Search results for: 'festival do ceu sp 29/11'

The exhibition Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations and Experiments in Twentieth Century Indian Art is a pioneering attempt to gather together works of sixteen prominent Indian artists under the single thematic rubric of the transient but least definable phases of contemporary art in the last century. The exhibition features the artworks, inspirations, and experiments, of artists that had a sustained relationship with tantra philosophy, its vivid, abstract, sacred symbols, or their personal spiritual illuminations. Biren De G. R. Santosh Gogi Saroj Pal J. Swaminathan Jyoti Bhatt K. C. S. Paniker Manu Parekh P. T. Reddy Prabhakar Barwe R. B. Bhaskaran S. H. Raza Satish Gujral Shobha Broota Sohan Qadri Sunil Das V. Viswanadhan

Among all attempts by foreign artists to present a complete view of India, none is so focused on people as the work of François Baltazard Solvyns, who lived in Calcutta for a decade starting in 1791. While picking up odd jobs, he embarked on an ambitious project to produce a comprehensive survey of ‘the manners, customs, and dresses, of the Hindus’. The first edition contained 250 hand-coloured etchings and was published by Solvyns between 1796 and 1799.

The art of the twentieth century may be too recent for us to judge it from the viewpoint of longevity, but if the past is any criterion, art is set to outlive us by far—a reason why its documentation is one of the more important tasks before us. This is where the Manifestations series is so important. It encourages discussion and debates around the selection of unique works by seventy-five acknowledged artists spanning a century (or more) of Indian modernism across a range of variously permutable combinations: periods, movements, mediums, materials, regions.  Raiba Ambadas Arpana Caur Arun Bose Asit Kumar Haldar Avinash Chandra Bal Chhabda Bikash Bhattacharjee Bimal Dasgupta Biren De Bireswar Sen C. Douglas Chittaprosad Devayani Krishna Dhanraj Bhagat Dharamnarayan Dasgupta Early Bengal (Anonymous) F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Pyne Gogi Saroj Pal Himmat Shah Indra Dugar J. C. Seal J. Sultan Ali J. Swaminathan Gaganendranath Tagore Raja Ravi Varma Jamini Roy Jeram Patel Jyoti Bhatt K. Adimoolam K. C. S. Paniker K. G. Subramanyan K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud K. S. Radhakrishnan Kalighat Pat (Anonymous) Khagen Roy Krishen Khanna L. Munuswamy Laxman Pai Laxman Shrestha M. F. Husain M. Senathipathi M. V. Dhurandhar N. S. Bendre Nandalal Bose Navjot Nemai Ghosh Nikhil Biswas P. Khemraj P. T. Reddy Paritosh Sen Partha Pratim Deb Prokash Karmakar Prosanto Roy Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Radha Charan Bagchi Ram Kumar Ranbir S. Kaleka Robert Ker Porter S. H. Raza Sakti Burman Satish Gujral Shanti Dave Shyamal Dutta Ray Gopal Ghose Sohan Qadri Sunil Das Sunil Madhav Sen Thota Vaikuntam Ved Nayar

This exhibition looks at the diverse range, moods and styles that primitivism has taken in India, some artists practicing entirely in that style, while others experimenting with it in part, or sporadically. One can count simplicity and a move away from sophistication as key components, as also an inclination or at least a nod towards the folk. The exhibition does not attempt to be a comprehensive survey of India’s primitivists—there are others who would bear inclusion—but is an attempt to understand a body of work and how, given its Western countenance, it can be understood in the Indian context. More than anything else, it offers a clearer view than in the past of what primitivism might mean in the context of modern Indian art. Amrita Sher-Gil F. N. Souza George Keyt Himmat Shah J. Sultan Ali Jamini Roy Jogen Chowdhury K. G. Subramanyan K. S. Kulkarni M. F. Husain Madhvi Parekh Mohan Samant Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Ramkinkar Baij Sunayani Devi

In the articulation of twentieth century art, where does one place Altaf Mohamedi? That question has probably troubled more curators than we realise. Altaf, who studied art in London before returning to Bombay (now Mumbai) was following in the footsteps of his elder sister and artist Nasreen Mohamedi, but that is where all similarities ended. Where Nasreen was an abstract, sparse artist who created a distinctive language using, for most part, rigid, inflexible lines that nevertheless sang on the paper over which they were made, Altaf’s work was intensely political and social.

What is the role of collectors and collections or archives in the world of art today? Does it simply allude to practices of producing a consumable past today or does it also aspire to question the ways in which history has been shaped by powerful interventions in the form of artworks, performances and installations?  In this series of conversations, we wanted to explore the idea of collecting recent or contemporary art—and how it inevitably takes us back to the moderns who influenced such practices heavily.