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Posts tagged with South Asian Contemporary Art

Indian artists in the 7th Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art

January 6, 2013

Manjari Sihare shares a note on the Indian artists participating in the 7th Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art in Brisbane

Brisbane: The 7th Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (APT7) opened at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane on December 8th, 2012. APT7 is world renowned for being the only major series to focus exclusively on contemporary art from Asia, the Pacific and Australia. It is the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art’s flagship contemporary art exhibition started in 1993. This edition marks its 20th year and is the most ambitious in scale featuring new and recent works by a total of seventy five artists and artist groups from a total of twenty seven countries. These include works of eminent Indian contemporary artists such as Rina Banerjee, Neha Choksi,  Sheila Makhijani, Raqib Shaw, Dayanita Singh and major new commissions by LN Tallur and Atul Dodiya. Also on view is a project by Raqs Media Collective in a section titled The 20 Year Archive in which the APT acknowledges its 20-year history by bringing together artists who work with archives. The exhibition is on view until April 14, 2013. Read more here, and watch this blog for additional posts on this exhibition in the near future.

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The Drawings of Souza and Picasso – a Meeting of Two Artistic Giants

December 1, 2012

Guest blogger, Sabah Mathur reports on a recent lecture at the British Museum on the Drawings of Souza and Picasso

The British Museum, London

The British Museum, London

London: One of India’s foremost modern artist, Francis Newton Souza, has often been compared to the twentieth-century giant, Pablo Picasso.  A recent lecture held at the British Museum (BM), London, as part of the event, Asian Art in London, re-visited the similarities between Picasso and Souza. Sona Datta, curator of Ancient and Medieval South Asia at the BM, explored the relationship between the two artists by juxtaposing their drawings in order to demonstrate the impact of Picasso on Souza.

The talk began by setting the stage for understanding modernity in the Indian context. Being a colonial country, Indian artists were faced with an inherent paradox – a contradiction between the sense of alienation of the individual artist and the cultural cohesion expected of a nation engaged in an anti-colonial struggle. It is important to address what it meant to be both Indian and modern in the Post-independence period. The latter demanded an expression of the universal, while the former called attention to the local.

Tracing the growth of modernism from academic art as taught in the schools set up by the British in India, and the Bengal School to the Progressive Artists Group (PAG), of which Souza was a founding member, Datta discussed the role of the PAG as an important group of modern artists who together formed a brave new world. However, modern Indian art was often regarded as an attempt to play catch-up with European art. It was widely considered to be derivative.

Datta argued that art has always been informed by other cultures. For instance, direct influences were drawn from African and Oceanic art by Picasso, Persian art by Henri Matisse, and Polynesian art by Paul Gauguin. It is by now well established that art does not exist in isolation but always arises out of influences. It would be more fruitful to examine in what sense art is borrowed and how it is invested with meaning.

Souza rejected his art school teachings and educated himself through books, reproductions, and actual works of art to which he could find access. He wrote that he had to teach himself about Western art. Many of his paintings show strong influences of Old Masters such as Titian as well as modern artists, most notably Picasso. Souza’s bold colours, geometrical compositions, and distorted faces are evidence of the inspiration he received from the latter. Man with a Dribbling Nose shows Souza’s mature style with highly distorted features – eyes in the forehead, elongated nose, exaggerated mouth and teeth, and bulging veins. Such heads were a unique invention of Souza’s and they communicate emotions with brute force.

Like Picasso, Souza also conveyed messages about politics, society, sex, and religion through his art. Souza’s Six Gentlemen of Our Time is a triumph of his capacity to probe emotion through significant form. The heads depicted are of men who represent the terrifying post-war atomic civilisation. Datta stated that their structure resembles Synthetic Cubism as practiced by Picasso.

Francis Newton Souza Six Gentlemen of Our Times

Francis Newton Souza, Six Gentlemen of Our Times, 1955
Image credit: WORDS & LINES , by Francis Newton Souza (First published in 1959)

A more direct inspiration can be seen in Souza’s Young Ladies in Belsize Park which is a reverberating echo of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Souza’s adaptation is essentially a brothel scene. He actually lived in this area of London and the nearby red light area afforded an interesting inspiration for this work. While Souza’s colours are much darker, the structure and thematic similarities to the original are clear.

