Indian art buyers and aficionados are developing an interest in solid three-dimensional art. The exhibits and the sales trend at the just concluded India Art Summit 2008 were proof that installation art and sculptures were acquiring a toehold in the mosaic of mainstream art. At the end of the three-day art summit Sunday, art promoters and auction houses admitted that curiosity and awareness about installations and sculptures – the mainstays of contemporary art across the world – were rising in India.
Gurgaon-based Gallery Alternatives sold an offbeat installation work, “Everyone Thinks I am an Animal”, by young artist Krishna Murari, showing how women are ill treated in society. Done in fur, leather and fibreglass, the work was sold for Rs.400,000 to a collector from Mumbai.
“I also sold a bronze sculpture, ‘Politician’ by Krishna Murari, to a collector in Gurgaon for Rs.150,000. I thought the canvases and the textile art would go first, but I am so glad that the sculptures have been sold,” Manu Dosaj, director of Gallery Alternatives, told IANS.
Murari, 33, a graduate from the Kolkata-based Government Art College, has several international shows to his credit.
Contemporary artist Amitesh Verma told IANS that the desire to explore new creative frontiers beyond the formats of conventional canvas frames gave birth to new genres like installation, digital art and three-dimensional solid in a variety of tangible mediums from metals, wood, traditional clay to industrial scrap.
This genre of contemporary art, according to art historians, came to prominence in the 1970s. Many trace its roots to early artists like Marcel Duchamp and his use of readymade art objects, rather than traditional art and sculpture.
Installation artist Shiv Verma belongs to a traditional Bastar family from tribal-dominated Chhattisgarh.
Verma, who holds a master’s degrees in Fine Arts from the Baroda School of Art, has contemporised the traditional Dokra sculpture of the region after a long artistic engagement with the local ethnic communities to highlight their plight in the wake of mindless industrialisation.
“Verma’s untitled work, a steel and iron cast installation showing the impact of mega industries on rural lifestyles in Bastar, has been booked several times over,” Shefali Somani of the Delhi-based Shrine Gallery told IANS.
A galaxy of bidders, including four big collectors from New York, Delhi and Mumbai, along with the Fine Art Fund and Christie’s, are vying to acquire the meticulously crafted Dokra-style work priced at Rs.600,000.
Somani said installation art and sculptures are popular because they are eye-catching and interactive.
British contemporary artist Will Martyr’s installation artwork “Three monkeys”, which uses simians clad in Byzantine outfits embellished with motifs of consumer luxury brands as a metaphor for modern-day human aspirations and its hollowness, has been sought after by 15 buyers from across the country.
“I never thought I would be able to show my work in India,” Martyr told IANS.
The “monkeys”, priced at $7,000 (Rs.550,000), was brought to the summit by Britain-based Emerging World Art.
Anil Bhimjiyani, a London-based gallery owner, said he was surprised by the response to his cache of alternative digital and installation art.
“I have had bookings for almost everything from a wide cross-section of people including a senior politician, who is also an art collector,” Bhimjiyani said. The prices of works he offered ranged between Rs.75,000 and Rs.180,000.
Vikram Bachhawat, director of the Kolkata-based Emami Chisel Art and Aakriti Gallery, agreed that Indian buyers were warming up to the aesthetic value of sculptures and installation art.
He attributed the trend to the rise in the number of private collectors across the country and abroad.
“As art is becoming more collector-based, awareness about sculptures is growing. Indian taste for sculptures is changing from the old British concept of decorative sculptures to contemporary installation art and solid figures,” Bachhawat said.
Bachhawat has been flooded with enquiries about “Touch and Be Green” – a bronze sculpture by Subrata Biswas priced at Rs.155,000 – and sold one from his catalogue to a buyer in Mumbai at the fair.
Two impressive sculpted motifs – “Iron”, a horse head by Mumbai-based Arzan Khambatta, and “Soliloquy-I and II” by Paresh Maity – which sat facing each other at the centre stage of the summit separated by a distance of 500 yards, showed that installation art and sculptures had come of age in India.

