China is embracing India, at least in art. A major contemporary Indian art exhibition this summer in Shanghai promises a cultural bridge between the two giants of Asia.

The India Xianzai exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai reflects the growing cosmopolitan nature of the two countries, as well as their shared cultural sensitivities. It also marks the increasing importance of Indian contemporary art in Asia and worldwide.

Organizers say the goal is to present “the best of Indian contemporary art” in the first major museum show of its kind in China. Twenty-one Indian artists will be featured, including Subodh Gupta, Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Jagannath Panda, Mithu Sen and other internationally acclaimed figures.

According to curators, India Xianzai will examine the “processes, narrative structures and aesthetic strategies that focus on the question of culture as an agency in artistic expression.” A common thread of active political and social engagement runs throughout, as well as exploration of “Indian-ness” in various national, hemispheric and global contexts. The exhibition also addresses cultural assimilation, a concern not just for India, but for every country in our increasingly smaller and flatter world.

India Xianzai features nearly 60 works including paintings, photography, video and installations. Much of the work on display comes from private collections. Several artists like including Riyas Komu, Suhasini Kejriwal and Schandra Singh created new works especially for the exhibition.

The common thread of active political and social engagement with one’s country and how each reacts to the Indian-ness outside the country can be seen running throughout the exhibition.

Other artists represtented include Anju Dodiya, Chitra Ganesh, Fariba Alam, Hema Upadhya, Justin Ponmany, Probir Gupta, Reena Kallat, Suryakant Lokhande, Susanta Mandal, Thukral and Tagra, TV Santosh, Vivek Vilasini and Vibha Galhotra.

India Xianzai runs from July 16, 2009 – August 31, 2009 at MoCA Shanghai, Gate 7, People’s Park, 231 Nanjing West Road, Shanghai, China. Various special lectures and screenings will be held throughout the run. A panel discussion featuring artists, Jitish Kallat, Mithu Sen and co-curators Alexander Keefe and Diana Freundl will be held July 16th.

For a taste of India Xianzai and the latest in Indian contemporary art, enjoy the gallery below! All images courtesy of MoCA Shanghai.

Take Away on Wall, Riyas Komu

Portrait of Zindi, Anju Dodiya

Neo Camouflage, Vibha Galhotra

Nature Gallery, Thukral & Tagra

Scrap Management, Probir Gupta

Under Scrutiny2, Susanta Mandal

The Lucky One, Chitra Ganesh

Saat Samundram, Subodh Gupta

Aquasaurus, Jitish Kallat

The post India Xianzai: Contemporary Indian Art at MoCA Shanghai first appeared on Indian Art News.

MUMBAI: The victims of the flood in Bihar in August have found good Samaritans in 31 artists from across the country. From Atul and Anju Dodiya and Jitish Kallat to T V Santhosh and Mithu Sen, artists have donated one work each to an auction organised by Saffron Art, artist couple Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher, Delhi gallery Nature Morte and the Trident in Gurgaon. Hundred per cent of the proceeds will go to NGOs that work with victims of the flood, said Saffron Art owner Dinesh Vazirani. The works will be auctioned on November 11 and 12 and those interested can visit www.saffronart.com.

The event has been put together in a lightning 20 days. Kher said that she and Gupta urgently called their friends as the condition of the flood victims is quite grim and getting worse. Stories about the global economic meltdown have eclipsed press coverage of flood relief, Vazirani pointed out. Now they have absolutely nothing, said Kher. Its the right time to do an auction. Riyas Komu, one of the contributors, added that Kher and Gupta are doing a worthy thing and that its high time the government tackles natural calamities better. It was an anticipated flood and there had been several warnings.

The even is especially significant for Gupta as he is a native of Bihar. Initially Gupta and Kher had the mad idea that they would go to Bihar themselves to see how they could help. Gupta joked that if he had carried out his plan, he wouldnt have been able to work for at least a year. Two NGOs Goonj and Samajik Shaikshanik Vikas Kendrawill disburse the funds generated by the auction. Vazirani said that a conservative estimate of the target he thinks the auction will achieve is Rs three crore. The upper estimate, he added, is Rs four crore.

