Art & Deal

Monthly Art Magazine in India

Year: 2012

Cover Story

COVER STORY

Sanjay Bhattacharya the artist? Yes all of us know him. Sanjay Bhattacharya the poet? Intriguing!!Bengali poetry that fl its and forms the clouds of fantasy, that when recited by the artist himself brings back memories of the famed Uttam Kumar…

Cover Story

COVER STORY

LONGINGS OF THE EARTH UNDERSTANDING THE ARTISTIC PRACTICE OF DHANESHWAR SHAHThrough the nineties, contemporary India and its art have become increasingly urban centric. Locked in this myopia of an urban gaze, there has been a movement away from engaging with…

Cover Story

COVER STORY

Th e first painting of the Assam Toil series by Raj Kumar Mazinder was an acrylic on canvas of the same title, which was done in 2004. I saw this painting much later. Th e fi rst work that had…

Cover Story

COVER STORY

DUET OF SELF AND CIRCUMSTANCEAn examination of art works could do with a look at the nature of the self that creates them. Aft er all self and environment, and self and art are inextricably meshed. In other words, artistic…

Essay

ESSAY

DIASPORA AND REINFORCING OF IDENTITIES IN FILMSMulticulturalism and the Diaspora have become much debated and contested terms in the politics and cultural ethos of the 21st century. Th e ‘melting pot’ that Britain and the USA have oft en been…

International

INTERNATIONAL

SHUMON AHMED, HOME LAND Photographer Shumon Ahmed lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh; a country plagued by extreme weather conditions but equally resourced by fertile land. Since a boy, Ahmed has watched his mother country become something all its own….

Feature

FEATURE

CONVERSATIONS WITH ETERNITY Just two days aft er the passing away of India’s renowned abstract landscape artist, Rajendra Dhawan, on the 2nd November 2012, a new kind of nature based abstraction s being born. It marks a signifi cant departure…

Feature

FEATURE

THE MAKER OF LARGEST WOOD CUT PRINTS IN THE WORLD, INDIAN ARTIST SANJAY KUMAR PAVES HIS WAY INTO NGMA & GUINESS WORLD RECORDS His wood-cut prints were exhibited along with that of Raza and Souza in French Biennale in the…

Report

REPORT

TRIALS OF THE ARTISTS AS AUTEUR Th is note on ‘Trial and error’ would try to bring in some of the aspects which are associated with these words. Th e word error can be the starting point. When one talks…

ART & THEATRE

ART & THEATRE

AFTERGLOW: PERFORMANCE ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY Th e title of this article does not call for a historical survey of the relationship between photography and performance art. Neither is my intention to pretend to worry about the complexity of the relation…

Obituary

OBITUARY

SUNIL GANGOPADHYAY [1934-2012] Sunil Gangopadhyay was an Indian poet and novelist. Born in Faridpur, Bangladesh, Gangopadhyay obtained his Master’s degree in Bengali from the University of Calcutta, In 1953 he with few of his friends started a Bengali poetry magazine…

History

HISTORY

THE FIRST LIGHTTh e region from which work is analysed, where bliss rises in the mind from the earth,whose borne Shakti (Supreme Energy) and prosperity is all dispersed here itself, that sacred place is triadic essence in duality, and free-will…

History

HISTORY

CONTEMPORARY DISCURSIVE DILEMMAS AND READING THE PAST ART AND LIFE OF K. VENKATAPPAWriting about K.Venkatappa (KV, born: 1886- 1965) aft er almost half a century aft er his demise, literally means reading, looking and perceiving him from an altogether diff…

Film

FILM

OMG Oh My God is a brilliant movie which deals with sensitive issues like religion, God and existence of God and also depicts how religion has become a business these days in the hands of a few. Th is fi…

Media & Communication

MEDIA & COMMUNICATION

INDIA ART FESTIVAL TO SHOWCASE OVER 500 ARTISTS & 40 ART GALLERIES —————————- THE BIGGEST ART FESTIVAL STARTS IN MUMBAI NEXT MONTH AT MMRDA GROUND, BANDRA-KURLA COMPLEX. ————————— India Art Festival, a modern and contemporary art fair, starting from 28…

Review

REVIEWS

REVIEW OF THE S.SHAM SUNDER’S PAINTING AND DRAWING SHOW “BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES” AT SUMUKHA GALLERY, BANGALORE, TILL END OF OCTOBER 2012 Horizon as a visible Circle Shamsunder’s set of paintings and drawings, titled as “Borders and Boundaries”, together form a…

Review

REVIEWS

THE INNER EYE: ThTh e Artist as an Urban Shaman Dhiraj Singh is a self-taught artist who apart from full time journalism, works on canvas and mixed media. Unlike his abstract paintings of acrylic on canvas that take a stratospheric…

Photo Essay

PHOTO ESSAY

NATURE’S PERFECT CYCLE The sun emerges from the east. It showers the universe with its mystic light which we attribute as a bright sunny day. Everything occurs in perfect order in nature that man has consistently failed to adapt to….

