The South Asian Artists Making Their Mark on the Western Scene

Source The New York Times by Meara Sharma
That’s evident in a cluster of solo shows in New York and beyond. This year, Bharti Kher’s tender sketchbooks on gender, motherhood and the body were up at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where a large survey of Huma Bhabha’s work will open at the Institute of Contemporary Art in March. Next summer, the Met Breuer, which opened in 2016 with a retrospective of the work of the radical Indian minimalist Nasreen Mohamedi, will pay tribute to the work of another groundbreaking South Asian woman — Mrinalini Mukherjee. Additionally, MoMA recently acquired a monumental photographic installation by Dayanita Singh, a selection of empathetic and wry photographs by Ketaki Sheth and a major work by Sheela Gowda, who transforms found local materials into stirring meditations on labor and marginality.
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Here Are 12 Feminist Artists We Loved In 2018

Source Feminism In India by Ashraya Maria
2018 has been a year of many milestones for feminism in India. Some of these include the removal of Section 377, the Sabarimala ruling, the #MeToo movement. These are all steps towards gender equality and inclusivity. However, there is still a long way to go. Women in India have found their voices, sometimes in art. Art can be immensely effective in opening up conversations, reimagining symbols, and dismantling oppressive structures. It does so by articulating subjectivities which otherwise remain diminished. Here are twelve artists whose work has encouraged serious engagement with questions of gender, sexuality, inclusivity, and intersectionality.
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#makingofabiennale 108 days. 95 artists. 36 countries. 10 venues. Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018 is a happy conjuncture of organised chaos, diverse identities and contrasting perspectives for a unified purpose - art. This is where unabashed expression leads to the liberation of thought and stimulation of the consciousness. Save the date 12\12\18! . . . . . #makingofanartwork #kmb2018 #artcollective #contemporaryart #festival #121218 #music #performanceart #installationart #paintings #sculpture #theatre #visualarts #finearts #kochimuzirisbiennale #kerala #fortkochi #biennalecity #india #peoplesbiennale #tatatrusts @tata_trusts

Une publication partagée par Kochi-Muziris Biennale (@kochibiennale) le 10 Déc. 2018 à 5 :13 PST

Jangarh Book Launch

Source MAP
In December, MAP released their first publication, called Jangarh Singh Shyam: A Conjuror's Archive, authored by Dr Jyotindra Jain. The book is an in-depth and critical introduction into the work of pioneering Indian artist, Jangarh Singh Shyam, exploring both his context and legacy. It also examines the events surrounding his tragic suicide in Japan in 2001, with previously unpublished letters from Shyam to his family in the weeks leading up to his demise. To coincide with its release, MAP loaned 45 of Jangarh's paintings and drawings from its collection to the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Delhi to form a part of an exhibition co-curated by Dr Jyotindra Jain and Roobina Karode. The exhibition is on view until 12th January 2019.

Goa's Serendipity Arts Festival: When art transforms a town

Source The Telegraph by Ruchir Joshi
Looking at the programme, there seems to be all kinds of offering for people with different tastes; you clearly can’t (and shouldn’t) try and take in too much, perhaps concentrating on designing your own festival from all the different components. There are also the pleasures of Panjim qua Ponzhio, the walks, the many great eateries, the bars, some with live music, and then just the lanes of the old town through which you can wander. Then, beyond the dusty Kurukshetra of the massive bridge and flyover being built, with their warring cranes and bulldozers, lies all of the rest of Goa, the sea, the beaches, the shacks and the winding maze of the roads leading inland. If you’re not a local, then perhaps the way to think about a festival such as this is as an additional attraction to a Goa holiday which is partly centred around the state’s capital city.
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The Modern Art of Independent India

Source The New York Review of Books by Ratik Asokan
National artistic vanguards tend to come in two types. Some groups, like the revolutionary muralists in Mexico, consciously set out to depict an aspect of their country: its people, its landscape, its culture. Others, like the American Abstract Expressionists, develop a novel style or approach, make an aesthetic breakthrough, which only later comes to be associated with the country of its origin. Over seventy years after its founding, it remains unclear whether India’s Progressive Artists’ Group (1947–1953) is a national vanguard of the first or second type. Art historians like to peg them as a band of dyed-in-the-wool regionalists, and the Bombay-based collective is commonly identified as the prime mover of a rooted and authentic Indian modernism. From time to time, PAG’s members—the “Progressives,” as they are now called—even made remarks to this effect. One of the founders, S.H. Raza, insisted late in life that the group’s goal was to articulate “an Indian vision and Indian ethnography.”
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The Young Firebrands of Indian Modernism

Source Hyperallergic by Sharmistha Ray
At the dawn of a new Indian nation in 1947, a country awoke from its long colonial slumber to confront the challenges of Independence. The departure of the British and the ensuing bloodbath of Partition witnessed the formation of two nations built along religious fault lines, India and Pakistan. Pakistan embraced a Muslim identity, while India elected a secular vision for its future under the stewardship of its first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. His political ethos of “unity in diversity” was a rallying cry for plurality, a country for all, in which all religions could cohabit and progress together.
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Opinion | Caught between two worlds

Source Livemint by Manu S. Pillai
But there end the parallels between Ravi Varma and Jangarh Singh Shyam—so named after he was born quite literally in the middle of a janaganana (census) of his people. For unlike the former, whose privilege equipped him to not only paint but also master life itself, the latter was lost when it came to things beyond art. He emerged from a village and when he moved in with shehri (urban) artists, bewilderment and competition were his companions. What he walked into was, we are told, a “ruthless global marketplace of art, whose pressures he was not equipped to cope with”. And when he hanged himself in 2001, aged 40, his life folded in tragedy. As his newest biographer writes, he did not lose himself because his art went nowhere, or because success shunned him. He was, instead, “trapped in the crossing,” lost between two worlds.
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Kochi-Muziris Biennale: Chris Dercon on why museums must look beyond the past, towards the future

