Search results for: 'DELHI DURBAR EMPIRE DISPLAY AND THE POSSESSION OF HISTORY'

Do we view things differently as we grow older? What are the perspectives that matter most when viewing art? Do we see things differently as men and women? Do we see art differently as men and women? How does one’s gender impact the creation of art? In the months leading up to ‘Ways of Seeing’, these were some of the questions we posed to ourselves, and we wish we could say that we found a generic, universal response, for there are as many standpoints and views as there are viewers and people. Amrita Sher-Gil Anjolie Ela Menon Anupam Sud Arpana Caur B. Prabha Devayani Krishna Elizabeth Brunner Gogi Saroj Pal Jaya Ganguly Kanchan Chander Kavita Nayar Latika Katt Madhvi Parekh Mrinalini Mukherjee Nalini Malani Navjot Nilima Sheikh Rekha Rodwittiya Shobha Broota Sunayani Devi Vasundhara Tewari Broota Zarina Hashmi Akbar Padamsee Avinash Chandra B. C. Sanyal Baburao Painter Bikash Bhattacharjee D. P. Roy Chowdhury Dharamanarayan Dasgupta Dhruva Mistry F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Pyne George Keyt Haren Das Jagadish Dey Jamini Roy Jogen Chowdhury Jyoti Bhatt K. H. Ara K. S. Kulkarni Khagen Roy Krishen Khanna M. F. Husain M. Suriyamoorthy M. V. Dhurandhar Nandalal Bose P. T. Reddy Prokash Karmakar Sakti Burman Satish Sinha Sudhir Khastgir Sunil Das V. Nageshkar

A close look at bus art with artist Sumantra Mukherjee as we join him on a walk through a bus depot, and a bus ride through the city where we try our hand at this popular visual language through paint and text. 

The idea of primitivism centres on the wish to identify with, or respond to, elements of a society that are deemed ‘primitive’. In artistic terms, it is about rejecting realism, simplifying technique and reducing the formal means of expression to a ‘primitive’ state. The term itself is borrowed from discussions of Western art, where high-profile examples include the images of Tahiti and its people made in the 1890s by Paul Gauguin, and responses to African sculpture by Pablo Picasso in 1906-09. The second thread of primitivism—the reduction of formal means—is best exemplified by the ‘cut-outs’ made by Henri Matisse in the 1940s.

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. 

How did the multiple trajectories of visual arts develop in the subcontinent? Where did they originate and how did their paths converge? Drishyakala offers a sweeping journey into the heterogenous histories of visual arts in India, from the first European travelling artists who drew landscapes to popular prints of the earliest woodcuts and lithographs evolving into the thriving advertising visuals of the 20th century. The exhibition is broadly divided into four categories, each exploring an unique area of development—the art of portraiture through photography and painting, oriental sceneries drawn by European travelling artists, popular prints from the late eighteenth century to post-independence and artworks of the nine National Treasure Artists. Together, these sections give brief glimpses into the dizzying variety of forms, styles and languages of South Asian art.

The twentieth century was marked by two important decades—the 1910s, when the Bengal School saw the establishment of a revivalist practice that came to signify Indian modern art in general; and the 1950s, when a newly independent nation put its colonised past behind it and embraced a triumphant modernism. A. A. RAIBA ADI DAVIERWALLA AVINASH CHANDRA BABURAO SADWELKAR BADRI NARAYAN BIREN DE CHITTAPROSAD D. P. ROY CHOWDHURY DEVYANI KRISHNA DHANRAJ BHAGAT G. R. SANTOSH GANESH PYNE HAREN DAS Indra Dugar J. SULTAN ALI JYOTI BHATT K C S PANIKER K S Kulkarni K. G. SUBRAMANYAN K. K. HEBBAR KANWAL KRISHNA KISORY ROY KRISHEN KHANNA KRISHNA REDDY Laxman Pai M. F. HUSAIN MOHAN SAMANT NANDALAL BOSE NIKHIL BISWAS P. T. REDDY PARITOSH SEN S. H. RAZA S. K. BAKRE SAKTI BURMAN SHANTI DAVE SUNIL DAS SUNIL MADHAV SEN VISHWANATH NAGESHKAR

This is the first-ever retrospective of the Indian modern artist Avinash Chandra who lived most of his life in the West, in London and New York. The artist, who had trained in New Delhi, left soon after for London, and most of his practice was limited to London and New York, the two cities he called his home till his unfortunately early death in 1991. In the roughly three-and-a-half decades of his career, Avinash’s work changed amazingly, reflecting his environment and milieu as he grew and adapted to cities vastly different from their Indian counterparts, with their own sub-cultures. That this happily coincided with a discovery of India, however superfluously, as a land of spirituality and sexuality, seemed to serve him well as his muse.

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

The India International Centre at New Delhi, in collaboration with the Amar Nath Sahgal Trust, presented a large suite of works by Amar Nath Sahgal (1922—2007), one of post-independent India’s foremost sculptors, in order to celebrate his centenary year in March 2023.