A fire sale of artwork that once belonged to Lehman Brothers, the investment services company whose bankruptcy in September 2008 augured months of worldwide economic turmoil, raised $1.35 million at an auction on Sunday, which is, at least, a start toward the billions in debt that the company left behind. In a news release the auction house Freeman’s, which conducted the sale, top right, in Philadelphia, said that all 280 lots offered, consisting of works from Lehman Brothers offices in New York, Massachusetts and Delaware, were sold. Among the top sellers were a Roy Lichtenstein “I Love Liberty” print, which brought $49,000; a set of 10 prints by Louis Lozowick, which went for $94,000; and a Georges Schreiber painting of Manhattan’s financial district for $20,000. (All sales figures include a 25 percent buyer’s premium on the first $20,000 of the hammer price and an additional 20 percent on the balance.) Freeman’s plans future sales of Lehman Brothers artworks on Dec. 6 and Feb. 12.

Most artists may have looked in a mirror and became their own models. There are those artists who have painted themselves literally into religious works. Namely, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Leonardo, and Rembrandt.

Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement” is said to have the artist’s face in the flayed St. Bartholomew, who was martyred by having been skinned alive. He holds his own skin in his hand. It makes you wonder what would bring someone to the depths of Hell by portraying themselves in such a lowly fashion.

Caravaggio, in “The Taking of Christ” (1602), appears on the far right, holding a lantern. The painting represents Jesus being captured in the Garden of Gethsemane. Soldiers were led to Him by His disciple, Judas Iscariot. Hoping for financial reward, Judas agreed to identify his master by kissing him. The scene is based on the New Testament – Mark – 14:44: “The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him and lead him away safely.”

This painting by Caravaggio was thought a copy for many centuries until it was rediscovered in 1990 at a Jesuit rectory in Dublin, Ireland and its authenticity established.

This Caravaggio painting is the subject of another of my articles, “The Taking of Christ – And Other Lost Religious Paintings.” I was fortunate enough to see this exceptional painting twice (I actually did make two visits) at Boston College in 1999. It is also the subject of a bestselling book by Jonathan Harr, “The Lost Painting.”

In Leonardo’s “The Last Supper,” when the image is superimposed over a mirror image, some say the face of Leonardo is revealed on the far right of the painting.

Rembrandt may hold the record for painting the most self portraits (90+). In his only seascape painting, “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” (1633), Rembrandt is seen in the foreground looking directly at the viewer. Unfortunately, this religious painting based on the First Testament – Luke – Chapters 8:22-25 was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. Sadly, I never saw this painting.

Why do artists paint themselves into religious works? Is it driven by ego or does it help to vindicate themselves from some aweful misdeed that occurred in their life?

I think it is a little of both worlds. On the one hand, the artist paints a scene from the Bible and just by “being there” he becomes a “witness” to the incident. So why not paint yourself as one of the models? Hopefully history will favorably remember your face as well as your name.

On the other hand, maybe by identifying himself with Jesus, the artist elevates himself beyond humanity, closer to God Himself. The artist realizes his own mortality and attempts to appease Him by making a cameo appearance with Jesus.

If these artists intended for their face and names to live in perpetuity, they have truly succeeded. From an art history perspective, the art world is eternally grateful for the artists’ contribution in supplying so much biographical information on themselves.

We have now been operating for over two years now, with one of our main goals being to highlight Welsh art & design to an national and international audience. Over the last few months we have been busy working on new opportunities for NakedWales to work on this goal further and go beyond the website and events that we have provided previously.

To this end we want your help, and your guidance. As members of the art & design world we want to hear from you as to what you would like NakedWales to do for you. While we all know a ferrari for everyone would be great, we are really wanting to know if there is anything that as a community we maybe able to bring people. That could fundamentally help you in your practice as designers and artists.

please comment below.

