Indian Art, a Global Affair
Posted by Clare DeBoer on January 26, 2010
With galleries and museums showcasing the works of India’s brightest young stars and ancient treasures, Indian art is front and centre this month in London. In 2005 Indian art turned heads, as the market began to skyrocket and prices for Indian art works reached record highs at international auction; investing in Indian art became a surefire way to earn serious returns. In 2005 Tyeb Mehta’s Mahisasura became the first work of Modern Indian art to break the million-dollar mark, selling for $1,584,000 and surpassing the previous record of $317,000 which had been held since 2002. With the onset of the financial crisis, many feared that the Indian art market, which had gained steam so rapidly, would crash. It proved its resilience however, when Christie's auction house sold masterpiece, Birth, by F. N. Souza for over $2.5 million in the second half of the year. Whereas price milestones were previously one-time and long-held, it has become commonplace for works to fetch figures in the millions and for numerous records to be broken and reset in a single auction. Moreover, Indian artists have been receiving more international attention than ever before; what’s on in London is a case in point.
Anish Kapoor's solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts earned him the title of “one of the most influential and pioneering sculptors of his generation” (royalacademy.org). This week the Whitechapel gallery opened landmark exhibition, Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, giving an inside view of how modern South Asia has been shaped through the lens of its photographers. Next week The Saatchi Gallery opens exhibition The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, showcasing a range of contemporary artists who are part of Charles Saatchi’s collection. The Victoria and Albert’s exhibition, Maharaja: the Splendor of India’s Royal Courts, which closed last week, explored the extraordinary culture of princely India through art.
Increased visibility and awareness of Indian art on the global stage is peaking both interest and prices in the field. Awaiting the auction houses' Asia week sales in March, the future for Indian art seems bright as the London art crowd heads east to get a glimpse of Mumbai through Raghu Rai's lens, and Brown University brings exhibition M.F. Husain: Early Masterpieces, 1950s-1970s, to campus on February 5th.
The Indian Century?
Posted by Year of India on December 16, 2009
12/16/09: Radio Open Source host Chris Lydon, who spoke with authors Rana Dasgupta and Suketu Mehta while they were at Brown for the "New Indian Writing" literary festival, has written:
Are we missing the point about "India Rising" and "India Inc."? Two of India's best young writers descended on Brown University's Year of India last week. They are telling me in conversation here that (much as Prime Minister Singh's Sikh turban hid his snowy locks and the mind of a transformative capitalist) we're not getting the dread in the euphoria of India today, or the violence in the growth.
Suketu Mehta's Maximum City made him the Dickens of Bombay -- except that the mushroom megacities of India today are sprouting 20 times faster than 19th Century London.
Rana Dasgupta may be the Jonathan Safran Foer of New Delhi, hip and incisive writing fiction and fact in the land of his ancestors.
Among their many points, three to start: (1) We're sibling societies, still: transnations of rough entrepreneurial stock, formed around big constitutional ideas (not ethnicity or faith) in fights with the British over independence... (2) Indians know, use and adapt to America far better than we with them, and their advantage will tell more and more as Indians "spread out into Africa and China and central Asia with enormous ease and flexibility." And (3) a deep ping-pong game of ideas runs long and strong under the US-India connection: from Thoreau's ecstatic reading of the Bhagavad Gita to Gandhi's reading of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, from Martin Luther King Jr.'s reading of Gandhi to Barack Obama's reading of Gandhi through King and his White House embrace of Prime Minister Singh last week.
Listen to Chris' interviews (available through the links above), and then post your comments here.
25th Anniversary of Bhopal
Posted by Year of India on December 3, 2009
12/3/09: Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster, which Suketu Mehta has described in today's New York Times as an "an epic mess that started one night when a pesticide plant owned by the American chemical giant Union Carbide leaked a cloud of poisonous gas."
"Before the sun rose," Mehta writes, "almost 4,000 human beings capable of love and anguish sank to their knees and did not get up. Half a million more fell ill, many with severely damaged lungs and eyes."
Read Mehta's op-ed about the need for Dow Chemical to take responsibility for the disaster and then post your comments here.
26/11 - Salute thee Mumbai
Posted by Vasundhara Prasad on November 25, 2009
On 26th November 2008, India came to a standstill.
I vividly remember today, last year. I was visiting my sister in New York City, all excited to celebrate my very first Thanksgiving in America, when the news of the attacks in Mumbai broke through. Over the next few days, I sat glued before CNN, watching my home being ravaged by mindless terror. I must confess though to feeling helpless, almost violated, as if someone had defiled the shrine of an old unhurried, SAFE Mumbai.