Picasso & Souza Talk_1

Les Damoiselles D’Avignon by Pablo Picasso Young Ladies in Belsize Park by Franic Newton Souza

Datta pointed out that both Picasso and Souza had a tremendous fluidity of line. This is clearly visible in the following drawings. Both artists were excellent draughtsmen and were aware of the importance of line in their work. Souza said, “The outline is the scaffolding on which you hang your painting. It is the structure without which art cannot exist and becomes wishy washy. Cezanne is nothing but structure. Within the structure you add paint and paint and structure are one and the same. There is a totality about it.”

Souza's drawings

(Left) Two Women Seated by Picasso, 1970 and (Right) Souza’s Woman on a Sofa, 1962
Image credit: Francis Newton Souza Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art by Aziz Kurtha, Grantha Corporation, 2006

The distinctions and similarities between the two artists become clearer upon comparing Picasso’s Femme au Chapeau and Souza’s Untitled (Head of Picasso). The influence on Souza’s work is obvious, but in his work the facial features are more visible whereas in Picasso’s work they are tending towards the abstract.

PICASSO_SOUZA_e_invite1

Picasso’s Femme au Chapeau and Souza’s Untitled (Head of Picasso).
Image credit: http://www.vadehraart.com/exhibition/viewDetails/76/1843?pages=2

Souza was a dominant force in developing modern Indian art and created a new artistic grammar for India. He was also an inspirational figure during the 1950s in the London art scene. Picasso meanwhile, is widely acknowledged as the most influential twentieth-century artist who created Cubism along with Georges Braque during the early 1900s. Both artists were inspired by their predecessors but reworked the art of other masters to create their own idioms. Their results were original. For instance, although Souza was influenced by a number of Western artists he mixed his art with his knowledge of Indian styles and motifs.

Both Souza and Picasso were artistic geniuses in their own way and they believed in their work. Souza, like Picasso, stood outside the regular society in a way. Born in Portuguese occupied Goa into a Roman Catholic family, he struggled against adversity from the very beginning. His father died when he was just three months old and the following year, his sister aged two, also passed away. In 1929, when Souza was only four, his widowed mother, heaped with debt, fled with him to Bombay. There Souza contracted smallpox and was sent back to Goa to be looked after by his grandmother.

Souza was fascinated by stories of tortured saints told to him by his grandmother and the grandeur of the Church had a profound effect on him. He was influenced not by its dogmas, but its architecture and the splendour of its services. Souza developed a strong anti-clerical streak. His denunciation of the clergy with all its vestments of religiosity and an underlying manipulation of power was expressed in a number of works. A characteristic example of this is Souza’s Death of the Pope where the dead Pope is a skeleton of a man rather than a grandiose figure, and the priests with their ghoulish heads, stand before him. Datta pointed out that Souza’s Catholic guilt and tragedy left him feeling alienated as an individual and in a way this was like fodder for his creativity.

Deviating from the discussion about Souza and Picasso, a member of the audience also put forth an interesting question regarding Souza’s relationship with another master of modern Indian art, MF Husain. In response, it was pointed out that it was Souza who had recognised Husain’s genius during the 1940s and had brought him into the fold of the art world, selecting him to join the PAG. Later during the 1980s Husain invited Souza to open his retrospective held in India. Interestingly, Souza once said that he had taught Husain everything he knew!

This highly confident attitude was typical of Souza, a characteristic that he shared with Picasso. Each of these artists tore the rule book and produced art that was full of emotion. Although Souza does not have any direct descendants in the sense of artistic style, he certainly left a very powerful influence on many other Indian artists with his intense personal vision and eclectic body of work.

A trained lawyer, Sabah Mathur has a keen interest in South Asian art. She recently completed an MA in Fine & Decorative Art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. Her MA thesis was titled “Monochromes and Chemicals: Understanding Francis Newton Souza’s Avant-Garde Experiments with Black Paintings and Chemical Paintings”. She has worked with Saffronart as well as the Modern & Contemporary South Asian art department at Bonhams.

