Inspired by History: Kaushlendra’s inspiration flows from a deep-seated fascination with ancient objects, evoking a yearning for the past that channels into his art. In the midst of modernity’s relentless march, his soul finds solace in the embrace of nostalgia. He believes that delving into history is an endeavor of understanding our roots and rediscovering the essence of human existence.

The Artistic Process: Kaushlendra’s artistic process emanates from a union of the conscious and subconscious mind. He strives to unlock the depths of his thoughts, feelings, and experiences, transcending the physical and venturing into the ethereal. This amalgamation of the conscious and subconscious mind manifests in his work, giving it a multifaceted richness that invites contemplation and introspection.

Capturing Fleeting Moments: As Kaushlendra observes the ever-changing face of the earth, he is acutely aware of the transient nature of existence. Through his art, he strives to capture these fleeting moments, immortalizing them on the canvas. His subjects become vessels to encapsulate the essence of time, preserving fragments of history and breathing life into them through abstract interpretations.

Caves and Ancient Monuments: Caves, with their enigmatic allure, and ancient monuments’ architectural magnificence captivate Kaushlendra as subjects of exploration. The ancient caves, witnesses to the unfathomable passage of time, whisper secrets from epochs long gone. Their geological formations, illuminated by playfully dancing light, become metaphors for the human psyche, mirroring the complexities of the human soul.

Delving into the architecture of ancient monuments opens gateways to the past. These awe-inspiring structures, once bustling centers of human activity, now stand as silent witnesses to the passage of centuries. Kaushlendra endeavors to unlock their stories, employing the language of abstraction to bridge the gap between the ancient and the contemporary.

A Meditative Realm: By gazing into the abstract forms Kaushlendra creates, he aspires to transport his audience to a meditative realm, where the boundaries between past, present, and future dissipate, leaving them immersed in a transcendent experience. Through his work, he aims to inspire reflection on the beauty and impermanence of existence and the timeless legacy of human civilization.

In conclusion, Kaushlendra Pratap Singh’s artistic journey has been one of self-discovery and a quest to unveil the enigmatic past. Inspired by ancient objects and driven by nostalgia, his art delves into the profound depths of consciousness, where the conscious and subconscious intertwine. His subjects, caves, and ancient monuments, serve as conduits to channel the essence of time into the abstract realm. With his creations, he strives to kindle an introspective flame within the beholder, fostering a profound connection to our shared human heritage and the eternal flow of time.

Stay tuned for the unveiling of Kaushlendra Pratap Singh’s exquisite artworks on VisionsArts.com. Get ready to embark on an artistic journey like no other!

#IndianArt #AbstractArt #ArtCollection #VisionsArts #KaushlendraPratapSingh #ComingSoon

The post Kaushlendra Pratap Singh: Bridging the Past and Present Through Abstract Art first appeared on Indian Art News.

‘Onanism’, 1969. Photo: Vadhera Art Gallery

Altogether, it was a very rich atmosphere.” This is how Nalini Malani described her experience at the Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW), the multidisciplinary initiative run by veteran artist Akbar Padamsee from 1969-72 out of his Napean Sea Road apartment in Mumbai, with part funding from the Union government’s Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship. “But, unfortunately, with very few women participants,” was the caveat during a 2014 interview with Shanay Jhaveri, assistant curator of South Asian art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, for part 3 of his series Building On A Prehistory: Artists’ Film And New Media In India.

Was she the only female member of the workshop? asked Jhaveri. “Yes, I was,” she replied. The interview was republished in an eponymous tome featuring a collection of essays on her work, released after Malani’s three-part retrospective, You Can’t Keep Acid In A Paper Bag, in 2014 at Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA).

In October, the 71-year-old artist opened The Rebellion Of The Dead at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the first of a two-part retrospective spanning the years 1969-2018. Instead of basking in the limelight, however, she is already absorbed in the impending second installation of the retrospective at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, slated from 27 March-22 July. “The relevance of the huge body of work produced by her over the years has grown multifold in the times we live in,” wrote KNMA director Roobina Karode in her curatorial essay in the 2014 publication. Karode sees her practice as so cutting edge and dynamic that it allows for exciting curatorial propositions that prompt new ways of seeing and interpreting works that have already been written about at great length. It’s no surprise then that each of the two venues will host unique selections, with no works repeating.