The works on display are quite stunning. Bose Krishnamachari, for instance, has served up a psychadelic piece of art titled Stretched Bodies. Delhi-based duo Thukral and Tagra have offered Somnium Genero, a triptych that involves pop art colours, old-fashioned frames and a toaster. In Bharti Khers work, This Way and Never Another Way, tributaries of red, blue, black and white bindis form what looks like a mighty river. The artists have really given great works, Vazirani said. And theyre well-priced. Are the organisers worried that collectors might shy away from spending on art at a time when the global economy is in a deep trough? Gupta explains that he doesnt expect buyers to be chary as theyre not donating money. Even though theyre spending considerable amounts, theyre getting something highly valuable in return, he said. The artists, on the other hand, have donated their paintings without asking for a penny. This is a coming together of artists from India, said Vaziranis wife Minal. Theres a sense of a community. Were able to contribute to the survival of people.

The post United colours for Bihar first appeared on Indian Art News.

The ShContemporary is a sign of a mature Chinese art market.

Come September, and eight galleries from various Indian cities will be travelling to the Middle Kingdom.

Their desintation, the ShContemporary 2008, or the Asia Pacific Contemporary Art Fair as it’s formally called, held in Shanghai from September 10-13. This is only the second year of the fair, which was instituted as something of a meeting ground for the best of contemporary art from the East and the West.

Quite successfully, since as many as 130 galleries from 23 countries participated last year, along with dealers, curators, museum representatives, artists and visitors numbering around 25,000. The Indian presence was not inconsequential (considering that Indian galleries are relatively recent to the art-fair scene).

Four galleries � Bodhi, Chemould Prescott, Sakshi and Nature Morte; three artists in the “best of discovery” curated section, showcasing young and promising talent � Shilpa Gupta, Sharmila Samant and Ravikumar Kashi; and another three in the “best of artists” section for the more established names � Jittish Kallat, Sudarshan Shetty and Zarina Hashmi.

Sales were good says Geetha Mehra, founder of Sakshi Gallery, adding “There was a lot of energy in the air.” Nivedita Magar, director with SKE Gallery in Bangalore, reports much the same.

“Many inquiries are still coming in,” she says. The gallery, which specialises in new age, mixed media kind of work, was recommended for participation at the inaugural ShContemporary by Pierre Huber, a Geneva-based dealer who was artistic director of the fair (he has since stepped down after allegations of “conflict of interest”).

Despite a few glitches like very high import duties � which meant Magar spent far more on transporting the art works within China than she did shipping them from India � and taxes on Chinese nationals buying foreign art, the Shanghai experience was valuable, Magar feels, “as it set off a network”.

This year, the Indian contingent to Shanghai is far larger than 2007’s � eight galleries, with such established names as Gallery Espace, Vadehra and Threshold, among them. The “best of discovery” section announced already has six Indians � Deeksha Nath (curator and critic), Tushar Joag, Vibha Galhotra, Ved Gupta, Sumedh Rajendran and Suhasini Kejriwal.

But there’s more to the China-India art encounter in recent times than the ShContemporary. The most important here is the 2006 exhibition at the Arario gallery in Beijing, “Hungry God”, which had a large selection of contemporary Indian artists like Subodh Gupta, Atul Dodiya, Tallur L N and Sonia Khurana.

Lately, these isolated encounters look set to become two way. “We already collect Chinese art and have been showing them selectively in our group shows at Sakshi,” says Mehra.

In art, as in their economies, there is a tendency in the West to see the two countries together as the two Asian giants with the most “happending” art that collectors must watch out for.

To give just one example, last year’s Rencontres D’Arles, arguably the most important international photography festival on the calendar, focussed on both India and China. The truth, however, is a little more complicated. While we celebrate the record $2.48 million that Souza’s “Birth” recently went for at a Christie’s auction, Yue Minjan’s 1995 oil “Execution” went for $ 5.9 million last year at Southeby’s, while the “Mask Series 1996 No.6” by Zeng Fanzhi fetched the highest price ever by an Asian artists � $9.7 million, at Christie’s Hong Kong auction in May.

