2017: When art broke out of gallery walls and went public

Source New Indian Express by Trisha Mukherjee
Art has traditionally been used as a medium of expression but conversations have often been restricted within the four walls of a gallery, catering only to a niche audience. In 2017, however, public art took on a life of its own -- breaking down walls of confined spaces and spilling out to the streets, making the art experience accessible to all. So the 142-year-old Sassoon Docks, housing one of Mumbai's oldest fish markets, became a vibrant canvas and an old barge in Goa was transformed into an art space during the 2nd Serendipity Arts festival. Earlier this month, designer and artist Manish Arora embellished Mumbai's Jindal mansion with yards of cloth, hand embroidered and printed, as a symbol of love and peace. Walls in public spaces became canvases for those looking to expand their creative spaces, whether at the ghats in Pushkar or a Delhi Metro station wall.
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"Textiles of Bengal" at Mingei International Museum

Source Blouin Art Info
Mingei International Museum in San Diego, California is currently hosting an exhibition of works titled “KANTHA - Recycled and Embroidered Textiles of Bengal.” The show features traditional quilted textiles created from the remains of worn garments — the craft technique is known as Kantha. These works are created in West Bengal in India and Bangladesh. Historically, the area of Bay of Bengal where river Ganges flows into the sea has been the source of the finest cotton ever produced. The works on display are completely handmade and the embroidery is created through the use of thread from the colored borders of cast-off sarees. Kanthas depicts colorful sceneries from rural areas and elements drawn from a rich local repertoire.
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Discovering the best and brightest in contemporary art at Serendipity Festival

Source Sunday Guardian by Bhumika Popli
Primarily famous for the sun and the sand, for its churches and nightlife, Goa’s Panjim city readjusts itself to an entirely new setting for about eight days every December, to host the Serendipity Arts Festival. This year’s edition was held from 15-22 December, with a range of art events, exhibitions, talks and musical performances feature on the event’s week-long billing. “Goa is a pretty amazing place, it is scenically fantastic and December has a great weather,” said Sunil Kant Munjal, founder and chief patron, Serendipity Arts Foundation, on his choice of making Goa the base for Serendipity. “Goa celebrates all kinds of different cultures and is very inclusive of people belonging to different cultures, this is exactly what we are trying to show in this.”
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Les tout petits prix de Noël de l'art contemporain

Source Les Echos par Judith Benhamou-Huet
Enfin, Hervé Perdriolle, spécialiste de l'art indien contemporain, possède une galerie en appartement, rue Gay-Lussac, accessible uniquement sur rendez-vous. Il a consacré un catalogue entier à ce qu'il appelle des « affordable curiosities ». Une impression laser de 2008, éditée à 100 exemplaires, représentant un chasseur assis les jambes croisées par Atul Dodiya (né en 1959), un des noms célèbres de l'art contemporain indien est proposé à 600 euros. Le peintre de Vadodara T. Venkanna (né en 1980), qui a acquis un auditoire relativement international, aime bien, lui aussi, revisiter l'histoire de l'art à sa manière. Il a réalisé un ensemble de petites esquisses à l'encre (13 × 10 cm) qui montrent des personnages en mouvement. Ils sont à vendre 300 euros pièce.
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The core idea is to push contemporary art: Aparajita Jain

Source DNA by Manish D Mishra
Art purveyor Aparajita Jain started Seven Art Limited (a gallery based in the heart of New Delhi), a month-and-a-half after Lehman Brothers collapsed. Quite a daring step at that point in time. However, with her single-minded vision and tireless passion over the years, she managed to create a brand and nurture some of the game-changing artists of our times. In 2010, the dynamic visionary founded the Saat Saath Arts Foundation (SSAF), a first-of-its-kind initiative she built to catalyse international exchange between India and the world. The foundation is forging a plethora of close-knit artistic relationships with a panoply of international curators, museums and galleries.
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Art is about creative problem solving: Peter Nagy

Source DNA by Manish D Mishra
How significant is the role of the arts? - I’m not the person to be asking that as my entire life and world revolves around art. Honestly, I would ask why would someone not be interested in art? It doesn’t have to be contemporary art, as all art forms and from all times and cultures are connected. But culture in general is now the engine of the economy and art overlaps with all other disciplines and vocations. Art is about creative problem solving and critical thinking, and I think all aspects of our life and world have to be approached with more creativity.
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Tribal Art Forms: bringing Indian ‘tribal arts’ into the mainstream

Source Livemint by Tanuj Kumar
Averse to presenting a fossilized version of “tribal arts”, the platform aims to show it as a “living tradition” that is in dialogue with contemporary practices. While the folk arts were traditionally intertwined with religion, mythology and ritualistic practices of indigenous people, their move from the village walls to the white cube of a gallery or people’s homes requires a sympathetic filter of research and curation that Tribal Art Forms can provide. If the platform could enable meaningful discussions, the term “tribal art” could perhaps be reclaimed. Many aesthetic terms were initially used pejoratively, to mock passing fads and fancies. “Gothic” was first used by its critics to describe barbaric or unrefined arts; “baroque”, to describe kitsch or the excessively ornamental. Both terms have been salvaged. Avenues like Tribal Art Forms, with an informed approach in curation, fostering relationships between indigenous artists and the public, could help redefine the term for our times and perhaps, someday, even render “tribal” altogether superfluous.
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Kochi-Muziris Biennale a major driver of art, culture in India: Report

