourrie du temps passé et des dialogues noués avec les artistes, cette collection présente des géographies hors des sentiers battus, des idées et échanges dans les domaines du savoir les plus divers et les plus actuels, des œuvres uniques nées de commandes. Ces œuvres, qui ont toutes fait l’objet d’exposition à la Fondation Cartier, sont les témoins des liens forts, uniques et durables que la Fondation entretient avec chaque artiste. La collection de la Fondation Cartier raconte une autre histoire de l’art contemporain qui fait de l’ouverture sur le monde dans tous ses aspects, de la dimension humaine et de la relation privilégiée avec les artistes, les éléments essentiels d’une programmation.
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Waswo X. Waswo’s “Photowallah” at Exhibit 320

Source Blouin Art Info by Paroma Mukherjee
Having travelled in India for over sixteen years, artist Waswo X. Waswo built himself a home and a studio in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Nine years of living there and several collaborations down, his latest exhibition promises a thorough reexamination of the photograph as an ethnographic document. A careful consideration of photography as a medium that lent itself to the traditional posed portrait style in the studios in India during the late 19th and early 20th centuries is what makes this show a homage to the very tradition that it also critiques. “Photowallah,” presented by Tasveer, opened at Exhibit 320 in New Delhi on October 8 and binds together three series (“A Studio in Rajasthan,” “Gauri Dancers” and “New Myths”), which were produced in Waswo’s studio in Udaipur, Rajasthan.
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‘Dedicated To Building Our Business In India’

Source BW BusinessWorld
Souza and Gaitonde works, which will be displayed at your forthcoming auction, are garnering a lot of attention. What according to you makes these master artists of modern India so special? As leading figures of the 20th century avant-garde, both Souza and Gaitonde transformed the face of Indian art. These artists, alongside other Indian modernist masters, are now rightly receiving critical reappraisal in major institutions across the globe. The Guggenheim Museum recently staged a landmark exhibition of Gaitonde’s work in both New York and Venice, and we’re incredibly excited to offer an important work by the artist in our upcoming sale from the 1970s. Souza was the intellectual founder of the Progressive Movement and has been already shown and collected by the Tate in London in 2005.
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Artist residency programmes in India have opened up new space for creativity

Source Sunday Guardian Live by Bhumika Popli
An art centre dedicated in developing contemporary art practice, Khoj International Artists Association also offers a number of art residencies. Sitara Chowfla, curator, Khoj, sheds light on the selection process of residencies offered by Khoj. She says, “We look at the artists who are developing new and different kind of works; often who are experimenting with new mediums and ways. We focus on thematic works, for example we decide on a topic and ask artists to send applications based on the set of ideas, which can be explored further. We put this call on our website and examine the proposals sent to us. Ultimately when we are building a residency we try to build a group of artists who we think would work together and gain learning from each other.”
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