Telling a timeless story

Source The Hindu bay Shailaja Tripathi
A self-taught artist, Madhvi is showing in Bengaluru after such a long gap that she doesn’t even remember her last show here. In the 80’s Nalini Malani (one of the most significant names in new media art) drew up a list of women artists and finally zeroed in on Nilima Sheikh, Arpita Singh, Madhvi and herself to come together for a series of exhibitions in different cities. Today these are one of the most seminal names in the field of contemporary Indian art. In 2010 came A World of Memories, her first book published by Penguin Studio which comprised some of the best works from different periods of her artistic career like “Village Opera” and “Biography of My Neighbour-II”. Madhvi grew up in a small village, Sanjay in Gujarat amidst nature, folklore and rituals to which art was intrinsic.
> read more

Painting is an influential medium for message of climate change: Artist Venkat Shyam

Source FirstPost by Vrushal Pendharkar
Finding My Way is a beautiful work of art and stories by the Pradhan Gond artist Venkat Raman Singh Shyam and writer and publisher of Navayana, S Anand. They come from completely different backgrounds forming a sonorous confluence where it is difficult to tell where Venkat's voice begins and Anand's voice ends. It is part-autobiography, part-narrative of an individual, a community, an art, a society, folk-mythology, life, all wonderfully illustrated by Venkat and powerfully narrated by Anand without any numbers to the pages.
> read more

Bombay dreams: how painter Bhupen Khakhar captured the city spirit

Source The Guardian by Amit Chaudhuri
Naive nude figures, provocative kitsch, vibrant urban scenes … a major exhibition of Khakhar’s paintings at Tate Modern shows why the accountant from Bombay became a liberating force in Indian art. Bhupen Khakhar was born in Khetwadi in Bombay in 1934. His father was an engineer, and he died when Khakhar was still a child. Whenever I read Khakhar’s biographical details – he died in 2003 – I stop short at “Khetwadi”, where a Gujarati tailor my mother courted for his skill at making perfect blouses lived and worked in a room by a bridge. Khetwadi didn’t fit in with my idea of Bombay. Although it was notionally in South Bombay (the term didn’t exist when I was growing up, and now denotes the richest urban setting in India), it was distinct from it, as were the bazaar localities beyond Nana Chowk and Grant Road. Khetwadi was a small town in a big city... > read more

Ahead of Christie's auction, art collector Rajiv Savara emotional over 1958 Gaitonde canvas sale

Source The Economic Times by Masoom Gupte
The decision of putting up the painting for auction was taken to ensure their collection's perpetuity. Proceeds of the sale will go to the Savara Foundation of Arts (SFA), founded by Savara, Roohi and his brother, Rahul. "It was a very emotional decision for us. It really was a question of which baby to chuck in the sea," Savara said. But the couple also understood the importance of putting up a serious, large format work for auction, as the idea was to raise a substantial corpus for the foundation. "If we are going to go through the pain of separation (with the painting), then it is our hope to raise sufficient funds (for our vision)," he added.
> read more

"Découvrir l’Inde par les yeux de ses artistes"

Source Le Petit Journal par Philippe Creusat
L’art contemporain en Inde est en plein essor. Eve Lemesle, finaliste 2016 des Trophées des Français de l’étranger participe à cette dynamique avec l’agence de production qu’elle a créée : « What about art ». Entreprenante et passionnée, elle prépare le lancement aujourd’hui du premier musée d’art contemporain au Bangladesh.
> lire plus

Inde. Une artiste française en campagne contre la pollution

Source Courrier International par Baishali Adak
Mélanie, 30 ans, a commencé par photographier des patients asthmatiques et des élèves dans plusieurs hôpitaux et écoles de Gurgaon. “C’est à ce moment que j’ai eu l’idée de lancer une campagne de plus grande ampleur. J’ai commencé à demander aux balayeurs de rue, aux vendeurs de fruits, aux agents de circulation et même aux enfants de porter un masque et de tenir la radio contre eux pour les photographier.” Mélanie, qui est originaire de Besançon, dans le Jura, est photographe professionnelle. Nombre de ses clichés ont été publiés par le magazine du Sunday Times (Royaume-Uni), Géo Ado (France) ou encore Le Monde Histoire (France). En Inde, elle habite à Gurgaon, une ville de l’Etat de l’Haryana située au sud-ouest de Delhi. “En septembre 2015, a-t-elle déclaré à India Today, j’ai été contactée pour une séance photo. Ma voisine, Namita Gupta, qui a créé la société Airveda [un fabricant de dispositifs pour surveiller la qualité de l’air], m’a demandé de prendre quelques photos sur la pollution de l’air à New Delhi à des fins pédagogiques et de sensibilisation.” > lire plus

