Bhupen Khakhar attaqué à la Tate : toute l’Inde en défense

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

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

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

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

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Seven artists and authors who inspired India

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

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

Source The Indian Express by Pooja Pillai
“The decision to close was a result of deep reflection and contemplation during the two-week window between the diagnosis and death of my father to pancreatic cancer,” says Abhay Maskara, owner and curatorial director, adding, “Time was no longer just a useful construct that I took for granted but rather felt like an alarm clock with a ticking heart. I realised I was unable to commit the next 10 years to the gallery, in the same way that I committed the previous 10. My time needed to be reprioritized.”
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At the end of its time

Source DNA by Ornella D'Souza
"Seeing someone you love for the last 47 years fade away... We assume we have time. But we only have visibility of one thing: every breath in, we're alive, every breath out, we're no longer alive. I don't see myself doing what I did at 37, at 57. ," shares the grieving son, casting an occasional glance at his late father's portrait at the modest reception. "We've had 45 shows, each dramatically different. And that's enough."
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Q&A: Art Curator Dr. Alka Pande on Her Prolific Journey

Source Blouin Art Info by Bibhu Pattnaik
Responsible for curating several significant and perceptive exhibitions in India and abroad, and giving a name to some of the most upcoming and influential artists, photographers and sculptors, Alka Pande is currently engrossed as the Consultant Arts Advisor and Curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. She also has expertise in art advisory services on art procurement and investment.
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Raza's bindu fades into the night

Source The Times of India by Dileep Padgaonkarl
Though Sayed Haider Raza spent a greater part of his life - close to six decades - out of India, it is India that was his magnificent obsession in all his waking hours and indeed, as he often confessed, in the dreams that haunted him after he fell asleep. When he was in full flow at his homes in Paris and in Gorbio, a village in the south of France, one could not but marvel at the eclectic range of his references: a verse by Kabir, a psalm of Tukaram, lines from a Muktibodh poem, a stanza from the Rig Veda, a ballad sung by a tribe of Madhya Pradesh, a detail in an Ajanta fresco, a composition of Mir or Ghalib, a quote from the Holy Quran or the Bhagvad Gita or the Ramcharitmanas and so on.
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Artists says Raza was a secularist in the true sense

Source India New England
Describing veteran artist S H Raza’s death as a huge loss to the art world, many from his fraternity said that he and his works represented secular India. Remembering him as a great artist and as a true secularist, artist Arpana Caur said that Raza embraced all religions. “Art was his religion. Artists like M.F. Hussain and Raza are relevant in the current Indian context, where we are witnessing tensions in the name of religion. Raza embraced all religions,” Caur told IANS. “The light has gone out of he Indian Art scene. However it was no ordinary light and will continue to inspire generations of artist to come,” Kerlar aptly put.
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Legendary artist S.H. Raza passes away

Source The Hindu
Legendary painter S H Raza who popularised globally Indian concepts and iconography and built a towering legacy of modern art passed away here today after prolonged illness, leaving a huge void in the artistic world. He was 94. The acclaimed painter, who depicted concepts like ’bindu’, ‘purush-prakriti’ and ‘nari’ in his instantly recognisable geometric abstract works, passed away at 11 am. “He was in the ICU at a hospital in New Delhi for the past two months and passed away today. It is indeed a very sad day. He was a great legend that the 20th century has produced,” poet and former chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi Ashok Vajpeyi said.
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Délices d’initiés

Source Les Echos par Jean-Denis Errard
Envie d'approfondir votre connaissance de l'art indien contemporain et d'y investir un peu ? Allez à l'exposition, modeste (19 oeuvres) mais instructive, qu'organise Artcurial jusqu'à fin août avec le galeriste spécialiste de cet art, Hervé Perdriolle. Ces oeuvres, encore discrètes sur la scène internationale, tendent cependant à émerger de plus en plus.
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‘Bharti Kher Matter’ at the Vancouver Art Gallery

Source Blouin Art Info by Bibhu Pattnaik
The Vancouver Art Gallery recently announced the ‘Bharti Kher Matter’, the first major retrospective in North America of internationally acclaimed Indian artist Bharti Kher. The exhibition will open on July 9 and it incorporates elements of painting, photography and sculpture that have been the hallmarks of her practice over the past two decades.
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Why Indian artists should stop looking to the west for validation

Source Verve by Madhu Jain
When The Guardian art critic dumped Bhupen Khakhar’s paintings in the same category as that of ‘second-rate British artists’, there was much agitation amongst the art cognoscenti in India about his unequivocally dismissive review of the late artist’s retrospective, which recently opened at the Tate Modern in London. The gauntlet thrown by the frequently acerbic but astute Jonathan Jones stung and caused quite a flurry — like setting a cat amongst pigeons. But his reaction, one which we might initially be offended by, also raises an important question: why do so many Indians continue to look to the West for validation — nearly seven decades after Independence?
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Here Are 3 Artists Who Are Making Delhi Into a Vibrant Art City of the Future

Source Artspace by Geeta Kapur
In Delhi, citizens in close proximity to the government (thus highly conscious of the terms of governance) actually live in extemporized conditions. Artists in Delhi, too, have migrated from all parts of the country and are beginning to recognize the means and relations of art production, and to engage in a discourse on ecology and ideology in relation to culture. A growing number explore the underbelly of this new New Delhi in order to comprehend the conjunctural nature of the contemporary and make radical use of the platforms and organizations described above. A Delhi avant-garde may see itself developing art practice across sites of informal labor and sites of statist anxiety—and perhaps subverting the high protocol of India’s capital city.
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Kochi Biennale to Yinchuan with Bose

