Akademi adds new art gallery space in Delhi

Responding to the evolving contemporary art world where artists are experimenting with bold subjects and mediums, the Lalit Kala Akademi in the national capital has opened a new gallery intended to provide more space for exhibitions.

Situated in the basement, the new exhibition space is an addition to the existing nine galleries, at the one of the country’s oldest art spaces that is available for hire by local and international artists both established and upcoming in the art world.

“The basement was previously used as a storage area for our collection and we have renovated it to create a more efficient space that adds to the existing exhibition galleries,” Ashok Vajpayee, Chairman Lalit Kala Akademi told PTI.

“Yeh Image Mahaan – India meets Bharat”, an exhibition curated by Rakhi Sarkar and documenting the new vibrant languages of art emanating from India, put together by Kolkata-based private art gallery CIMA, became the first show at the new Akademi gallery that was inaugurated here on Monday evening. The exhibition is scheduled to go on till January 29.

“Right now the Akademi is one of the best spaces present in the capital, we are centrally located and we also have our own collaborations with institutions abroad. We send abroad our artists works and similarly exhibit international artists as part of our cultural policy,” says Mr. Vajpayee.

Presently a “bold” show comprising of works by 20 well known artists and commissioned by the Akademi is also being exhibited at the venue.

“Against all odds: A contemporary response to the historiography of archiving collecting and museums of India” displays how each artist would like their museums to be as well as critique or articulate the history of collecting all the while reflecting on issues from a personal or social viewpoint.

“People have commended us on this bold exhibition that has been curated by a young curator. We have to open up to the happenings of the contemporary art world and the Lalit Kala Akademi is trying to respond to this,” says Mr. Vajpayee.

The Chairman says the Akademi which has hosted retrospective shows on leading contemporary artists like Ram Kumar and Satish Gujral and is slated to put up soon a big show on Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, is striving to encourage artists from all over the country especially younger ones.

Apart from individual artists and galleries the Lalit Kala Akademi also plans to host a triennial by the end of 2011 where work from private galleries would be exhibited.

State-run Lalit Kala Akademis would also be chipping in with their artists.

Jawahar Sircar, Secretary, Ministry of Culture who inaugurated the tenth gallery of the Lalit Kala Akademi says, “The new gallery is an example of the neutral spaces that are being made available to artists especially younger ones who want to exhibit their art and not just commercial spaces for buying and selling art. The Lalit Kala and the National Gallery of Modern Art

Meanwhile, the Akademi is also supporting the upcoming India Art Summit in the city.

“The IAS is essentially a commercial venture, it is a fair. While we are supporting them we are not playing a direct role. We are hoping to meet and interact with the number of artists who will be visiting the city both at an institutional level as well as on a personal level,” says Mr. Vajpayee who is also a well-known poet and author.

Yusuf Arakkal: Portrait of artist and his haunting, taunting faces

Noted Kerala born portrait artist Yusuf Arakkal has honed his trademark portraiture of faces in the last 40 years into a series of haunting visages. ‘If Mona Lisa can sport a moustache, why can’t I paint faces?’ asks the artist, now working on canvases woven around Christ.

The evocative faces have been defined by critics as ‘voices from the void, filled with a strange power that haunt, taunt and burn with a latent fire’. No wonder an exhibition, on at the Art Alive Gallery that closes Feb 12, is called ‘An Inner Fire’.

‘I have been painting faces since Day 1. I trained in portraits even before I went to the art school under Jaya Varma, a relative of the renowned Raja Ravi Varma. He taught me to draw faces in the European tradition for 18 months in 1964,’ the painter told IANS.

‘Between 1964 and 1969, I painted several portraits but when I finished art school, my approach to portraits changed according to the phases in my life. There were times when I painted children’s faces.

‘Certain faces lingered in my memory and haunted me. Sometimes I refer to press photographs but I do not copy from photographs. Once I even painted my gardener,’ Arakkal said.

The 66-year-old artist, who is also fond of cinema, studies the way a filmmaker frames his subject on the lens. Influences of filmmakers like Vittorio de Sica, Satyajit Ray, Raj Kapoor and Truffaut are apparent in his work.