Top 5 at Christie’s Arts of India Sale, London, May 26

Source Blouin Art Info by Archana Khare Ghose
On May 26, alongside the high-profile auction of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Indian Art by Christie’s at King Street, London, will take place another India-related sale. Titled “Arts of India,” it’s a fantastic collection of 118 lots from the late 16th century to the late 19th century. The majority of the lots comprises miniature paintings from almost all schools of the genre that flourished in this time span under different rulers, including the Mughals. These include the Pahari School, with works from Mandi, Chamba, Garhwal, Kangra, Basholi; and the schools that thrived in the plains of north, central and west India at Lucknow, Gwalior, Bundi, Datia, Mandla, Panna, Jodhpur, Jaipur, and Udaipur. From the later period are the paintings of the Company School, the Calcutta School, and the Kalighat Paintings.
> read more

An Adivasi's ways of seeing

Source Business Standard by Geetanjali Krishna
Finding My Way is a hard book to put down even for the most blase of readers, although some might wish it had been more tightly edited, with fewer disjointed digressions from autobiographical anecdotes to sometimes incomprehensible Gond philosophy to Kabir's poetry (albeit beautifully translated). Adding to the lack of temporal progression is the fact that the pages are not numbered. It is almost as if a reader can randomly open the book on any page, and read on. It must be said, though that, through this hodgepodge, the honesty and simplicity of the artist and the Gond people comes through beautifully. As a visual autobiography, Finding My Way offers a glimpse into the unseen lives of the Gond people, shedding light on the plight of forest dwellers and the price they pay for development and commerce. But what really shines throughout the book is a celebration of different ways of seeing - and the author/artist's quiet confidence that India's folk artists have stories worth telling, songs worth listening to, and canvases that need to be painted for a wider audience.
> read more

St+art India: Interview with Festival Curator Giulia Ambrogi

Source StreetArtNews by Christie Bailey
What was the relationship between the artists and the resident community? I mean, what’s the people’s reaction to a peaceful artistic invasion? Was amazing. Very supportive even when perhaps we were creating some noise with the cranes working also till late at night. Many people have been contributing in different ways, offering chai, the Indian tea, their houses for water and facilities, or their shops to keep paints and materials. The warmest and most loyal reaction was by the kids of the close slum and of the colony were always with us, helping out in needs such as going to grab water, washing the brushes and buckets and simply hanging around and making a lot of noise! I think everyone, aside from personal preferences on the pieces, is very happy and proud to have become a sort of famous spot in the city attracting journalists, cameras and people from other parts of Delhi and the world.
> read more

Some wonderful samples of Indian art in the traditional styles came to Brisbane recently

Source India Link by Vish Chilumkurti
The Queensland Gallery (QGOMA) concluded last month the eighth edition of Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT 8) which began in November last year. This year, the focus was on artists from Asia, the Pacific and Australia. It centred on recent work in performance art, video, kinetic art and figurative painting and sculpture, with themes encompassing the cultural, the social as well as the political. One of the main attractions of this exhibition was the collection of contemporary art from India titled Kalpa Vriksha. This is a term which symbolises the divine wish-fulfilling tree from Hindu mythology.
> read more

Why doesn't NGMA have space for adivasi artists, asks Venkat Raman Singh Shyam

Source The Economic Times by Charmy Harikrishnan
He sits across me, in a white shirt patterned with green sprigs of leaves and brown trousers. He has an iPhone in his pocket, a tiny gold ring on his right ear, a sun tattoo on his hand and a Xylys watch on his wrist. Venkat Raman Singh Shyam leans forward, a tuft of hair falling on his forehead, his big eyes going wider in part bewilderment and part indignation, and says: "People tell me, 'Oh you don't look like a Gond artist.'" What should a Gond artist look like? What should Gond art look.
> read more