Rathin Barman: The first Asian artist to Exhibit at deCordova Sculpture Park – II

November 24, 2012

Guest blogger, Diana Campbell  in a tête-à-tête with Prateek and Priyanka Raja of the Experimenter Gallery about Rathin Barman’s work that was exhibited in the Frieze Art Fair in New York followed by the deCordova Sculpture Park

Rathin Barman, Untitled, 2012
View at deCordova Sculpture Park
Courtesy of the Artist, Experimenter Contemporary Art, Kolkata, India, and the Creative India Foundation

Mumbai: In my last post, I interviewed Rathin Barman about his recent work exhibited at the deCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts.  This work debuted with Experimenter at the Frieze New York Sculpture Park. The Kolkata based gallerists Prateek and Priyanka Raja spoke to me about about how they saw this work transform from an art fair context to an institutional context.

DC: How did you see the work develop from idea to the fair, and from the fair to the park?

Prateek and Priyanka Raja (PPR): When Rathin responded to the possibility of showing a work at the sculpture park at a venue as prestigious and global as Frieze NY, we felt that he had exceeded our expectations in conceptual framework and thought. Untitled 2012 was also so ambitious in its scale and vision that we knew immediately we would need a collaborator to actualize the project. We were very fortunate to have had the support of Creative India Foundation through every step of the process from production to shipping to installation and even take down of the work at the fair. At the fair, we were anxious how this would turn out given that this was the first time the work was being installed ever. When finally put up, the work looked stunning across the river and with the Manhattan skyline in the backdrop as if conceptually and physically the work came together.

Then when through Creative India Foundation, the opportunity came for the work to be installed at deCordova Sculpture Park, was the high point for us. It meant that the work had found a truly public space viewed within the context of some fantastic sculpture by some of the best sculptors in the world in a beautiful sculpture park that was renowned for its content. It was realizing a large project from seed to thought to reality — a truly wholesome experience for us.

DC: How does it feel to have the first Asian sculptor to be displayed at one of America’s best sculpture parks? This is a great honor for Rathin, do you have any other developments you can share with us about his exciting career? 

PPR: Rathin Barman is a very young sculptor, but his work is not restricted by scale or ambition. For Rathin we feel it was an opportunity of a lifetime. This was the first time he had travelled outside India and I think the learning was tremendous. The honor for Rathin to be included in a sculpture park, not only as an Asian but as an artist is tremendous. Rathin is working on a large commission for a very interesting collection currently and is preparing for a show that is in the development outside Kolkata. Also he is simultaneously applying to a selection of residencies for next year, as we feel the next level of his practice needs to have a deeper understanding of material, form and process that will be possible to garner in an international residency and open up newer possibilities for Rathin.

Rathin Barman, Untitled, 2012
Another View at deCordova Sculpture Park
Courtesy of the Artist, Experimenter Contemporary Art, Kolkata, India, and the Creative India Foundation

DC: You received many compliments about Rathin’s work at frieze, any you can share? 

PPR: During Frieze, one of the most poignant sights with regard to the sculpture was when someone left behind a bouquet of sunflowers beside the sculpture. Untitled really is a work about the ferocious need for our cities to grow and at the cost of everything else around it including nature, the people who live in it and the fabric of lives in a city like NYC. That was an unsaid compliment but whoever kept the flowers surely understood what the work was about.

