FIAC : A Multitude of Masterpieces in the City of Lights

Source Art Info
Coming hot on the heels of Frieze, Paris's FIAC gives it a run for its money, drawing A-list dealers and sharp-eyed collectors alike. This year, ARTINFO France has offered reports on sales from the main fair (here and here), an asssesment of its many satellite fairs (here), a peek at the pop-up outdoor sculpture garden the fair has brough to the city (here), and even a video walk-through (here). But for those who just want to get a taste of all the great art at FIAC in one place, we've also put together this photo gallery. Enjoy!
> To see pictures of the great art at FIAC 2012, click on the slideshow.

Source Time Out Delhi

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Larry Gagosian pessimistic about Indian art market

Source Art Radar Journal
Famed gallerist Larry Gagosian recently sat down with Kelly Crow of The Wall Street Journal to discuss his international operations. As outlined in an article published on 11 October 2012, the dealer remains positive about the Chinese and Middle East art markets, but does not see potential for his business in India. "We have some Indian collectors who buy from us in London, but we’re not really selling to collectors in India. Maybe we’re not approaching it the right way, or maybe we don’t have the relationships. Usually when the business is there and the appetite for collecting is there, it trickles up. It’s not happening yet. India remains focused on its local art, and its museums aren’t showing international art often enough."
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Simple Tales III

Source Chatterjee & Lal
The Simple Tales series functions as polemic and argues for a loosening of the self-imposed limits to what might be displayed in commercial galleries in India. Teetering, perhaps, on the chaotic these exhibitions privilege the connoisseur over the art historian. Ultimately, they argue that the chance encounter can be more satisfying as an art experience than the expected and homogenous. Simple Tales III will bring together works spanning more than 1500 years. The mediums used include bronze, wood, stone, paper and digital video. In the present edition, works will be included by contemporary artists such as Ashish Avikunthak, Hitesh Natalwala, Piyali Ghosh and Sahej Rahal.
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L'Inde et l'« american dream »

Source Les Echos par Jacques Hubert-Rodier
Dans une comparaison avec les Etats-Unis de la fin du XIX e siècle et leur société diverse, laïque, matérialiste et fièrement démocratique, « The Economist » souligne que l'Inde a aujourd'hui « besoin de sa propre version du rêve américain ». Mais, pour ce faire, les hommes politiques en Inde doivent avoir une vision et la défendre. Il y a soixante-cinq ans, les dirigeants fondateurs de l'Inde avaient un « rêve admirable et exceptionnel » : créer une démocratie libérale. Et les Indiens d'aujourd'hui ont la liberté d'expression, de protester, de choisir leurs dirigeants, à la différence de pays comme la Chine, la Russie ou le Pakistan. Mais « la partie économique de leur vision a été un échec ». Ce qui manque à l'Inde c'est une nouvelle classe de dirigeants politiques, qui prennent des décisions permettant enfin aux déshérités d'émerger aussi de la pauvreté.
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Baldessari Teaching a plant the alphabet

Prince Claus laureate Jivya Soma Mashe is renowned for his vivid representation of the Warli vision of nature and culture in equilibrium, and for highlighting the contemporary relevance of local forms of knowledge. SOIL, partially funded by the Prince Claus Fund is a unique double exhibition initiated by artist Jackie Sleper and the Indian art historian and curator Sushma K. Bahl.
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Johnny-come-lately

Source Business Standard by Kishore Singh
The honest intention serves up a platform for artists looking for their due and collectors for value — but does it deliver on its promise? I was fortunate in having, for company, a keen collector with a very generous budget and a mandate to help identify any work (or works) that he would willingly buy — his contribution to emerging artists of exceptional talent. We teetered up aisles and down corridors, looked left and right, even managing to speak to a few artists — mysteriously, the artworks weren’t labelled — but, despairingly, failed to find anything to take back home.
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The United Art Fair: First Impressions

Source Art Info
In a bizarre, inexplicable, and possibly unintentional twist, the most overwhelming democratic space in the two halls that comprise the United Art Fair is the VIP lounge.
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Mithila painting exhibition at Fresno State

Source Fresno States News by Joan K. Sharma
The British colonial officer in Madhubani District, William G. Archer, “was stunned by the beauty of the paintings and similarities to the work of modern Western artists like Klee, Miró, and Picasso,” Sharma added, so he made black-and-white photographs that were the earliest-know images of the Mithila work. Archer later became the South Asia curator at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1977, American anthropologist Raymond Owens was conducting research in Madhubani and was similarly “stunned” by the Mithila paintings, now on paper, and shared some with fellow anthropologist David Szanton. They helped establish the Ethnic Arts Foundation, dedicated to sustaining the Mithila painting tradition.
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Vernacular Moment: Rethinking Tribal Art