Editorial

Editorial

Autumn has arrived. Th e Northern Winds sway across the city and soothe the senses. Nature is such a mystery, yet it has a cycle. Life cycles that we are all caught up in and invariably follow. It defi nes…

Cover Story

Cover Story

Iconography in Contemporary Times and Contemporary Iconology Iconography is a ‘pointer’ to the relevance of culturally recognized images, contained upon their own self. A sign is an arrow mark to a direction which separates itself from that direction. In this…

Cover Story

Cover Story

Migrating Iconographies Iconography, as strictly defi ned, refers to the study of all visual symbols and/or the symbols themselves, but in popular usage iconography is nearly impossible to separate from religion and convention. Th e term itself elicits immediate associations…

Cover Story

Cover Story

Issues of Iconography and Contemporary Indian Art: A Rethink. Let us consider the Contemporary Indian Art before we explore the issues of iconography. Apparent is the expansion of art into areas beyond the perimeter of painting, sculpture and perhaps we…

Essay

ESSAY

CHANGING ICONOGRAPHY OF WOMAN POWER / SHAKTI IN INDIA It is ironic that a nation that has venerated and held in an exalted position Goddess or Shakti , is also living with the ignominy of both practicing and accepting female…

Essay

ESSAY

THREADING A FRACTURE Even in anodyne discursive deliberation—in the regime of art fi eld, to proff er a trope much favored by Alain Badiou—craft , and its trendy metonymical step-sister “reskilling” art inaugurates a hermeneutics of suspicion evidenced in the…

Amit Mukhopadhyay's Column

AMIT MUKHOPADHYAY’S COLUMN

NOTES FROM ‘LOWENIX’? No one has accused me of being so, not even the ‘unbidden chatterers’, but the point I have in mind for so long is, can religion be reconciled with reason because ‘secular’ and ‘spiritual’ always contradict each…

Face to Face

FACE TO FACE

‘WE HAVE BROKEN TABOOS AND MADE THE FORBIDDEN FASHIONABLE’ Celebrity Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla are at the forefront of a glittering profession, having dressed such iconic illuminators as Amitabh Bachchan, Dimple Kapadia, Nikhil Nanda, Madhuri Dixit and Shahrukh Khan;…

International

INTERNATIONAL

DOCUMENTA 13 Documenta over the years has always been a refl ective and somewhat grim aff air. Historically the fi rst Documenta in 1955 took place to lift the sprits of Kassel, a German town suff ering from the aft…

Photo Essay

PHOTO ESSAY

HAND MADE MEMORIES – BIRENDRA PANI My present series of Conceptual Photographs are related to my experience of human life and material culture in contemporary time. Th ese were generated during my travel in diff erent spaces in India and…

History

HISTORY

THE STYLISTIC CHANGES IN THE ICONOGRAPHIES OF BUDDHA Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born in the royal family of the Shakyas at Lumbini at 562/566 B.C. One day, as he was wandering around the royal park, he saw an…

Film

FILM

SALUTE TO WOMANHOOD: INDIAN CINEMA’S TRYST WITH DESTINY. Th e Indian Film industry has been a major point of reference for Indian culture in this century. It has expressed the changing scenarios of modern India to an extent that no…

Review

REVIEWS

OF DESIRE MACHINES AND HUMAN CONDITIONS ‘ Soft subversion’ and ‘Human conditions’ were two conceptual frameworks with which Birendra Pani and Rajiba Pani worked for their exhibition in Red Earth Gallery in Baroda’.Soft subversion’ speaks about the ‘new social reality…

Review

REVIEWS

ARTICULATED VIOLENCE AND THE ECONOMY OF THE UNSPOKEN Th e ascending stairs have the alphabets conjoined by the liquid in the test tube and further one has a panorama of what a ‘lived reality’ can never be the synonym of…

Editorial

Editorial

Art in every age corresponds to the beliefs, ideals and philosophical ideas it propagates. Iconography as a convention is inseparable from the religiosity and ritual it entails. It has penetrated very deeply into the psyche of people and idol worship…

Essay

“Understanding the Polemics of ‘Tribal Art’ in the Contemporary Art Scenario”

This has been a query that has haunted the art world in almost a Benjaminian sense of haunting, which is, when anyone posits the query – what is art? This has been a contentious and much debated issue since human…