Another comment was made by an Australian collector who had liked the work a lot. He said that the work “exuded the bereft-ness of city living and the barrenness of our modern relationships that cities bring along. In fact it made a comment on how urbanity is taking over everything”

Diana Campbell is Founding Director and Chief Curator, Creative India Foundation, Hyderabad, a private foundation which advances Indian contemporary art globally and is developing India’s first international sculpture park. She is responsible for directing the foundation’s programming, selecting artists & commissioning sculptures for international sculpture parks as well as the foundation’s future park slated for 2015. Through her work with the foundation, she is a key advisor for renowned international sculpture parks such as de Cordova Sculpture Park, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wanås etc. on Indian artists for their collections. Campbell has curated sculpture projects for the India Art Fair, and SH Contemporary fair in Shanghai, and has contributed to projects at Frieze New York, Frieze London and Art Hong Kong. She is also is the co-curator for the Mumbai City Pavilion for the 9th Shanghai Biennale. Campbell also advises real estate developers on their public art programs in India. Prior to moving to India in 2010, Campbell curated exhibitions independently at prestigious galleries such as Marlborough Gallery, and worked at Sotheby’s New York and the Neue Galerie. Campbell is a Princeton and Independent Curators International (ICI) alumna, and speaks Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Rathin Barman: The first Asian Artist to Exhibit at deCordova Sculpture Park

November 23, 2012

Guest blogger, Diana Campbell in conversation with the Rathin Barman about his work at the deCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts

Rathin Barman, Untitled, 2012
Courtesy of the Artist, Experimenter Contemporary Art, Kolkata, India, and the Creative India Foundation

Mumbai: In September 2012, deCordova Sculpture Park exhibited its first sculpture by an Asian artist, Rathin Barman’s Untitled, 2012, which debuted with Experimenter at the Frieze New York Sculpture Park curated by Tom Eccles. deCordova Sculpture Park is one of America’s premier sculpture institutions, and it is investing strategically to be the best sculpture park in the US by 2016. The Creative India Foundation is obviously thrilled to partner with them to spread the reach of Indian creativity internationally ahead of opening our own sculpture park.

deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts

Nick Capasso, the Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at deCordova Sculpture Park shared, “The installation process went very well, and everyone here is thrilled with the sculpture! We honestly could not be more pleased, and Rathin himself is very happy with the iteration of Untitled at deCordova, which looks very different than how it appeared at Frieze in New York…This artwork has been a success for us on every level – aesthetically, educationally, and strategically.” I am excitedly awaiting images of the work in the snow once the seasons change.

I took some time to interview Rathin Barman and his gallerists Prateek and Priyanka Raja about Rathin’s experience at deCordova and to learn about how they saw the work transform from an art fair context to an institutional context. Rathin Barman had his first solo show less than a year ago, and he is already making solid marks on the international sculpture scene. I look forward to seeing Rathin’s work develop as he continues to experiment, experience, and learn. To avoid reader fatigue, I have broken the interview into two parts, first an interview with Rathin Barman. The conversation with Prateek and Priyanka Raja will follow in my next post.

DC: The work looks completely different at deCordova than at Frieze. How did you react to the new site and how did that experience translate into this work?

Rathin Barman . Untitled, 2012 . Sculpture Park, New York Art Fair
Courtesy: Experimenter, Kolkata and the Creative India Foundation

RB (Rathin Barman): Randall’s Island, the venue for Frieze NY 2012 and deCordova Sculpture Park are completely different sites in terms of environment, urbanity & development with respect to installing Untitled 2012. Randall’s Island is among the lone green areas in New York City surrounded by three mainland city parts, and it is entrapped with box-like architectural structures. I have reacted to the site and situation of the entire physical space of the island while proposing and installing the work at Frieze Art Fair.

Three massive wall structures made of iron construction bars are the metaphoric representation of the shape and geographical position of the island both visually & conceptually. These wall structures created a cage like space in between where viewers can walk through. The inner part of the walls structured organically free flowing, loosely associates formation of tree branches, while the outer part is much more architectonic which simulates the architectural set up of closest city line.

The rubble that partly filled the wall structures was collected from demolished building sites from Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs connected sites to the situations. Moreover, the form allowed viewers to look and experience the work and the surrounded sites of urban development at the same time. It was interesting to see the city through an organically free flowing structure partly obstructed with rubble! It gives a feeling of the city’s tenacious need to grow against its own internal fragility.

