For Art's Sake

http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20011224/na-arts.shtml -- Dec. 24, 2001
India Today column:

CURRENT ISSUE DEC 24, 2001

NORTH AMERICA SPECIAL: THE ARTS


The $30m project to revamp the Asian Society has resulted in 4,000 sq ft more for new exhibitions

By Raj S. Rangarajan

After over a year of renovation, the Asia Society in Manhattan has reopened its doors to the arts again much to the delight of New York's arty crowd. Local architect Bartholomew Voorsanger helped add 4,000 sq ft of interactive dimension and open space to the museum and society-a 45-year-old nonprofit institution dedicated to fostering understanding and promotion of Asia and Asian art.

Vishakha N. Desai, senior president and director of the society, is enthusiastic about the result. "This $30 million project has completely revamped the area and doubled the gallery space. We are now wired electronically with high-tech customized browsers so that patrons can learn about Asia and we have devised new methods to manipulate images in a fun-filled setting."

CASE FOR SPACE: Views of the revamped Asian Society; An 8th century Ganesha

The place is now more attractive to the younger generation with three digital mouse like objects (read stones) leading viewers to visual information projected from an overhead device-an experience that is original and interesting.

Coinciding with the reopening of the society, three new exhibitions have been organized. These are Conversations with Traditions: Shahzia Sikander and Nilima Sheikh; Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China, 4th to 7th Century; and The Creative Eye: New Perspectives on Asia Society's Rockefeller Collection.

"Conversations with Traditions" curated and conceptualized by Desai, who has strong art credentials herself, showcases collaborative original works from two women South Asian artists: 56-year-old Nilima Sheikh from Baroda and 31-year-old Pakistan-born Shahzia Sikander, now a resident of new York.

Sheikh and Sikander have each created 50 works included in a 38' x 5' long scrolls. The installation of ephemeral, translucent strips of paper covers the entire wall space from the lobby to the third floor forming a magnificent visage. The exhibition will be on till February 17 next year.

Also open till Spring is The Creative Eye-a permanent collection of Asian masterpieces that John D. Rockefeller and his wife had collected and which now belong to the Asia Society. Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller the IIIrd, the Society has a worldwide reach with regional centers in three cities in America and in Melbourne, Australia, Hong Kong and representative offices in San Francisco, Manila and Shanghai.

An 8th century Ganesha

How the current exhibition was put together is interesting. Desai explains, "We invited 30 prominent artists-performers such as Chandralekha and Malavika Sarukkai and writers such as Pico Iyer and Gita Mehta, and other contemporary visual artists from the western world-to view the collection and requested them to choose their favorite objects and explain why."

The objective was to build a creator's archive. Normally a curator would write the small blurbs on various objects, "But this time, we asked creative folk to freely comment on whatever was meaningful to them," says Desai. The people chosen were those from Asia or those with a profound interest in Asia.

Among the pieces at The Creative Eye are an 8th century sandstone Ganesha from Uttar Pradesh which has drawn a lot of attention from westerners as well as Asians. Gita Mehta, author of Karma Cola and Snakes and Ladders, says of the Ganesha: "This is a suave, elegant dancer who throws out his left hip with sensual, I dare say sexy, finesse while observing us with aloof tiny eyes, as if to say, 'Jump into it! Let's see what you can do! I dare you!'."

SMALL IS EXPRESSIVE: A miniature (top) by Sheikh and Sikander; the artists
Thirty prominent artists chose their favorite objects to exhibit in The Creative Eye.

Mehta prefers the traditional description of the elephant-god in "endearingly sensual, even humorous dance postures, inviting devotees to approach him as the remover of obstacles. But one of Ganesha's tusks is always broken-here held aloft in a left hand, making the god particularly beloved to writers."

New Yorker Milton Glaser who designed the famous "I Love NY logo" (with a heart sign for love) says of Ganesha, "This playful depiction of Ganesha charms immediately. The sense of motion reminds one of a futuristic painting or a stroboscopic photo of a figure in motion."

Visual artist Sikander weighs in with different heads of the Gandhara period, homing in on a 7th-8th century Vishnu perhaps from Thailand. "The human face is indeed one of the most powerful and unique visuals, transcending time, race and age," he raves.

Dancer-choreographers Chandralekha and Malavika Sarukkai chose a copper alloy Shiva Nataraja (Lord of the Dance) of the Chola period. Chandralekha queries, "Why did the gods dance?" then answers her own question. "For better comprehension of the form and kinetics." Sarukkai talks of "the cosmic dancer, his face radiant with serenity and the energy of cosmic activity in the cycle of 'mahakal' or eternal time", which is also referred to by Mehta.