At the Brooklyn Museum of Art from October 30, 2009 to January 31, 2010 in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, “Who Shot Rock and Roll” is the first major museum exhibition on rock and roll to put photographers in the foreground, acknowledging their creative and collaborative role in the history of rock music. From its earliest days, rock and roll was captured in photographs that personalized, and frequently eroticized, the musicians, creating a visual identity for the genre. The photographers were handmaidens to the rock-and-roll revolution, and their images communicate the social and cultural transformations that rock has fostered since the1950s.
The exhibition is in six sections: rare and revealing images taken behind the scenes; tender snapshots of young musicians at the beginnings of their careers; exhilarating photographs of live performances that display the energy, passion, style, and sex appeal of the band on stage; powerful images of the crowds and fans that are often evocative of historic paintings; portraits revealing the soul and creativity, rather than the surface and celebrity, of the musicians; and conceptual images and album covers highlighting the collaborative efforts between the image makers and the musicians.

Indranil Ghosh’s portraits have a magical air that imbues fragments of lives and spaces with an engrossing grandeur. Many of his paintings have a soft, dreamy aura produced by dusty blues, grays, and purples. The colors promote a heightened sense of reality.

Indranil Ghosh’s portraits have a magical air that imbues fragments of lives and spaces with an engrossing grandeur. Many of his paintings have a soft, dreamy aura produced by dusty blues, grays, and purples. The colors promote a heightened sense of reality.
In this painting the artist talks about the intimacy beetween krishna and ratha which is deep and eternal

In a shaky global art market, collectors stick close to home; shopping for Midwestern masterworks.

From Bloomfield Hills, Mich., to Turin, Italy, contemporary-art collectors are passing on works by international art stars and skipping far-flung art fairs and auctions. This year, they’re buying local.

In Detroit, major collector and steel company executive Gary Wasserman says he’s stopped buying works by England’s Anish Kapoor and China’s Yue Minjun so he can focus more on buying “powerfully Midwestern” art by artists like Brian Carpenter, whose $1,000 photographs often feature images of dead deer, Lake Erie nuclear reactors and snowy footprints. Swiss collector Guy Ullens, widely known for his vast collection of Chinese contemporary art, says he’s also started buying landscapes by Swiss and German painters like Anselm Kiefer to hang in his home in the Alps. Italian collector Pierpaolo Barzan says the only contemporary art fair he’s attending this season starts next Friday in Turin, where he hopes to find work by Roman artists like Nicola Pecoraro and Pietro Ruffo.

“I believe that I can put together a much stronger collection, and make an impact in the art world, by collecting local artists rather than trying to find the next Chinese star,” Mr. Barzan says.

At the height of the boom, art collectors scrambled to acquire works by top artists from rising markets including China, Russia, India and the Middle East. A serious approach to collecting meant trips to London, New York and Hong Kong several times a year for auctions, and mandatory stops at the art fairs in Cologne, Miami Beach, London, Shanghai and Basel, Switzerland.

Now, a full year since the recession gutted the global art market, collectors are canceling their trips. Some Westerners are now loath to dip into markets like Russian or Indian contemporary art, whose prices soared during the boom but whose long-term value is less established. Many are cutting back on expensive art-buying trips. And some collectors say they’re interested in supporting local artists, particularly at a time of economic hardship—the cultural equivalent of buying an American car instead of an import.

On Tuesday, Christie’s and Sotheby’s begin their major round of fall art auctions in New York, and their offerings have already been calibrated to suit the mood. Neither house is including any Chinese pieces in their closely watched evening sales, a reversal from recent seasons.

Brett Gorvy, Christie’s international co-head of postwar and contemporary art, says the company decided to shift Chinese pieces to sales in Hong Kong. “There’s been a reluctance in the U.S. and Europe for these works but the appetite is still strong in Hong Kong and Taiwan,” he says.

The New York sales for both houses also include no Indian artists, with the exception of Mr. Kapoor, who was born in Mumbai. Mr. Gorvy says top examples of Indian art were scarce this time around.

Instead, both houses have packed their catalogs with works that traditionally appeal to U.S. buyers, like Alexander Calder, Jasper Johns and Joan Mitchell. Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s world-wide head of contemporary art, says the house added artists with strong regional followings, like sculptor Germaine Richier, who is heavily collected in Belgium, and Juan Muñoz, a favorite in Spain. Overall, the houses expect to bring in a combined $427.5 million to $606.8 million from their sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art, up from $404.8 million in May but down from $728.9 million last November.

