CONTEMPORARY ONE WORD SEVERAL WORLDS

jeudi 30 décembre 2010

DJ Click fait sa Route du Rom


Source Aujourd'hui l'Inde par Réjane Ereau
Paris, centre Barbara Goutte d’or. Studio 2. À droite, assis par terre, Amrat et Sanjay. Musiciens indiens, tabla et harmonium. À gauche, bien calés sur leurs petits tabourets, Serioja et Tudorel. 100% tsiganes, violon et saxo. À leurs côtés, Valentina, chanteuse sarde. Et quelle chanteuse… Entre eux, debout derrière son clavier, Click. DJ chef d’orchestre, métisseur de sons, programmeur trait d’union. « Il y a un an et demi, j’ai joué seul à Delhi dans une boîte VIP, raconte celui-ci. Les gens ont adoré : c’est la première fois qu’ils entendaient de la musique des Balkans, ils se sont complètement lâchés, genre "back to the jungle" ! Cet impact m’a donné envie d’approfondir, de monter un projet en Inde. J’en ai parlé à Amrat, croisé dans un festival… » Amrat Hussain, artiste râjasthâni installé en France : un grand nom du tabla, issu d’une ancestrale famille de musiciens, leader des Rajasthan Dohad Gypsies et d’un trio de jazz fusion.
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The art of arrival

Source Indian Express by Georgina Maddox
The art calender for 2011 looks exciting. India has already seen some stimulating international art events towards the end of 2010 and that augers well for the year ahead. Not only is Indian art going overseas, but art work from Europe and America is also making its way here — it may not be the cream of the selection, but it is undoubtedly way better than what we have seen in the past few years. Even eight years ago, international museums like Tate Modern and Serpentine in London, MoMA in New York and Guggenheim in Germany had not even heard of names like Atul Dodiya, Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher.
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mardi 28 décembre 2010

Delhi plans Tate Modern-style gallery in old power station


Source The Guardian by Jason Burke
The city of the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, the Gate of India and the 12th century Qutb Minar tower is to get a new monument. A decommissioned power station in Delhi, the Indian capital, is to be converted into an art gallery modelled on London's Tate Modern. The plan has been approved by Delhi municipal authorities, the Times of India newspaper reported , and could be completed in three to five years, depending on how long it takes to dismantle parts of the Indraprastha power plant beside the banks of the Yamuna river.
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dimanche 26 décembre 2010

Folklore for the future

Source Indian Express by Vandana Kalra
Meanwhile, the sequel to the current exhibition at Devi Art is keeping Garimella occupied. “The subsequent show will have artists working consciously outside their art practice, looking at issues in the larger world,” she says. In the adjoining room in the brick-red private museum in Gurgaon, Chitrakar artists from West Bengal await her feedback on their work. Garimella plans to encourage them to experiment with animation.
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Indian art shakes off recession

Source The Economic Times by Parul Vadehra
The momentum continues in 2011. The 3rd edition of India Art Summit in January promises to be bigger and better than ever before with 84 galleries from 24 countries presenting their collections of Modern and Contemporary Art, in addition to various curated projects, live performances and an impressive line-up of speakers. The month of May will see the opening of what is said to be the largest exhibition of Indian contemporary culture in Europe at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. And in June, for the first time in the prestigious Venice Biennale's 115-year history, there will be a pavilion dedicated to Indian Art curated by art critic and curator Ranjit Hoskote, another positive outcome of the public-private initiative. These exhibitions and many more at institutions and galleries across the country and abroad are sure to make 2011 an exciting year for Indian Art.
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Resurgence of hope


Source Deccan Herald
Cautious optimism, responsible art, promising auctions and the return of the legendary Anish Kapoor, defined the Indian art scene in 2010, writes Giridhar Khasnis
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vendredi 24 décembre 2010

Tribal art floors coal capital


Source The Telegraph by Praduman Choubey
“Exhibitions such as this which promote tribal arts should be organised on a regular basis,” said Mallick speaking on the occasion. He further urged the government to come forward and support these rural art forms, which were staring at extinction.
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jeudi 23 décembre 2010

3 Indian and 2 Chinese artists in top 10 for sculpture auction revenue

Source Art Radar Asia
Three Indian and two Chinese artists are featured in Artprice’s top 10 of contemporary artists for auction revenue from sculptures. While the report’s contemporary painting segment features artists from the US, the UK and China, artists in the contemporary sculpture list are more globally spread. From India comes Anish Kapoor, Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher and from China, Chen Li and Wang Zhan. The list, “with revenue totals ranging from €855,000 for Subodh Gupta to more than €11m for Jeff Koons,” is rounded up by three Europeans and two Americans.
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samedi 18 décembre 2010

Ce n'est qu'un au revoir !

Soirée d'adieu à Paris, Sayed Haider Raza, après avoir vécu 60 ans en France, repart vivre en Inde.


Son Excellence Ranjan Mathai, ambassadeur de l’Inde en France et Sayed Haider Raza


Ranjan Mathai, Raza et Ashok Vajpeyi, poète et directeur de Lalit Kala Akademi


Veena, Raza et Madame de Villepin. Photos Hervé Perdriolle

vendredi 17 décembre 2010

Death of a folk artist


Source Business Standard by Geetanjali Krishna
In the September 2010 South Asian art auction at Sotheby’s, two of an Indian folk artist’s works went under the hammer. I was thrilled to read that my favourite folk artist Jangarh Singh Shyam’s works (Crane and Landscape with Spider) stood their ground next to the works of modern Indian masters like Husain, Souza and Raza. It’s not often that folk art gets its due recognition, and I marvelled at how far this adivasi artist from one of India’s most underdeveloped states had come. It’s a pity that he wasn’t alive to see it.
As is often the case with brilliant people who die young, one can’t help but wonder exactly how much the world lost the day this Gond artist was found hanging from a ceiling fan in his lonely little room in Japan. But there’s one thing I’m sure of. He would have been proud to see how far the style of painting he developed has come today.
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mercredi 15 décembre 2010

Work in progress

Source Indian Express by Vandana Kalra
The next director of Tate Modern, Chris Dercon, has exciting plans for Indian art
When Chris Dercon takes over as the director at Tate Modern, London, in March 2011, one of the first tasks he wants to fulfill will be the formation of the India Acquisitions Committee, formed with the objective of building a more extensive collection of Indian art. “It will be responsible for pointing out the exciting things happening in Indian art and we will take it on from there,” says Dercon.
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Dictionnaire de l'Inde contemporaine

Source Armand Colin
Longtemps perçue comme le pays des maharajahs et des mendiants, l’Inde est désormais tombée dans un autre cliché, celui du pays émergent, de l’informatique et des délocalisations. Que retenir ? L’Inde de Mittal le magnat de l’acier, ou celle du plus grand nombre de mal nourris de la planète ?
Qui sait qu’en 2030, quand l’Inde sera devenue plus peuplée que la Chine, elle gardera une population en majorité rurale, et ce alors même que dès aujourd’hui, Delhi ou Bombay dépassent 20 millions d’habitants ? Qui sait que les films tournés à Bombay (Bollywood) ne représentent qu’une minorité de la production cinématographique indienne ? Que la politique de discrimination positive en faveur des intouchables, des tribus, mais aussi des femmes, est parmi la plus développée du monde ?
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dimanche 12 décembre 2010

Sold for Rs 9.6 cr, Arpita Singh’s painting puts women artists on top

Source Indian Express by Georgina Maddox
“I think it’s great that Arpita is leading the way for women artists’ work to be priced in parallel with all the male artists, who have been dominating the market for years. It’s time women artists got their due,” says Dinesh Vazirani, the director of Saffronart. Noting that the collector base supports women artists, he adds, “The market is strong within the country, given that the buyer of the work was of Indian origin. This is a moment in history.”
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samedi 11 décembre 2010

A world of endless creativity


Source The Hindu by Shailaja Tripathi
The ongoing exhibition at Devi Art Foundation probes what it means to be a vernacular artist in this country. Encompassing a diverse range of art practices that exist within the exhaustive cluster of traditional arts, ‘Vernacular in the Contemporary' an ongoing exhibition at Anupam and Lekha Poddar's Devi Art Foundation (DAF), presents some extraordinary works from the genres of popular, folk, tribal and native art of the country.
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jeudi 9 décembre 2010

