2013! Ashok Art Gallery wishes a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

As 2012 draws to a close, it feels like a one-step-forward, two-steps-back kind of year.To all our "Smart" visitors: We send you all best wishes for a healthy, happy, safe and prosperous (so we can all buy/create more art works) new year. Here's hoping that 2013 brings only good things. We appreciate you all; you are the best! HAPPY 2013

The Ashok Art Gallery is internationally known for one of its most important holdings: more than 2000 major works by the world's most significant Artists.Over the past years, as Ashok Art Gallery has become a major centre for contemporary visual art, the Gallery has built a strong collection of contemporary work of different artists, we became a sponsor of the STANDUP-SPEAKOUT Artshow, Organized by Art Of Living Foundation and United Nations.Organized an International Contenmporary Art Exhibition including artists from USA, The Nederlands, Pakistan and India.We have also participated at Art Expo India 2008, 09 Mumbai and India Art Summit 2008 New Delhi.

Art Market trends detected in the practice of fine arts in India

Indian art market started truly maturing. The buyers now started showing lesser reliance on galleries and investments started based on more informed choices.The recent ArtTactic Indian Art Market Confidence Indicator is up by 19.2% from October 2010, helped by a strong confidence in the Indian economy. Despite a below-par auction season in New York in March 2011, experts in the Indian art market believe the positive economic sentiment will start filtering into the Indian art market, which has been troubled since the speculative boom in 2008. With economic growth set to out-pace China, the survey experts believe India’s economic growth will help fuel the Indian art market. The Economic component of the ArtTactic Indian Confidence Indicator has increased 21% from October 2010.

Three primary trends are now being detected in the practice of fine arts in India. Firstly a search for a distinctly Indian identity continues to dominate artists’ minds. Often it leads to the use of materials and objects which are distinctly Indian.

The second important trend that is being observed is the use of computer graphics, photography, modern technology and a host of other media in the creation of art works.

The third trend is the search for an individualist language of expression. The most important new style that fits this new trend is ‘Pseudorealism’, an art-genre which has originated solely in India. Only six years since inception, Pseudorealism has already a huge following among the new generations of India.



The Ashok Art Gallery is internationally known for one of its most important holdings: more than 2000 major works by the world's most significant Artists.Over the past years, as Ashok Art Gallery has become a major centre for contemporary visual art, the Gallery has built a strong collection of contemporary work of different artists, we became a sponsor of the STANDUP-SPEAKOUT Artshow, Organized by Art Of Living Foundation and United Nations.Organized an International Contenmporary Art Exhibition including artists from USA, The Nederlands, Pakistan and India.We have also participated at Art Expo India 2008, 09 Mumbai and India Art Summit 2008 New Delhi.

Western world have suffered from many of the same biases and prejudices that have infected analyses of Indian philosophy and culture.

Every culture must find a way to grasp the horns of polar opposites – male/female, good/bad, sky/earth, birth/death – which epitomize so much of the human condition. Additive cultures, like Egypt and India, accept these contradictions as imperfectly perceived parts of a greater unity. 

Unlike the Western religions, which have little philosophical content and belief in the "One God" is mandatory, many of India's ancient religions were not religions in the narrow sense in which religion is construed today. India's early Buddhists were predominantly atheists, the early Jains were agnostic, and within the broad umbrella of Hinduism, there was space for considerable philosophical variety. In the Upanishads, god is described in an extremely abstract and metaphysical way. The philosophical content is essentially secular and spiritual ideas emerge from debate and speculation - not immortal revelations that cannot be challenged or modified with time. In the Nyaya-Sutras, the overwhelming focus is on rational and scientific thinking and analysis, on human understanding of natural phenomenon and physical processes occurring in nature. 

 

This rich tradition of philosophy - both rational and spiritual - found it's way into Indian art and architecture as well. Stupas and temples incorporated a profound symbolic language based on visual representations of all the important philosophical concepts. These included the Chakra - the revolving wheel of time which symbolized the cyclical rhythms of the cosmos;  the Padma - or the lotus symbol which embodied the prime symbol of creation - of the universal creative force that springs from the bosom of the earth; the Ananta (represented as a snake) symbolized  water - the most important life-giving force and the infinite ocean from which all life emerged, got differentiated and then got re-merged and redissolved; the Swastika - representing the four-fold aspects of creation and motion; the Purnakalasa - or the overflowing flower pot - a symbol of creativity and prosperity; the Kalpalata and Kalpavriksha -  the wish-fulfillment creeper or tree that were also symbols of imagination and creativity; Gavaska - sometimes understood to be the third eye; Mriga - or deer - symbolic of erotic desire and beauty; and lingam and yoni - the male and female fertility symbols. 