High prices, of course, don’t mean anything. But fairs like the ShContemporary, especially the importance they are given by galleries and curators globally, show how much more mature the Chinese art market is.

The post Fair Ground first appeared on Indian Art News.

Bose was central to India’s drive to independence. He was the only artist enlisted by Mahatma Gandhi because both believed that India’s soul was revealed in her villages and among her common folk. Adamant about using local pigments and materials, Bose treats fisherman with the same dignity and thought as the greatest of the gods. A spirituality underlies his work – whether the subject matter is Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or Christian.

During a Pan-Asian movement, Bose incorporated Japanese painting techniques into his oeuvre.He sketched and painted on everything from postcards to walls. Ethereal, otherworldly watercolors of Siva contrast with simple black-and-white linocuts for a children’s reader. A life-size ink-and-tempera on silk of the great hero Arjuna captivates with its sensuous line. Annapurna and the Slaying of the Buffalo Demon are incredibly intricate, rhythmic works. The Sun Temple at Konarak vibrates in an almost cubist style. Bamboo and lotuses are brushed with all the sensibility of the most accomplished Japanese aesthetic, complete with vermil-lion chop and a Bengali signature rendered vertically like Chinese calligraphy.

Regardless of technique, the sights and sounds and the life rhythms of nature in his beloved India are always at the heart of Bose’s art.

Supratik Bose, the artist’s grandson and Harvard urban planner, arrived for the Philadelphia opening, as Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art Curator Darielle Mason pointed out, “with something under his arm.” In memory of the late Museum Director Anne d’Harnoncourt and her devotion to seeing these Indian national treasures shown in Philadelphia, Bose presented the museum with a sumi-e painting of a cuckoo in banana trees, done by his grandfather in 1959. It was Supratik Bose, with the help of scholars and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (a former student of Bose herself), who had the foresight to place Bose’s work in the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.

The late, legendary PMA Curator Kramrisch, a native of Moravia, also taught at Tagore’s university. Kramrisch, who did so much to shape the museum’s collection into the premier status it enjoys today, spent the first three months of her stay living in Nandalal Bose’s house.

Upstairs, in the museum’s William Wood Gallery, Multiple Modernities, a selection of Indian art from 1905 until 2005, puts Bose’s influence further into context. The museum’s most recent acquisition, a lithograph of Sabari with Her Birds by Atul Dodiya (b. 1959), is directly influenced by Bose’s renderings of the same subject in the current exhibition.

The post Work of an Indian master is on exhibit PMA first appeared on Indian Art News.