Collectors began retrenching to artists from their respective cultures in the last few months. Last fall, Americans took home a third of the art offered at a Christie’s sale of Italian art in London. They only bought 4% at a similar sale two weeks ago.

Jo Backer Laird, an art lawyer at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Taylor and Christie’s former general counsel, says auction houses are continually shuffling their rosters to keep up: “If one major collector in Des Moines is buying an Iowa artist or anything from the Midwest, you can bet the auction houses are paying attention to that.”

Miami Beach has emerged as home to one of the world’s biggest contemporary art fairs, drawing artists, dealers and collectors from around the globe. Miami vintner and collector Dennis Scholl says he and other buyers in his hometown are now “circling back” to take a closer look at local artists. He has acquired works by Miami artists like Daniel Arsham, whose sculptures evoke melting glaciers and stairwells to nowhere, and Leyden Rodriguez Casanova, a sculptor who turns suburban furniture like sectional sofas into impassable forts.

Mr Scholl says he is “running, not walking from the whole China/India art thing,” because he thinks such works became overpriced during the boom. He is still buying work from other internationally known artists, like Olafur Eliasson, but he makes a point of hanging their works alongside examples by local artists, thereby “imparting equal dignity,” he says.

Marjorie Ornston, a Los Angeles photography collector, has flown to art fairs in Paris and Miami Beach and belongs to the Photograph Council at the J. Paul Getty Museum. But last weekend she jumped at the chance to sift through bins of daguerreotypes, wanted posters, and California streetscapes offered up by struggling local dealers in a one-day sale at Dawson’s Bookshop in Los Angeles. She paid $475 for a midcentury color photograph of a young Mexican odalisque, a “great price” considering the work’s unusual history, she says.

The shift could be a cultural boon for artists in cities like Atlanta, Austin and Detroit that have been overlooked by the art establishment. In Austin, dealer Lora Reynolds seems like a market anomaly: Sales at her eponymous gallery are “much better” this year than before the market crashed, she says, in part because she expanded into a bigger space and broadened her base of Austin collectors. “We weren’t hit as hard by the crisis, and collectors here still want art,” Ms. Reynolds adds.

Works by artists who are primarily known regionally and are carried only by local galleries, of course, are typically far less expensive than those by artists featured in major auctions and art fairs, or in galleries in New York or London. Los Angeles collector Lenore Schorr says buying at a local gallery also often means saving on “pain-in-the-neck costs” like insurance and shipping.

Collectors may also feel more of a personal connection to artists who live nearby. Mr. Wasserman, the Detroit collector who also sits on the board of Miami’s Wolfsonian Museum, buys “electric” abstracts by Beverly Fishman. Ms. Fishman runs the painting department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in nearby Bloomfield Hills. Mr. Wasserman calls her regularly for art-buying advice, and recently donated one of her works to the Toledo Art Museum.

Some collectors are wary of the buy-local trend. Belgian collector Mark Vanmoerkerke says he might seem overly nationalistic were he to exclusively collect Belgian art, especially since artists in other parts of the world may be making stronger work at any given time. His collection is more broadly focused around post-conceptual art made in the U.S. and Europe.

The process of defining artists by a single geographic signifier can also be a minefield since artists often travel widely and have varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

For artist Colby Bird, going home to show in Austin felt like moving forward. The son of a mortgage broker and investor left Texas at 18 to study art in Colorado and later at the Rhode Island School of Design. Around two years ago, he joined a New York gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Art bought several of his photographs and prints, including one depicting a mattress on top of bags of flour.
More

When a gallery in Austin called Okay Mountain invited him to do a show over the summer, he was surprised by the large turnout at the opening, which included internationally known artists like Justin Lowe and Troy Brauntuch. The hometown setting also inspired him to make a 28-foot-wide banner that said “Swagger” in the purple and black colors of his alma mater, Lyndon B. Johnson High School.

Earlier this month, as he returned to Austin to be part of another show at Lora Reynolds, he called the high school and asked if he could donate the banner. “They were psyched,” Mr. Bird said. “The basketball coach said, ‘We could use some swagger right now.’