The Rebellion Of The Dead cements Malani’s reputation as one of India’s foremost feminist artists. “My own art was from the start female-oriented,” she told Sophie Duplaix, chief curator at Centre Pompidou, in an interview. From the outset, Malani was drawn to the interiority of feminine narratives, beginning with the subjectivity of diary-based explorations, and moving into the multiple dimensions of the world of Indian and Greek mythology, extracting her female protagonists from the patriarchal set-up of the societies that had conjured them. It was not a popular practice to adopt, and the unprecedented, theatrical nature of Malani’s video, installation and performance art triggered an unfair share of criticism. For instance, in 1999, when she exhibited Remembering Toba Tek Singh (1998) at the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai, Indian art critics accused her of being an “installator”, a pun on gladiator, for creating a spectacle for the public.

Similarly, one of the highlights of The Rebellion Of The Dead is the rarely exhibited Onanism, a 3:51-minute, 16mm film made at VIEW in 1969, exploring female angst through the quasi-cathartic movements of a dear friend suffering from mental issues. “You must try to understand that period; it was as if women had swallowed the concept that we are incapable,” Malani had told Jhaveri. “It was almost as if doors were shut. It was a very, very strange situation because there was no openness on the part of the men. None.” Was the attitude patronizing or did they view her with some sort of suspicion? Jhaveri asked. “Neither. They simply ignored me.”

One senior modernist who helped further Malani’s career was S.H. Raza, whose recommendation letter helped her get a French government scholarship that took her to France from 1970-72, soon after her diploma from Mumbai’s Sir JJ School of Art. In Paris, she was given the freedom to design her own education since the École des Beaux-Arts was still to reconfigure its new syllabus. This would be a foundational period for Malani, who practised printmaking at Atelier Friedlander and immersed herself in Marxist politics while attending lectures by Noam Chomsky, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as film screenings at the Cinémathèque Française, where she met directors like Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker.

‘In Search of Vanished Blood’, site-specific medium, single channel, video play, sound. Photo: Rafeeq Elliasi/Centre Pompidou

Like her predecessor Amrita Sher-Gil, Malani decided to return to India in 1973. She soon began to document a Muslim slum in Bandra, Mumbai, striking a deal with Pundole Art Gallery, which offered her Rs300 a month for a year’s output of oil paintings. She was devastated when, one day, the municipality razed the slum. The footage languished for decades till her archivist Johan Pijnappel rediscovered and digitized it, a few years ago.

This slum project is a part of Malani’s corpus of work that is yet to be exhibited. However, on display at the Pompidou are other early works such as Tabloo (1973) and Utopia, a film diptych (1969-76), as well as two other significant later pieces. One, Alleyway, Lohar Chawl (1991), an installation of five reverse-painted transparent Mylar sheets with stones—the result of her long-term residential engagement with Lohar Chawl in Lower Parel, Mumbai. And the second, Remembering Mad Meg (2007-17), a four-channel video with 16 light projections and eight reverse-painted rotating Lexan cylinders with sound that was first shown as part of the landmark Paris-Delhi-Mumbai show at Centre Pompidou in 2011 and was eventually acquired by the Musée National d’Art Moderne at Centre Pompidou. In Search Of Vanished Blood, a six-channel video/shadow play, is an immersive feminist interrogation steeped in literary references to mythical characters from Greek and Indian mythology, created for documenta(13)—it will be exhibited at Castello di Rivoli.

Nalini Malani.

“Is the female voice in the 21st century gaining momentum, and how important is this?” Pijnappel asked Malani in an interview published in the Irish Museum of Modern Art exhibition catalogue in 2007. “It is now a voice to contend with,” she replied.

The Rebellion Of The Dead is on view till 8 January at Centre Pompidou, Paris. For details, visit Centrepompidou.fr/en.

The post Nalini Malani: A female voice in art first appeared on Indian Art News.