 

Rules were also evolved to provide additional symbolic content through hand gestures (mudra) of sculptured deities.  Deities were sometimes given multiple arms to signify energy or power or to suggest movement and as symbolic of the celestial dance.  Different arm positions embodied different virtues such as wisdom, strength, generosity, kindness and caring. Multiple arms could thus be used to  signify multiple virtues. 

 

Western analysts have often had difficulty understanding the complex cultural and philosophical systems that gave birth to India's artistic tradition. For many, Indian sculptural panels appeared to be nothing more than a random collection of strange or arbitrary juxtapositions of  primitive beliefs and superstitions. This is not to say that Indian spirituality was always free from superstition or arbitrary constructs, but in the best of the sculptural panels, there was a conscious and knowledgeable attempt to convey powerful philosophical ideas. 

Once Indian painting is freed from externally imposed standards, and the motivations of the Indian artist are better understood - a whole new world of visual delight can open up. From the quixotic 15th C illustrations of  Jain texts in Gujarat to the deeply expressive miniatures of Malwa, one can move on to the colorful whimsy of 16th C Mewar, the striking elegance of the Kishangarh school, and the refined beauty of later Kangra miniatures. One can appreciate  the earnest lyricism of the Orissa palm-leaf miniatures, the decorous elan of the Bundelkhand wall paintings, the bold and dark colors of  Lepakshi, and the vivacious renditions in the palaces and temples of Madurai, Thanjavur and Ramanathapuram. In all these varied traditions of Indian painting, an important element that infused Indian painting with charm and vivacity was the folk idiom that unabashedly found it's way in the art of the regional kingdoms who were less infected by formal Mughal tastes.

When the European world began to experience a renaissance in the realm of art and sculpture, exactly the opposite processes were at work in India. After the renaissance, much of the new patronage for European sculpture came from the urban areas, and this is why European sculptors infused their creations with an urbane  sophistication. The strong shadow of Islamic prudery prevented such a development from taking place in India. The great wealth of  Indian sculpture was created during Europe's Christian era, in a society where the divide between the city and the countryside had not yet sharpened as much. This is why so much of Indian sculpture retains such a strong link to nature and seems less urbane and cosmopolitan, and hence less meritorious to the Western eye. 

 

The Ashok Art Gallery is internationally known for one of its most important holdings: more than 2000 major works by the world's most significant Artists.Over the past years, as Ashok Art Gallery has become a major centre for contemporary visual art, the Gallery has built a strong collection of contemporary work of different artists, we became a sponsor of the STANDUP-SPEAKOUT Artshow, Organized by Art Of Living Foundation and United Nations.Organized an International Contenmporary Art Exhibition including artists from USA, The Nederlands, Pakistan and India.We have also participated at Art Expo India 2008, 09 Mumbai and India Art Summit 2008 New Delhi.

M F Hussain, the legend is no more, India has lost its Picasso, and not even on its own soil

Maqbool Fida Husain, 95, the renowned contemporary and progressive artist who put India on the world's art map, died today in London's Royal Brompton hospital, after a month of illness. Husain died of a heart attack at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London.
Husain's art made him a legend. He was undoubtedly India's best known painter who presided over a cult following for more than six decades. However, his contribution to the Indian art goes beyond his numerous celebrated works. In many ways, his life, turbulent in its twilight, was a reflection of the churning that India faces through polarised debates on religion, personal freedom and art.

The man who graduated from painting hoardings for films to becoming India's most celebrated painter was born on Sept 17, 1915 at Pandharpur in Maharashtra. His mother, Zunaib, died in his infancy and his father, Fida, remarried and moved to Indore, where Husain went to school. As a child, Husain learnt the art of calligraphy and loved to read poetries while he resided with his uncle in Baroda. He joined the J J School of Arts and started to earn his living by painting billboards for feature films. In 1947, Hussain won an award for his paintings at the annual exhibition of the Bombay art society and this marked the beginning of a distinguished career ahead waiting for this art maestro.