Source The New Indian Express
KPMG in India Chairman and CEO Arun Kumar said, "It is exciting to see how the biennale has rapidly become one of the leading global festivals of contemporary art along the lines of its European counterpart, the Venice Biennale." The event also garnered huge support on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Within the first ten weeks of the first edition of KMB, it gained 12.3 million hits on Facebook and has 90,274 followers as on 18 May 2017 on this social media site, the report added.
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The British Museum Begins Its Big Makeover With a New China and India Gallery

Source Artnet News by Javier Pes
The Queen officially opened the British Museum’s Gallery of China and South Asia in early November in the presence of its benefactor, the Hong Kong- and London-based businessman, philanthropist, and former museum trustee Joseph Hotung. But it wasn’t until this past weekend that the public finally got to see the full reveal of the spectacularly revamped space. Formerly the Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of Oriental Antiquities, the redesigned and renamed gallery runs the length of the museum building above its north entrance in Bloomsbury.
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FotoFest Announces Details for 2018 Edition Focusing on India

Source FotoFest
“The artists, all of Indian origin, are imagining and responding to what India means today in its myriad complexities, given its ancient culture and more recent emancipation from British colonialism,” says Biennial Lead Curator Sunil Gupta. “They were selected by a process of portfolio reviews and face-to-face meetings with nearly three times as many artists than are in the show. The final short list was arrived at by assessing the engagement of their works with both the issues and the technology that define photography in the world today.”
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An exhibition in Delhi brings together key political works of the late artist-pedagogue KG Subramanyan

Source The Indian Express by Vandana Kalra
The panels in black and white illustrated by him now occupy centre spread in a solo dedicated to the artist at Delhi’s Art Heritage Gallery. Coming little more than a year after his demise in June 2016, the show “Seeking a Poetry of the Real” brings together his key political works, that are also some of his most significant works 1969 onwards. The period before this, his close associate R Siva Kumar describes, was a “period of extended self-preparation”. In the exhibition catalogue, he writes, “During the first two decades of his career he appears to have had little interest in the social and political world around him — at least when we look at it both in relation to his later art, and to his activities in the decade between 1938 and 1948.”
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Jyoti Bhatt: Embracing rural rhythms

Source Milliennium Post by Uma Nair
Jyoti Bhatt brings to Rukshaan Art in Mumbai a show that captures his journeys across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal and Bihar from the 1960's to the 1990's. Walking into India's villages and capturing women and children and huts and walls, this series of photographs is more than a documentation. It is an archive of the living traditions of India's rustic villages – the arts and crafts of the folk idiom that were not just forms, but living relics of the rituals that were integrated into the lives of humble dwellers embodying narratives that hark back to centuries ago.
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Folk Theorems

Source Open the Magazine by Ritika Kochhar
“Not since Pupul Jayakar’s times has anyone in the government looked at revitalising these crafts and artists,” Pundole says. “Now the private sector will have to take it up. The original traditions slowly started dismantling as education and developments in science caused people to question religion and blind beliefs. Now, as it continues to grow out of a collectible base, more people are producing it. But they have to ensure that they aren’t cloning the work of successful artists and focusing too much on stylisation and repetition.” What’s the difference between tribal and folk art? “Folk art is familiar. It’s traditional and passed on from generation to generation, mostly in agrarian communities. It’s used for decoration and aesthetics mainly. The spirit of the work is in the imagery. Tribal comes out of nomadic people and the imagery is based on certain practices or rituals. It’s mostly functional. It had no identity till J Swaminathan brought it to the public eye. Non-urban is a term I like to use. Tribal and folk has too many connotations,” he says.
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Leading Indian, South Asian galleries to woo visitors at India Art Fair 2018

Source Business Standard
Platform, which acts as a springboard for emerging art practices and art collectives from South Asia, will welcome Tribal Art Forms and Delhi Crafts Council (both New Delhi) for the first time. Pichvai Tradition & Beyond (New Delhi) will return, making vernacular arts a particular focus. Platform will also welcome back Britto Art Trust(Dhaka), Nepal Arts Council (Kathmandu), Swaraj Art Archive (Noida) and Blueprint 12(New Delhi). Complementing the fair's regional perspective, carefully selected international galleries will showcase globally-recognised artists, many of whom have never exhibited in India before. David Zwirner (London/New York/Hong Kong), Blain-Southern (London/Berlin),Karla Osorio Gallery (Brasilia), Mo J Gallery (Busan) and Richard Koh Fine Art(Singapore/Kuala Lumpur) will participate for the first time.
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Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018 picks its first artist