Source Firstpost
There is another aspect which I find very interesting, which becomes evident in this Biennale: that in India, there is still an innate sense that things don’t have to be split up — that we can inject literature, cinema, design, but that we can also inject the popular arts. Do you call it folk art, do you call it craft? I don’t think we have the right name for it yet. Because there are some artists who are so-called "outsider artists" who fit in the concept of Anita Dube so well. And they would fit in in Kiran Nadar's museum too. Actually, Kiran Nadar is now showing an outsider artist; I don’t recall his name. He is very famous for creating murals and he died very young — actually, he committed suicide in Japan, because he couldn’t take the tension between the so-called high art and what he was forced into and where he comes from.
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Tushar Joag, best known for making public interventions through art, passes away at 52

Source Indian Express by Pallavi Chattopadhyay
Contemporary artist Tushar Joag, who considered art as a tool for social concerns, passed away at his residence in Noida after a heart attack. He was 52. He is survived by his wife, artist Sharmila Samant, and two children. The artist was famous for his 2010 bike journey of over 50 days from Mumbai to Shanghai, when he passed the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Madhya Pradesh and, then, the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei province in China, and highlighted the plight of those who were displaced due to these mega projects in “Riding Rocinante from Bombay to Shanghai”, which featured in the inaugural exhibition of Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi in 2011. In his performance piece Right to Dissent in 2011, Joag locked himself in a room at the Clark House in Colaba, Mumbai, for six days, as he wrote in notebooks the words, “I will not lose faith in the Indian democracy and judiciary”, mocking the country’s outdated laws. This was his response to the arrest of public health activist Binayak Sen, who was arrested on charges of sedition and later released. Artist Mithu Sen, who has worked with Joag in many group shows, says, “He had his own ideology and strong vision. He was a great human being and that part of him led him to do that kind of art.”
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The Guerrilla Girls and other aliens land in Kochi

Source Livemint by Anindita Ghose
The first female curator of India’s largest biannual art event, Anita Dube, has climbed a high watchtower, seeking out those working in spaces far beyond what is visible of the contemporary art world. As might be expected from an early member of the Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association, 60-year-old Dube’s curatorial theme references the French Marxist theorist Guy Debord. For the ongoing fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (on till 29 March), she has actively sought women with no formal training in art, people from the queer community and Dalit artists, among others, and welcomed these aliens of the art world to share space alongside celebrated giants such as William Kentridge and Jitish Kallat. At a preview earlier this week, Dube called attention to Bapi Das, a former autorickshaw driver from Kolkata, whose fine threadwork needs a magnifying glass to be appreciated. She has been particular about including artists from countries such as Indonesia, Kenya, and Egypt in an attempt to balance the American and Euro-centric skew of the international art world.
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We need to get back our diversity: Kochi-Muziris Biennale curator Anita Dubey By Trisha Mukherjee

Source The Hans India
She wants to make a point -- that there is no hierarchy in art. “What I have tried to do is to mix up all kinds of styles and languages. There is no hierarchy. None at all. I am not taking contemporary art as top of the hierarchy. I am not letting its aesthetics overpower,” Dube said. The works by B V Suresh, and Durgabai and Subhash Shyam are among the 95 Indian and international artist projects, being showcased at the Biennale. Also lined up is an exciting set of ancillary events, including talks, presentations and discussions by artists and thinkers, film screenings as well as the Music of Muziris concert series featuring artists like the Three Seas Project, T M Krishna, Imphal Talkies, and Insurrections Ensemble among others.
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The 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale Begins

Source Blouin Art Info by Archana Khare-Ghose
The fourth edition is curated by Anita Dube, regarded as one of India’s most thought-provoking artists, on the theme “Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life.” Talking about the response of the artists to the current global socio-political situation, Dube said, “Artists often respond to social and political issues as they unfold, with care and with time. I think this is a crucial understanding both for those who make art and those who consume it — not to expect quick, reactionary responses, but to allow for wellconsidered, organic approaches to happenings in the social sphere.” She added many artists have also come together for social causes, including help for Kerala communities affected by the devastating monsoon floods in August, which displaced one million people. Krishnamachari said that many artists showing at the Biennale have reacted to this and other issues through their art. He cited Ai Wei Wei and JR, who responded to the migration issue by creating major works in public spaces Greece and the Mexican border, respectively; the L.A.-based artist Claire Salvo, who was inspired by the #MeToo campaign for a stippling portrait series called ME:WE; and the work of the Guerrilla Girls.
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New film on Jangarh Singh Shyam

Music in the dots: Jangarh Singh Shyam and the mythic dimensions of his work

Source The Sunday Guardian by Bhumika Poplin
Artist Jangarh Singh Shyam was only 40 when he reportedly committed suicide in 2001. A new retrospective of his work is now on view at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi, celebrating this short but remarkable life. Jangarh was truly a prodigy. He was making art since childhood and decorated the walls of his hut with paintings. His images have the capacity to pull the viewer into the art, because he himself was completely immersed in his works. He once said, “The first time I dipped my brush in bright poster colours in Bhopal, tremors went through my body.” This was the time he joined Bharat Bhavan at the invitation of his mentor Swaminathan.
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Connecting Threads: Exhibition traces textile histories and practices in contemporary Indian art

Source Firstpost
Anita Dube's 'Ah (a sigh)' (left); 'Silence (Blood Wedding)', 1999, Bones covered in red velvet with beading and lace. From the collection of Devi Art Foundation (centre); and Pushpamalan N's 'Triptych' from the Bombay Photo Studio series (right). It is one of the installations at Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum's latest exhibition titled ‘Connecting Threads: Textiles in Contemporary Practice’, curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta and Puja Vaish. All Image Courtesy: Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai.
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Anita Dube in Conversation