HONG KONG— Held May 24, Christie’s Hong Kong spring sale of Asian contemporary and Chinese 20th-century art saw healthy results, due in large part to its more careful selection of works, smaller scale, and tighter focus on what old-money Chinese art collectors covet. Quality works by Chinese masters from the 1950s and 1960s held their prices or established new records, while art created on the mainland in the last 20 years — a category that had become fashionable in the last decade among American and European collectors, who account for 90 percent of the market — continued to underperform. Eric Chang, Christie’s senior vice president, international director of 20th century Chinese and Asian contemporary art, said after the sale: “The results, which nearly doubled pre-sale expectations and saw over 90 percent of lots selling within or above their high estimate, prove that our specialists brought together the right mix of works and matched them with attractive estimates to best meet the current market.” The auction brought in HK$181,657,500 (US$23,379,320), selling an impressive 34 of 38 lots, for 89 percent sold by lot and 98 percent by value. The top earner was a painting by the late, European-trained Sanyu, one of the biggest names among 20th-century Chinese artists. A collector paid HK$42,100,000 for the work, Cats and Birds, setting a new auction record for the artist.

The post Christie’s Hong Kong Sales Smaller but Still Strong first appeared on Indian Art News.

The market for contemporary art, the most speculative segment of the art market (+108% since 2003), has not withstood the shocks of the current financial turmoil. The results of the prestigious November sales in New York organised by Sotheby’s and Christie’s on 11 and 12 November are most discouraging. Only 66% of the lots offered during the two prestigious evening sales found buyers and the total sales revenue generated amounted to just $ 204 million, well below the most pessimistic estimates of $ 429 million. Retrospectively, November 2007 increasingly looks like having been the market’s peak. At the same evening sales last year, only 9% of the lots remained unsold and the total revenue amounted to $ 399 million, i.e. 20% above the combined low estimates. As at 15 November 2008, the prices of contemporary and post-war art have contracted by 36% compared with December 2007, returned, in just a few months, to their November 2006 levels.

A self-portrait by Francis BACON, a Concetto Spaziale Festa sul Canal Grande by Lucio FONTANA, a sculpture and a painting by Roy LICHTENSTEIN, a nude by Lucian FREUD and an oil painting by Brice MARDEN are among the key lots that remained in the hands of the auctioneers. Even more worrying… 10 of the 13 works by Damien HIRST offered last week were also bought in. Not even the veritable star of the contemporary art market in September with his highly successful Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale at Sotheby’s was able to seduce buyers.

In this black November for the art market there were nevertheless some consolations at Christie’s on the evening of the 12th. Firstly there was Jean-Michel BASQUIAT Untitled (Boxer) dating from 1982 which had belonged to Lars Ulrich and which fetched its low estimate of $ 12 million. An abstract painting by Gerhard RICHTER entitled Abstraktes Bild (710) fetched $ 13.2 million, a little over the $ 12m expected. However these relatively good results turned out to be just a short pause in the massacre as the following lot, a monumental painting by the same German artist entitled Ozu (2.6 x 4 metres) painted in 1987 and estimated at $ 10m … was bought in. The previous evening at Sotheby’s an Archisponge (RE 11) by Yves KLEIN fetched the highest bid of the week at $ 19m, but well below the $ 25m low estimate. The other star lot of the evening was a painting entitled Beggar’s Joys by Philip GUSTON which went under the hammer for $ 9m, significantly below the $ 15m expected. Beggar’s Joys was one of the 65 lots carrying a guaranteed price among the 138 offered (47%). Last year, at the same sales, 48% of the works were guaranteed by the two auction houses.

The week dedicated to Contemporary Art closed on 13 November at Phillips de Pury. Traditionally the works presented there are much more recent than those presented at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. With “emerging art” being a much more volatile sector, it was not surprising that only one of the six works offered above the $ 1m line found a buyer.

The post Contemporary art loses its shine first appeared on Indian Art News.

Sotheby’s, the auction house, has become the latest victim of the financial crisis after failing to make the high estimates it predicted for its contemporary art sales.

By Urmee Khan Last

Andy Warhol’s series of 10 skull paintings sold for £646,750 Photo: EPA The sales made a total of £43.9 million, down £11.4 million on its lowest estimate of £55.3 million. Even the highest selling lot in the auction, Andy Warhol’s series of 10 skull paintings, sold for £646,750 less than its lowest estimate at £4,353,250.