Source The New Indian Express by
Versatile and provocative painter Nilima Sheikh, whose illustrious body of works is a scorching portrayal of the turmoil in Kashmir valley and a mystical depiction of women-centric issues, has become the first artist to get the curator’s nod for the fourth edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), which begins exactly a year later -- December 12, 2018.Anita Dube, the curator of the upcoming KMB that is hosted by the Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), announced Sheikh’s name today, formally setting in motion the process of selection of her artists for the high-profile contemporary art event that has redefined the cultural landscape in Kerala and India. During her over five-decade career, the 72-year-old Vadodara-based painter has produced an incredibly magnificent oeuvre, wielding her brush to make an intense depiction of subjects, with particular emphasis on Kashmir, Partition and displacement. Her strength also lies in the portrayal of grimness of contemporary life like oppressive patriarchy and the silent suffering of women that crack social fabric and she does it through use of traditional idioms and motifs.
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India’s First Public Sculpture Park Opens in a Spectacular 18th-Century Fort

Source Artnet News by Skye Arundhati Thoma
As for the impressive location, Nagy told artnet News that the majestic surroundings provide the perfect setting for contemporary artworks. “It was important to find something not too large and sprawling, where we would not have been able to maintain a focus. Madhavendra Palace is just so different in its architecture and modernist aesthetic—it provided us with the focus we needed.”
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Placing contemporary art in history

Source Livemint by Radhika Iyengar
Featuring works by artists such as Subodh Gupta, Thukral & Tagra, Bharti Kher, Stephen Cox and Evan Holloway, the Park boasts of larger-than-life bronzes, beautifully carved out wood pieces and stone works. Only three pieces have been made from scratch for this space, “everything else is borrowed and are older works”, says Nagy. Some even date back three decades, including a 1984 bronze creation by the late French artist Arman.
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Painting outside patriarchy

Source The Hindu Business Line by Rosalyn D’Mello
It is a universally unacknowledged secret that Amrita Sher-Gil struggled with facial hair — a characteristic potentially revealing of her Punjabi genes, despite her half-Hungarian matrilineal ancestry. In the postscript of her 1934 letter to her parents announcing her desire to return to India from France, primarily in the interest of her artistic development, she rants about her hairy woes. “My beard is growing and increasing hopelessly and it looks horrible and I am plucking at it all day long.”
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Jangarh Singh Shyam's Enchanted Forest

Source Millennium Post by Uma Nair

This New Sassoon Dock Art Project Shows How Barriers Could Be Broken

Source Mid-Day by Benita Fernando
This has been the case at Sassoon Dock, situated on the southern tip of the city, ever since the art project opened early in November. Famous for its historic association as the one of the oldest docks in the city and its fish market, and equally infamous for its stench, the character of Sassoon Dock has been transformed during the course of this initiative. The team behind it, St+Art India Foundation -- a New-Delhi-based non-profit committed to bringing Indian and international artists to create public art in urban spaces -- has aptly used the tagline Art for All, for this project.
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An exhibition brings together iconic works of art to tell India’s story in relation to the world

Source The Hindu by Ranvir Shah
Fashioned out of white quartz, two little hand axes sit together at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS). They look similar — jagged, oblong, unremarkable. But these tools, dating back 1.7 million years — one from Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) and the other from Attirampakkam (Tamil Nadu) — are here for a reason: they tell the story of shared ancestry across continents. And this is the starting point of ‘India and the World: A History in Nine Stories’, an exhibition that tracks the country’s interactions with the rest of the world over a million years through over 200 iconic objects — tools, seals, sculptures, paintings, pottery, textiles. The objects have been brought together from collections across India and the British Museum to commemorate 70 years of Independence.
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Climate for change

Source Financial Times by Melanie Gerlis
To mark its 25th anniversary next year, Dag Modern gallery, headquartered in New Delhi, plans to make its mark with a show of around 1,000, mostly 20th-century Indian works from its collection. They will be presented across 18 exhibitions under one structure in the grounds of the city’s Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. Slated for February, the month-long show will overlap with the India Art Fair (February 9-12). Both events will focus attention on India’s art market, which is still small in the scheme of things — accounting for about half a per cent of global auction sales in 2016, according to the Tefaf Art Market Report.
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What happens when some of India’s biggest artists display their work in a tech park?

Source Scroll In by Nikhita Venugopal
Anu Menda, the managing trustee of RMZ Foundation said that over the next few years, they plan to add roughly 20 more sculptures as well as expand the collection to Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai. The foundation is an initiative of RMZ Corp, one of India’s leading commercial real estate developers. Although the artists showcased at Ecoworld have gained both international success and recognition, their work needs a platform for greater exposure in India, Menda said. By creating a public gallery, the foundation offers both employees and visitors a chance to experience and enjoy the presence of good art.
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Indian Art in Paris

Source Frieze by Skye Arundhati Thomas
In the film I am Twenty (1967) by Indian filmmaker S. N. S. Sastry, the narrator asks a group of young men and women – all of whom were born on 15 August 1947 (the day of Indian Independence) – how they feel about the 20-year-old nation state of India. A young man with a mop-top, unimpressed by the question, replies: ‘I don't have any love for the country, I don’t want to show off like other people and say, “Oh, I’ve got a love for the country” – whom shall I tell? Whom shall I tell that I have a love for this country?’ He bursts into a Beatles song instead: ‘I should have known better with a girl like you.’
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Arts What’s Behind the UK’s New Love Affair with Asian Art?