Tribal art with a contemporary edge


Source The Hindu Business Line by Chitra Narayanan
The Devi Art Foundation show is unique because it is probably one of the largest-ever showcase of folk art in an urban gallery space. It has put on its walls an art that rarely reaches urban studios but instead seems to find itself more in craft melas or handicraft emporiums. Several galleries, including the CIMA art gallery in Kolkata, are now trying to change that, resolutely going after innovative tribal art and giving it a display side by side with the contemporary art shows they usually put up. This has meant that the outstanding works among tribal art now have a space to stand out, in the process lifting their valuations. Perhaps, in some ways, the galleries' move is also dictated by commercial interests as Indian folk and tribal art is fast acquiring a big following in international markets with many collectors abroad willing to pay a good price.
These innovations and spark of originality is what is helping some of our folk and tribal artists to finally make a breakthrough into the space reserved for the Hussains, Pynes and Subodh Guptas.
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The Alternate Course

Source Express India by Vandana Kalra
Tribal art goes mainstream, with experimental works and frequent exhibitions.
He is one of the leading collectors of contemporary art in India, but during the last three years Anupam Poddar and his mother Lekha have been sifting though works by tribal artists from remote corners of the country. With art historian and designer Annapurna Garimella, the two shortlisted a group of around 30 artists from over 170, and commissioned them to produce work that could feature alongside their existing collection in the exhibition Vernacular, In the Contemporary. The first in the series of the two-part exhibition opened at the Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon recently.
The audience is not confined to India though. If the museum of Asian Art in San Francisco has a major collection of Madhubani artist Ganga Devi’s works, Paris-based art collector Hervé Perdriolle has been collecting Indian tribal art since 1996. In April, Jyotindra Jain curated the Other Masters of India: Contemporary Creations of the Adivasis at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.
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Saffron Art holds winter online Auction December 8th an 9th 2010

Source Elite Traveler by Radhika Wadhwa
The world’s largest online fine art auction house, Saffronart, will offer 100 artworks by 43 modern and contemporary Indian artists, including paintings, sculptures and installations. Highlights of this sale include modern masters such as S H Raza, F N Souza, Ram Kumar and Akbar Padamsee alongside some of the biggest names in contemporary Indian art like Surendran Nair, Subodh Gupta, Shibu Natesan and N S Harsha.
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Vernacular Mosaic


Source Open Magazine by Sohini Chattopadhyay
An ambitious project, using unconventional methods of selection, revisits an exciting range of India’s traditional art forms. Dr Annapurna Garimella is a fussy woman, fussy about work, fussy about labels. Congratulate her on putting together what is possibly India’s biggest tribal art show, and she shoots back, “Many of the artists are not tribals, so that’s inaccurate.” How about native art? “If a Madhubani painter uses tubes of paint manufactured in Japan, can you call that process of creating art native?” she throws back at you. Aha. “I chose the term vernacular with care. It signifies a traditional art language without the limitations that the terms ‘folk’, ‘tribal’ or ‘native’ have.”
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mercredi 8 décembre 2010

Ruée sur l’art moderne chinois

Source Art Market Insight
En automne 2008, Hong Kong était la première place de marché douloureusement frappée par la contamination de la crise économique au marché de l’art. Le marché reparti, les ventes d’automne 2010 à Hong Kong confirment deux tendances : un nouveau souffle pour les stars contemporaines chinoises, indiennes et indonésiennes d’une part et d’autre part, l’explosion des prix pour les artistes modernes.
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lundi 6 décembre 2010

L’Inde a été désignée comme "pays cible" en 2011 pour les investissements français à l’étranger.

Source Aujourd'hui l'Inde
La croissance de l’Inde est restée soutenue malgré crise et avoisine aujourd’hui les 9%. Cela ouvre des perspectives. Il y a effectivement eu l’émergence d’une classe moyenne qui compte désormais entre 250 et 300 millions de personnes et qui va continuer a se développer. Le pays a des besoins importants en infrastructures (eau, routes, électricité). En 2011, l’Inde est placée comme pays cible par UBIFRANCE. 40 opérations sous formes de pavillons, de salons, sont prévues en Inde l’année prochaine. Nous avons eu 35 entreprises francaises lors d’un salon nucléraire à Bombay. A Chandigarh se tient actuellement un salon sur le machinisme agricole auquel participent 10 entreprises françaises. Deux operations importantes seront organisées l’année prochaine: une rencontre technologique franco-indienne en septembre déclinée sur plusieurs villes et une exposition sur l’art de vivre à la française, qui se tiendra à Delhi en juillet.
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Anish Kapoor s’expose pour la première fois en Inde


Source Aujourd'hui l'Inde
Celui que Sonia Gandhi présentait samedi dernier, lors de l’inauguration de l’exposition à New Delhi, comme "l’enfant du pays" aurait plus d’une influence indienne à revendiquer. "Il a lui-même parlé de l’impact de la philosophie indienne et du symbolisme profond, inhérent à de nombreux aspects de la vie ici, sur son oeuvre", rappelait la présidente du parti du Congrès. Si l’intéressé préférerait se faire désigner comme "le meilleur artiste" plutôt que par ses origines, il avoue cependant l’emprise d’un "psycho-langage du travail" décidemment indien : "Comment cela pourrait-il en être autrement ? C’est là où j’ai grandi", déclarait l’artiste pour le quotidien britannique The Guardian.
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dimanche 5 décembre 2010

Welcome home, this time to glory and groupies

Source DNA by Madhu Jain
She stood there, transfixed, in one of those skin-sculpting little black dresses, admiring herself like a, well, latter day female avatar of Narcissus. Anish Kapoor’s stainless steel curvilinear “S-curve” sculpture, polished to beyond perfection, threw back an image of a lithe body with a pert bum. “Hey, move over,” her friend standing alongside said, nudging her, “I want to stand in the very same spot so that my bum looks as taut as yours.” Don’t blame the ladies. Or the spiffily turned out young men preening before the uncannily distorting surfaces of sculptures, when not networking: the reality in most cases was far less flattering than the illusion, sleight-of-eye, of Kapoor’s uncannily distorting surfaces. Le tout Mumbai turned up, many of them branded from tip to toe, at the inauguration of Anish Kapoor’s exciting exhibition in the cavernous and imposing Mehboob Studio in Bandra this week.
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mercredi 24 novembre 2010

Back on its feet

Source Business Standard by Kishore Singh
ArtTactic’s market confidence report for Indian modern art gets a thumbs-up, but it’s cautious about the contemporaries
For some time till the economy – and the art market – crashed in late 2008, drawing room conversations tended to centre not so much on art as much as investment in art. Though there was nothing intrinsically wrong if a set of investors wanted to treat it like any other tradable commodity, media attention focused unfortunately only on prospective returns, leading to a sprint in which galleries began to promote younger artists with potential but not yet the ability to command those markets. Which is why when the economy went into a tailspin, not only were careers destroyed, the fragility of the art industry and its alarming lack of resilience also showed up. Now that the economy is back on track, investor confidence in the art market is still nervous but the interest has returned — and this time investors (and collectors) are asking the right questions: What are its long-term prospects? How much should one invest annually, and who can be impartial guides in the process? What about short-term liquidity? How do you enhance the value of your portfolio, getting rid of weak assets to buy into blue-chip artists?
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Arpita Singh’s ‘Wish Dream’ may come true


Source Tehelka by Girija Duggal
For once, SH Raza, FN Souza, Akbar Padamsee and their ilk will have to be content with being confined to the sidelines. It is veteran Arpita Singh who will be the belle du jour at Saffronart’s upcoming Winter Art Auction, when one of her works will go under the hammer carrying a price tag of $1.9-2.3 million (Rs 8-10 crore), making it not only the highest-estimated work by a female Indian artist - living or dead- at an auction, but also the first work by a female artist in the country to be pegged at the magic Rs 10-crore mark.
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Rare Tagore art on auction