The composite work, which joined 10 previously-separate works together, was the highlight of a contemporary art sale at Sotheby’s and was bought by an unnamed US dealer.It had been expected to fetch up to £7 million, but bidding fell short.

The second highest hammer price achieved across the three contemporary art sales was £2,841,250 for Gerhard Richter’s Abstrakes Bild (Rot), just short of its lowest estimate of £3 million.

The sales included the Modern and Contemporary Design Sale, which made £1.2 million, against its lowest estimate of £1.8 million, two contemporary art sales, which made a combined total of £291,320,50 – £124 34750 less than their lowest combined estimates – and the Twentieth Century Italian Art Sale, which bucked the trend by taking £13.6 million, against a pre-sale estimate of £11.9 million.

One of the bright spots for the auction series was the sale of a specially created work by Angel of the North sculptor Antony Gormley, which sold for £193,250 against its lowest estimate of £100,000.

The sale topped a difficult week for the contemporary art market in which the financial crisis sent share prices and the value of investment funds plunging.Sotheby’s blamed global financial difficulties for the lower hammer prices, saying the estimates had been predicted in better financial circumstances. Cheyenne Westphal, chairwoman of contemporary art at Sotheby’s Europe, said the sale was “assembled in a very different economic environment from that which prevailed today”. “Bidding in tonight’s sale was rational and considered,” she said. “We are very pleased with the results of tonight’s sale, which is the second highest total for an October Sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s.

“It is important to keep perspective; this market has witnessed rapid growth – five years ago our October Contemporary Art sale yielded £3.5 million and our first various owners sale two years ago brought £9.9 million, and last year our October sale realised £34,865,300.
“What we have seen tonight is that buyers are continuing to respond to unprecedented saleroom opportunities; works of high quality that are fresh to the market and properly estimated continue to perform well, as illustrated by the prices achieved for Warhol, Richter and Basquiat.”

The post Sotheby’s auction house latest victim of financial crisis first appeared on Indian Art News.

