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After
Basu, Work
Reviving
a listless economy and keeping the die-hard reds at bay—the new Chief
Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya will require extraordinary grit to junk
the legacy of Basu raj.
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METRO
FEATURE
Retro
Scape
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| Shah:
Catching up |
Historical
shows? Retrospectives? Chronicled canvas displays? Who's heard of that?
Traditionally the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi was the only
place delivering a bit of our modernist past to our post-modernist present.
Most other galleries would reserve their archival riches to musty storerooms
or lazy stopgap exhibits where parvenus would suddenly become neighbours
of veterans. "In India there is amazing hesitancy in showing what
has been displayed 20 or 30 years back," says Peter Nagy of Delhi-based
gallery Nature Morte "That doesn't happen in other parts of the world."
So the gallery, now at a circular structure in Hauz Khas Village, is engaged
in bringing some kind of curatorial honour to old and important Indian
works with "Shah, Souza and Sundaram", featuring the stalwarts
Himmat, Francis Newton and Vivan.
Apart from
just patronymic alliteration and old world revival (apparently they were
also trying to rope in photographer Dayanita which would add a Singh to
the title) the intention, as Nagy says, was to "find a bridge between
three generations of stylistically disparate artists". Souza's simple
line drawings, mostly nudes, were done between 1955 and 1959 when he was
creating a storm in London not only with his brazen sketches but also
with his fiery prose. Himmat Shah, of the same genre, infuses a high degree
of cubist energy in his pen-and-inks as well as his famous heads. And
Sundaram's retro kit catches a crucial transitional phase: charcoal and
engine oil drawings of the '90s, influenced by the greasy mess of the
Gulf War and setting the stage for his future installations.
Sometimes
the past is stronger than the present.
-Anshul
Avijit
more...
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COLUMNS |
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 With
all the noise about the cabinet resolution on dilution of the government’s
stakes in public sector banks, is anyone buying shares of these banks,
asks V. Shankar Aiyar in Au
ContrAiyar.
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TALKING
POINT |
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"The emphasis will be to create a truly world class faculty with diverse
approaches, beliefs, research and pedagogical styles," Prof. Sumantra
Ghoshal, founding dean of the Indian Business School, tells INDIA TODAY
Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in an
exclusive
interview.
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DESPATCHES |
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Long-forgotten
customs are invoked to preserve Meghalaya's endangered sacred groves,
and the legends surrounding them. INDIA TODAY's Teresa Rehman reports
on the unique conservation effort
in Despatches.
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