Source The London Economic
This September the Saatchi Gallery launched its annual START art fair. The event serves as a showcase for emerging artists around the world. Among them this year were a number of exciting Asian artists: contemporary Indian artist Owais Husain, Chinese performance artist Liu Bolin and Vietnamese painter Nguyen Van Du. This is part of a growing trend which has seen Asian art explode in the UK over recent years. The work of Asian artists has sold for huge amounts at auction, and has been displayed in wildly popular shows around the country. As works sell for record sums and the public floods to Asian exhibitions in record numbers, what is behind this new fascination?
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Read between the dots

Source The Telegraph by Srimoyee Bagchi

Bengaluru festival 'Experimenta' celebrates experimental cinema

Source The New Indian Express
Dubbed as Indias first and only international biennial celebrating experimental films and moving image art in India, "Experimenta" kicks off on Tuesday. The festival offers over 70 contemporary and rare historical films from across the world over 6 days at the Goethe Institut Max Mueller Bhavan here. The programme sections include Artist Profiles and Talks, Curated Programs, International Competition, Feature Focus and Performances. In its endeavour to celebrate the history of experimental cinema, the festival will screen rarely seen archival restorations of critically acclaimed films from Mozambique, Algeria, the US, Italy and India.
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Sold! Camille Claudel art sells at $4.1 million in Paris, breaks records

Source Hindustan Times
The star of the auction late Monday, a bronze called “The Abandonment”, went for nearly 1.2 million euros, twice its estimate. The statue is one of a series inspired by the Indian myth “Shakuntala” about an overlooked wife from the Hindu epic “Mahabharata” from which Claudel drew parallels with her own tumultuous relationship with Rodin, who was both her lover, boss and artistic rival. It was snapped up by an “international collector”, auction house Artcurial said. Interest in the “unprecedented” sale of bronze, plaster and clay works still owned by the artist’s family was intense, it added. French museums also stepped in to try to stop 12 works that were sold at the auction to stop them falling into private hands or going abroad.
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‘In India’ by William Gedney at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Source Blouin Art Info
William Gedney is the pioneer of documentary photography in America who failed to get the recognition that he deserved during his lifetime, yet was celebrated only postheumously. “How do Indian streets differ from American streets?” photographer William Gedney questioned to himself during his stay in India from 1969 to 1971 in Varanasi, where he stayed with a local family. He photographed life in the ghats and sometimes in narrow, winding lanes of the city. Ten years later he travelled to Kolkata and shot the city life. He reflected his experiences and memories of travelling to India in his journal notes, “Your eye is led from one thing to another. Before it can rest your sight must move on. The movement pulls you. The crowds on all sides, wagons, bicycles, vendors, cars, cattle, a thousand shops, the curbs lined with goods, lumber carried across the street, horns blowing, color dashes in front of you, each street a tunnel of movement, of frenzy,” he wrote in his journal in 1969, when he took the first of his several trips to India on a Fulbright fellowship which had greatly affected him.
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The word for world is forest: Vibrant art stories of Gond folklore

Source The Indian Express by Vandana Kalra
A new publication of over 100 works dives deep into the vibrant art of the late Jangarh Singh Shyam, the artist who put Gond folklore on the global map. Art collector Mitchell S Crites distinctly remembers the first time he met Gond artist Jangarh Singh Shyam. It was in the winter of 1987 and the world was yet to discover Shyam’s art rooted in the Pradhan Gond folklore and tradition of Madhya Pradesh. After hearing of his talent and purchasing a couple of his works through dealers in Delhi, Crites paid him a visit at the Surajkund Mela in the capital. There, he found Shyam sitting on a bamboo mat under a large tree, dressed in faded jeans and a checked flannel shirt. The unassuming artist and Crites were to develop an association that lasted more than 15 years. Whenever Shyam travelled to Delhi from Bhopal, he would first visit Crites before any other collector in Delhi.
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‘India’s Rockefeller Artists’ at DAG Modern, New York

Source Blouin Art Info
The exhibition brings together important works by a number of Indian painters and sculptors, who has been invited in the American soil on grants sponsored by John D. Rockefeller III’s philanthropic vision. Through the JDR 3 rd Fund in the 1960s and 70s, and then through the Asian Cultural Council’s assistance, artists like V.S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, Ram Kumar, Bal Chhabda, Krishen Khanna, Natvar Bhavsar, Jyoti Bhatt, K.G. Subramanyan, A.M. Davierwala, Avinash Chandra, Arun Bose, Paritosh Sen, K.S. Kulkarni, Vinod Dave, Bhupen Khakhar,and Rekha Rodwittiya have been brought to the USA to experience the world of American art from a closer geographical proximity and share their learning and experiences to augment the artistic communities of both backgrounds.
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Dealers & the 'art' of faking it: Akbar Padamsee on how to avoid buying a counterfeit