Source The Sunday Guardian by Julia Marchand
It seems that "tribal art" has somehow succumbed to a more appropriate word: vernacular art, a term that best describes the unique and rich diversity of the Indian contemporary art scene. "In claiming its diversity and hybridity as part of contemporary art, India not only acknowledges its rich pluralistic existence but also re-configures the definition of contemporary" (art historian and curator Yashodhara Dalmia.) Re-configuring the notion of contemporaneity in India goes hand-in-hand with its market, and the systematisation of vernacular production, circulation and valuation.
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Kochi to turn into a canvas for world artists

Source The Hindu by S. Anandan
This December, the contemporary art world will move into the city for a three-month sojourn beginning ‘12/12/12’, the day the maiden Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) opens. India’s first biennale is billed to be a watershed in the port city’s evolution — from being a crucible of ancient cultures into an international hub of contemporary art.
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11 milliardaires de plus vont donner la moitié de leur fortune

Source Metro
L'action philanthropique des plus riches américains se poursuit. Le duo de choc Bill Gates- Warren Buffet, qui ont lancé en 2010 l'opération "Giving Pledge" (promesse de dons) consistant à donner au moins la moitié de sa fortune à des œuvres caritatives, a convaincu onze milliardaires de plus. Au total, 92 fortunes ont pris cet engagement Après le réalisateur George Lucas, le fondateur de CNN Ted Turner, le maire de New York Michael Bloomberg, le fondateur de Facebook Mark Zuckerberg ou encore le fondateur d'eBay Pierre Omidyar, c'est au tour du directeur général de Netflix, Reed Hastings, du co-fondateur d'Intel, Gordon Moore, et de l'ex-patron canadien du géant des boissons alcoolisées Seagram, Charles Bronfman, de promettre de se délester d'une partie de leur fortune.
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Asian art seeing a resurgence in global market

Source Daily News by Madhusree Chatterjee
The sale of the Asian Modern and Contemporary Art at Christie's for four days Sept 11-14 at the Rockfeller Centre in New York that mopped up $44,735,075 is being labelled by experts as a comeback for art from Asia and India. The Indian section was led by an untitled oil-on-canvas work by V.S. Gaitonde, which the master from the progressive contemporary school painted in 1969. It raked in $962,500. Jonathan Stone, the chairman and international head of Asian Art, says the auction reflected a world-wide demand for the greatest objects of Asian art.
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The long road

Source The Hindu by Neha Mujumdar
Writer-artist Gieve Patel’s lifelong fascination with people of the Warli tribe began in his grandfather’s estate. Warli adivasis worked on the estate, and when Patel, as a young man in his 20s, would try to interact with them, he would be discouraged, because they were from another caste. In an early poem, Grandfather, he attempts to sort out this puzzle – why does his kindly grandfather discourage him to mix with the ‘others’?
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They joined the fight

Source Business Standard by Gargi Gupta
Painter-writer J Swaminathan and writer-artist Richard Bartholomew were two key, and lively, figures of the Delhi art world of the 20th century. Their sons seek to rescue their legacy. One was an eminent painter who started out as a journalist and remained, through his career, a writer who penned incisive essays on aesthetic and cultural debates in left-wing journals in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. The other was the preeminent art critic and newspaper reviewer of those decades, and an artist who painted (early on) and (later) took beautiful, intuitive photographs of his family, his artist friends and life around him.
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Christie's sale of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art achieves $7,060,625

Source The Economic Times
The successful sale can be attributed to works of exceptional quality, extraordinary history, and accessible estimates, which led to an enthusiastic response from clients throughout the entire sale. The modern art section reflected the continued strength and breadth of this collecting field and was led by Vasuedo S. Gaitonde's extremely rare Untitled, 1969, from the collection of Dr Bernard Peters, which achieved $962,500."
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The art of misunderstanding

Source Financial Times by Griselda Murray Brown
Kher’s work has been shaped by her decision to stay in India – as has her attitude towards artwork collapsing and things not going to plan. “In India,” she says, “you have to give a bit and you have to go with it.” The chaos that characterises life in the country’s teeming cities, and the clamour of its 1.2bn voices, is expressed in Kher’s poignant piece “Sing to them that will listen”. Part of the Parasol Unit show, it’s a small Tibetan “singing bowl” filled with rice, each grain hand-inscribed with words from an Indian Sunday newspaper’s matrimonial column. Phrases such as “fair girl”, “B.Tech” and “caste no bar” speak of the selection process behind each potential match – but these careful messages are mostly obscured by others, leaving chance to create its own order.
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Atul Dodiya chez Daniel Templon