The 20 Best Booths at Frieze New York

Source Artsy by Marina Cashdan and Casey Lesser
For their quietly impressive booth in the Spotlight section, Mumbai gallery Jhaveri Contemporary collaborated with the estate of Zahoor ul Akhlaq to show the late pioneering Pakistani artist’s paintings and a sculpture. The artist is a major influence on miniature painting and contemporary Pakistani artists. Zahoor’s paintings on view, from the late 1980s and ’90s, evidence a confluence of the traditions of 17th-century Mughal and Persian paintings, which he studied while in school in London in the 1960s, with the leading western art movements happening that time—namely pop art and color field painting.
> read more

Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016

Source E-flux
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is pleased to announce the first list of artists who will be part of its third edition, opening on December 12, 2016. The Biennale, which will run for 108 days, from December 12, 2016 until March 29, 2017, is the largest and longest contemporary art biennial in South Asia. The main exhibition and an ancillary programme of talks, seminars, workshops, film screenings, and music will take place across a range of venues in Fort Kochi and Ernakulam, in Kochi, Kerala, a state on India’s southwestern coast.
> read more

Indianne Travel accueille la collection d’Hervé Perdriolle et vous emmène à la découverte de l’Inde et de la tribu Warli du 6 au 10 mai Au Medicis Paris VI

Source Indianne Travel
Amoureux de l'Inde, des Arts et des Voyages d’exception, nous vous invitons à une double découverte : celle des œuvres émouvantes d'une tribu animiste qui rend compte des rapports de l'Homme et de la Nature, et celle d'une agence de voyages spécialiste du sous-continent indien, qui ne propose ni catalogue ni circuits formatés, plébiscite le luxe éco-responsable et offre au voyageur exigeant, à travers un itinéraire sur mesure et haut-de-gamme. un tête-à-tête avec les territoires et les cultures, sous le signe de leur préservation.
> du 6 au 10 mai Au Medicis 5 rue de Medicis Paris VI
> Indianne Travel site web

Hema Upadhyay and three Indian artists at Museum of Fine Art’s Boston show

Source The Times of India by Uma Nair
Four Indian artists including Hema Upadhyay feature in a historic exhibition that looks at the city as a spectacle in a showing entitled Mega Cities Asia at MFA, Boston from April 3 to June 17, 2016. Rubbing shoulders with the late genius Hema Upadhyay and Subodh Gupta are emerging artists Aaditi Joshi and Asim Waqif.
> read more

‘Art is more than unbroken lines’

Source The Hindu by Jayanthi Madhukar
Walking around the small room in NGMA and taking in the works stacked against the walls, Chowdhury talks of his plans to open a museum in Kolkata for his private collection. He is confident it will happen soon. Then he pauses near a table. One of the drawings placed on it has a piece of broken glass inside the frame. “While reframing, that piece was not removed.” He laughs at the irony of a broken glass encased within the drawing of unbroken line. It is a sign to change that title. “Maybe you can think of something else?”
> read more

India’s Richest Woman Nita Ambani Eyes The Art World

Source Blouin Art Info by Bibhu Pattnaik
India’s richest woman with a $20 billion family fortune and a 27-story sky palace in India’s south Mumbai, billed as the world’s most expensive home for its $1 billion estimated cost – Nita Ambani is now eyeing the art world. Her new interest is the conservation of Indian art forms and making them more widely known internationally. Recently her Reliance Foundation sponsored an exhibition of traditional Indian pichwai paintings of Shrinathji, the Ambani family deity, at the Art Institute of Chicago. She’s also the biggest funder of the new Met Breuer’s debut show of modernist drawings by Nasreen Mohamedi, the first museum retrospective of the artist’s work in the U.S. Nasreen’s exhibition ‘Waiting Is a Part of Intense Living’ made its debut at the Reina Sofia Museum in Spain this past September.
> read more