Source Daily Bhaskar
New Delhi, Encouraged by the recovery of the art market after a slowdown of 30 months, a leading Bangalore-based auction house has lined up rare art works of Indian modern and contemporary artists like Raja Ravi Varma, Rabindranath Tagore, Nikolai Roerich, M.F. Husain, Jamini Roy and F.N. Souza for an auction here Nov 30.
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dimanche 21 novembre 2010

The vernacular advantage

Source Livemint by Anindita Ghose
With two big shows and renewed interest, tribal art is the youngest star of the contemporary art scene.
There’s been a tribal invasion in the living spaces of art collectors Lekha and her son Anupam Poddar. At their New Delhi residence, two large vertical panels from Purulia in West Bengal take up one wall. The paintings tell the stories of the gods Manasa Devi and Shiva. They belie a linear concept of time as we know it, bringing different events of a narrative together in one space. In the dining area, there are woven fibre chairs from Chhattisgarh (with snakes fashioned as backrests) and six paintings by Gond artist Jangarh Singh Shyam. The earliest of these were bought in 1988, long before Jangarh became the poster boy of the new wave in Indian tribal art.
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mardi 16 novembre 2010

A Chinese Fish Vase, Found in an Attic, Swims to an $85 Million World Record in London

Source Art Info by Kate Delmling
This is, at least in part, a patriotic gesture: He Shuzhong, founder of the nonprofit Beijing Cultural Heritage Foundation, told the New York Times last February that "Chinese people are becoming richer and need to be responsible for our dignity and history." The passion for collecting has spread throughout Chinese society, with a dozen popular television reality shows feeding interest and demand, including one, "Collection World," in which contestants must agree to smash their family treasures to bits if judges decide that they are reproductions.
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dimanche 14 novembre 2010

Bill et Melinda Gates, philanthropes impatients


Source Le Monde par Frédéric Joignot
"Pour moi, quelle est la plus belle image du monde ?" demande Bill Gates au public. Le tableau de Van Gogh Les Tournesols apparaît derrière lui : "Est-ce celle-là ?" L'"homme de Vitruve ", le dessin de Léonard de Vinci, suit : "Ou celle-ci ?" Voici maintenant le logo de Microsoft : "Ou bien celle-là ? " La salle rit, un graphique s'affiche aussitôt : la courbe de la mortalité infantile depuis un siècle. Bill Gates conclut : "Voilà la plus belle des images." La courbe passe de 20 millions en 1960 à 9 millions en 2010.
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vendredi 12 novembre 2010

1,2 milliard de ventes d'art en dix jours à New York

Source Le Monde par harry Bellet
Un tableau de Roy Lichtenstein, Ice Cream Soda, peint en 1962, et vendu chez Sotheby's le 9 novembre, pour 14 millions de dollars, était proposé à 650 dollars en mars 1962 par le marchand Leo Castelli, et que l'acheteur de l'époque, après discussion, l'avait emporté pour 500 dollars. Le Modigliani, lui, avait été vendu 16,8 millions de dollars en 1999 : 51 millions de bénéfice en un peu plus de dix ans.
Les exemples de ce type de plus-value sont nombreux, ce qui n'est pas pour rien dans l'intérêt porté à l'art contemporain. Avec une clientèle qui vient de partout : si les acheteurs nord-américains restent majoritaires, avec environ 45 % des enchères, suivis des Européens à 31 %, la part de l'Asie est en hausse, avec 6 %, et surtout, celle du " reste du monde ", comme le disent les maisons de vente pour ne pas évoquer directement les émirats du Golfe, bondit à 18 %. Alors que les marchés financiers sont perturbés, " les gens veulent mettre leur argent dans quelque chose de tangible ", confiait une acheteuse au New York Times. Des bonbons bleus, par exemple.
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lundi 8 novembre 2010

In form

Source The Hindu by Shailaja Tripathi
One. Art Alive, a gallery in posh Panchsheel Park, is hosting a group show ‘Jangarh Kalam' of Gond tribal arists.
Two. Lekha and Anupam Poddar's Devi Art Foundation will close their art activities for this year with ‘Vernacular, In the Contemporary'.
Three. Gallery Arts of the Earth, a gallery devoted solely to the cause of tribal art has recently become part of the city's culturescape.
Four. W+K Exp gallery hosted ‘Dog Father, Fox Mother, their daughter and other stories' an exhibition of Pardhan Gond sculptures by young artist Sukhnandi Vyam in May 2010.
The list is long and growing by the day, pointing at the renewed interest in the exquisite tribal art traditions of the country. The scholars who have been advocating the genre for years now are only elated that the terms of engagement have also changed with this development.
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Michelle Obama at Crafts Museum

Source Sify News
The National Handicrafts and Handloom Museum, home to more than 20,000 exhibits and a village complex showcasing ethnic and regional crafts and textiles, is all set to host US First Lady Michelle Obama Monday morning. According to Ruchira Ghosh, director of the museum, 'the visit will boost the museum's image'. The museum serves as a confluence of arts, crafts and culture. The highlight of the museum is an ethnic village complex spread across five acres. It has 15 structures - mostly homes and temples from the states of India showcasing ethnic lifestyles. The complex has been designed by architect Charles Correa.
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dimanche 7 novembre 2010

The Sotheby's of India

Source The Daily Beast by Claire Howorth
India, for the next few days basking in President Obama’s presence, is one of the few countries in the world enjoying a robust economy while the bottom drops out everywhere else. Saffronart, a Mumbai-based online auction house, has soared in the good times. Minal Vazirani, who founded the company with her husband, Dinesh, 10 years ago next month, discussed her company’s unusual market, and the growing global appetite for modern and contemporary Indian art.
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Changing motifs

Source The Financial Express by Garima Pant
Having begun dabbling with the Gond tribal art form since the age of 15, Mayank Shyam, son of legendary Jangarh Singh Shyam has come a long way. Preparing for his upcoming exhibition in Paris in January 2011, Mayank is excited about his first show away from Indian soil and at the opportunity to take this native art form to newer heights. Though Gond art is not new internationally, as Jangarh was instrumental in putting this art form on the global map before he committed suicide in 2001, for the legendary artist’s son, it is a mean feat.
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samedi 6 novembre 2010

Jangargh Kalam

Source The Times of India by Neelam Raaj
If Swaminathan put Gond artists in the national spotlight by showcasing them alongside the works of urban contemporary artists at Bhopal's Bharat Bhavan, it was French art critic Herve Perdriolle who took them to the global stage. The Paris-based Perdriolle has organised many exhibitions in Europe with his collection of Indian art. Today, his collection, which started in 1996, includes Bhil, Warli and Gond paintings. Are other collectors following suit? Perdriolle says that the economic crisis in 2008 made collectors more aware of the 'other' art. "They want new attractive works, both for cultural and investment reasons."
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jeudi 4 novembre 2010

Coming of age

Source The Telegraph by Aarti Dua
Tribal art will have a splashy coming out at a show titled Vernacular, In the Contemporary next month. The display, which is being put on by mega-collectors Anupam and Lekha Poddar, will be held at their museum Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon. Indian tribal artists have also attracted foreign collectors like the Paris-based Hervé Perdriolle, who has amassed a substantial collection of his own. Collectors like Perdriolle too are looking at emerging voices. Perdriolle began by following the footsteps of “historical ethnologists and renowned Indian artists who had been commissioned by the Indian government”. So his collection largely covers masters from the Warli, Gond, Bhil, Madhubani and Patua arts. But he has since added works by emerging artists like patua Monimala and Mithila painter Pushpa Kumari. “The emerging artists are evolving around their proper tradition with a strong and personal point of view,” feels Perdriolle.
Don’t forget that collectors like Anupam also have a huge impact on the market. As Garimella says: “Anything that Anupam Poddar collects, others start collecting in India.” And as Perdriolle says: “The richness of these art forms is so vast that the potential is huge.”
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vendredi 29 octobre 2010



Keith Haring bilboard 1982 Times Square Show. Image trouvée sur le web associant sur une même peinture les personnages créés par Haring et ceux de la tribu Warli. Campagne Coca Cola "Happy Diwali 2010" réalisée en collaboration avec un peintre Warli.