Source Ocula by Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi
The process of constructing the Biennale was driven by wonderful conversations with artists whose work I have admired for a long time; with artists I encountered during my travels; with my curatorial team; with the [Kochi Biennale] Foundation, and with the huge production apparatus. Without dialogue, solidarity is impossible. This has been the key lesson for me, and the curatorial frame slowly emerged from this process. The project involves a vast array of artists whose practices and backgrounds are connected by threads and narratives that run through the exhibition. What emerges are fragments: groupings of artists that enable a particular thread of the polyphony of the Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life to be teased out. Propositions and ruptures are also laid out within the architecture of the sites, like the unfolding of a musical score.
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Fighting Climate Change, With Art And Saris

Source The Establishment by Ambika Samarthya-Howard
I was filming Jalobayu (climate in Bengali), Monica Jahan Bose’s collective performance piece, at Select Art Fair in Miami Beach. The performance started indoors with a group of women who all quietly carried 216 feet of sari to a ritual site outside on the beach. After a series of symbolic activities on the sand, Bose eventually wraps herself in a red sari and enters and battles the ocean in a breathtaking statement on climate change. Bose uses the sari—18 feet of unstitched handwoven fabric that is commonly worn by women in South Asia—to represent women’s lives and the cycle of life on our planet. The sari is perhaps the real star of the show. But not just any sari. The sari she uses in the show is written on and worn by the coastal women in Bangladesh. “JALOBAYU juxtaposes women’s words and their worn saris against the backdrop of the rising ocean in Miami Beach,” says Bose. “The intent is to raise awareness of climate change and link Miami Beach to coastal Bangladesh, both of which face devastation due to climate change.”
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Jangarh Singh Shyam: A Conjuror’s Archive

Source Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is delighted to present the opening of exhibition ‘Jangarh Singh Shyam: A Conjuror’s Archive’, co-curated by Dr. Jyotindra Jain and Roobina Karode at KNMA. The exposition is enriched with works brought in on loan from government and private institution collections and many private collectors. The exhibits include paintings on paper and canvas, terracotta murals, digital prints of photographs, Jangarh’s letters, and reproduction of mural images and theatre posters which incorporated Jangarh’s art work. A substantial showing in this exhibition of Jangarh’s works has come from The Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bangalore. Works from institutions such as Bharat Bhawan in Bhopal and The Crafts Museum in New Delhi are historically important as they were places where Jangarh worked on-site projects. Some in-situ murals will be reproduced for the exhibition. The book by Dr. Jain (who is a cultural historian and museologist), offers rare insight into the life and works of Jangarh Singh Shyam.
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Art collector and gallerist Amrita Jhaveri on her latest auction, and future of Indian art market

Source Firstpost by Geetha Jayaraman
Though she was introduced to art by her parents at a young age, her love for it manifested much later in life. Meet Amrita Jhaveri, South Asian art expert and collector, who over the years have acquired works of a vast number of Indian contemporary artists. In addition to a two-decade collecting history, Jhaveri has authored a book on Indian art and was instrumental in bringing a sculpture show by British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor to India in 2010. She also runs a gallery in Mumbai, Jhaveri Contemporary, with her sister Priya. We get to glimpse of that collection as she sets to auction 43 selected works of Indian contemporary artists in a Saffronart online auction titled ‘Amaya Collection’ to be held on 4 and 5 December, 2018.
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Hervé Perdriolle, the Parisian curator

Source Sunita Nair
Hervé Perdriolle played a pioneering role in exposing Indian indigenous art at international art forums since the 1990s, after the Indian government had searched out artists from the villages in Maharashtra and Bihar and other states in order to keep alive their vibrant art traditions. This tall and affable Parisian art dealer, curator and lover of art brut and outsider art – outside the mainstream of ‘high’ art – became passionate about the work of Jivya Soma Mhase since their first meeting in 1998.
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Tyeb Mehta's "Durga" fetches Rs 20 cr at Sotheby's auction

Source Business Standard
Tyeb Mehta's painting "Durga Mahisasura Mardini" was sold for USD 2.9 million (Rs 20.49 crore) at Boundless India, Sotheby's inaugural auction in Mumbai, Thursday evening. Art works worth USD 7.9 million (Rs 55.40 crore) were sold at the auction, a Sotheby's official said, adding over 75 per cent of sold lots achieved prices above their pre-sale high estimates. Mehta's painting had remained in the same private collection ever since it was commissioned directly from the artist in 1993. Strong competition for Amrita Sher-Gil's "The Little Girl in Blue" led the painting to sell over the high estimate for Rs 18.69 crore (USD 2.7 million), a record price for the artist in India. This is only the seventh oil painting by the artist to be offered anywhere in the world. The work had remained in the same collection for 80 years, since it was selected by Sher-Gil for her first solo show in 1937.
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Amrita Sher-Gil, Known as ‘India’s Frida Kahlo,’ Is a Standout at Sotheby’s Inaugural Auction in Mumbai

Source Artnet News by Sarah Cascone
A rare work by Hungarian-Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941), who was nicknamed the “Indian Frida Kahlo,” was among the top sellers at “Boundless: Mumbai,” the inaugural sale for Sotheby’s India, held today in Mumbai. Her piece, The Little Girl in Blue (1934), went for 18,68,75,000 INR ($2.54 million), well above its presale high estimate. Previously, only two oil paintings by Sher-Gil had ever been auctioned in India, and only six worldwide. The sales totals for the night were 56,08,00,000 INR ($7.9 million)—roughly matching expectations—with 11 lots failing to sell. The move into the Indian market is not without risk for Sotheby’s. The country’s economy and art market appears to be growing, but the same was true ahead of 2008’s recession, and optimism in the region is understandably mixed with caution after the once-booming market cratered a decade ago. Christie’s stopped its annual live auctions in Mumbai last year.
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Tyeb Mehta and Amrita Sher-Gil to lead Sotheby's first auction in India