Indian art gaining worldwide recognition

Source Newsgram by Zofeen Maqsood
For some time now, Indian art and its unique cultural identity had been garnering interest in the avant-garde world circles celebrating art and aesthetics. But this past December when a masterpiece by late Indian abstract artist Vasudeo Gaitonde sold at the prestigious Christies auction in Mumbai, India, for an unprecedented $4.4 million dollars (Rs 29 crore approx), the highest ever for an Indian artwork, it compelled the connoisseurs to actually sit up and take real notice of the extremely engaging art stories originating from the Indian subcontinent.
> read more

Indian Artists at Art Basel 2016 in Hong Kong

Source Blouin Art Info by Bibhu Pattnaik
Four Indian galleries participated at the 3-day-long Art Basel, Hong Kong which concluded on March 26. They were Mumbai-based Chemould Prescott Road, Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery and Nature Morte and Kolkata-based Experimenter. The 4th edition of the Art Basel featured 239 galleries drawn from 35 countries. Leading Indian contemporary artists like Atul and Anju Dodiya, Ravinder Reddy, Faig Ahmed, Ayesha Sultana and Rathin Barman showcased their creations.
> read more

Singh Twins bring contemporary art retrospective to Peel Art Museum and Archive

Source The Star Toronto
As a strategy for art-world success, the one employed by the Singh Twins would seem to have some holes. “Narrative, decorative, figurative, non-European, small scale — all the things you’re not supposed to do in contemporary art,” they laugh. “So we just thought, ‘let’s put it all in one package and throw it out there.’ ”And so, a couple of decades ago, they did. But then a strange thing happened: They actually began succeeding. From exhibitions at London’s Tate Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Museum of London, to name just a few, the twins — Liverpudlian Brits, Sikh and bona fide art-world celebrities back home in the U.K. — have landed here, at the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archive for their first retrospective in Canada.
> read more

The National Crafts Museum in New Delhi, India would soon be demolished

Source Art Found Out by Scott Rothstein
This institution, formally named the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum was created in 1958 by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, a brilliant social reformer and member of the Indian Independent movement. The mission of the institution was enhanced during the 18 years that Dr. Jyotindra Jain guided the museum. There are over 35,000 works in the museum collection, which is housed in a building designed by Charles Correa. Plans for the future of the collection are unknown. Local bureaucrats have kept much of the rationale behind this decision from the public. The National Crafts Museum represented the very best of Indian culture and stood as a monument to the rich heritage of a remarkable country. Sadly, the administrators responsible for the institution do not understand and respect the importance of it.
> read more

Indian Art London

Source Christies
This year, Christie’s auction of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art, taking place on 26 May at London King Street, will showcase iconic works by leading modern masters and rare, unseen pieces from distinguished private collections in the North America, Europe and South Asia.
> read more

Un marché mondial en quête de confiance

Source Le Quotidien de l'Art par Alexandre Crochet
Si la vision globale du marché est « moins positive qu’il y a un an », pointe le rapport, les perspectives pour les ventes d’art contemporain pour six des huit régions examinées restent « neutres à positives » pour les mois à venir. Si les marchés chinois et russes ont chuté de 41 % et 68 %, l’Asie du Sud-Est a progressé de 28 % en 2015, et les ventes d’art moderne et contemporain indien ont connu une hausse de 13,5 %. En dépit de la baisse des cours du pétrole, les experts n’ont pas un avis défavorable mais prudent concernant le Moyen-Orient. Asie du Sud-Est, Inde ou encore Amérique du Sud - Brésil mis provisoirement entre parenthèses – devraient voir émerger encore davantage de grosses fortunes ces prochaines années.
> lire le rapport Art & Finance report 2016

Galleries celebrate milestone anniversaries during the Art Paris Art Fair 2016

Source AMA
Galerie Hervé Perdriolle also celebrates its 20th year in business. For Art Paris Art Fair 2016, Hervé showcases different types of murals, ranging from ritualistic art, street art to outsider art. On one wall, one may find works by Jivya Soma Mashe who reinterprets India’s Warli tribe on paper. On the other, there are photographs of Julien “Seth” Malland’s street art. Lastly, there are pieces of removed apartment walls of Jean-Daniel Allanche who painted his apartment from floor to ceiling for 40 years. “I always have an interest in art works whose original intention is not to be shown in the galleries…things that convey a way of life.” says Perdriolle.
> read more