jeudi 28 octobre 2010

Kamel Mennour on the New Cutting Edge of French Art

Source Art Info By Grégory Picard
One of the most prominent dealers on the contemporary French art scene, Kamel Mennour gathers veteran artists like François Morellet and Claude Lévêque at his gallery alongside outstanding young talents like Camille Henrot and Mohamed Bourouissa, whose urban prison videos have garnered recent acclaim. ARTINFO France sat down with Mennour to talk about what's happening in the world of contemporary art, and where Paris fits into the equation.
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mardi 26 octobre 2010

Back to the roots


Source Afqs by Anushree Bhattacharyya

Coca-Cola's new campaign uses the 400-year-old Warli art form to celebrate the joy of this festive season.
Coca-Cola India spreads the spirit of celebration and togetherness this Diwali with its new television commercial.
The campaign, focused on the youth, talks about their desire to remain close to their roots, even as they step out in search of new opportunities.
> read full article

lundi 25 octobre 2010

Fiac 2010: "la meilleure depuis longtemps", selon plusieurs galeristes

Source AFP par Pascale Mollard-Chenebenoit
La Fiac (Foire internationale d'art contemporain), qui fermait ses portes dimanche soir à Paris, a tenu ses promesses: les galeristes étaient nombreux à exprimer leur vive satisfaction, plusieurs estimant qu'il s'agissait de la "meilleure édition depuis longtemps".
Le grand public a lui aussi amplement profité, à partir de jeudi, de cet immense musée éphémère au coeur de Paris.
Au total, plus de 85.660 entrées ont été comptabilisées sur les deux sites entre mardi soir et dimanche, a indiqué la Fiac un peu avant la fermeture. Cela représente une hausse de 6% par rapport à 2009, année qui avait déjà été marquée par un bond de 23% de la fréquentation, soulignent les organisateurs.
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samedi 23 octobre 2010

L'art fait vendre

Source Challenges par Soizic Briand

Marketing non académique
La collaboration entre les grandes marques et les artistes s'intensif Une association gagnant-gagnant.
Cartier, Vuitton et d'autres maisons de luxe ou d'alcools avaient montré la voie. Aujourd'hui, toutes les marques, et même les plus démocratiques, veulent des artistes. Qu'ils décorent les produits ou s'exposent dans les boutiques, qu'ils les aident à comprendre le présent et à envisager l'avenir afin de renforcer le lien avec les clients. « La créativité sera le grand champ de bataille des marques, estime Martin Riley, directeur du marketing de Pernod Ricard. Et pour créer des images fortes qui engendrent le lien, les artistes sont les meilleurs. »

Produits signés d'artistes
Mais la façon la plus évidente de vendre plus est encore de faire intervenir les artistes directement sur ses produits. Cette année, Hermès a fait intervenir Daniel Buren sur ses carrés et Dom Pérignon a lancé un coffret façon Warhol. La bouteille de Ruinart se pare d'un fi l d'or dessiné par la designer Patricia Urquiola, et Mumm réitère sa collaboration avec Patrick Jouin. Depuis une dizaine d'années, toutes les grandes maisons de champagne se sont mises au design. De quoi séduire une clientèle plus jeune, vendre accessoires et bouteilles plus cher, mais aussi affiner leur image et faire la différence.

Nouveaux publics
L'art fait courir les foules. L'exposer peut donc augmenter le trafic. Même s'il choque certains, comme à l'arrivée des sculptures de Murakami sous les dorures du château de Versailles. Jean-Jacques Aillagon, son président n'en a cure : « Les grandes expositions font parler du château de façon mondiale, ce qui ravive l'intérêt des mécènes et incite à sa visite. Or l'essentiel de nos ressources vient de la billetterie. » Depuis qu'il a organisé les premières manifestations, la fréquentation a augmenté et le public a rajeuni, tout comme l'image du château de Versailles.

Fidélisation de la clientèle
Pour être à la pointe des tendances et s'affirmer comme défricheur, Audi France s'est lancé dans un programme de mécénat auprès des jeunes artistes. La suite logique de l'opération Audi Talents Awards commencée en 2007.

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jeudi 21 octobre 2010

FIAC 2010 : l'art contemporain triomphe à Paris

Source L'Express par Robin Massonnaud
L'art moderne et contemporain attire de plus en plus d'amateurs. Les chiffres de fréquentation du château de Versailles explosent avec l'exposition Murakami, alors que les files de visiteurs s'allongent inexorablement au Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris où Basquiat fait l'objet d'une passionnante rétrospective.
Les ventes aux enchères de juin ont enregistré de bons résultats La rentrée parisienne s'annonce brillante.
Celles de Sotheby's à Londres les 15 et 16 octobre derniers sont plus que satisfaisantes : 34,6 millions d'euros engrangés en deux ventes avec des prix élevés comme ces 2,6 millions d'euros déboursés pour un « White Concetto Spaziale Attese » de Lucio Fontana ou les 1,6 millions obtenu pour « Diamond Dust Shoes » d'Andy Warhol.
Même succès au même endroit pour Christie's avec un total vendu de 30,2 millions d'euros dont 2,5 millions d'euros pour « I become death, Shatterer of Worlds » de Damien Hirst, 2,3 millions d'euros pour « Kaikai Kiki » de Murakami ou 1,7 million d'euros pour « Negro Period » de Jean-Michel Basquiat.
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jeudi 7 octobre 2010

L'Inde compte un nombre record de milliardaires, selon la liste Forbes.

Source Forbes
L'Inde comptait en 2010 dix-sept nouveaux milliardaires, portant le nombre total à un record de soixante-neuf, le premier d'entre eux demeurant le magnat Mukesh Ambani, selon le classement annuel des plus grandes fortunes indiennes du magazine Forbes publié jeudi. M. Ambani, président du plus grand groupe privé indien, Reliance Industries, est pour la troisième année consécutive l'homme le plus riche du pays avec une fortune estimée à 27 milliards de dollars. Il est talonné dans ce classement par Lakshmi Mittal, le PDG du leader mondial de l'acier ArcelorMittal, qui détient 26,1 milliards de dollars. Le nombre record de milliardaires "est encore un signal supplémentaire que le centre de gravité va de plus en plus glisser vers l'Inde et la Chine d'ici la prochaine décennie", a estimé Indrajit Gupta, rédacteur en chef de Forbes India. Les entrepreneurs indiens démontrent "leur capacité à s'atteler à des opportunités de création de richesse sans précédent existant dans cette partie du monde", a-t-il ajouté.
Les quarante Indiens les plus riches représentent une fortune cumulée de 243 milliards de dollars, en hausse par rapport aux 229 milliards USD voici un an, mais encore loin derrière le montant record de 351 milliards USD accumulés en 2007, avant la crise financière mondiale. Ils sont pourtant plus de deux fois plus riches que les quarante Chinois les plus fortunés, qui cumulaient l'an dernier 106 milliards de dollars, selon Forbes.
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mercredi 29 septembre 2010

Première participation de l’Inde à la Biennale de Venise

Source Artclair
Pour la première fois en 2011 il y aura un pavillon indien à la Biennale de Venise. Le journal Indian Express révèle que le pays participera à la 54e édition de la prestigieuse exposition internationale d’art. Le commissaire du futur pavillon national a été annoncé ; il s’agit du critique d’art et commissaire indien : Ranjit Hoskote. En revanche, l’artiste représentant le pays n’est pas encore connu.
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lundi 27 septembre 2010

Finally, Indian pavilion at 2011 Venice Biennale

Source Express India by Seema Chishti
Biennale, the most prestigious and the oldest International art festival, will finally have an Indian pavilion. The festival will be held next in June 2011. Work for securing the Indian pavilion would start next month at a meeting of all the Art Commissioners intending to participate in the festival. Well-known art critic, curator and commentator Mumbai-based Ranjit Hoskote will curate the work and represent India at the meeting.
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samedi 18 septembre 2010

Sotheby's Asia Week Sales in New York Total $27,649,251

Source Art Daily
Zara Porter Hill, International Head of Indian Art at Sotheby’s said: “The vibrancy of the Indian art market returned to Sotheby’s in this sale. Paintings from the 18th century to the latest contemporary art achieved exceptional prices with a number of artist records being set. The result far exceeded the low estimate and was a validation of our strategy. This focuses on carefully curated and strategically estimated high quality sales, and these have produced this year’s consistently strong sell through rates. Competitive international bidding resulted in more than half the sold lots achieving prices in excess of the high estimate. The highlight of the sale was undoubtedly the group of works by MF Husain which was led by Cinq Sens which sold for $782,500 exceeding the $500/700,000 estimate. The four records set today come on top of the three achieved earlier in the year to round off an exceptional year for the department.”
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mercredi 15 septembre 2010