Source Art Actuel
Atul Dodiya, né en 1959, vit et travaille à Mumbai. Fort d’une étonnante capacité à se réinventer, Atul Dodiya a investit un éventail complet de styles, se lançant dans des expérimentations toujours maîtrisées, depuis la peinture photo-réaliste de ses débuts jusqu’aux œuvres sur stores métalliques qui lui ont valu un succès international. Cette réflexion sur l’objet reflète son intérêt pour les aspirations de la classe moyenne indienne et l’impact de la globalisation sur ses traditions.
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Three cheers for India's tribal & folk art

Source The Times of India by Archana Khare Ghose
I sincerely hope Saffronart makes this auction a regular feature in its annual calendar as tribal/ folk art deserves this recognition. Throughout my career of writing in art, I’ve faced difficulties in pushing stories related to this genre in newspapers where I’ve worked and even when I’ve got a go-ahead from a kind editor, it has always been tough sourcing images of these artists. If Saffronart’s auction succeeds, it would be a booster shot to the efforts of the very dedicated professor and former director of Crafts Museum in Delhi, Jyotindra Jain, who has been inarguably the strongest voice in favour of Indian tribal/ folk art for a long time, and also to the efforts of Meena Verma and Tulika Kedia who have been brave enough to open dedicated galleries to folk/tribal art in the commercial art hub sector of Lado Sarai in New Delhi. This write-up cannot be complete without mentioning the French art connoisseur Herve Perdriolle who runs a gallery in Paris that has such a vast collection of tribal and folk art from India that an average Indian would be surprised on beholding it all. > read more

Contemporain, un mot, plusieurs cultures !

Le livre d'Hervé Perdriolle "Art Contemporain Indien" sous titré "Contemporain, un mot, plusieurs cultures" publié par 5 Continents Editions retrace son parcours de critique d'art, de la Figuration Libre aux expéditions indiennes. Ce beau livre nous fait découvrir un autre versant de l'art contemporain indien, celui des "Adivasis", celui des premiers habitants de l'Inde. Il décrit l'engouement, dans les années 1970 et 80, des intellectuels indiens pour ces formes d'art alors connues des seuls ethnologues et amateurs éclairés. Ce livre, richement illustré, montre les artistes historiques et les figures émergentes de cet art contemporain issu de cultures locales. L'Inde, comme l'art contemporain, est plurielle. Un mot, plusieurs cultures.
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Jangarh Singh Shyam à la Biennale de Gwangju !

Des œuvres de Jangarh Singh Shyam, le légendaire artiste de la tribu Gond, ont été sélectionnées pour la Biennale de Gwangju du 7 sept au 11 nov 2012. En proposant ces œuvres, Nancy Adajania –critique d'art indienne et membre du comité de sélection- renoue avec l'esprit du grand peintre et penseur indien, Swaminathan, associant l'art contemporain véhiculaire, issu de culture globale, à l'art contemporain vernaculaire, issu de culture locale. A découvrir aussi les œuvres de l'artiste indienne Sheba Chhachhi et celles des français Laurent Grasso et Chris Marker.
> Biennale de Gwangju

Première vente d'art tribal indien chez Saffronart

Cette première vente d'art contemporain vernaculaire a été un succès malgré le fait que de nombreuses œuvres présentées venaient du premier marché. Les estimations raisonnables, plus que la qualité moyenne des œuvres, ont permis la bonne tenue de cette vente. Selon Saffronart les lots ont été acquis autant par des nouveaux collectionneurs que par des collectionneurs d'art moderne et contemporain ouvrant leur collection à l'art tribal; la localisation des acheteurs est principalement indienne et américaine.

Swami and His Friends

Source The Indian Express by Vandan Kalra
The exhibition display ends at a junction where most others would have liked to make a beginning — in 1969, a year after artist-writer Jagdish Swaminathan was awarded the Nehru Fellowship to research on folk and tribal art in India. It was this journey to the interiors of Kinnaur, Kutch and Bastar that introduced him to his own language of art, one that includes birds, trees and mountains in the well-ordered geometrical spaces. This experience was to last his entire lifetime.
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