The Indian art market is reaching new heights. Pavan Kapoor visits the subcontinent to find out what is fueling the boom.
Indian art has formally arrived in its role as a financial asset. This is apparent as I walk into the pulsating Habitat Center, the 5000 sq feet complex in New Delhi which has become the center of contemporary cultural, economic, business and social events since the last decade.
Artists have become brand names, coveted and consumed with the same zeal as the newly rich snap up Chanel and Jimmy Choo. The galleries mushrooming in Mumbai and Delhi are as swank as anything you’ll see in New York or London — exhibitions open to the clink of champagne glasses, with delectable hors d’oeuvres and loads of press.
The boom in Asian/Chinese art can be denoted to foreign buyers but that of India is surprisingly coming from Indians, or people of Indian descent, who are the main players in their own art scene. It started with non-resident Indians or NRIs who were initially nostalgic about Indian art but then began to recognize its potential as an investment.
Rajiv Chaudhri, a New York-based Indian hedge-fund manager, set off ripples in the art world in late 2005 by paying US$1.6m for a Mehta work. The amount paid for the Mahishasura, depicting the buffalo-demon of Hindu mythology, was a milestone as the first contemporary Indian painting to cross the million-dollar mark. Other significant NRI collectors include New Jersey-based Umesh and Sunanda Gaur, Kent Chitlangia and new age guru Deepak Chopra.
Officials from Sotheby’s who were in Mumbai for a road show [WHEN?] for auctions of Indian art in London and New York confirmed the company’s sales of Indian art enhanced over US$375 million in 2007, compared to $62 million in 2004.
India has seen an unprecedented growth in the art market since 2005.. The upward spiraling prices made the whole world turn around and look at Indian painters in a fresh light. Today the Indian art market is worth US$350 million, which is only 1 percent of the world art market. But with rising disposable incomes and current economic situation the Indian contemporary art market in the coming years will drive both prices and growth.
The market’s future potential also lies in the burgeoning disposable income of the middle class coupled with unprecedented awareness and access to art information.
Artist Atul Dodiya is feted at galleries in New York and London where his paintings sell for six-figure sums. But it’s in Mumbai where he chooses to create art reflecting the tumultuous changes in his homeland. Dodiya is riding a wave of success. His Three Painters sold for US$541000, more than triple its pre-sale estimate, at a Christie’s auction in New York last year. The sale confirmed Dodiya’s reputation as a leader of a generation of contemporary Indian artists whose canvases are filled with the colors of a country on the boil,
Structuring the boom back home is the massive initiative taken on by the pharmaceutical mogul, Ranbaxy. The Religare Arts Initiative is a 360 degree point of view, an effort to bring art closer to people and to reach out to lovers and patrons of art the world over. It will have various initiatives and outreach programs planned in conjunction with art institutions, museums, galleries and curators. The collaborations with such esteemed institutions/individuals will help in enriching public awareness about art, with the hope that art will become an inherent part of their lives. It is a holistic approach for the growth, development and business of art.
“The Religare Arts Initiative will ensure that all the diverse dimensions of art are nurtured and given the right exposure, so that art assumes a greater role in societal fabric and enriches a wider consciousness, at the same time become a positive driver for wealth generation in a free market economy,” said Sunil Godhwani, the CEO of Religare Enterprises Ltd.
Dr Alka Pande, probably the most respected authority in the India art scene today. Is the Consultant Arts Advisor and Curator, Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, has been responsible for curating some of Delhi’s most unusual and perceptive shows in recent times. She also is the official curator on the board of Religare Arts Initiative and has authored several books on art and art history, and has a special interest in ancient Indian erotic literature and art .
Mr. Mukesh Panika heads the Arts Initiative at Religare. He has been the master mind for this Initiative and has been working hard on putting together its various aspects to establish a transparent and functional institution that is a genuine benchmark for artists, investers and art lovers of a wide spectrum.
“The Religare Art Initiative has recently taken over a 10,000 square feet space in Connaught Place, the heart of New Delhi and plans on opening the biggest gallery in India, a café, a resource center,” says Mukesh. “With art taken as such a serious financial asset today it can only grow if the infrastructure is strong and that is when a strong corporate group comes in at that platform,” he continues.
It is indeed a serious job at hand for Religare when we hear of ground-breaking news of the painting Tribute to Hashmi, MF Husain India’s icon of painter broke the US$1 million record. In a historic moment at the Emami Chisel Art Auction in Kolkota. Among some highlights of the evening were Tyeb Mehta’s Kali III which fetched a little over US$1 million and J.Swaminathan’s Bird & Mountain which fetched almost US$4 million.
Besides works of Husain and Mehta, pioneering painters F N Souza and J Swaminathan also fetched over US$250,000 for their paintings.Souza’s Manor House, whose reserve price was fixed at US$1 million, was sold for US $412,500. Amrita Shergill’s two untitled charcoal paintings were sold for about US$55,000 and US$37,000 while S H Raza’s ‘Landscape’ cost US$230,000 for a bidder.
At the Sothebys auction in Feb 2008, speculators who swooped on the Chinese market have moved in on the Indian art scene and are now eyeing artists from the subcontinent such as Jitish Kallat and Subodh Gupta and so many others.
Heady days these might be but the rapid commercialization of the art scene has prompted some soul-searching.
“Being an artist is not what it used to be,” confesses a member of the art frat. “It has become about churning out work and making money.” Amid the dross lurk the gems – canvasses filled with the colours of an India on the move, an India grappling with complex issues like the cost of rapid development, societal tensions and the growing gap between rich and poor.

The post Booming Times first appeared on Indian Art News.