Each terror site ignited a flash of memories. Each grenade blew apart a certain way of life, exploding the innocence of just another era. Leopolds Café, where I spent hours with my friends, drinking frothy coffee shakes over a plate of hot, spicy Reshmi Kebabs; Colaba Market, where in the congested lanes you find the best street-food in the city; Chatrapati Shivaji terminus, which left you awe-struck with its sheer size, the most crowded place in the 'maximum city'; and of course, the Taj, where I spent the night of my high-school graduation, talking about life and the future, with two of my closest friends. It seemed as though in the space of 60 bloody hours, an entire world of memories had been shaken, perhaps irrevocably.
Sadly, Mumbai is not a novice to these attacks. Serial blasts in 1993, 2002 and the train blasts in 2006 left us all dazed and fearful. However, a crisis reveals the strength, the audacity and the tenacity of Mumbai's heart. In 2001, a day after 9/11, journalist Nancy Gibbs writing the cover story for Time magazine made a significant observation, "On a normal day we value heroism because it is uncommon. On Sept. 11, we valued heroism because it was everywhere." A year ago, on 26/11, that heroism was a contagious blessing across Mumbai. It had infected people everywhere the AK47-carrying killers went.
The entire ordeal claimed almost 200 innocent lives. Among all those who were killed in the attacks, I did not know anyone personally, but I still feel as if there were so many among them who were close to me. Despite what happened, the city did not waste a single day pondering over its terrible fate. Mumbaikars went ahead with life, picking up pieces and building with every passing day, all the more resolute to never let those heartless terrorists have their way again.
This 26/11, I won't be in Mumbai. But Mumbai will be in my mind and my heart. The city has taught me the real meaning of resilience and the importance of self-belief. With utmost pride and teary eyes, I salute thee Mumbai!
Jai Hind!
South Asian Identity Week 2009
Posted by Akshay Rathod on November 25, 2009
Last week marked South Asian Identity Week 2009. As co-director alongside Meara Sharma '10.5, I'm proud to say our week was extremely successful and thought-provoking. Our week of events worked towards exploring the complexities of the South Asian identity in the 21st century.
Let me share with you the thinking process behind our week of events. As Homi Bhabha mentions in The Location of Culture: “The 'beyond' is neither a new horizon, nor a leaving behind of the past.... Beginnings and endings may be the sustaining myths of the middle years; but in the fin de siècle, we find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion.” This “moment of transit” is what this year’s South Asian Identity Week’s theme, "Earth Unbound," strives to unpack.
Some of the notable events:
For the event "A Change of Heart," we assembled a group of artists to present a performance and panel discussion on queer South Asian performance poetry. The event brought together performance poets from India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. They explored issues of sexuality, transgenderedness, family, politics, and history through the lens of the queer South Asian experience, an identity that is often not discussed openly in South Asian communities.
We had a Brown faculty panel entitled “South Asia Rising.” The professors on the panel were Professor Ashutosh Varshney, Patrick Heller, Shayoni Mitra, and Vasuki Nesiah. Professor Meera Viswanathan moderated. We asked, is South Asia rising? Is it rising as a whole? Or in parts? How should we define “rise”: by GDP per capita? Political freedoms? Military strength? Cultural empowerment? Happiness? What are the major variables challenging each South Asian country’s prosperity? With a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds, this panel of Brown professors unpacked and explored these questions and sparked insightful discussion, debate, answers, and more questions about South Asia’s future.
On our final day, we were privileged to bring Rekha Malhotra--DJ Rekha. Rekha Malhotra is an accomplished and critically acclaimed DJ, artist, music producer, and activist. She has been credited with putting bhangra music on the map in the US. She is the creator and host of Basement Bhangra, New York City's popular dance party at Sounds of Brazil. She gave a lecture on the history of bhangra and later that evening, she played to a packed audience at Graduate Center Lounge.
All in all, it was a great week!
The State Dinner
Posted by Year of India on November 24, 2009
Today is the first state dinner of Barack Obama's presidency, and the guest of honor is Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Obama is calling the relationship between the United States and India one of the ''defining partnerships'' in the world.
What are your thoughts on the state dinner? What will the two leaders discuss? What should they discuss? And what will U.S.-India relations look like during Obama's presidency?
Meanwhile, Politico has released a "wish list" of the top 10 guests who they would like to see invited to the state dinner. Who would be on your list?
Join the conversation
Posted by Watsonblogs on November 17, 2009
Join the conversation, on the Year of India blog...
What would Mahatma Gandhi say to President Obama? His grandson, the public intellectual Rajmohan Gandhi, was on campus this week. And he told Radio Open Source that the conversation would go something like this: Mahatma Gandhi would “say to the Americans what he said to the British: who asked you to be the guardians of the whole wide world? And why do you think you know better than the local people what is best for them? Relax! Trust those people. Yes, they may make mistakes, but they’re entitled to their freedom, to their independence.”