The Economic Times by Rashmi Menon
Coming across fake paintings is one thing, says Padamsee. What’s worse are the attempts to influence him so that he can verify the paintings as genuine. “I met an art dealer recently, who put up a fake painting of mine. She took me there and photographed me. I was furious because it was not my painting. If she respects herself as a dealer, she need not have resorted to such tactics,” he recalls. Padamsee, though, looks at it pragmatically. “I haven’t lost anything. She loses her money. I told her clearly it wasn’t my painting. Despite that, if she wants to throw her money away, then do it. It’s your money. How difficult is it to check with me? I stay around the corner from her. She could have come by and asked. She didn’t want to. She said she bought it, but I don’t think she did,” he says.
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‘The Tagore Triad’ at Akar Prakar, Kolkata

Source Blouin Art Info
Akar Prakar, Kolkata is exhibiting Tagore family’s contributions to the world of arts. The exhibition features Rabindranath, Abanindranath, and Gaganendranath Tagore. Belonging to the same family yet their approach to painting was individualistic which redefined the history of Indian art. For them, art was not a mere form of visual expression, but a tool for protest against the regressive forces (social and political). These 3 artists created their own art form instead of following the Western art. The exhibition witnesses the rich heritage and legacy of our country in comparison with western modern art. Even today the creations of the 3 maestros are revered by the world despite the fact that modern art form has invaded the traditional techniques of art.
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Nalini Malani, une artiste pionnière indienne au Centre Pompidou

Source Le Quotidien de l'Art par Magali Lesauvage
Le Centre Pompidou consacre une rétrospective à l’artiste de 71 ans, pionnière en Inde de la performance et de la vidéo, dont l’œuvre mouvante mêle récit intime et drames de l’Histoire. Née en 1946 à Karachi (au futur Pakistan), un an avant la partition des Indes Britanniques en deux États (Inde et Pakistan), Nalini Malani a connu dès l’enfance l’exil à Calcutta, puis à Bombay. De ce lien intime avec les tourments de l’Histoire, l’artiste indienne a fait le fil conducteur de son œuvre, depuis la fin des années 1960 jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Parmi les premières œuvres de l’artiste, la vidéo Onanism (1969) montre sans fards l’orgasme d’une jeune femme et par là même l’audace de Nalini Malani à aborder le thème de la sexualité féminine, sujet encore tabou en Inde aujourd’hui.
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Given Power- From Tradition to Contemporary Folk and Tribal Art Exhibition

Source Global Fashion Street
Two contemporary galleries, – Exhibit320 and Blueprint12 – have come together to create a platform for Folk and Tribal Art.​ Given power – From tradition to contemporary’, a show that is an endeavor to showcase a selection of works collected from the interiors of Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and Maharashtra. The exhibition will inaugurate with a private preview on ​Thurs​day 23rd November 2017. The preview will be followed by a month long public viewing from ​Friday 2​4​th November – 24th December 2017.
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Jaipur’s new sculpture park welcomes contemporary Indian art with traditional architecture

Source Architectural Digest by Peter Nagy
High above the city of Jaipur, perched like an eagle looking for prey, stands the Madhavendra Bhawan palace. Built by Sawai Madho Singh at the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries, it is the most finely preserved element of the rambling Nahargarh Fort, which occupies the opposite end of the ridge from its more famous cousin, Amer Fort. Nahargarh, which dates back to the first half of the 18th century, is today little more than an impressive entry gate, an undulating wall following the geography of the hilltops, and an overgrown amphitheatre. This only creates a more incongruous setting for the stoicism of Madhavendra Bhawan, rigid in its geometric symmetries and heavyset countenance.
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You Can Help Rehabilitate Thousands Of Indians, With Just Art

Source Youth Ki Awa Az
Imagine a world without art: it would be drab, grey and probably unhappy. Thankfully, we live in a world where art is around every corner, be it in the form of graffiti, a painting in a fancy gallery or just a simple scribble made by a child. Art has been an essential form of expression right from the days of the early man painting in caves. This is exactly what the people at ArtReach think too. This unique not-for-profit aims to reach children and young people living in marginalised communities across India and transform their lives. They strive to bring contemporary and traditional Indian and international artists into care homes, homeless shelters, Dalit communities, remote tribal villages and municipal schools to teach and create art, shaping new opportunities.
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5 art industry insiders answer the biggest FAQs about buying art