While regard to my experience at deCordova Sculpture Park at Lincoln Town, Massachusetts and Lincoln area, my excitement and feeling was totally different from Randall’s Island. More than 95% area of deCordova and Lincoln are green, almost uninterrupted natural space making a strong contrast with the nearby city of Boston. Here the ground plan of the installation is almost unchanged but the rubble (again found locally) filled all over the structure commenting a different realization toward the site and situation. There is no such city line to see but the beauty of nature has been obstructed by the rubble which would remind the viewer of urban development/expansion.

Rathin Barman, Untitled, 2012
View at deCordova Sculpture Park
Courtesy of the Artist, Experimenter Contemporary Art, Kolkata, India, and the Creative India Foundation

Gradations of the park and viewing the installation from inside & outside add an interesting dialogue between the work and the landscape, in context of nature & urbanization and stipulation of their existence.

DC: People think rubble is rubble, what differences did you find between NY rubble and Massachusetts rubble? And how is that different from India? What does that have to say about the respective changes in urban development between these spaces?

RB: One of the most interesting parts of the work is that I made the iron structure in Kolkata, and it’s been transported to NY and then Massachusetts. And I had never been to the US before proposing the project, so I realized the urban site and situation of US virtually and theoretically rather than carrying a physical experience of it while creating the work.

But, when I was making the iron wall structure, the filigree of organic flow onto the structure definitely came from my physical experiences of Indian cities and their surroundings. However, environmental issues regarding urbanization and expansion of urban space are a common challenge to the urban developers throughout the world. In that sense, Untitled 2012 has a universal context.

Rathin Barman, Untitled, 2012 (detail)
Courtesy of the Artist, Experimenter Contemporary Art, Kolkata, India, and the Creative India Foundation

Using locally found rubble into the installation is a response to character particular site and its surrounding development. The Massachusetts rubble had been delivered twice, in both times it contains almost 50% of soil with bricks, stones & concrete, but in New York soil percentage was close to zero. It was almost 100% concrete and bricks. NYC has much more crowded with buildings than Boston the reason why you can hardly find soil into rubble. This is an interesting characteristic of rubble found in two different cities.

DC: You gave several presentations during your time at deCordova, how did the audiences react to your work? Any particularly good questions that pushed the way you think about the work?

RB: Interaction with deCordova audiences was amazing. These were very intimate conversations and I was pleased to know that the local population responded well to my work. Most of my works including Untitled have dealt with multiple ideas related to urban expansion, history & development, environmental issues, relation between rural and urban through formal and material representations. Hence, the viewer interactions were like discussions with each other. Viewers could identify and read/associate with the form, material and the process of the work with his/her experiences, and that way they played a very crucial role with my art practice and often added new layer or meaning or facet to the work. The conversations opened up new angles for me. During an open conversation one lady associated the rubble with 9/11, which I had never thought of at any stage of the production or installation of the work, to her, the rubble meant something else, a different sort of demolition.

Rathin Barman, Untitled, 2012 (another view)
Courtesy of the Artist, Experimenter Contemporary Art, Kolkata, India, and the Creative India Foundation

DC: How was the process of transforming the work with deCordova’s curators?

RB: Working with deCordova was a fantastic experience. During the installation process we have discussed about the history of deCordova, the sculpture park, settlement of Lincoln Town, history of Boston’s urban planning and development etc. and at the same time urbanization in India, these discussions had an important role to the process. My practice and I were very beautifully absorbed into the park and its people, which helped me respond to the space.

Diana Campbell is Founding Director and Chief Curator, Creative India Foundation, Hyderabad, a private foundation which advances Indian contemporary art globally and is developing India’s first international sculpture park. She is responsible for directing the foundation’s programming, selecting artists & commissioning sculptures for international sculpture parks as well as the foundation’s future park slated for 2015. Through her work with the foundation, she is a key advisor for renowned international sculpture parks such as de Cordova Sculpture Park, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wanås etc. on Indian artists for their collections. Campbell has curated sculpture projects for the India Art Fair, and SH Contemporary fair in Shanghai, and has contributed to projects at Frieze New York, Frieze London and Art Hong Kong. She is also is the co-curator for the Mumbai City Pavilion for the 9th Shanghai Biennale. Campbell also advises real estate developers on their public art programs in India. Prior to moving to India in 2010, Campbell curated exhibitions independently at prestigious galleries such as Marlborough Gallery, and worked at Sotheby’s New York and the Neue Galerie. Campbell is a Princeton and Independent Curators International (ICI) alumna, and speaks Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Arpita Singh’s Men in Turmoil

