Gond artists win Ojas Art Award; to showcase at ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival

Source DNA
Three artists, who work with the tribal art form of Gond, have been selected to display their artworks at the upcoming literature festival in Jaipur. The trio, Bhajju Shyam, Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, and Roshni Vyam have been picked as the winners of the inaugural Ojas Art Award recently. The award has been co-organised by Delhi-based art body Ojas Art with Teamwork Arts, which produces the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival. Noted Gond artist Bhajju Shyam, who has previously exhibited at the Museum of London and toured UK, Germany, Holland, Italy and Russia, bagged the first prize which comprises a cash award of Rs 51,000.
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At Christie’s Second India Auction, Signs of a Maturing Art Market

Source The Wall Street Journal by Shanoor Seervai
A murmur rippled through the bidders at Christie’s second-ever auction in India on Thursday when V.S. Gaitonde’s abstract aquamarine painting was brought to the podium. Last December, at the London-based auction house’s first India sale, one of Mr. Gaitonde’s paintings fetched $3.8 million, the highest price ever paid in India for a modern work of art and an auction record for the artist. This time, the bidding for Mr. Gaitonde’s untitled work started just under $500,000, and within minutes it was sold for $1.06 million to an anonymous Asian telephone bidder, making it the third-costliest lot of the evening. Although modern Indian art dominated the sale, Christie’s also extended its support to the country’s top contemporary artists including Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher and Atul Dodiya. Ten contemporary works were auctioned to benefit Khoj International Artists’ Association, a New Delhi-based collective, and fetched over $304,000 in total.
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Himalayan art at Pundole's goes under the hammer

Source Business Standard by Avantika Bhuyan
It was in the late 1960s, when refugees from Tibet had started making their way into India in the wake of the 14th Dalai Lama’s self-exile in Dharamshala, that Roshan Sabavala started nurturing her love for art. Art enthusiasts such as Karl Khandalavala and Madhuri Desai, founder of the Bhulabhai Desai Institute, encouraged her. Unlike collectors in the ’60s and ’70s who were gravitating towards the emerging modernist scene in India, Sabavala started collecting ancient Nepalese and Indian bronzes and then artefacts from Tibet. It is from her collection that 121 lots of sculptures, paintings and silver will be auctioned at Pundole’s on December 16.
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Christie's second India auction nets $12m

Source BBC News
The top seller at the Mumbai sale was a painting by Indian artist Tyeb Mehta, which sold for $2.8m. The auction house sold a total of 78 art works at Thursday's auction. Last December Christie's had sold 83 art works and raised more than $15m at its first-ever art sale in India. Christie's second sale in India featured paintings by several Indian masters including MF Husain, SH Raza and author-artist Rabindranath Tagore. The top selling work was an acrylic on canvas painting of a falling bull by Mehta, one of India's top artists. Sonal Singh, Christie's head of department in Mumbai, told the AFP news agency that said second sales were "always a little bit harder", but added that "the depth of the market is visible, quality works are in demand".
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Community art: Behind the scenes at the Kochi biennale

Hindustan Times by Riddhi Doshi
This time, the Kerala government has given the foundation only Rs. 1 crore so far, against Rs. 9 crore in 2012. When the funds failed to arrive at the last minute, the foundation set up a crowdfunding initiative in mid-November that has, online and offline, raised lakhs already, with artists and art connoisseurs pitching in tens of lakhs each. Artist Vivan Sundaram, for instance, donated Rs. 40 lakh and Sudhir Patwardhan Rs. 10 lakh, and they have decided to bear the cost of creating and installing their own works at the site. "Many other artists and even some galleries have come forward to bear the cost of creating and installing art works," says Bose. "Art lovers such as gallerists Shireen Gandhy and Abhay Maskara and collector Poonam Shroff have also been acting as ambassadors for the biennale, calling on friends to donate funds. Overall, the response has been very heartfelt, and very heartening."
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Celebrating Gond Art