Source Vogue India by Arundhati Thomas
Hire an art consultant if you wish to consider collecting art seriously and on a broader scale, and if you don’t have the desired knowledge or don’t know where to begin. Look for a person whom you can trust completely, someone who understands your taste, aspirations and concerns to help you collect as you would like to collect, and not merely to tick off names from a list. If you are, or wish to be, a serious collector, please remember you have a disease, and just like any other disease you need to get the right doctor to help cure it. But with art, you don’t need to cure it completely; you just need to control your levels in certain ways so you may collect meaningfully over the long term and with focus. A good consultant will understand your mind and heart in how you respond to artworks, and help you walk on that path over time to get things that will resonate with you.
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Inside the palatial New Delhi home of artist and collector Shalini Passi

Source Architectural Digest by Nikhil Khanna
Shalini Passi, her husband Sanjay, and son Robin, live in a sweeping curve of a home in New Delhi’s posh Golf Links neighbourhood. The house, shaped like a gentle boomerang, overlooks the 220 rolling, bucolic acres of the Delhi Golf Club; on some days you can even hear the whack of a Callaway on the 8th tee. Shalini’s house, however, is anything but bucolic—instead it is astonishing, filled, as it is, with art from floor to ceiling.
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In Pictures: Take a tour of the art-filled offices of the Jindals

Source Architectural Digest
(Right) This spiral staircase connects the executive floors of the JSW Centre in the Bandra-Kurla Complex. The installation is Jagannath Panda’s Wizard of the Wasteland; Photographer: Neville Sukhia; (Left) The Jindal Mansion located on Mumbai’s Pedder Road. Art sometimes spills out of this iconic building on Mumbai’s Pedder Road. Refurbished by Mumbai-based architecture firm Edifice, the clean-lined interiors house the Jindal family offices.
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Art and jewellery meet at Nirav Modi’s Mumbai office

Source Architectural Digest by Tora Agarwala
Years passed by, and the lilies resurfaced—this time though, as jewels in the necklaces and earrings that made up his eponymous brand NIRAV MODI’s Lotus collection. “Art has impacted my work directly and indirectly, and often provides a thought or a mood, which leads to a piece or a collection,” he says. But even in art, Modi’s inspirations are diverse—a Gond painting by the late Jangarh Singh Shyam that hangs in the diamond merchant’s Mumbai office (a museum in its own right) is the story behind his Mermaid Cuff collection. His daughters’ plastic bangles inspired the Embrace collection. And FN Souza’s 1974 work Metropolis inspired his Spring necklaces and earrings. “Art has to be something that mesmerizes me; the beauty of which, I cannot help but admire.”
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Riyas Komu on the need of the hour at the new Bihar Museum

Source Architectural Digest
“We owe it to Bihar and to ourselves; we owe it to Bihar’s rich heritage and long history,” said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during the inauguration of the main galleries of the Bihar Museum on October 2, this year. He also defended the public expenditure for it as a long-term cultural investment. The state was once at the centre of India’s political, spiritual and cultural development; so any apprehensions about the museum’s location are misplaced. The city already houses the third-oldest museum in the country, the illustrious Patna Museum, established in 1917, and which has a large collection of archaeological materials and artefacts. Now, the two museums will function complementarily in terms of the historical periods they cover.
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L'art contemporain indien a la cote

Source Le Revenu par Tim Witcher et Agnès Bun
Enrichis par la croissance économique du géant démographique d'Asie du Sud, les nouveaux magnats indiens permettent à des oeuvres d'artistes comme Vasudeo Gaitonde (1924-2001) d'atteindre des prix records. Mais cet engouement ne se cantonne pas aux salles d'enchères. Deux célèbres établissements parisiens, le musée Guimet et le centre Pompidou, exposent actuellement chacun une artiste indienne, jusqu'à janvier. Quant à l'Asia Society de New York, elle prépare une grande exposition d'artistes contemporains indiens pour l'année prochaine.
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Bharti Kher on how women artists are going to change the art world

Source Vogue India by Shahnaz Siganporia
Suddenly my success or how good I am will always be pegged to the fact that a single piece of my work sold for that much money. But is that the sum of my achievements? Although I honour and respect it, I resent it too. Is my career going to be based on the result of those two auctions, those two or three hours, a decade ago? Is this the lesson I want to teach my kids? That you are only worth how much money you bring in? But if we’re going to obsess over money, then let’s talk about money. The international art world in 2015 was worth US$ 63.8 billion (TEFAF art market report). China holds a 19 per cent share and the US accounts for 43 per cent, while the art world in Europe generates more money than agriculture.
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Madhvi Parekh

Madhvi Parekh 1972 oil pastel on paper 49x34 cm

Source DAG Modern Rétrospective Madhvi Parekh
Madhvi Parekh est pour moi l’une des plus grandes artistes indiennes. Pourquoi ? Elle me semble être la seule a réussir une synthèse parfaite entre l’art contemporain moderne et le folk art encore si vivace en Inde. Son art célèbre la contemporanéité intemporelle des arts premiers. Son art peut évoquer Klee que lui a fait découvrir son mari dès ses quinze ans. Mais bien plus encore son art évoque, laisse apparaître, transpire, des racines bien plus anciennes. Celles de son village natal du Gujarat. De Klee, elle retient la part la plus enfantine, la force primale tant recherchée également par Picasso. Avec ravissement aussi, certaines de ces oeuvres sont un écho profondément indien à certaines oeuvres de Gaston Chaissac et d’A. R. Penck. Les formes et les couleurs de Madhvi Parekh ont cette liberté pulsionnelle que l’on retrouve dans une seule autre forme d’art la danse. La danse qui était pour Elie Faure la première des manifestations artistiques. Hervé Perdriolle