Source The Telegraph by Smita Tripathi
On November 29, at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, as the clock strikes seven, 60 lots will go under the hammer at Sotheby's first ever auction in Mumbai, called 'Boundless: India'. This landmark auction will make Mumbai Sotheby's 10th sale location globally. The pieces featured in the auction, as the title suggests, transcend time and geography. Says Yamini Mehta, International Head of Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art at Sotheby’s,"The idea of not having categorisation in the works and by calling the sale 'Boundless' means that we can look at works not just by Indian artists but also works that are inspired by India." So there are architectural drawings of IIM Ahmedabad by Louis Kahn, mid-20th century furniture by Pierre Jeanneret, a 1948 photograph of Srinagar by Henri Cartier-Bresson among the lots.
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Jangarh Singh Shyam New Book

Collateral exhibition at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018

Source MAP
Following a year-long conservation project of its eighteenth-century Dutch warehouse in Fort Kochi, MAP is proud to offer this space once again as a venue for the forthcoming Kochi-Muziris Biennale. As a separate collateral exhibition during the Biennale, MAP has also invited the French artist Georges Rousse and Greek designer Nassia Inglessis to create installations throughout the first floor of the venue which will be on display for the duration of the Biennale.

Jangarh Singh Shyam book launch

Source MAP
Jangarh Singh Shyam: A Conjuror's Archive, authored by Dr. Jyotindra Jain and published by MAP will be released this December. The book is an in depth and critical introduction into the work of India’s seminal ‘tribal’ artist, exploring both his context and legacy. It also examines the events surrounding his tragic suicide in Japan in 2001, with previously unpublished letters from Jangarh to his family in the weeks leading up to his demise. To coincide with its release, MAP is working with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Delhi where over forty five of Jangarh’s paintings and drawings from MAP's collections will be on display, as part of an exhibition curated by Dr. Jyotindra Jain and Roobina Karode.

Emami Group to start 70,000 sq ft interactive art facility in Kolkata

Source Money Control
Adding its creative touch to the culture capital of the country, Emami Group is all set to throw open the doors of a 70,000 square foot space called The Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC) this November. To be inaugurated on November 21, KCC would be the first multi-dimensional interactive art centre for modern and contemporary Indian art in the eastern part of India. “KCC will also house, Emami Art Gallery space with a regular programme of exhibitions by artists of national and international repute. We would have a different programme every month for artists. The first year Emami art will host the first ever solo exhibition of Late Dashrath Patel, followed by exhibitions of Bose Krishnamachari, Ravinder Reddy and Jogen Chowdhury,” said Richa Agarwal, executive director, KCC and CEO at Emami Art.
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Delhi-based artist wins Emerging Artist Award, Swiss residency

Source Business Standard
Delhi-based artist Anupam Roy, whose "large-scale drawings and paintings speak about systemic violence and injustice", has bagged the Emerging Artist Award 2018 granted by the non-profit Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA). Given annually in collaboration with Pro Helvetia (Swiss Arts Council), the award seeks to promote young artists who are studying or practising in India, and demonstrate extraordinary skill and promise in the visual arts, FICA said in a statement. As part of the award, he would receive a 90-day residency in Switzerland in 2019, supported by Pro Helvetia -- something the jury felt would help develop his practice and in forging further artistic collaborations, FICA said.
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A Conjuror’s Archive

Source MAP
MAP is excited to announce that it will be contributing through a loan of 46 artworks to an exhibition of India’s seminal ‘tribal’ artist, Jangarh Shyam Singh, curated by Dr. Jyotindra Jain and Roobina Karode. Organised at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), A Conjuror’s Archive will explore the oeuvre and legacy of Jangarh Singh Shyam and trace both the evolution of his own practice and his impact upon contemporary and future generations of artists. A whole range of conditions, events and mediations associated with Jangarh’s life and his art practice has since remained underexplored. This exhibition attempts to construct an equitable account of the formation of his prodigious artistic body of work that founded his legacy and grew into a movement. It also probes the efficacy of extra-cultural interventions into an individual artist’s operative and relatively well-grounded indigenous cultural tradition, and asks how the latter interacts with the new, while intentionally reinventing itself.
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Fraudulence framed: What’s with this picture?

Source Livemint by Vivek Menezes
Nirav Modi placed big artists and their artworks up front in his story of simple-living millionaire boy turned ultra-cosmopolitan billionaire. Both “Souza’s” at his elbows are fakes. Francis Newton Souza died in 2002 on a visit to Bombay from his home in New York, just as the market value of modern and contemporary Indian art had begun to explode. In his lifetime of exuberant highs mixed in with plentiful hard knocks, the 78-year-old never sold a painting for even $10,000, and his passing went largely unremarked. At that time, the poet and critic Adil Jussawalla wrote with great anger about “the near-indifference to his death, the mealy-mouthed praise” saying, “I’m shocked…Surely there’s little doubt he was one of our greatest painters.” In fact, India’s burgeoning art marketplace did respond immediately afterwards, with ghoulish alacrity. Less than twelve months passed after his burial in Sewri cemetery before the top price for Souza’s paintings crested $100,000, then in fairly short order surged well past a million dollars. In 2015, his monumental ‘Birth’ sold for just over $4 million, setting the record for the most expensive Indian painting ever sold (that benchmark has since been broken by his Goan countryman, friend and colleague Vasudeo Gaitonde). Before he died, a good part of Souza’s last years were consumed by rage and frustration because he detected that his work was being widely forged with impunity. On 20June 1997, he wrote an incendiary open letter to Geeta Mehra, the director of Sakshi Art Gallery on Altamount Road in Mumbai, complaining “there are numerous fakes in the art market, not only in India but in Europe. Mr. Julian Hartnoll, of the Hartnoll Gallery, showed me several fakes and forgeries of my work being sold in London…since Indian art has found a fairly stable art market, many unscrupulous persons are dealing in fakes!”
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Kochi-Muziris Biennale: All You Need To Know About The Largest Art Festival In India