Source The Indian Express by Poonam Goel
Jangarh Singh Shyam was one of the most celebrated folk artists of our country. He showed his works at the prestigious Magicians of the Earth exhibition at Pompidou Centre in Paris alongside leading western artists such as Francesco Clemente. To honour the memory of this talented tribal artist, Delhi-based Gallerie Ganesha is hosting a show of his works along with those of Shyam’s daughter Japani Shyam in a two-person show starting on December 18. Shyam, born in 1962, belonged to the Gond tribe of Madhya Pradesh. As a boy who lived in the jungles of Mandla in Madhya Pradesh, he was discovered by the legendary artist J Swaminathan. Says Shobha Bhatia, director, Gallerie Ganesha, “From his home town where he created mural paintings to his last works before his death in 2001, he continued to evolve and his creativity matched that of the greatest names in contemporary art.”
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Standard of Madhubani paintings falling

Source The Times of India by Law Kumar Mishra
Mishra, while delivering a lecture on Mithila archaeology at Bihar Research Society here on Thursday, said nowadays it is the buyers who decide the design and theme of the paintings. "People of Mithila are learning the art from trainers in towns and metropolitan cities, not from its experts from Mithila. These trainers themselves do not know the essence and aesthetic beauty of the silk art," he said, adding, "in the name of tantric painting, women have ignored the traditions of Mithila and they see it as just a job opportunity.
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Interview: Amin Jaffer of Christie’s on the art scene in India

Source Reuters by Tony Thakaran
India is falling behind China as an emerging powerhouse on the global art scene because it rarely turns up at international art fairs or invests in new museums to promote its artists, an official at auctioneer Christie’s said. Amin Jaffer, international director of Asian art at Christie’s, said the Chinese government, unlike India, is enhancing its museums and encouraging art exhibitors. Jaffer spoke to Reuters about the art scene in India and where he sees Christie’s India auctions a decade from now.
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L'art est-il l’avenir de l’hôtellerie de luxe ?

Source Les Echos par Clara Lefort
D'un côté, les hôtels affichent leurs collections privées, s'offrent les services de commissaires éclairés. De l'autre, les artistes investissent les chambres d'hôtels avec des oeuvres visionnaires. L'art serait-il devenu le nouveau dénominateur commun de l'hôtellerie du luxe? Enquête sur ces nouvelles pratiques qui révolutionnent l'industrie. Que faire quand la concurrence s'annonce chaque jour de plus en plus rude, y compris sur le secteur du très haut luxe, que de nouveaux acteurs s'affirment et séduisent la clientèle haut de gamme (Airbnb propose quelques trésors pour la séduire), et que l'on veut donc légitimement affirmer sa différence et sa valeur ajoutée?
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Les maisons de designers français à l’honneur à Miami

Source Le Monde par Véronique Lorelle
La Maison des sinistrés acquise par Bally mesure 6 mètres sur 9, soit 54 m2, et repose sur seulement deux compas – une idée de génie de Jean Prouvé qui a reçu en 1947 la médaille d’or de la Reconstruction et de l’Urbanisme. Elle pouvait être transportée dans des caisses et montée en une journée par trois personnes, au sein des villages dévastés. Elle sera présentée avec du mobilier que Pierre Jeanneret avait dessiné pour la cité utopique de Chandigarh, en Inde, inventée avec Le Corbusier.
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Chicago Crazy House - Henry Darger

Source Media Part par Lucie Eple
Henry Darger, artiste naïf américain né à Chicago en 1892 et mort le 13 avril 1973 a produit une œuvre magistrale, un récit de plus de 15 000 pages ponctué de près de 300 compositions (collages et peintures) : The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, narrant les aventures fabuleuses des filles Vivian, menacées par le très redouté John Manley, qui projette d’asservir tous les enfants de la contrée. Mais Darger est aussi l’auteur d’une autobiographie de 5000 pages : Histoire de ma vie, découverte en même temps, et dont les éditions Aux forges de Vulcain nous offrent de découvrir les premières pages (nous comblant et nous frustrant de concert donc), ainsi qu’une préface aussi passionnante que lumineuse, rédigée par l’auteur et essayiste Xavier Mauméjean.
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Nouveau record du monde pour l'art brut chez Christie's