"La danse, qui inaugurera les langages affectifs des sociétés primitives et qui est d’ailleurs le premier que l’on rencontre chez l’enfant n’est qu’une stylisation de ce besoin d’une forme liturgique élémentaire de "communion organisée", qui élève l’instinct individuel à la conscience la plus fervente, sinon la plus lucide, des intérêts supérieurs de la collectivité. Dans les tribus, elle rappelle sans cesse à cette collectivité, par ses rythmes puissants, par ses répétions rituelles, par ses retours périodiques qui célèbrent les événements les plus solennels de la vie sociale, qu’il convient de sauvegarder dans les moeurs l’ordre qu’enseigne aux hommes les manifestations constantes de l’univers astronomique et biologique : la succession régulières des saisons, les phases de la lune, le lever et le coucher du soleil et des étoiles, la migration des oiseaux, la périodicité du sommeil, de la faim, le battement de nos propres artères, le bruit cadencé de nos pas et jusqu’à la symétrie sensible des deux moitiés du corps de tous les êtres vivants - mystérieux ensemble mécanique qui donne à nos assises subconscientes la sensation d’un balancier régulateur dont chacun de nous perçoit confusément en lui, dans la société et le monde, l’universelle présence." Elie Faure L’universalité de l’art circa 1900

Madhvi Parekh 1979 sketch pen on paper 38x28 cm

Madhvi Parekh 2005 acrylic on canvas 91x152 cm

Breaking boundaries with brushstrokes

Source The New Indian Express by Medha Dutta
Madhvi Parekh is not your run-of-the-mill folk artist. Inspired by her artist husband, this 74-year-old painter picked up the brush only after her marriage. She borrows heavily from the folk art form of Gujarat—she hails from Sanjay, a small village in the state—and is what one would call ‘a contemporary artist’. To Manu, his wife seemed a natural contender for the space left behind by legendary Bengal artist Jamini Roy, who had begun at the start of the 20th century.A series on Christ and The Last Supper were a surprise for a world that believed that one cannot, or rather, doesn’t, merge Christ with folk art form. The artist smiles, “As a child I was drawn to Christianity as I had some Christian friends. Later, when I visited the Holocaust museum in Israel, I walked out very disturbed. Just outside there was a small, peaceful church. It seemed the opposite of all the hatred and atrocity. The image of Jesus attracted me and I started drawing him.” Madhvi defies any boundaries on her art. This independent-minded artist will not let you pin her down to one single form. One meeting with her and you know that this petite woman is made of steel—she merges styles and forms at her will and overwhelms the art world with her give-a-damn attitude.
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Tarq’s This Burning Land Belongs To You comes to London

Source Architectural Digest
Exhibiting within the beautiful Swiss Cottage Gallery — itself an architectural landmark building designed by Sir Basil Spence (renowned for his brilliant Modernist and Brutalist designs), Tarq’s searing new exhibition, This Burning Land Belongs To You, trains the spotlight on contemporary Indian art.
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6 Indians on contemporary art’s global power list

Source DNA
If going up 30 positions on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index made us happy, then the Raqs Media Collective has given us a cause to truly rejoice. The New Delhi-based art collective, comprising Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, has jumped 47 positions to take the 39th spot on ArtReview’s 2017 Power 100 list. The global list is considered to be the most established ranking in the contemporary art world, and is compiled by international contemporary art magazine ArtReview. Artists Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale feature on the 84th spot, down from 83 last year while art collector, patron and philanthropist Kiran Nadar makes a debut on the 99th position.
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Of Gonds and their Gods

Source Pune Mirror by Aurogeeta Das
Jangarh’s feelings towards these deities was a fascinating mixture of fear, awe, respect and love — feelings that extended to the many creatures of Mandla’s forests, whom he knew intimately from his boyhood. Jangarh’s love of nature and his keen observation of flora, fauna and avifauna shines through in The Crites Collection’s works. In his pantheon of Gond deities, we see Jangarh’s words ring true — that he tried to crystallise his fear of deities in his art, through the medium of painting. The trees, plants, animals, birds, insects and deities of Mandla’s forests, which Jangarh depicted with such talent, verve and imagination, create an enchanting world, lavishly featured in The Crites Collection’s book and exhibition. Beyond the many paradoxes of his life, art and legacy, readers and viewers of these may be transfixed by the potency of Jangarh’s alchemy — his loving and worshipful transformations of terror, fear, awe and beauty into an artist’s and aesthete’s vision of the numinous.
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An Iconic Mainstream Artist Who Stayed Invisible