Source Republic by Diyali Banerjee
The international exhibition is reportedly the biggest contemporary art festival in Asia and will be held across nine venues featuring 95 artist projects. Works in the exhibition will be contributed by eminent artists including Dayanita Singh, Subodh Gupta and Anish Kapoor among others. It will be organised in several heritage venues including Fort Kochi, Mattancherry, and Durbar Hall in downtown Ernakulam. As per media reports, a team of 20 trained Art Mediators will be residing in Kochi through the span of the event. They will hold guided tours for the visitors, free, and will communicate with them in both English and Malayalam. Visitors will also have the provision of buying personal guided tours with a Mediator. The major art event comes just four months after Kerala suffered a disastrous flood, that caused huge damage to the state. However, the state is reportedly undergoing a fast recovery as several non-profit organizations have joined hands with the government for the cause.
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1000 ancient idols smuggled out of India every year

Source The New Indian Express
An estimated 1,000 pieces of ancient artworks are stolen from Indian temples every year and shipped to the international market, according to Singapore-based Indian-origin shipping executive. "We are estimating about close to 10,000 major work of arts leaving India every decade," said S Vijay Kumar, who has been tracking the theft of venerable gods and goddess for 15 years. Some of these are as heavy as 15-16 tonnes. Kumar has detailed the artwork theft in a book "The Idol Thief", which was launched in Singapore on Saturday. "We have tracked some of the huge objects, 15-16 tonnes sculptures, that have left the country by Ocean containers, declared as brassware and garden furniture," Kumar told. Giving a comparison, he said Italy was the front runner in protecting its artwork with tough laws which has helped recover 378,000 pieces 2012 while India has rescued 27 pieces since 2012.
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Over 800 photographs of historic India to be offered at an auction in London

Source Indulge by N.J. Pinto
More than 800 historic photographs of India will be offered at Sotheby’s in London on 13th November as part of the Travel, Atlases, Maps & Natural History sale. Many come from the collection of Sven Gahlin (1934-2017), a Swedish-born collector and art historian known for his connoisseurship. His interest in Indian art began in the 1960s when he started building a superlative collection of Indian miniatures, sold at Sotheby’s London for £4.6m in 2015. Now, over 250 photographs from his collection are appearing at auction for the first time, led by a magnificent album including 80 portraits of Indian Maharajahs, Rajahs and Nawabs (est. £30,000-40,000).
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Indian artists reach for the stars

Source Livemint by Benita Fernando
If astronomers have looked for answers by scanning the outer reaches of the known universe, so have artists. In many ways, the cross-pollination between astronomy and art is successful not because of the scope of vibrant metaphors or poetic titles but because the astronomer and the artist consider the fundamental questions of the human condition: Where are we from? What are we doing here?
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Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World

Source PAFA
Known for her large-scale sculptures and installations made from materials sourced throughout the world, Banerjee’s works investigate the splintered experiences of identity, tradition, and culture, prevalent in diasporic communities. Using a variety of materials ranging from African tribal jewelry to colorful feathers, light bulbs, and Murano glass, Banerjee’s art celebrates diversity at the material level. These sensuous assemblages present themselves simultaneously as familiar and unfamiliar, thriving on tensions between visual cultures and raising questions about exoticism, cultural appropriation, globalization, and feminism. In turn, her wider practice challenges current nativist political leanings by proposing a multi-faceted nature of identity; not based exclusively on a person’s culture of origin or gender, but instead on self-identity. These inclusive and freeing conceptions of the “self” manifest themselves throughout Banerjee’s ever-evolving work – in fragmented figures, riotous use of color, and symbolic materials. Paired with her thought-provoking and poetic titles, Banerjee’s works relentlessly query contemporary modes of artistic production and societal engagement.
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Dame Jillian Sackler Hosts Private Dinner In Celebration Of New Museum Of Art And Photography In Bangalore

Source Hamptons by Lee Fryd
Who are we as a nation and where do we come from? At a private dinner party at Dame Jillian Sackler's home, to raise awareness for the new Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore, we were happy to be talking about a different democracy. India, an old country populated by the young, has a rich history but a paucity of museums. Surrounded by the museum quality art in Dame Jillian Sackler's living room, we were reminded: Art is our heritage and our legacy. Toward that end, Sackler introduced Abhishek Poddar, who is spearheading the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) in Bangalore India, geared towards the 65 percent of the country under the age of 30. "The Museum of Art and Photography will be the largest private museum in India but more importantly, it will be the first museum in India with 21st century museum outreach and public programs," Jonathan Marder told us. "Abhishek has donated the first seven million dollars and the first 7,000 objects, with his family. But, it's not enough for one man. He needs help with this project. There are Indians here who have already given collections and donations. And there's tremendous support in India. They've broken ground and in two years they plan to open doors."
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From a woman's eyes

Source The Pioneer
Like Sher-Gil, Fabri was born in Budapest. A Hungarian Indologist, he was invited by Rabindranath Tagore to teach art history at Santiniketan in 1933, and later joined the Archaeological Survey of India, working in Delhi, Lahore and Mohenjodaro. Sher-Gil and Fabri first met at the Faletti’s Hotel exhibition, which Fabri described as a “veritable feast for the eyes” in his review for Lahore’s Civil and Military Gazette. The pair went on to forge a close relationship, with Fabri providing Sher-Gil with crucial emotional and critical support in Lahore. Indeed, her husband Victor is said to have believed the two were lovers. In 1947, six years after her death, Fabri wrote the novel Indian Flamingo dedicated to “the beloved, undying memory of Amrita and her sisters and brothers of the New India”. The novel is the story of the love between John Fawcett curator of the Lahore Museum and Padma a young artist who is in the prime of her youth. Fabri had himself become the curator of the Lahore Museum after the end of the Second World War.
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Book Review: Amit Dutta’s ‘Invisible Webs: An Art Historical Inquiry into the Life and Death of Jangarh Singh Shyam’