SOTHEBY’S SALE OF CONTEMPORARY ART TO FEATURE EXCITING WORKS BY LEADING INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS
INDIAN ARTISTS such as Subodh Gupta (b. 1964), Bharti Kher (b. 1969), Anish Kapoor (b. 1954), Raqib Shaw (b. 1974) and T.V. Santhosh (b. 1968) are an ever-growing force in Sotheby’s international sales of Contemporary Art – in addition to the company’s regular dedicated sales of Indian Art – and this summer’s major series of Contemporary Art sales in London will see this trend gather further momentum still. The sales on Tuesday, July 1 and Wednesday, July 2, 2008, will present a total of eight works by these cutting-edge and highly sought-after names and together the works are estimated in excess of £2 million. The sale will also include a work by Pakistan’s leading Contemporary artist, Rashid Rana.
James Sevier, a specialist in the Contemporary Art department, comments: “The group of works by Contemporary Indian artists being offered in our July sales is the largest group of its kind to be offered in our international Contemporary Art sales in London, indicating the growing international focus on this area of the market. Featuring recent paintings and sculptures by Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher and TV Santhosh – alongside important works by Raqib Shaw and Rashid Rana – the tightly curated assemblage reveals the broad variety of themes, materials and ideas that are flourishing within India’s Contemporary arts scene at the beginning of the 21st century. As the country’s traditional beliefs and rural way of life are confronted with the rapid pace of change exacerbated by the country’s urban transformation and the global media, the work of these artists explores the divisions and conflicts prevalent in Indian society today.
We have witnessed a huge growth in demand for works by Indian artists over the past 18 months; their work is increasingly being sought by Western and Indian collectors. This demand has seen new record price levels continually being achieved at auction. We expect the works on offer in July to follow recent trends, affirming the position of these artists as some of the most innovative and influential names on the international Contemporary Art auction market today.”
An Untitled sculpture from 2003 by Anish Kapoor leads the group in terms of value, with an estimate of £1-1.5 million. This stunning piece embodies the pioneering manipulation of space and material that characterizes the very best output of this world-renowned sculptor. One of the largest of the artist’s alabaster works and the first double-concave piece to come to auction, its sheer magnitude marks it apart as a sculptural phenomenon, evoking the grandeur of a feat of nature. Contrasting to the immensity of the marble, two beautiful hollows have been carved to mirror each other either side of the monolith, creating a spatial echo across a thin screen of alabaster. Thus, while the work’s scale is truly inspirational, addressing the viewer at eye-level and engaging total bodily experience, the colossus is also imbued with a serene weightlessness. It manifests dualities that have become synonymous with Kapoor’s seminal canon: presence versus absence; infinity versus illusion; and solidity versus intangibility.
An Untitled black Belgian granite sculpture by Kapoor will also be offered with an estimate of £400,000-600,000. Executed in 2002, the sculpture is a further sublime example of the artist’s ongoing sculptural enquiry into the relationships between form, material and space. Powerful in scale, the awe-inspiring physical presence and natural beauty of this rough-hewn monolith engages the viewer at eye level. It is one of only a handful of works that Kapoor has made on this scale in black Belgian granite. A third piece by Kapoor will be a lacquered bronze sculpture entitled After Marsyas. The title of this sculpture relates to Kapoor’s 2002 commission for the Unilever Series in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern entitled Marsyas. After Marsyas, estimated at £70,000-90,000, presents an experimental lens for contemplating the metaphysical polarities of human experience.
Subodh Gupta’s Untitled from 2005 is estimated at £200,000-300,000 and this work will see Gupta – who is arguably the most internationally recognised of all the Indian Contemporary artists – take the stage in a major Evening Sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s once again. The Untitled canvas depicts a vessel stall glistening in the pink dawn of sunrise and it is one of the artist’s most important and powerful photo-realist paintings to ever come to the market. The canvas captures the sense of promise and expectation that epitomises the mood of ambition and prosperity within India’s flourishing economy. The glistening pots and pans mark a stark contrast with the flatness of the soft pink background, creating a strong visual tension. The pots and pans are everyday icons of India’s complex and rapidly evolving contemporary identity; they are a staple of Indian homes both among the rural and urban echelons of society. Gupta utilises the stainless steel objects to inspire a commentary upon the prevailing social ills of discrimination, caste politics, industrialisation and religious tensions exacerbated by India’s urban transformation.
A second work by Gupta will be a highlight of the Contemporary Art Day Sale and this comprises a cast aluminium sculpture from an edition of three entitled Untitled (Across Seven Seas). This piece is estimated at £40,000-60,000.

New Delhi-based Bharti Kher is a trans-cultural Indian whose broad artistic language explores everyday concerns like identity, race, ethics and society and their continued dislocation within a global media age. Executed in fibreglass, wood and fur and estimated at £40,000-60,000, Misdemeanours from 2006 is one of Kher’s most iconic and powerful sculptures. It captures a snarling hyena whose hyper-real – almost hallucinatory form – typifies the dream-like characters inhabiting the surreal landscape of Kher’s imagination. It points towards the shattered harmony between man and nature in a modern society in which animals are increasingly confined to laboratories, zoos and tourism in their struggle for survival against the onset of urban expansion and a booming human population.
Raqib Shaw’s Chrysanthemum & Bee (after Kotsushika Hokusai) encapsulates the multiple layers – in terms of both style and subject matter – that typify the work of this artist. Shaw’s output can be defined as occupying a space between two artistic traditions; that of Kashmir in India (where he was born) and also London (where he now lives). Taking inspiration from the work of the great Japanese painter and printmaker Kotsushika Hokusai, Shaw applies a vibrant Kashmiri palette to the Japanese organic source motif, transforming the subdued, delicate hues of the original print into an explosion of iridescent colours. Motion in an otherwise static image comes from the bee that is, like the eye of the viewer, drawn to the flower. Shaw’s treatment of the chrysanthemum – considered in the Western world to be the symbol of death and mourning – is a masterstroke in the inverting of preconceived notions and truly embraces the Japanese interpretation of the flower as a symbol of regeneration. The panel was acquired directly from the artist by the seller in 2001 and is estimated at 80,000-120,000.
Further Day Sale highlights include TV Santosh’s oil on canvas from 2005, Man Made Famine and the Rats, estimated at £40,000-60,000 and a stunning work by Pakistan’s leading Contemporary artist Rashid Rana entitled Veil #6.
Since Rana’s first solo exhibition in 2004 with Peter Nagy’s Nature Morte Gallery, he has become one of the leading figures of Mumbai’s vibrant Contemporary Art scene. Rana is an artist who is best known for his photographs, videos and installations which tackle multiple issues such as politics of gender, violence and popular culture, as well as the authenticity of a work of art in the current media age of global distribution. Veil #6 belongs to Rana’s critically acclaimed series of works that drew their inspiration from the urban environment of his home city of Lahore. It depicts a found newspaper image of five veiled Muslim women at a protest rally against un-Islamic dress and brings together all of the artist’s concerns regarding gender, race, the media and popular culture with a single image. Added to this is the work’s underlying subversive content – namely the thousands of tiny pornographic images that describe the composite image in a pixelated x-rated mosaic. Rana’s photographic practice creates images that offer an alternative view of how popular ideas and prejudices are created.
* Pre-sale estimates do not include buyer’s premium
Sotheby’s holds the record for any Indian work of art sold at auction. This was set by Raqib Shaw’s Garden of Earthly Delights III , which sold for £2,708,500 (US$5,491,755) in London in October 2007.
The works will be on view at Sotheby’s, New Bond Street, London on:
Saturday 28 June 12noon – 5 pm
Sunday 29 June 12 noon – 5 pm
Monday 30 June 9 am – 7 pm
Tuesday 1 July 9 am – 12 noon