Husain's creativity, style and innovation in paintings have made him reach the pinnacle in Indian art. In the 1947 annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society, his painting Sunhera Sansaar was shown. This was his first exhibition. After the Partition later that year, Husain decided to stay in India. Soon the Progressive Artists' Group was formed. F N Souza, a member of The Progressive Artist's Group, invited Hussain to become a member of it in 1948. Through it, Husain was exposed to, and strongly influenced by, the work of Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka.

From 1948 to 1950 a series of exhibitions all over India brought Husain's work to the notice of the public. In 1951 Husain travelled to China. In 1952, had his first solo exhibition in Zurich, and over the next few years his work was widely seen in Europe and the USA. In 1966 Husain was awarded the Padmashree by the Government of India. In 1967, he made his first film, 'Through the Eyes of a Painter' which was shown at the Berlin Festival and won a Golden Bear. Husain went on to make two more films: 'Gaja Gamini' (2000) with his muse Madhuri Dixit and later 'Meenaxi: Tale of 3 Cities' (2004).

In 1971, Hussain was invited along with Pablo Picasso at the Sao Paulo Biennial. Apart from the several solo exhibitions, Hussain has many studios in major metropolitans of the country. In 1973, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, in 1989, the Padma Vibhushan and was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1986.

Some of his best known works are called the Sufi paintings, and were first exhibited at the Pundole Gallery in 1978. During these years Husain slowly grew into a public figure, often embroiled in controversies. His Shwetambari exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery consisted of two halls shrouded in white cloth, whorls of which also shared the floor with torn newspapers. Later, he gave a public performance at the Tata Center in Calcutta. For several days a crowd watched as he painted pictures of six goddesses. On the last day of the exhibition he destroyed his paintings by painting the whole thing white.

Husain had become a photogenic icon, and the newspapers loved him. The stuffy Calcutta Club was pilloried when it refused admission to a barefoot Husain on the grounds that he violated their dress code. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1987, and during his six year term he produced the Sansad Portfolio. In the early '90s, several collections of his paintings were made accessible to the public in exhibitions of permanent galleries. The most interesting of these is the Husain-Doshi Gufa in Ahmadabad, collaboration between the painter and an architect in the construction of a gallery.

Soon, Husain went on to become the highest paid painter in India. His single canvases have fetched up to $2 million at a recent Christie's auction. The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) (Massachusetts, USA) showed a solo exhibition from 4 November 2006 to 3 June 2007. It exhibited Husain’s paintings inspired by the Hindu epic, Mahabharata. In early 2008, Husain’s Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12, a large diptych from the Hindu epic, fetched $1.6 million, setting a world record at Christie's South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale.

His name was also included in the list of the 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World, issued by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan. At the age of 92, Husain was to be given the prestigious Raja Ravi Varma award by the government of Kerala. The announcement led to controversy in Kerala and some cultural organisations campaigned against the granting of the award and petitioned the Kerala courts. The Sabarimala Trust went to the Kerala High Court and it granted an interim order to stay the granting of the award until the petition had been disposed of.

With the rise of Hindutva in the 1990s, some of Husain's works became controversial because of their portrayal of Hindu deities in the nude or in an allegedly sexual manner. The paintings in question were created in 1970, but did not become an issue until 1996, when they were printed in Vichar Mimansa, a Hindi monthly magazine, which published them in an article headlined "M.F. Husain: A Painter or Butcher". In response, eight criminal complaints were filed against Husain. In 2004, Delhi High Court dismissed these complaints.

In 1998 Husain's house was attacked by Hindu groups like Bajrang Dal and art works were vandalised. Shiv Sena endorsed the attack. There were also reportedly death threats. In January, 2010, he was offered the citizenship of Qatar, which he accepted. He was living in Dubai and London since, and breathed his last at a London hospital on 9th june 2011.

The Ashok Art Gallery is internationally known for one of its most important holdings: more than 2000 major works by the world's most significant Artists.Over the past years, as Ashok Art Gallery has become a major centre for contemporary visual art, the Gallery has built a strong collection of contemporary work of different artists, we became a sponsor of the STANDUP-SPEAKOUT Artshow, Organized by Art Of Living Foundation and United Nations.Organized an International Contenmporary Art Exhibition including artists from USA, The Nederlands, Pakistan and India.We have also participated at Art Expo India 2008, 09 Mumbai and India Art Summit 2008 New Delhi.