Source Financial Express by Ashutosh Bhardwaj
The book is rich in references, draws its sources from archives, but is not a mere academic argument. It’s essentially a personal statement of an artist about his illustrious contemporary. Dutta, who made repeated visits to Patan over several years, acknowledges that “Jangarh’s journey across this collapsed and distorted time spanning at least a century backwards, overlapped somewhere with mine too.” Dutta has a remarkable range of works. Several acclaimed films, a novel in Hindi, and his diaries as an Indian film student that have been translated into English. In between, he has written poems in Hindi and short stories for children. The book on Jangarh is perhaps his most intimate work, a space in which he converses with his art in an inverted manner: “Does confronting the self through the other unwittingly amount to judging the other through the self?” His journals record that the depiction of a girl’s suicide in Robert Bresson’s Mouchette drew him towards the form of cinema. It is not certain whether he was aware that he would later find himself decoding a suicide. The book reminds one of Gleaners and I, a movie about the condition of gleaners in France, which is also a metaphor to decode the art of its director Agnes Varda. Filmmaking, for her, is an act of gleaning all that has been left aside by history. Dutta, too, comes across as a gleaner of the remnants of Indian art, with Jangarh as his doppelganger, a double for his life and art.
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Kerala floods: Kochi Biennale Foundation to raise funds for rebuilding through auction of select artworks

Source The Indian Express
The Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), which runs the extremely popular Kochi-Muziris Biennale – the country’s largest contemporary art exhibition – has said that it will do its part in raising valuable funds for the rebuilding of Kerala after the devastating floods in August. An auction of select artworks will be held on January 18 next year, the proceeds of which will go into the Chief Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund. Titled ‘Art Rises for Kerala’, the auction will feature art installations, paintings and sculptures of more than 40 artists in India and abroad. Some of the artists whose works will be featured at the auction include Dayanita Singh, Subodh Gupta and Anish Kapoor among others. “The power of art in disaster recovery is significant,” said Bose Krishnamachari, KBF founder-president and the co-curator of the first biennale, in a statement. “Our endeavour reinforces the fact that art goes a long way in re-laying the foundations for a state in its troubled times,” he added. The fourth edition of the biennale will go to the floors at multiple locations in Kochi on December 12 this year and conclude on March 29, 2019.
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It’s an exciting time to be a part of the arts in India, feels collector Shalini Passi

Source The Telegraph by Anannya Sarkar
The cream of Delhi’s art-loving upper crust — from Subodh Gupta to Sanjna Kapoor, Bose Krishnamachari and Dayanita Singh — gathered at art collector and connoisseur Shalini Passi’s Golf Links house recently for a peek into the making of the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which will be held in December. While curator of the Biennale, Anita Dube, took guests through the highlights of this year’s calendar art event, Shalini, who is a patron of the event, also launched the Shalini Passi Art Foundation and MASH, a digital platform, alongside. t2 chatted all things art with Shalini...
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Sunita Nair’s new book is a treat for anyone interested in local Indian art

Source Vogue India by Gayatri Rangachari Shah
India’s tradition of indigenous art, built over centuries, is increasingly recognised and celebrated, not just nationally, but also around the world. So how do folk and tribal artists negotiate their way in today’s contemporary art world? How do they respond to the pulls and pressures of the market while ensuring their art remains true to its roots? An impressive new book by Sunita Nair, titled Indigenius Artists, examines these questions and delves into the details of the illustrious artist practices surrounding what was once referred to as ‘primitive’ or ‘folk’ art, but is today more aptly called indigenous. Indigenous Artists, 329 pages, is priced at Rs 5,000, and is available at all Taj Khazana stores in India or on Amazon.
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The Plurality and Progressivism of India’s Modern Art Revolution

Source Hyperallergic by Zachary Small
In the show’s final section, called “Masters of the Game,” Progressive Revolution argues that India’s artists borrowed from a range of traditional folk- and high-art styles to create their own version of modernism. Even though most works in the show’s finale were created after PAG’s dissolution, they all demonstrate a united approach to upending the cultural mores of Indian society. This final section is replete with historical gems and challenging visual splendor. Erotic male and female nudes rule the gallery walls, echoing the poses of millennia-old sculptures. Take a look at “Shiva and Parvati” (from the Transitional period, late 10th to early 11th centuries) and think about M. F. Husain’s “Eternal Lovers” (1968) for a good comparison. Seen in the exhibition’s catalogue but not the exhibition, Husain’s interpretation of the godly duo as a normal couple in naked repose was a scandalous move for Indian society.
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Kiran Nadar's Groundbreaking Museum Of Indian Art

Source Forbes by Naazneen Karmali
Nadar is sometimes referred to as the maharani of the Indian art world for her collection of modern South Asian art that now numbers more than 5,500 pieces. The museum opened in 2010 and is funded by her family's foundation. Her interest in art was sparked accidentally when she began to buy paintings for her home three decades ago. By 2005 she had a collection substantial enough to consider building a museum. "It used to pinch me that the bulk of my artworks were in storage when I really wanted to share them with the world at large," she explains. Today the museum draws 100,000 visitors annually and has made "some incredible artworks accessible to common citizens," says Gaurav Bhatia, managing director of Sotheby's India. He calls her collection the outcome of "a wonderful mix of instinct, study and enthusiasm."
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Anoop Skaria passes away: Fraternity remembers the man who established Kochi as a hub for contemporary art