The post INDIAN SUMMER AT SOTHEBY’S LONDON THIS JULY first appeared on Indian Art News.

LONDON — There are enough “recession-proof,” super-rich buyers to push soaring prices for the best works of art still higher, experts predict, but the picture is less rosy at the lower end of the market.
And in a world where perception is everything, values for even the world’s most sought-after artists could come back down to Earth with a bump if confidence were to slide.
Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the world’s two top auctioneers, have just completed a series of summer sales in London that raised more than $1-billion, underlining how resilient the top end of the market is despite growing economic gloom.
Records tumbled and bidding was aggressive in the sales room, such as last week when a Monet water lily fetched the equivalent of $81.4-million Canadian, doubling the previous high for the French master.
Christie’s raised $558-million overall during the London summer season of impressionist, modern, post-war and contemporary art, while Sotheby’s has raised $454-million with just the relatively minor contemporary day sale to go.
“At the high end of the market there is a combination of extreme wealth and a lack of alternative assets for these people,” said Anders Petterson, founder of ArtTactic, which tracks confidence in the art market.
“Auction houses are appealing to largely recession-proof buyers, including wealthy individuals from the Middle East, Russia and India.”
But falling share prices, inflationary pressures and rising costs of oil appear to be taking their toll on the middle market.
At the Phillips de Pury contemporary art sale on Sunday, one-third of lots on offer failed to sell and the auction total of around $49.5-million fell short of its low pre-sale estimate.
“It’s evident … that the high end of the market (over $1 million) is currently operating independently from the lower price segments,” the latest ArtTactic survey concluded.
Best art on show
The sharp rise in values for high-quality art has encouraged owners to part with their best paintings and sculptures.
“It can be good news for the art market if some people are hurting because of exposure to other assets, because it gets them to put works on the market they probably would have preferred to keep,” said Ben Crawford, chief marketing officer at MutualArt.com, an online art information service.
He, like Petterson, sees values for the best works of art continuing to rise, and takes issue with the theory put forward that prices could be heading for a fall.
At the back of people’s minds is the art market crash of the early 1990s, and comparisons have been drawn between the bubble created by Japanese buying then and aggressive Russian collecting today.
“There’s an argument that there are a few rogue billionaires propping up the market, but that is clearly not the case,” Crawford said.
While generally confident, ArtTactic’s Petterson warned that psychology plays a big part in a market where the perceived value of brushstrokes on a piece of canvas was everything.
“The problem is when people in the market start to question and become uncertain,” he said.
“There could be a political or economic jolt that is so dramatic that it distracts people at the high end of the market, and it is like a house of cards.”

The post High art prices may disguise malaise first appeared on Indian Art News.