Source Times of India by Uma Nair
In 2009 when he was invited to curate Arco Madrid artist curator said: Art is worthless if it cannot create a response. With Bombay Boys, Double Enders, National Highway, Arco Madrid, Kochi Biennale and now Yinchuan in China Curator Bose Krishnamachari is strutting his curatorial abilities like the proverbial peacock. As a curator he has worked hard to make Cochin the art capital of India if not Asia. At best Bose is a self-invented curator of artistic wit, political savior faire, global fame, and sheer originality. In the world of Indian contemporary art he known as the Malayali Messiah. Bose’s wings now spread to an ambitious new biennial featuring works by international icons Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor in northwest China later this year at the Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan (Moca Yinchuan). The inaugural edition, entitled For an Image, Faster than Light runs (September 9 to December 18).
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"Indian Dreaming, autres contemporains, l'invention d'une tradition" Artcurial Paris

La librairie Arturial invite la galerie Hervé Perdriolle pour une exposition intitulée "Indian Dreaming, autres contemporains, l'invention d'une tradition". On peut y voir des pièces majeures entre autres de Chano Devi, Jangarh Singh Shyam, Jivya Soma Mashe et Ram Singh Urveti. Artcurial, rond point des Champs Elysées du 24 juin au 28 aout (fermé du 1er au 21 aout inclus).
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Gond Art is as Contemporary as Any Other: Venkat Raman Singh Shyam

Source Blouin Art Info by Archana Khare-Ghose
Venkat Raman Singh Shyam has been fighting ill-informed labels all his life. He has done it through his art but categorizations by critics, who are accustomed to seeing only categories, have even tried to subvert his art. So, he decided to tell his own story before any of those category-happy critics could cause irreparable damage. He has done that through a book titled “Finding My Way” (published by Juggernaut), with the help of author and publisher S. Anand. The book, released in New Delhi sometime back, is Shyam’s life story told through the art that he practises — the Gond Art — in his own words, given the form of text by Anand. More recently, it was the subject of discussion at Galerie Hervé Perdriolle in Paris that houses one of the biggest collections of Indian tribal art outside India.
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When an ancient tribal art depicts modern Indian life

Source Quartz India by Annalisa Merelli
It only takes a couple of hours from Mumbai to reach the land of the Warlis. One of India’s many ancient tribes, they live along the Maharastra-Gujarat border. They are easily identifiable through their art, depicting stylized figures walking in whirlpools, dancing, and working in the fields with animals. Like many forms of traditional Indian art—Rajasthani miniatures, Gond drawings, Patua illustrations—Warli art, too, is somewhat formulaic. And yet its beauty interrogates the difference between art and craft. What turns an artisanal skill into something worthy of being labelled “art”? Surely, Warli artist Rajesh Vangad, who painted the large Warli mural in Mumbai’s airport, and photographer Gauri Gill, have the answer.
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Murals: War of the relics

Source The Times of India by Uma Nair
Touchdown at the Indira Gandhi International Airport your eyes fall on the long panels of some artists and you wonder why the media call it murals. Is a long painting in horizontal domain with no political identity ,no comment in satire, wit or higher intellectual commentary a mural ? Why has Arpita Singh’s large mural Wishdream become just a monumental memory stuck in some millionaire’s stock of art wealth after being bought off Saffronart for Rs.10 crores ? Questions rambled and ran through my reflections last week, when news came of the demise of the colossus KG Subramanyan.
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K G Subramanyan: Writing an image, picturing a story

Source The Indian Express by Ranjit Hoskote
Late last year, the translator Arunava Sinha brought me, as a gift, a book titled Rhymes of Recall. Published by Seagull in an elegant saddle-book format, it was a collection of K.G. Subramanyan’s poems, accompanied by monochrome golden images of his paintings. In one of these poems, ‘Wednesday Outing’, the river Ganga speaks: “Yet between the rocks and sea I laugh and live/ Rubbing the ribs of earth, holding the sky/ In the tiny mirrors of my glassy waves./ And in this passage I have many histories,/ That grow and multiply with the passing years.” Ganga’s soliloquy eloquently sums up the author’s own life. Artist, teacher, storyteller, poet, cultural organiser, textile designer, theorist of art and culture, K.G. Subramanyan (1924-2016) touched the lives of innumerable students, viewers and readers.
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Verse and the visual

Source The Hindu by Sharan Apparao
Watching my own pinwheels whirl in the breeze on my terrace, I pick up this book not knowing what to actually expect. I find a delightful jewel. A wonderfully engaging writer, S. Anand, weaves many ideas, stories, ideologies into the biography of Gond artist Venkat Raman Singh Shyam. The book gives us an insight into the legend of Jangarh Singh Shyam, Venkat’s uncle and an artist whose life ended all too soon. Both writer and artist combine the philosophy of Kabir with that of the Pardhan Gonds and bring in principles of art history made de rigueur by the written history of modern art. Anand has delved into the layers of an artist’s mind, combining history and fantasy. It is with unbelievable dexterity that this writer moves between the different worlds (Anand will be at Artcurial Paris to dedicate this wonderful book on July 12 from 19h to 20h).
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