Source Firstpost
White walls with artworks, wooden benches polished to a high shine, a quiet courtyard with sculptures and stone seats, an open seating space under a tiled roof, delicious treats, and above all, a sense of community. At Kochi's well-known Kashi Art Gallery and Cafe, a visitor might experience this all. They would also be in the very place that, in a way, laid the foundations for Kochi to become a hub of contemporary art in India. The founder of the Kashi Art Gallery and Cafe — Anoop Skaria — however, is no more. Skaria, who set up the gallery-cafe with his wife Dorrie Younger a little over two decades ago, passed away on Saturday, 20 October.
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Outsider Art Fair 18-21 oct 2018 Atelier Richelieu Paris

Solo show Jean-Daniel Allanche
Jean-Daniel Allanche (1940-2015) enseigne la Physique à l'université de Paris-VII ainsi que dix années en Afrique. Parallèlement, il pratique musique, écriture et peinture. Son œuvre picturale ne sera jamais montrée de son vivant. Hormis une centaine de peintures sur papier et sur toile, c'est sur les murs de ses lieux de vie qu'il affectionne de peindre.
C'est tout particulièrement dans son appartement de la rue des Ciseaux, un sixième étage sans ascenseur à cent mètres de l'église Saint-Germain-des-Prés, qu'il va créer. Son univers pictural se complètera au fils du temps par l'accumulation de nombreux objets hétéroclites et sculptures africaines transformant son lieu de vie en une œuvre d'art globale.
"Depuis 1975, j'ai occupé mes loisirs à la création de ce lieu : plus de 200m2 de peintures murales et au plafond. Elles illustrent les résultats de la théorie harmonique des couleurs. Pour ce qui est des motifs, elle exprime un nouveau style que j'ai appelé peinture-molécules. Des ronds plus ou moins grands composent les éléments du dessin qui reste figuratif (…)" Jean-Daniel Allanche, notes datées de 2000.
Dans plusieurs cahiers, Jean-Daniel Allanche va développer des théories entre la physique, la peinture, la musique et le jeu : Théorie harmonique des couleurs, Harmonie et Anharmonie, Jeu de conservation harmonique globale, Somnolence angulaire et réveil dans une situation non turbulente, Automatisme angulaire en l’absence de turbulence, Jeu de facilité...
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'India Should Consider Cultural Exchanges Much More Diverse Than British'

Source The Wire by Soumitra Das
Catherine David was in India last month on the invitation of the Raza Foundation and the French Embassy and was exploring the possibilities of holding an exhibition of Sayed Haider Raza’s works at the Centre Pompidou to coincide with the artist’s birth centenary in 2022. During her three-day stay in Kolkata, she was hosted by Reena and Abhijit Lath of Akar Prakar. She even visited Santiniketan for two days. I had conversations with her on two successive days after lunch, veering from one topic to another – from Bengali meals on the first day to the Laths served spicy Marwari food on the second, supplemented by biryani and firni, and on both occasions she enjoyed the rich cuisine. David seemed to take the heat and crowds of the city in her stride. That was probably in keeping with the keen interest she takes in the Bengal School and the city – “Calcutta” for her – where it was born. Touching on the exhibition being planned for Sayed Haider Raza’s birth centenary, David said she was considering putting him in dialogue with a contemporary like Kishen Khanna or maybe Ram Kumar, as their early works had a “common point.” Everything being in a fluid state now, Catherine David is expected to make her decisions by the end of this month.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art reclassifies status of Native American art for new exhibition

Source The Art Newspaper by Gabriella Angeleti
Donor of artefacts asked New York museum to present them as "American art rather than tribal art". An exhibition of Native American artefacts will take place in the American wing of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time in its history. The exhibition comprises 116 works from the collection of the US philanthropists Charles and Valerie Diker, who recently donated 91 pieces to the museum. The donation was made under the condition that they “would be presented as American art rather than tribal art,” says Charles Diker. “Perhaps to recontextualise what we define as American culture.” The Dikers began collecting Native American works of art in the 1970s while living near Serafina, New Mexico. Unlike the Modern and contemporary works that dominated their collection at the time, “Native American art was not about purchasing an artist, but rather preserving a culture and an aesthetic,” Diker says. The couple drew parallels between “anonymous Native American creators and artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, who were inspired by, and able to translate, the abstraction of Native American art in their own work”, Diker says.
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Le Met doit rayer le mot "tribal" de ses œuvres "amérindiennes"

Source Le Quotidien de l'Art par Magali Lessivage
C'est la première fois que l'aile consacrée à l'art américain du Metropolitan Museum de New York, fondé en 1872, accueille une exposition d'objets « Native Americans ». Dans ses collections permanentes, les arts « amérindiens » sont exposés avec les arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie, tandis que l'« American Wing » présente des peintures, sculptures et œuvres d'arts décoratifs des XIXe et XXe siècles. Une distinction dont ne veulent pas Charles et Valerie Diker, qui viennent de faire don d'une collection de 91 pièces au musée, où elles sont exposées jusqu'en octobre 2019. Provenant de 50 peuples différents d'Amérique du Nord, elles sont léguées à condition d'être « présentées comme art américain et non art tribal, afin de recontextualiser ce que l'on nomme "art américain" » et de monter leur influence notamment sur des peintres tels Mark Rothko ou Jackson Pollock, dont les Diker sont aussi collectionneurs.

Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum: A house for Indian art

Source The Hindu by Shailaja Tripathi
Ahmedabad is a city of museums — kite museum, a museum of utensils, a world-class textile museum, toy museum and more. Any addition to this list would be a mere add-on, unless it of some consequence. Sanjay Lalbhai and Jayshree Lalbhai understood this well and that’s why Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum has a character distinct from any other of its ilk. The museum that opened to the public last year, is just a 100 metres away from the famed Calico Museum of Textiles in Shahibaug. At first, the architecture of this colonial structure draws you in, before the masterpieces inside take over.
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A curatorial vision for Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Source The New Indian Express
Elaborating on this year’s theme - ‘Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life’ - she said, “My earliest intuitive vision for this edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale to explore the possibilities for a non-alienated life has remained with me. The need to listen, think and learn with each other, particularly voices from the margins - of women, of the queer community, the oppressed castes, the whispers and signs of nature - with a spirit of freedom and comradeship is vital. In both the exhibition and the carefully designed interactive spaces, I hope the incredible range of exhibiting artists and visitors will become active participants and co-producers of the Biennale as a shared knowledge laboratory.”
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New York, New York

Source Hindu Business by Ella Datta
New York has for some years now been displaying the works of high-profile Indian artists. In 2016, Met Breuer (the Breuer building of the Metropolitan Museum) marked its opening with a definitive show of abstract artist Nasreen Mohamedi. Two years earlier, the Guggenheim Museum had exhibited Gaitonde’s works. It is not just the big names that are under the arc lights. This year, a relatively younger artist from Karnataka, Ranjani Shettar, showed her works at the main Metropolitan Museum, New York. The Met has also acquired her installation Seven Ponds and some Raindrops for its permanent collection.
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Cannibalisme sexuel

Source Galerie Hervé Perdriolle
L'omniprésence d'une pornographie impossible à réguler induit un certain retour à la morale dont l'érotisme fait les frais. Il est plus facile de retirer un Balthus ou un Mapplethorpe d'un musée que de contrôler les vidéos pédophiles sur le darknet. Ainsi, la pornographie cannibalise l'érotisme. Cette série de petits formats de T. Venkanna illustre cette dérive avec férocité et humour. La galerie Hervé Perdriolle expose une quarantaine de petits formats de T. Venkanna, l'un des 20 artistes sélectionnés pour le prix SKODA en 2010 et 2012. On a pu voir des œuvres de Venkanna, notamment, à l'exposition The Empire Strickes Back à la galerie Saatchi en 2010, à la galerie du Jour (M)other India en 2011, à la Biennale de Kochi en 2012-2013 et au Manoir de Martigny en 2018.
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Firebrands Who Forged a New Art for a New India

Source The New York Times by Jason Farago
Slowly, too slowly, museums are now taking up the task of rewriting the history of art since 1945 as more than just a “triumph of American painting,” as the veteran critic Irving Sandler called it. That kind of revision was the animating force of “Postwar,” the epochal 2016–17 show that Okwui Enwezor curated for the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the last few years have also included significant shows of postwar painting from Cuba, Mexico, Poland, the Soviet Union, Turkey and South Korea in Western museums and galleries. It’s the animating force, too, of “The Progressive Revolution: Modern Art for a New India,” a new exhibition at Asia Society that showcases the leading avant-garde painters of India in the first years after independence. From 1947 to 1956, in the roiling atmosphere of post-Raj Bombay (now Mumbai), the dozen or so painters of the Progressive Artists’ Group, drawing on sources from Asia, Europe and the United States, forged a rebellious, forward-looking new style that could serve as the artistic model for a new, secular republic.
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Lively Mithila village art graces museum walls

Source Examiner by Janos Gereben
Qamar Adamjee laughed when asked how much travel was involved in her curating the exhibit “Painting Is My Everything: Art from India’s Mithila Region” at the Asian Art Museum. “Many elevator rides to our storage at the lower level,” said Adamjee, the Asian Art Museum Malavalli Family Foundation associate curator. She adds, “The exhibition title is a quote from Dulari Devi, a featured artist whose personal life experience, from hardship to global recognition through her art, mirrors the changes in the practice of painting.” All 30 works on view come from what Adamjee calls “a somewhat impoverished region in Bihar state, the subcontinent’s rural northeast,” and all are owned by the museum.
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‘Invisible Webs’ by Amit Dutta explores the implications of artist Jangarh Singh Shyam’s death

Source The Hindu by Srikanth Srinivasan
This trans-geographical, trans-historical investigation culminates into a close formal analysis of Shyam’s art in the final chapter exploring the artist’s use of line and synthetic colours. This final section is a potent counterpoint to ideas of primitive art that rely on sociological explanations of art objects and questionable conceptions of aesthetic naiveté. In establishing Shyam’s painting as sophisticated and formally self-conscious, Invisible Webs calls into question the categories of tribal and folk arts that vastly different aesthetic tendencies are boxed into. Invisible Webs invites us to consider Shyam’s suicide not as an end, but as the beginning of a long, hard journey of collective introspection about our priorities as a developing nation. It gives meaning to Shyam’s death.
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Art galleries: Homing in on heritage

Source Forbes India by Jasodhara Banerjee
Relocating to Devidas Mansion also brings Jhaveri Contemporary to one of the art hubs in the city. “There is one hub in Worli, with Saffronart, Nehru Art Centre and Tao Art Gallery being located there, and there’s another one here,” says Amrita. The Colaba neighbourhood is home to galleries such as Chatterjee & Lal, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, and The Viewing Room, while also hosting the offices of international auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s. “This building is like an old lady with wrinkles,” says Priya. “And we want to keep her that way.” Old buildings should not be a novelty in an old city. Especially in a city as old as Kolkata, which has imbibed English, French, Dutch, Danish, Armenian and Portuguese influences into its architecture. In the decades after the capital of the colonial government moved from Calcutta to Delhi (in 1911), the city continued to evolve with its creative and inventive architecture, up till around the 1960s.
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‘The Progressive Revolution: Modern Art for a New India’ Review: A Movement Looks Forward

Source The Wall Sreet Journal by Michael FitzGerald
‘The Progressive Revolution: Modern Art for a New India,” at Asia Society Museum, explores a remarkable intersection of art and politics in a landmark period of recent history: the early years of India’s independence and the arrival of Indian artists in the mainstream of global contemporary art. The six artists who formed the Progressive Artists’ Group soon after Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed India’s independence in 1947 shared Nehru’s idealistic goal of a unified nation free of divisions of class, caste and religion, as well as the belief that India should play a prominent role in the postwar world.
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