Source The Wire by Gita Jayaraj
Dashrath Patel, one of India’s most versatile modernists, would have been 90 this month. By itself the number might not count for much. There is a specific ‘black hole’ of art history into which many artists vanish, never to be spoken of again. In a facetious way, one could even ask, what is an artist compared to even the Taj Mahal that is facing erasure today.
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Gond : The Enchanted Forest

Interview: ‘Without My Audience, the Art Does Not Come Alive’

Source The Wire by Noopur Tiwari
The Centre Pompidou in Paris, one of the world’s leading museums of modern and contemporary art, is holding a retrospective on the feminist Indian artist Nalini Malani titled ‘The Rebellion of the Dead, Retrospective 1969-2018,’ which will run from October 18 to January 8. Malani was born in Karachi in 1946. Her family lived in Kolkata before moving to Mumbai. Women’s place in society, the rise of fundamentalism and ecological destruction are some of the recurring themes of her work. She was one of the first Indian artists to use video in the early 1990s. This is a first retrospective at the prestigious museum dedicated wholly to an Indian artist. In 1985 and 1986, several Indian artists’ works were shown at the museum. More recently, in 2011, an exhibition called ‘Paris-Delhi-Bombay‘ brought together works of several Indian and French artists. Malani spoke to The Wire in Paris, tracing her journey and discussing the influences that have informed her work.
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New North and South: creative threads that run across continents

Source Financial Times by Rachel Spence
Suffused with a strange, glowing light that shifts from violet-pink to blotted turquoise, vast ships glide slowly through an industrial waterway, their cargo of gargantuan machinery reaching towards the heavens like the limbs of mysterious sea creatures. In reality, these are shipbuilding cranes embarking on the transcontinental voyage — the last of its kind — from the Tyneside waterfront to their destination at the Bharati shipyard on India’s western coast. Our encounter with this significant yet forgotten bond between South Asia and northern England comes courtesy of a video installation by the trio of Indian contemporary artists who work under the umbrella of the Raqs Media Collective.
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Missives from the Paris contemporary art season: Day 5

Source Architectural Digest by Natasha Jeyasingh
This is juxtaposed with the drawings of Seher Shah, whose interest in brutalist architecture legacy in India examines another complex heritage of modern India. Brutalism formal paradigms are at the same time the marks of international modernism and specially ‘porous’ and adaptable to the ‘localities’ (harsh climate and light, etc.). Shah’s work looks at how that language was spread and assimilated across the country. Pablo Bartholomew’s black and white photographs taken in Calcutta in the 70s brings into focus the Chinese and Burmese diaspora living in the city and his own mixed ethnicity as an Indo-Burmese. In a similar yet very diverse thread, Gauri Gill’s photo project on the aftermath of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the memories of the victims’ relatives is also autobiographical, focusing on a community that moved away from the caste system and gave women equal rights. Both these narratives add to the multilayered story of modernism in the country.
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Missives from the Paris contemporary art season: Day 4

Source The Architectural Digest by Natasha Jeyasingh
So, what is his take on Modernism in India? “Dr. BR Ambedkar’s emancipatory architecture for an Indian Union and Republic is for me the structure of Indian modernism. Modernism, like Indian food, is too wide and diverse to actually map in a linear fashion. You have to see the divergences rather than the convergences if you are mapping something as diverse as Indian modernism…Similarly, Indian art history cannot be the element of few conversations only…You have to be able to read more about Souza’s politics to understand his work than the fact that his name is Francis Newton Souza and he is a Christian…We need to look at all the other elements, of Indian modernism, beyond just a man with a paintbrush painting a nude woman–how is that the accepted definition of Modernism in India?”
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Bhupen Khakhar’s painting sold for 1.1 mn pounds at Sothebys

Source Hindustan Times
‘De-Luxe Tailors’, one of the well-known works of renowned artist Bhupen Khakhar, was sold at a record price of 1.1 million pounds at Sothebys in London on Tuesday. ‘De-Luxe Tailors’, which is the last of the seminal Tradesman series by Khakhar, epitomises the artist’s early style and is a signature work from this period, said a Sotheby’s statement. This painting was a part of painter Howard Hodgkin’s personal collection. He had been a mentor to Khakhar and had hosted the artist many times in the late 1970s.
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Imagination in Flight

Source The Indian Express
Nagaland-based Akup Buchem’s electric hand-sewing machine sits in a corner of a bathroom, by the washbasin, incessantly tapping away at a piece of paper. There’s no particular design mapped out. Delhi-based Ritika Mittal has two knitting needles performing the action of knitting, without threads. Debasis Beura from Bhubaneshwar absorbs all his thoughts into the dark frame of window, allowing only a sliver of red light to sieve through a crack in the wall. These explorations in art are meant to question the formality of practice and space. They are part of “The Moving Image: A Course Exploring Light, Movement and Narrative”, organised by Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) and Serendipity Arts Trust (SAT). For a month, 14 young artists experimented with kinetic art, photography and video, and mentoring them were senior artists such as Susanta Mandal, Chandan Gomes, Babu Eshwar Prasad and Lokesh Khodke.
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