Patriotic collectors eyeing New York Asian Art Week

Source Times of Malta
Asian collectors rediscovering their roots are expected to be among the big buyers at New York auctions this week highlighting ancient and modern works from Asia.
Christie’s leads Asian Art Week, which takes place in March and this month, with 1,200 lots from India to Japan auctioning at an estimated collective price tag of between $46 and $65 million.
Rival auction house Sotheby’s follows suit with pre-sale estimates of $21.9 to $31.2 million for 738 lots, while more than a dozen city galleries are hosting exhibitions and sales of their own.
Hugo Weihe, head of Christie’s Indian and southeast Asian art, said the modern and contemporary auction on Wednesday was expected to raise more than $10 million, with works by big-name artists including Francis Newton Souza and TV Santhosh.
“We see increased interest in India now for the antiquities, which of course has happened in Chinese art,” said Mr Weihe. Indians – similar to the rich Chinese actively buying their nation’s treasures back from Western collectors – are expected to be a big force.
“Once any economy gets strong, literally you buy into your heritage,” Mr Weihe said. “China is doing that in a very strong way. We were very surprised, ‘why hasn’t India done that more?’ Well now we’re seeing very strong signs.”
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mardi 14 septembre 2010

Saffronart Autumn Sale Results


Source Art Market Monitor By Marion Maneker
Saffronart had good sale last week with 76% of the lots clearing and 51% getting above estimates (with commission.) The $6.4m sale total was below the estimate range but several works by strong names in the category sold well, including Subodh Gupta.
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Gond art is becoming a rage abroad


Source Tehelka by Nisha Susan
This month’s Adivasi art exhibit at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, curated by Dr Jyotindra Jain, created a stir with its showcase of Jangarh’s work. You may have seen Bhajju Shyam’s travelogue called the London Jungle Book, or seen snippets about Venkat Shyam’s recent solo US show, or of Sukhnandi Vyam’s sculptures shown in Delhi. Later this year, expect Bhimayana, a stylish graphic novel about Ambedkar’s life drawn by the Gond couple Subhash and Durgabai Vyam — it’ll be published in four languages.
Today Gond art is sold in galleries and auctions, not obscure handicraft shops. Gond painters are not anonymous. They’ve crossed the artificial ravine between craft and art largely because Jangarh Singh Shyam , groomed in Bharat Bhavan amidst modern artists, put a signature to his work and encouraged other Gond artists to do so too.
> read full article

vendredi 10 septembre 2010

Semaine d'enchères d'art asiatique à New York

Source AFP
Les Indiens devraient figurer en force parmi les acheteurs, estiment les experts. "Nous voyons un intérêt croissant en Inde pour les antiquités, un phénomène qui s'est déjà produit en Chine", a estimé Hugo Weihe. "Une fois qu'une économie se renforce, les collectionneurs de ce pays rachètent leur patrimoine historique", a indiqué Hugo Weihe à l'AFP.
> lire la dépêche

mercredi 8 septembre 2010

India's Online Auction Pioneers

Source The New York Times by Gayatri Rangachari Shah
Founded in 2000 by the husband-and-wife team of Dinesh and Minal Vazirani, Saffronart specializes in the sale of modern and contemporary Indian art and claims to be the world’s largest fine-art online auction house. Based in Mumbai, with offices in New York and London, the company has rapidly elbowed its way onto the Indian art auction scene, alongside established veterans like Christie’s and Sotheby’s. While the company is not the only online art auctioneer in India, it pioneered the concept there.
> read full article

lundi 6 septembre 2010

Jitish Kallat to Present Provocative Work of Art on Art Institute's Grand Staircase


Source Art Daily
This fall, acclaimed contemporary artist Jitish Kallat turns the landmark Art Institute Grand Staircase into a meditation on religious tolerance, drawing on the museumʼs own history in concert with the most devastating terrorist attack on American soil. Public Notice 3, a site-specific installation, brings together two key historical moments: the first Parliament of the World’s Religions, opening on September 11, 1893, in what is now the museum’s Fullerton Hall, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 108 years later, on that very date. Public Notice 3—the first major presentation of Kallat’s work in an American museum—will be on view September 11, 2010 through January 2, 2011.
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Saffronart Offers an Exceptional Collection of Modern and Contemporary Indian Art


Source Art Daily
Speaking about the auction, Dinesh Vazirani, CEO and Co-founder of Saffronart said, “Our auctions in March and June saw a strong demand for rare and exceptional works which are unique to the market. This autumn, Saffronart once again presents a carefully selected and focused collection of high-quality works by modern and contemporary Indian artists.”
“The global art market has seen a surge in both growth and confidence and we expect our Autumn Online Auction results to set the tone for the season. An exceptional collection with strong provenance, our Autumn Online Auction offers yet another opportunity for collectors all over the world to acquire the finest and rarest artworks”, he added.
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dimanche 5 septembre 2010

India could bid abroad to bring desi art home

Source Financial Express by Garima Pant
As the market for Indian art, historical relics and other curios from India catches the fancy of the global cognoscenti, the government is planning to put in bids for some of these treasures when they surface in auction houses abroad.
The plan ties in neatly with the emphasis on developing and adding to Indian museums which the government has taken up in a big way, in the last couple of years.
The plans are an indication of how the government is pushing the often moribund ministry to make the best use of what India has to offer. The ministry has already completed a huge expansion of the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi to showcase for the guests at the Commonwealth Games.
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samedi 4 septembre 2010

A forthcoming auction in New York promises to change the way contemporary Indian tribal art is viewed in the global market

Source Livemint The Wall Street Journal by Anindita Ghose
The first major and most significant exposition of Shyam’s work was in Paris as well: Magiciens de la Terre, a historical exhibition curated by Jean-Hubert Martin at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1989.
The Sotheby’s sale will be the first time that a canvas by an Indian folk artist has been estimated at $30,000-50,000 (around Rs14-23.4 lakh), and the sale price may exceed that range. The work, Paysage avec Araignée (Landscape with Spider), was part of the Pompidou show. This is the third time that Sotheby’s has included Shyam’s work, the first being in its March auction, when a 2001 work estimated for $5,000-7,000 was sold for $13,750. Two large paper works executed in 1988 and 1989 were sold in July for $15,000 and $18,000.
A lot of the credit for the global curatorial relook goes to Paris-based Hervé Perdriolle who started his pursuit as a collector in 1996. Now, as a gallerist, he is an active agent in promoting artists such as Shyam, as well as Mashe and the Mithila painter Chano Devi. Over an email exchange, he says he is interested in these artists in the same vein that he is interested in Warhol, Basquiat and Ravinder Reddy.
> read full article

mercredi 1 septembre 2010

Un duopole en péril

Source Art Price
Le marché de l’art a repris son élan au premier semestre: + 71% de chiffres d’affaires sur les ventes fine art uniquement ! Les maisons de ventes n’ont pas raté l’occasion et annoncent des croissances allant jusqu'à trois chiffres pour rassurer une offre et une demande encore incertaines.
Le duopole historique Christie's et Sotheby's annonce dans le même sens un premier semestre respectivement fort de +67% et +140% comparé aux chiffres fine art du premier semestre 2009. Rien de plus normal dans un marché en pleine croissance. Mais le constat est un peu plus noir si on le compare aux belles années passées.
C’est 25% de moins pour les deux maisons qu’au premier semestre 2007 et 20% de moins qu’en 2008. C’est à peine une hausse de 9% pour Christie's et 0,5% pour Sotheby's comparée au premier semestre 2006, avant que le marché ne connaisse l’envolée des prix de 2008/2009. Si les deux maisons de ventes anglo-saxonnes reprennent des parts de marché, c'est uniquement dû à quelques ventes d'éclat : plus de 340 coups de marteau millionnaires représentant 62% de leurs produits des ventes combinés.
Entre 2002 et 2008, le duo Christie's Sotheby's n'a jamais concédé plus de 30% de part de marché à l'ensemble de ses concurrents. Depuis juillet 2008, les concurrents n’ont cessé de voir les deux maisons anglo-saxonnes leur laisser du terrain pour atteindre au second semestre 2009 plus de 46% du produit des ventes mondiales.
Si les maisons de ventes chinoises ont su tirer profit de ces largesses, les maisons de ventes occidentales n’ont pas su réagir et peinent à se réadapter à cette nouvelle offre mondialisée.
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lundi 30 août 2010