Source The Art Newspaper by Julia Halperin
An untitled work on paper by Henry Darger, around 1940-60 (above), sold at Christie’s, Paris on 2 December for €601,500 (est €180,000-€250,000), a record for the artist and a new benchmark for Outsider art at auction.
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Inspiring Contemporary Art in India

Source Christies by Lavender Au
When the artists community at Khoj was established in 1987, Indian art was still a conservative arena. There were few galleries and artists rarely travelled, meaning Khoj represented an exciting and important development for the domestic art community. A carefully selected group of artists settled into the studio in Khirkee Village, New Delhi, where they occasionally drank and danced into the small hours. They also debated their practices, formed networks and exchanged ideas. In the words of one of the founding members, Pooja Sood, Khoj ‘existed for artists by artists’. Khoj, which holds artist residencies, workshops and acts as a communal space for artist communication and exploration, now stands in the vanguard of the contemporary Indian art scene.
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Christie’s to hold auction in Mumbai next month

Source Hindustan Times by Vanita Srivastava
Christie's Mumbai head of department Sonal Singh said: “Christie's second sale in India underlines the every growing demand for the best Indian modern and contemporary art by national and international collectors. Our first sale in India welcomed 35% of new buyers to our sale room in Mumbai. Furthermore, the 80 artworks on sale, as well as our support to different cultural initiatives throughout India and abroad, demonstrate our long term engagement with India, its art and its art community."
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Shine Shivan: Draw bridge

Source Livemint by Sanjukta Sharma
Shine Shivan, contemporary art’s enfant terrible, revitalizes the medium of drawing in his new ‘open studio’ solo at Gallery Maskara Mumbai. Part of the inspiration for this show came from his interactions with Warli artists at their villages on the Maharashtra-Gujarat border. Shivan wants to ensure long that Warli, and drawing, live on.
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Inspired by India: Francesco Clemente at the Rubin and Mary Boone

Source Blouin Art Info by Wendy Vogel
The art market boom of the early 1980s famously resuscitated painting, a medium whose death had been proclaimed many times over during the previous two decades. Clemente was among the era’s young figures who rose to fame. Associated with the Transavanguardia movement, the Italian-born, New York–based artist had his first show with Mary Boone Gallery in 1983. He opens his latest at Boone this month. Through February 2, 2015, Clemente’s work can also be seen in “Inspired by India,” at New York’s Rubin Museum of Art. Modern Painters senior editor Wendy Vogel met with Clemente in his studio just north of Houston Street to discuss painting, writing, the persistence of cultural ideals, and a gentrifying New York.
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Inde : une croissance à la chinoise ?

Source Le Monde par Claire Guélaud
Un risque de pauvreté réduit de moitié et une croissance moyenne supérieure à 8 % par an : les années 2003 à 2011 ont été une période faste pour l’Inde mais l’activité y a ensuite sensiblement ralenti. En 2012, le produit intérieur brut (PIB) n’a progressé que de 4,7 % et la production manufacturière a reculé pour la première fois depuis 1991, pendant que l’inflation galopait et que les déficits courant et budgétaire se creusaient dangereusement. Depuis 2014, toutefois, l’économie indienne donne des signes de redressement. Dans le dernier rapport qu’elle lui a consacré, rendu public mercredi 19 novembre, l’Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (OCDE) prévoit une hausse du PIB de + 0,4 point à 5,4 % en 2014 et de 1 point, à 6,6 % en 2015. En 2016, trois dixièmes de point de croissance seulement sépareraient l’Inde de la Chine.
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Cause and Effect

The Indian Express by Vandana Kalra
Performed at Khoj two years after the artist founded the organisation with Anita Dube, Pooja Sood and Manisha Parekh, this was followed by several more by Gupta at the venue. After his most recent engagement with the organisation in 2012, The Spirit Eaters, a comment on the community of Kanthababas, sought by bereaved families to give peace to the soul of the deceased, now the acclaimed artist is pitching in with funds for the space. He is among 10 leading artists who have donated artwork that will be up as part of Christie’s India auction in December. The proceeds will be forwarded to Khoj. The auction will also have works by veterans such as Tyeb Mehta, Jehangir Sabavala and Bhupen Khakhar.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott warli paintings as cultural link