While defining the central theme of the artworks in Conversations with Traditions, Sheikh, who studied history at Delhi and later took her MFA in 1971 from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Vadodara, says, "there is something common to Shahzia and me-an entire generation and the political partition of our countries apart. That is our seeking language and history through techniques and mediums of the miniatures traditions of our countries." She adds: "I do not engage in the intricacy of the miniature painting traditions for myself. I am interested in the intimacy that the format suggests, the layering of the surface, quality of color and line, and in the idea that ornamental structure is not antagonist to self-expression in the contemporary context."

A significant year for Nilima Sheikh was 1984 when she created 12 tempera paintings of Champa (not the real name), a young acquaintance who was born in a working class family and was married when she was still a minor, and allegedly, her husband's family killed her barely a year later. Sheikh used the "dowry death episodes" in the early '80s to poignantly portray the 12 miniatures from a carefree girl on her bicycle to one threatened by in-laws and later succumbing to torture.

Sheikh has had shows in the UK, Germany, Johannesburg, Brisbane, Australia and was a student of leading artist and teacher K.G. Subramanyan in Vadodara. Husband Gulam Mohammad Sheikh is also an artist. For the first time, her artwork is on display in New York.

The works of Sikander, who studied at National College in Lahore and got her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in America, explore the role of women in South Asian societies and draw on Indian miniature paintings pushing the boundaries of both style and tradition. She has displayed her works at Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Renaissance Society, Chicago and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Currently, Sikander is experimenting and developing work in digital media. She also paints and makes prints.

If you haven't been to Asia Society in a while, now is the time: the new space is also a place to hang out if you are artistically inclined or if you wish to have a quiet meal with like-minded people or need intellectual stimulation in the form of a seminar, a film or perhaps a performance.

The store too now has a new look with more variety of interesting merchandise for the Asia lover.

NORTH AMERICAN SPECIAL: PROFILE

Maiden Success



High Bid: Sagar at the Podium

At Christie's New York auction of Indian art, 26-year-old Mallika Sagar broke the glass barrier several times over.

Young, pretty and confident, Mallika Sagar strode up to take the podium - and the gavel - in a room full of art connoisseurs in New York recently. The occasion was Christie's auction of contemporary Indian paintings. The 26-year-old unassumingly broke the glass barrier several times over that October day. For never before had Christie's employed a woman to auction contemporary Indian art. And Sagar earned the distinction of being the first woman auctioneer of Indian origin at Christie's.

"I wasn't really nervous. It was just a wholly different atmosphere," Sagar smiles. "The positive energy in the room and knowledgeable bidders made the process specially exciting because we set three world records for Indian paintings."

Sagar may well give credit to the buyers, but she spun her own brand of charm at her first-ever auction to create the three records. A large Sayed Haider Raza work (La Terre), estimated to sell between $20,000 and $25,000, actually went for $50,000! An untitled Vasudeo S. Gaitonde canvas, which was estimated between $12,000 and $18,000, was snatched up for $45,000. And a figurative 1959 Ram Kumar went under the hammer at $35,000 - far beyond expectations that it would fetch $15,000-20,000.

The canvases of Raza, a living master of Indian contemporary art, and Gaitonde, a renowned abstract artist who died in August, attracted many Indian-American bidders, some on the telephone which Sagar handled with the professional panache that three years at Christie's gave her. Now, Sagar is Christie's India representative and is based in Mumbai.

But it was a step at a time. After a sound base at Cathedral School in Mumbai, Sagar went to boarding school at Suffield Academy in Connecticut. A major in history of art in 1998 from Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, a 116-year-old institution, put her on her career track.

Then it was time for her to understand all facets of the business: the art, marketing techniques and much more. A year's rigorous training did the trick followed by work with Christie's Indian and Southeast Asian department in New York and on a construction project "responsible for putting together the brand new offices here at Rockefeller Center".

Training also involved being aware of regulations and auction procedures that are announced before every sale as a requirement of the Department of Consumer Affairs in New York state, where the state's sales tax and buyer's premiums are applicable. Christie's charges a premium to the buyer on the final bid price of each lot sold.

But it took a little more to actually auction. "I practiced a lot to talk in public in front of a room full of people though it is not like acting in a play or being in a debate," she says. "But every situation is different, every lot of sculpture or paintings has a different background, and we try to anticipate every kind of scenario."

Interestingly, all the Husain paintings at the New York auction fared very well, proving yet again that M.F. Husain, at 86, continues to remain popular. Sagar, a specialist in 20th century paintings (contemporary painting) says, "Husain's works, prior to the 1960s and '70s, tend to have very good quality and are difficult to get." But for the first time since he executed the artwork, explains Sagar, the early Husains came on the auction lot and the bid prices were higher than normal because ownership was changing hands.

The youngest of four siblings from an industrial family, Sagar's achievements would show she prefers the number one.

—Raj S. Rangarajan