A Golden Decade

Source Indian Express by Prabhjot Sohal
A Decade ago, when the world wide web surfaced as a just-a-click-away-mart, the general perception was that anything posted online would be sold immediately. But, few believed that this would include art, especially Indian contemporary art. But, Saffronart, a global company with Indian roots, proved the sceptics wrong, as it solely spearheaded the online auctions of Indian contemporary art. And, now when Indian art is breaking sales records worldwide, Saffronart, India’s largest online fine-art auction house, ranks top in the list of rightful credits.
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dimanche 29 août 2010

"L'Inde m'a poussé au monumental" 


Source Aujourd'hui l'Inde per Lily Montagnier
Ici, l'aspect brut de la brique prend des airs précieux, semblable à des lingots d'or. Et encore plus quand ils sont ornés de colliers de pierres taillées une par une à la main. Comme des pierres précieuses. Le fastueux et le brut mélangés. Une combinaison évidente pour celui qui a déjà traversé New Delhi d'un bout à l'autre. Deux vies se côtoient ici. "En venant de France on a une vision très romantique, très fastueuse de l'Inde. Mélanger les deux-le réel et le clinquant-m'intéressait." Dans un espace malheureusement trop petit, les visiteurs tournent autour de ce précieux mur de pierre. Après l'Inde, il ira à Paris pour une exposition intitulée "Paris-Delhi-Bombay" au centre Pompidou en mai 2011 avant de rejoindre le Japon, la Corée et les Etats-Unis. Un rêve qui pourrait durer sept ans, qui sait.
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Wanted: A Charles Saatchi for India

Source Business Standard by Kishore Singh
It is not that such collectors do not exist in India. Anupam Poddar has done the most among Indian collectors for the contemporaries, but can you recall the reticent collector and founder of Devi Art feeding the media information about his buys. Sugar baroness Rajshree Pathy might be more flamboyant (and more eclectic in her selection of art), yet despite her intent of setting up an art university and museum in Coimbatore, and owning a fabulous collection in her home in New Delhi, her buys don’t make news yet. This is hardly new: other known collectors, such as Ashok Alexander and Rajesh Sawara, too have refused to be in the collecting spotlight. Yet, what we need today are collectors who will divert attention away from the Progressives (who will continue to thrive on the decades of adulation they have enjoyed) — to those artists who have segued into the peripheries of popular perception. Who will take up the mantle to speak for them?
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Christie's Presents Highest Value South Asian Art Sale Ever Offered


Source Art Daily
On September 15th, Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art auction will include over 100 carefully selected works from leading 20th and 21st century South Asian artists and is expected to realize in excess of $10 million. This auction presents a whole spectrum of modern and contemporary and will feature celebrated Modern Masters Syed Haider Raza, Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool Fida Husain and Jagdish Swaminathan alongside the biggest names in contemporary art including Subodh Gupta, Rashid Rana, Atul Dodiya and TV Santhosh.
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mercredi 18 août 2010

Gond artist’s work in Sotheby’s New York sale

Source News Views
This is the third in the series of Shyam’s compositions sold by Sotheby’s in 2010.
In March 2010, Sotheby’s London sold one of his works at 13,750 pounds. Two of his large paper drawings were sold for 15,000 pounds and 18,000 pounds respectively in July 2010.
The work to be auctioned Sep 26 was produced in the catalogue of ‘Magiciens de la terre’, an important exhibition curated by the Jean Hubert Martin at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1989.
Eminent art writer Herve Perdriolle, an authority on tribal art, says Jangarh Singh Shyam’s work ‘contains the stuff of mythical tales’.
> read more

The next big thing


Source Business Standard by Kishore Singh
In 1996, Frenchman Herve Perdriolle began a collection of Indian tribal art, leveraging it later as a curator, to pitch the contemporary alongside the traditional, folksy or tribal — take your pick — not without some degree of success. In the bargain, he did what governments in India have failed to do despite their many awards and recognitions for tribal arts and crafts: focus attention on art forms that are dynamic as well as contemporary despite having a tradition in their folk roots.

Jangarh Singh Shyam was a Gond tribesman from Mandla, Madhya Pradesh, who became a protégé of artist and Bharat Bhavan founder J Swaminathan. He was feted in Kolkata and New Delhi, shown in Tokyo, celebrated at the Magicians de la terre exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris, though material benefits stayed out of his — and other, similar artists’ — reach. All that might change with the forthcoming Sotheby’s auction on South Asian Art in New York next month. For the first time a canvas (86.6” x 61”) by an Indian folk artist has been estimated at a value between Rs 14 lakh and Rs 23 lakh and, if previous indications for Shyam’s works at auction are any pointer, the price might well exceed, even double, that.

So far, precious little has been done to position these artists alongside their “urban” contemporaries, or create dialogues to bridge the condescension that keeps one school of artist apart from the other. But with international collectors discreetly buying into this segment of the market, that might change soon. Internationally, tribal art from Oceania is part of the big ticket circuit, and analysts say the next big shove could come from similar art expressions in Africa and India. It would be a pity if Indian collectors lost the opportunity of bagging these canvases to those outside the country because of a flawed belief that a traditional artist does not compare to the likes of, say, M F Husain, or Subodh Gupta. They might be proved wrong sooner rather than later.
> read full article

samedi 14 août 2010

The Rise of the Emerging Art Economy

Source Bloomberg BusinessWeek by By Rachel Wolff
The art market always follows the money. These days that means courting new collectors from emerging economic superpowers. Auction houses aren't just wooing them with Warhols. They're also whipping up buzz about art from their native countries. And it's working. New York's Chinese and Indian art and antiquities galleries will be holding exhibitions of their own during Asia Week with hopes of attracting visiting connoisseurs. Museums are also reinforcing the trend with more BRIC-dedicated shows than ever. "Whenever there is an economic boom in a place, it usually goes hand in hand with a creative burst of energy," de Pury says. "And I think this all is going to continue." At the very least, an economic boom has given new value to these bursts.
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mardi 10 août 2010

Sotheby's Claims a Robust First Half, Tallying $2.2 Billion

Source Art Info
The company says it has enjoyed the second-highest income in its history.
Sotheby's has previously stated that increased activity from Asian buyers has been a critical factor in the auction house's robust earnings this year.
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Christie's Claims a Stellar $2.57 Billion First Half, Beating Out Sotheby's

Source Art Info
The auction house's CEO calls the last six months "one of the most successful half years in our history."
That auction house also cited Asian buyers and the booming market for Asian art as key drivers of recovery in the auction arena.
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mardi 3 août 2010

Priceless Art? Turn Right at Noida

Source Tehelka by Sahar Zaman
If you have followed the art auctions in the past five years, and wondered who went home with the show-stoppers on the cover of the auction catalogues, look no further than Noida. Here, in the Kiran Nadar Museum of Arts (KNMA), you can gently let your jaw descend at a Raja Ravi Varma from 1894, FN Souza’s Nude with Fruit (1958), MF Husain’s Ganga of the early 1970s, a Raqib Shaw, the first ever seen in India — The Absence of God (2008) — and Anish Kapoor’s untitled electric blue disc from 2009. And all this that is on display, forms only a fraction of Kiran Nadar’s personal collection of 300 works. Luckily, for the rest of us, Kiran likes to share./.../
The Indian art market is only 0.04 percent of the international market. Characteristically, Kiran doesn’t respond to this with platitudes about our steady growth. “A Picasso can go for more than $100 million so where are we at just $3.5 million for a Raza?” she asks. In a country without a museum culture, sustaining the 80,000 sq ft-planned KNMA is bound to be a challenge. But she remains pragmatic about the scene, saying, “Donations and funding for a museum come at a later stage. We are at an initial stage where we are doing it all on our own. You can’t expect people to come and fund you unless you are well-established.”
> read full article