Source Deccan Herald
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Canberra recently, he gifted his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott two Warli paintings that highlighted an anthropological link between the countries. Anthropologists believe that Warlis—a tribe living in the hilly as well as coastal areas of the Maharashtra-Gujarat border—are Australoids. The prime minister is learnt to have explained to his counterpart the anthropological links between Indian tribes and aborigines in Australia.
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Nouvelles pièces disponibles

Source Galerie Hervé Perdriolle
Parmi ces nouvelles pièces disponibles, 11 Tantra Paintings provenant du Rajhastan datant de 1990 à 2013 sélectionnées et rassemblées par Franck André Jamme l'auteur du livre "Tantra Song" publié en 2011 par Siglio à Los Angeles; un double filet de pêche de Jivya Soma Mashe, le premier disponible depuis celui acquis par Agnès B. en 2010 et montrée à la Fondation Cartier dans l'exposition "Histoires de voir" Paris 2012, …
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Where artists tread

Source DNA by Farah Siddiqui
Says Kallat, "The historical and the inter-galactic are to be viewed metaphorically within the exhibition; an analogy could be drawn to gestures we make when we try to see or understand something.We might either go close to it or move away from it in space to see it clearly; we may also reflect back or forth in time to understand the present. The intent is to place a divergent set of ideas, a series of sensory and conceptual propositions, as a prod to the imagination."
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Ways of Seeing: Gauri Gill at Experimenter, Kolkata

Source Art Now Pakistan
In Ways of Seeing, Gauri Gill collaborates with Warli painter Rajesh Vangad from Ganjad, Dahanu – an Adivasi village in coastal Maharashtra to present her most recent body of work, Fields of Sight. The work’s visual language emerged symbiotically from Gill’s initial experiences of photographing the landscape in Ganjad, where she felt that although her camera was perhaps capturing the distinct ‘chameleon-like’ skin of what she was ‘seeing’ through her camera, it was missing vital aspects of what was not apparent to the eye of the outsider. In her discussions and subsequent excursions with Vangad, who’s family has worked and lived in Vangad Pada as artists for generations, she discovered a new way of understanding the landscape she photographed.
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Art, and much more...

Source DNA by Ashiesh Shah
n an innovative new exhibition, Gallery Maskara is converted into Shivan's temporary studio for the next few weeks. The artists will spend the next few weeks working in the gallery space itself adding works to the series of drawings and sketches that are ingeniously suspended from a large wooden construction. I saw Shivan's work exhibited after a significant amount of time and it was great to see such a considerable amount of work on display. One often encounters Shivan's sculptures, videos and performances making this exhibition of drawings all the more original.
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Tagore's pocket book, art treasures at Christie's auction

Source Zee News
A remarkable pocket book belonging to Tagore is the most unique addition to the sale. Written in Bengali in Tagore's hand, it is a rare mixture of poetry, art and introspection. "Covering the years 1889 to 1904, the pages reveal the private concerns of Tagore, from mundane land transactions and taxation, to a poem written as a guide for children learning to read," said the statement. "The book was given by Tagore to a teacher at Santiniketan, Subodh Chandra Mazumder, and is being offered by his descendants. Tagore composed many of his major poems and songs in this book, including poems from the 'Sonar Tari' (Golden Boat) series and 19 poems from the 'Swaran' series," it added.
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Kochi Biennale taking crowdfunding route to raise funds

Source Business Standard
"An event of this scale needs all the support it can get, but our campaign objective is not just to raise funds; we want to make it participatory, allow people to take ownership of it and feel proud of it," said Riyas Komu, Secretary of the KBF. Kochi Muziris Biennale 2014 has a projected budget of Rs 26 crore and has been pledged some government support and corporate sponsorship. The crowd-funding drive, besides helping meet part of the costs, is expected to raise the profile of the Biennale worldwide.br> > read more