‘I am interested in the camera,’ he said.

Arakkal’s life is one of adventure. A member of the erstwhile ruling Arakkal clan of Cannanore in northern Kerala (now Kannur), the artist of Islamic lineage left his native place for Bangalore in search of a job.

Initially, he felt lost in the film-crazy Bangalore of the 1960s.

But a member of the extended Arakkal royalty took in the young artist and provided him shelter till he found a job as a technician at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bangalore.

But the desire to paint and sculpt was overriding, the artist remembered.

Arakkal gave up his job to study at the Chitrakala Parishad. He spent some time as a graphic artist at the Garhi Artists Village in Delhi.

The faces are drawn to linear and geometrical measurements and his canvases often come across as a detailed graph with horizontal and vertical lines supporting the visage.

Arakkal was honoured with the prestigious Lorenzo De Medici gold medal in 2006 at the Florence International Beinnale for his composition, ‘Bacon’s Man With the Child and Priest’.

The artist, who assimilates inspiration and the subtleties of his craft from post-war Western contemporaries, is working on a new series on Jesus Christ comprising 10 compositions.

‘The first composition of the series, ‘Christ’s Last Supper’ with only Christ looming in the frame was exhibited at the India Art Summit 2011. I have completed two more in the series, the ‘Gethesemane Prayer’ (Christ’s last prayer in the garden of Gethesemane) and ‘Piata’ (Italian for dead),’ Arakkal said.

Arakkal believes ‘figurative art is the trend of the decade’.

‘In the last five years, Indian contemporary art has been drawn to ’super-realism’, popularised in the US in the late 1960s, 70s and 80s by artists like Chuck Close, who painted a curious body of grid-like artscapes and photo-realistic images in the CMYK colour format,’ he said.

The other trend is that of ‘traditional figurative drawing, the kind mastered by Kishen Khanna and Rameswar Broota,’ Arakkal said.

‘Portraiture is a difficult genre because it requires technical expertise. But as a creative art form, it can give away to tedium and mechanical repetition if the portraits are not dredged from memory and imagination,’ he said.

Art junction: Matisse meets Tagore

Here is your chance to see works by legendary international artists, ranging from Henri Matisse and Andy Warhol to Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor, alongside the works of Rabindranath Tagore and F.N. Souza, and contemporary stars like Subodh Gupta and Jitish Kallat, all at the same venue.

In India, too. Come January 20, Delhi’s Pragati Maidan will provide all the sensory overload you ever desired when the third edition of the four- day India Art Summit (IAS) opens its doors.

The canvas has got bigger and wider. Consider this: Some 54 galleries participated in the Delhi art fair’s last edition in August 2009. In comparison, 84 galleries, including 30 international ones, will show the works of nearly 570 artists, worth almost Rs 100 crore together, this time.

Naturally, the venue too has expanded from 4,500sqm to 8,000sqm.

“We’ve got an overwhelming response from all over the world, not just from galleries but also from museums, art institutions, curators, dealers and private collectors. People are beginning to take Indian art more seriously, so they all want to come here,” said Neha Kirpal, director, IAS.

For instance, representatives from the world’s top museums like Guggenheim in New York and Abu Dhabi, Tate London, Centre Pompidou of Paris, and the Singapore Art Museum will be attending the fair. As will the directors of various international art fairs and of expositions like the art biennales.

All of India’s leading galleries including the CIMA Gallery, Vadehra Art Gallery, Nature Morte, Sakshi Gallery and Chemould Prescott Road will have booths at the fair.

“There seems to be a lot of interest with people from all over the world coming to attend the fair. We’re looking forward to it,” said Usha Gawde, director, Sakshi Gallery.

Like last time, there will be works in canvas, sculpture, video and cutting-edge installation at the fair. The prices too will range from an affordable Rs 20,000 to as high as Rs 8 crore.

The international galleries too are bringing in works by leading international artists. Kirpal said: “What is happening in the economy is being reflected in the art world. There’s a desire to go global, and Indian collectors are looking at blue-chip international artists too.”