International Calls

Source Indian Express by Georgina Maddox
So far 34 international and 84 national galleries have already registered for the fair. The list of international participants is quite impressive already. From London, UK the Lisson Gallery will participate for the third time, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, USA, comes back a second time, the Sundaram Tagore Gallery in Hong Kong, China, makes an entry as does the Galerie Kashya Hildebrand, Zurich, Switzerland, Aicon Gallery, New York, USA, Grosvenor Gallery, London, UK. Other first time entrants include Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France, Die Galerie Frankfurt, Germany, The Drawing Room Gallery, Makati City, The Philippines and Greenaway Gallery Adelaide, Australia to name a few. Michelle D’Souza, director, Thomas Erben Gallery, says, “We are privileged to play a role in the ‘internationalisation’ of the Indian art world. So we are thrilled to be back at this exciting event.” “This event will provide clients an opportunity to see vetted original and authentic works of art. They will be able to meet the specialist dealers and ask them questions and see what each gallery has to offer. So we are looking at the Summit as a good arena for leading Indian and international galleries,” says Conor Macklin, director, Grosvenor Gallery.
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vendredi 30 juillet 2010

Britain, India working to conserve culture

Source Hindustan Times
India's culture ministry and the British Museum are working closely to conserve Indian art, architecture and traditional textiles, says director of the museum Neil MscGregor.
He is part of the British cultural delegation touring India with Prime Minister David Cameron. “We will host three separate workshops for the conservation of archaeological material in Kerala later this year by bringing teams of British and Indian scholars to discuss the best conservation methods. We recently invited Indian experts to work in the British museum to conserve painted textiles,” MscGregor told th news agency on Wednesday while visiting an art gallery in Connaught Place.
MscGregor, who has been the director of British Museum since 2002, said: "The museum's collaboration with India has four strands in four different spheres. The British Museum has embarked on a big project to document the changing tribal culture in Arunachal Pradesh. It is spread over a period of 20 years."
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David Cameron lance une offensive de charme en Inde

Source Aujourd'hui l'Inde par Naseed Chand (AFP)
Deux géants britanniques, BAE Systems et Rolls-Royce, ont annoncé la signature d'un contrat cumulé de 1,09 milliard de dollars pour 57 nouveaux avions de chasse d'entraînement Hawk destinés à l'armée indienne lors du premier jour de la visite de David Cameron en Inde.
"Je veux que ces relations entraînent une hausse de la croissance économique et une baisse de nos chiffres du chômage", a déclaré le Premier ministre lors d'un discours à Bangalore (sud), vitrine de l'industrie high-tech indienne. "Ceci est une mission pour le commerce, oui, mais je préfère la voir comme une mission pour l'emploi", a-t-il ajouté.
Témoignant de l'importance accordée à cette visite de deux jours, M. Cameron est arrivé mardi soir accompagné d'une délégation de ministres et hommes d'affaires, notamment le chancelier de l'Echiquier George Osborne.
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lundi 19 juillet 2010

Are soaring art prices creating another bubble?

Source The Economic Times by Sharmistha Ray
Unarguably, the major auction houses have injected the much-needed optimism back into the art market, which was looking listless even at the start of the year. The highly successful model of art auctions as mini-theatre fabricated by Christie’s and Sotheby’s and adapted by India’s Saffronart to its online platform is hugely entertaining and it delivers results. Art history has never been more compelling. The story is one of desire; of promise and regret on a battlefield of gigantic egos coupled with huge sums of money. The art works that line the walls like rarefied gems are the auctioneer’s willing props.
Together, with an avid audience of affluent buyers, they overture history . Records are shattered one after the other. The press offices declare even minor records as major victories; forget about the past is what they want to tell us. It’s good times again; we can blindly roll about in the hay and enjoy the glorious sunshine. But even Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist of all, would remind us that the difference between comedy and tragedy is a tightrope walk ten thousand feet off the ground.
> read full article

samedi 17 juillet 2010

Tagore: it's for my pictures to express and not to explain


Source The Hindu by Ananya Dutta
The 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore has triggered a deluge of cultural events and exhibitions worldwide. The sesquicentennial year has also been marked with coincidental events, indicating a flush of interest in his paintings and graphical adventures.
For all Tagore's fame as a poet, novelist, musician, playwright and philosopher, it was an exhibition of the paintings of the “accidental artist,” opened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on May 9, that set the ball rolling for the series of cultural events planned by the government of India.
This was immediately followed by the announcement that 12 paintings of Tagore would go under the hammer as a part of Sotheby's annual auction of Indian art. The auctioneers described them as “arguably the most important group of works by Tagore ever to appear at an auction.”
The news triggered protests from art lovers in India, who demanded that the priceless works be acquired by the government. West Bengal Chief Minster Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee wrote to Dr. Singh, urging him to intervene. But the efforts of the Ministry of Culture did not bear fruit, and the paintings were sold for £1.5 million, three times the estimated price. While it was Tagore's writings and songs that catapulted him to international fame, the Nobel Laureate believed that it was his art that allowed him to communicate with a universal audience.
> read full article

jeudi 15 juillet 2010

Sculpting stories


Source The Hindu by Shailaja Tripathi
Rarely do any private galleries in the Capital play host to our exquisite indigenous art and craft, for that's considered to be the domain of state-owned museums and galleries. And in this context the ongoing show of sculptures “Dog Father, Fox Mother, Their Mother and Other Stories” at a contemporary space like W+K Exp (Wieden+Kennedy Experience), the art gallery owned by W+K Delhi, a creative agency, can justifiably be called an aberration.
> read more

Rashid Rana at the Musée Guimet

Source The Telegraph by Gareth Harris
A quiet revolution took place in the French museum world this week. Over 20 works by leading Pakistani artist Rashid Rana went on show at the venerable Musée Guimet, France’s national museum of Asian art (‘Perpetual Paradoxes’, until 15 November).
For the first time, contemporary works have been integrated into the museum’s permanent collections with Rana’s striking digital photomontages and sculptures, dating from 1992 to today, placed alongside ancient Buddha statuettes and effigies of revered deities over two floors.
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dimanche 4 juillet 2010

Bharti Kher: the contemporary Indian artist


Source Wonder Woman by Archana
Gurgaon-based Bharti Kher has become the most valued contemporary Indian woman artist. An elephant that she made with fibreglass and bindis has notched up Rs 6.94 crore at the Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening in London on June 27, 2010.
At the same auction, ironically, Kher's husband Subodh Gupta, who's a pro at setting auction records, scored a blank. His pots-andpans installation remained unsold.
Kher's installation of the elephant lying prone on the floor, dotted with white bindis all over and titled The Skin Speaks A Language Not Its Own, was one of the most talked-about works of art of this auction and is also the best-known installation by the 41-year-old artist. With dimensions of 142x456.2x195 cm, the work met the expectations of the auctioneers as it fell barely short of its highest pre-auction estimate of 1,000,000 Euro.
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mardi 29 juin 2010

Sotheby's Contemporary Art Auction

Source Art Daily
Bharti Kher’s celebrated sculpture The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own established not only a record for the artist at auction but also a new record for any work by a Contemporary female Indian artist at auction, when it sold for the remarkable sum of £993,250 ($1,493,947 /€1,211,273) (est. £700,000-1,000,000). The life-sized elephant is one of the most iconic and most talked-about works of art by a contemporary Indian artist and the masterpiece of the leading female artist of her generation.
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lundi 28 juin 2010

Five Indian art galleries at Art Basel

Source The Economic Times
The inclusion of Indian galleries at Art Basel this year was preceded by a long overdue trip to India last year by Art Basel’s new directors and the selection committee consisting of leading Western galleries.
Obviously Marc Spiegler and Annette Schönholzer, the new co-directors of Art Basel since the 39th edition, appreciate both the economic and symbolic significance of including galleries from India. However, it’s also true that Indian galleries have in recent years undergone a major upgrade in quality and are now ready to be tested tête-à-tête with the best of the West.
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vendredi 25 juin 2010

Could China Become A Major Market For Indian Art?