November 22, 2012

Guest Blogger, Bansie Vasvani on Arpita Singh’s solo show at the DC Moore Gallery, New York (on view until January 5, 2013)

Installation Shot, DC Moore Gallery, New York
Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York

New York: Arpita Singh’s vibrant watercolor works on paper, currently on view at the DC Moore Gallery in New York, are a departure from her signature portrayal of women. Here men take center stage, often in an uneasy stance, caught in the crossfire of urban chaos and unease. Singh subverts the conventional heroic male by depicting a slew of men plagued by the overbearing metropolis filled with snaking highways and packed motorcades that bombard the human mind with too much noise and pollution.

Arpita Singh, Cain (?) the Wanderer, 2012
Watercolor on paper, 16 x 11 1/2 in.
Courtesy of Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and DC Moore Gallery, New York

In Cain (?) The Wanderer, 2012, a lone figure in threadbare Gandhian garb traverses the urban landscape. Much like his biblical counterpart, who is shamed for killing his brother and compelled to be a wanderer, Singh’s wanderer too is bereft and alone. Yet the simplicity of his appearance makes us question whether in fact he is truly ill-equipped for the modern world or if his bare upper body, stripped of cover and pretention, attains a mysterious alchemy of strength to face the world. The text inscribed on his body and the surrounding environment alludes to Singh’s cryptic, deeply personal worldview, often difficult to decipher. Is her wanderer a ruthless modern day Cain, or is his Gandhian facade emblematic of forthcoming quietude? Multi-layered and symbolic, Arpita Singh’s work is a complex configuration inundated with allusions to mythology, popular culture and current events.

Arpita Singh, The Kingsway, 2004
Watercolor on paper, 17 3/4 x 23 3/4 in.
Courtesy of Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and DC Moore Gallery, New York

Informed by the tradition of miniature painting, textiles and folk art, The Kingsway, 2004,
presents a grid like structure on which five perturbed men stand and look askance at their
surroundings. Clothed in simple cotton ware, these male figures hold pistols close to their
phalluses implying a sense of impotence in their roles as guardians of their environment. The grid like formation, and the text in the densely populated cityscape that form the background of this painting, become important signifiers of a dangerous world fraught with tension. Singh’s men are caught in a current of urban disquiet where their internal psychic condition is reflected in the jarring quality of the external space thereby blurring the boundaries between internal and external, public and private, conscious and unconscious. The inner space of their minds cannot be separated from the external din and danger of the streets and highways. Her male figures appear weak and vulnerable in the face of an outside threat, making a mockery of their manhood. But like the protagonist of the previous work, we are left to wonder if their simplicity points to ineptitude in a complex world, or a blessing in disguise.

Arpita Singh, Untitled, 2010
Watercolor on paper, 14 1/2 x 11 in.
Courtesy of Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and DC Moore Gallery, New York

In Untitled, 2010, and The Roadmap Creeps in the Page of my Notebook, 2012, the flat grid like structure appears as a leitmotif against which Singh places her figures, numbers, and words. Inspired by a label from a tea carton, the flat surface was conducive to her meticulous art making process of layering colors that resemble thick pastel, such that her watercolors appear saturated with pigment and tone. Through these rich tapestries dense with imagination and experience, Singh depicts a world steeped in anxiety with a sliver of hope towards a future of some peace and resolution.

Arpita Singh, The Roadmap Creeps in the Page of My Notebook, 2012
Watercolor on paper, 16 x 11 15/8 in.
Courtesy of Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and DC Moore Gallery, New York

Bansie Vasvani is an independent art critic based in New York City.  She has a Masters Degree in Modern and Contemporary Art, and has traveled extensively to art fairs all over the world.