But there’s much more on the palette. The Speakers Forum will cover panel discussions on everything from Indian art on the international circuit to the role of museums.

The panellists include international experts like the director of the Art Institute, Chicago, and the chief curator of Tate Modern as well as leading Indian artists, gallerists and curators.

Anish Kapoor will be in conversation with Homi Bhabha, professor and director of Harvard University’s Humanities Centre. Leading American installation artist Dan Graham will talk to the San Francisco Art Institute’s director of exhibitions, Hou Hanru.



Eight art projects have been developed solely for the fair, and a host of collateral events will be held across galleries and museums in Delhi.

There’s even an extensive VIP programme covering exhibition launches (the CIMA Gallery will inaugurate its “Yeh Image Mahaan — India Meets Bharat” show at the Lalit Kala Akademi) and special viewings.

The London-based Serpentine Gallery’s co-director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, who is one of the most sought-after curators of contemporary art in the world, will, along with the Delhi-based KHOJ International Artists Association, conduct the KHOJ Marathon, a series of 20-minute public interviews with 25 leading intellectuals.

Some 11 galleries will host solo shows of artists. In its last edition, the art fair drew 40,000 visitors and saw sales of around Rs 26 crore, with 40 per cent of the buyers being first-time buyers.

4 Americans paint vibrant India in new light

For many Westerners, India continues to be a land of tigers, princes, snake charmers and spirituality. Often these cliched images also dominate the imagination of artists from abroad. But four American artists - Carrie Fonder, Lily Stockman, Rebecca Layton and Jenny Mullins - have tried to break free.

In an exhibition titled Super/Power, their visual narratives are filled with a different set of images: autorickshaws, godowns, mobile phone towers and electrical transformers. The art works attempt to foster a dialogue between the mythologies of the old and vibrant India with New India. Curator Georgina Maddox says "each artist has employed multiple mediums to engage with the subject of India." Through paintings, sculptures, drawings and installations - they express themselves in an exhibition on view from April 1-16 at Threshold Art Gallery.

Detroit-based Fonder's sculptures deal with issues of gender and the way culture influences gender identity. Her work uses the ubiquitous autorickshaw that she purchased in October 2010 to illustrate her responses to the hijra (eunuch) community in India. "I was inspired by the beauty and boldness of the hijras that I encountered in my daily life in Mumbai as well as the rickshaws. Hijras got me thinking about the hardships they face not only as hijras but also as women," says Fonder.

Her creation titled Trans-co takes a multi-cultural look at gender while paying homage to hijras and autorickshaws. "It's a play on American car culture; at the same time it nods reverentially to the world of amazing rickshaw customisations visible throughout India," says Fonder who's fascinated by the dualities of India. Despite stereotypical and historical trappings, India is also contemporary and unique, she says.

LA based Stockman, who grew up on a farm in central New Jersey, was always attracted to the collision of the natural and built environment: how man shapes his surroundings. Last year she moved to India and was fascinated to see the same thing happening here.

Padamsee''s ''reclining nude'' sets Rs 6.3 cr auction record

Indian modernist painter Akbar Padamsee set a new auction record with his untitled work fetched Rs 6.3 crore (USD 1,426,500) in a New York sale by Sotheby's on March 25.Padamsee's 10x3ft painting of a reclining nude drawn from his 'grey period' of work in the 1959-60 when the artist returned to India after an eight-year-old stay in Paris was sourced from a private collection in the United State, reported the auction house.

The sale was part of the Modern and contemporary South Asian Art held in New York on March 25 which realised a total of USD4,028,250.Padamsee's work gains prominence as there are only three other works of the artist in the grey series. One was bought by artist M F Husain which has been subsequently lost and the remaining is with artist Kishen Khanna and filmmaker Bal Chhabda.

The Untitled (Reclining Nude) had travelled to North America, where it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Montreal in 1960 and subsequently entered a US private collection where it had remained until now.Other prominent works featuring in the sale were by Rabindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, M F Husain, F N Souza, S H Raza, Ravinder Reddy , Bharti Kher among others.