Source Jing Daily
However, another aspect to this that is particularly interesting is that it’s not strictly limited to top historical Western artists like Warhol and Picasso. At recent auctions in Hong Kong and art exhibitions in Beijing, we’re seeing more pieces by artists from neighboring countries like India piquing the interest of Chinese collectors and art lovers.
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jeudi 24 juin 2010

Art’s everywoman


Source Livemint by Sanjukta Sharma
A lot of contemporary art follows directly or indirectly from Western trends and Western technical and digital ingenuity. Their universal appeal is often a matter of technique rather than form or subject. In Reddy’s work, it is easy to spot the provincial in the universal, and yet the universality is what you react to, on first and later viewings—Reddy recently told me, over the phone from his Visakhapatnam studio, that it was “a kind of an amalgam of Egyptian and Mexican figures, Nigerian bronzes, real-life women in rural Andhra Pradesh and Warholian pop sensibility”. The faces could be as close to Kalighat paintings as to African folk art.
The Indianness of his works attracted French collector and curator Hervé Perdriolle, who visited Reddy many times. “The heads are iconic because of their eloquent simplicity,” Perdriolle says. “As with Subodh Gupta’s Very Hungry God, he has found with this the universal in the local.”
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lundi 21 juin 2010

Art and Design to Raise Funds for Literacy in London


Source Artdaily
PRATHAM is one of the world’s leading and most respected non-profit organisations. It is known for its enduring literacy movement in India and for achieving annual donations of more than 2 million pounds to help provide quality education to underprivileged children. With six international offices chaired by the movers and shakers of India's financial world and several awards including the CNN IBN Indian of the Year in 2009, the charity has changed the lives of 34 million children in 22 of India’s 28 states.
PRATHAM UK, the charity's London headquarters, is proud to announce the launch of ARTiculate, a new fundraising platform with the sole mission of transforming the lives and learning conditions of a further 11 million children by the beginning of 2011. More than six hundred guests will congregate from all parts of the globe at the Old Billingsgate on 11 September 2010 to celebrate the launch of this new venture and support the charity’s unwavering efforts in India.
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vendredi 18 juin 2010

Gupta Painting Fetches Double Estimate as Indian Art Revives

Source Bloomberg by Arijit Ghosh
A Subodh Gupta oil painting showing three bicycle-riding doodhwalas, or milk sellers, sold for more than double its estimate at an online auction as demand revived for Indian artists.
The untitled work by Gupta, 46, in the semi-photorealist technique, had a presale high estimate of $240,000 and sold for $494,500 at the auction by Saffronart yesterday. A work by Syed Haider Raza titled “La Provence Noire,” fetched $746,111. Raza, 88, graduated from the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Bidders sought works by painters such as Raza and Maqbool Fida Husain, India’s best-known artist, as economic recovery revives demand for the country’s art. Asia’s largest economy after Japan and China may grow at between 9 percent and 10 percent annually in the coming years, Chakravarthy Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said yesterday.
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jeudi 17 juin 2010

Tagore Works Lead Sotheby's South Asian Art Sale to $8.2 Million

Source Art Info by Louise Chen
Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore headlined the Sotheby's South Asian Art Sale in London last night, not with his famous manuscripts, but with 12 paintings that fetched £1.6 million ($2.37 million), massively exceeding their £250,000 ($370,000) estimate. The evening sale, which also featured works by prominent South Asian artists Raza, Souza, and Chandra, managed a 78 percent sell-through rate and brought in £5.5 million ($8.2 million) for the house. Other highlights of the auction included Haider Raza’s Rajasthan, which went for £527,250 ($780,000). Last week, Christie’s London sold Raza’s Saurashtra for an artist-record $3.4 million.
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mercredi 16 juin 2010

Indian Art Sales Report Predicts Increased Demand

Source Buzzine Bollywood by Simran Mody
A section of the report lists gallery ratings and analyzes the trends, spotlights on infrastructure, art banking perspective, conservation, and provides writing space to connoisseurs.
“Many fundamental changes are expected within the infrastructure of the Indian art market in the coming months as the responsibility grows about becoming a major player and market at the global level,” Tuli explained in his statements to the press. “China has become the world’s third largest market. India is not yet among the Top 20 at present.”
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Tagore artwork fetches record sums at auction

Source India Today by Archana Khare
The most keenly watched auction of Indian art this season, of 12 paintings by India's first Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, ended in London on Tuesday on a high note.
The auction house Sotheby's sold the set of paintings at a sum of £ 1.6 million (approximately Rs 11 crore) against an estimated pre- auction figure of £ 250,000 (approx. Rs 1.7 crore).
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The Bidding Business


Source The New York Observer by Sallie Brady
It was a decade ago when Saffronart, an online auction house specializing in modern and contemporary Indian art, held its first sale. "We sold $125,000 in art and we thought that was amazing," said the house's co-founder Minal Vazirani, 38. Six years later, when just one online auction made $17 million, the Harvard Business School knew they had a subject for a case study. Today, Saffronart has an office in the Fuller Building on 57th Street and galleries in Mumbai and London, and runs half-a-dozen online auctions annually, selling not just art but vintage and contemporary Indian jewelry and has recently added real estate. They also have competition: Both Sotheby's and Christie's accelerated the pace of their Asian sales after the region's economy, and Saffronart took off.
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dimanche 13 juin 2010

Raza's painting Saurashtra sold for £2.4m ($3.5m) in London on Thursday.


Source BBC News
Officials at Christie's told the BBC that the large-scale painting was produced during a key period of Raza's career. He painted the work in 1983 as a "homage to his homeland". Christie's say that the painting - an acrylic on canvas - was bought by an Indian museum for well above the estimated price. It was sold by a private French collector who acquired it directly from the artist. The painting was one of several pictures by South Asian artists - including Francis Newton Souza and Tyeb Mehta - that were sold for millions of pounds.
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Catch Raza’s record work in Noida

Source The Telegraph by Amit Roy
Syed Hyder Raza’s colourful and vibrant painting, Saurashtra, bought for a record £2,393,250 at a Christie’s auction in London yesterday will be open for viewing at a private museum in Noida by ordinary members of the public, the new owner has promised.
“I am delighted and would love to see people come and see the painting at my museum,” Kiran Nadar, wife of Shiv Nadar, chairman and chief strategy officer of HCL Technologies, said in a statement. “The size and quality of this painting makes it a very sentinel work.”
The 200cmx200cm work which Raza painted in 1983 was acquired by a collector in France where the 87-year-old artist lives though he has always said he carries India within him.
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L'art, valeur refuge en temps de crise

Source L'Express par Annick Colonna-Césari
"Le marché de l'art est aujourd'hui mondialisé, explique la galeriste parisienne Nathalie Obadia, et tous les pays ne sont pas touchés de la même façon par la crise." Les nouveaux acheteurs, russes, asiatiques, ou moyen-orientaux, peu soucieux du lendemain, contribuent largement à faire monter les enchères.
Les mentalités évoluent également. "Aujourd'hui, l'art, y compris contemporain, a sa place dans un portefeuille de valeurs, au même titre que l'immobilier ou la Bourse", poursuit Nathalie Obadia. Dans une époque économique chaotique, un tableau de Warhol ou de Rothko apparaît comme un meilleur placement que les actions.
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jeudi 10 juin 2010

Indian Artist Souza’s Work Raises $7.9 Million, Double Estimate

Source Bloomberg By Scott Reyburn
A collection of works by India’s priciest modern artist, Francis Newton Souza, sold last night for more than double its estimate as dealers saw recovery in the country’s art market.
The 152 lots fetched 5.4 million pounds ($7.9 million) with fees, exceeding a presale upper forecast of 2.3 million pounds, based on hammer prices, said London-based auction house Christie’s International.
The paintings, drawings, prints and sketch books were offered directly from Souza’s estate. The co-founder of India’s postwar Progressive Artists Group died in Mumbai in 2002.
Auction prices for modern and contemporary Indian art have risen -- and fallen -- spectacularly in recent years. Values of modern Indian works fell during the financial crisis, though not as much as their contemporary counterparts. Prices for contemporary works increased seven-fold between 2000 and 2008, according to the French-based database Artprice.

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