TAKE on art - July - December 2017

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"This issue of TAKE, returns to an often-quoted maxim: “Writing about art is like dancing about architecture.” There is perhaps some truth to this. Is writing any less of a creative exercise than art making? Or does the creative in writing reside only in its fiction? Artists and writers of fiction have always been inspired by each other, occasionally drawing further close to generate analyses of each other’s work. This issue forks in its intent. It is, as several of our issues have been, an homage to art criticism, by emphasizing the importance of its form with respect to the subject it describes, salvaging it from the footnotes of art history. On the other hand, it is also an experiment in publishing art writing that takes on a language comparable to that of art making, a narrative that is ostensibly an instance of creative practice." - Excerpt from editorial by Bhavna Kakar
With contributions from:
Adwait Singh | Anoop Panicker | Anushka Rajendran | Avantika Bhuyan | Avni Doshi | Asad Lalljee | Ashish Rajadhyaksha | Belinder Dhanoa | Bharti Lalwani | Bhavna Kakar | Gayatri Rangachari Shah | Himali Singh Soin | Iftikhar Dadi | Ingo Niermann | Karthik Shankar | Natasha Ginwala | Madhu Jain | Manish D Mishra | Manisha Gera Baswani | Manoj Nair | Mario Fusco | Meera Menezes | Rachael A Rakes | Sarnath Banerjee | Sarover Zaidi | Seema Bhalla | Shubhalaxmi Shukla | Simon O'Sullivan | Stephanie Bailey | Sujata Assomull | V Sanjay Kumar | Varun Rana

A Writer's Discourse

There are two moments in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus that I come back to often. The first is an epitaph that Socrates uses to explain bad writing, which he recites (and I will now quote) in full:

4 mins

Complete Love

It’s 2011, late summer. All over Europe, young people are occupying central public squares to demonstrate for more social justice. In Berlin, their agenda is different. The completists gathered at Alexanderplatz aspire for justice primarily on an intimate level. They believe that only when the redistribution of material wealth includes equal chances of finding sex and love — no matter how elderly, disabled, or ugly you are — communism will become real.

10 mins

The Smuggler: A Mural By Sadequain

The story goes that Sadequain (1930 – 1987), living in Karachi, was exhausted and in poor health. He was offered a stay at a government rest house at Gadani in 1958, so that he could recover. Gadani is located in the province of Balochistan on the Arabian Sea, a few kilometers west of Karachi. It must have felt quite remote from the city back then. The western coastline of Pakistan has long been infamous for underdevelopment and for unregulated trade activities with West Asia.

4 mins

Delicate Animals

The humidity is sabotage and my skin is undone. I’ve always had a preference for dryness. While other women fear wrinkles, I never mind the beginnings of a crease. They seem cleaner, those intersecting lines. But then I’ve never been afraid of getting older, of being an abstraction.

5 mins

Ghosts Of Ghan-Town

Landing gracefully on a rock, the camel tucked in its wings And wondered if this was perhaps Miryam Springs? This parched and desolate landscape was not what he hoped to find What of the flourishing settlement he had once left behind? 

1 min

Kerala Boy

The Kerala boy stands alone, facing the sea or what looks like the sea. Water is never far from his feet. His eyes are dark and his hair is blacker than the best Tellicherry pepper. He is an inch taller than most and a little long in the tooth. He likes the language of protest. He likes the flavour of a season called ‘Left’.

4 mins

Fictioning The Landscape: Robert Smithson And Ruins In Reverse

That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is – all the new construction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of the ‘romantic ruin’ because the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built. –Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey”

6 mins

Falling In Love (Again): India's Weaves Story

India’s love affair with handwoven cloth shows no signs of abating. Open any fashion magazine or newspaper and weaves get ample play. Designers up and down the country extol the virtues of weaves, proudly brandishing their innovative work with weavers to contemporise motifs and palettes. This is laudable but hardly surprising.

4 mins

Technologies Of Elegance

As soon as you enter the exhibition space in Bikaner House, the display ahead sort of takes your breath away. It’s a carefully crafted mise-enscène, filled with dangling screens, suspended sequins, overflowing jewellery boxes, glass displays, and more. And yet, in spite of the exquisite setting, and the props that inhabit it, your focus never wavers from the clothes, which form the essence of the exhibition.

6 mins

Regal Renaissance: The Royal Opera House Re-opens

The Royal Opera House Mumbai is widely touted as ‘Mumbai’s cultural crown jewel’ and India’s only surviving opera house. The original idea for the space was conceived of in 1908. It was inaugurated in 1911 by King George V, and eventually completed in 1916. The design incorporated a blend of European and Indian detailing.

3 mins

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TAKE on art Magazine Description:

TAKE on art, the leading art magazine in India published bi-annually from New Delhi since 2009, comprehensively covers, reports and critiques art and cultural events from India and abroad. Led by Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Bhavna Kakar, TAKE follows a critical approach to the larger discourse on art through curated issues with contributions by leading writers and critics from across the globe. The magazine has been invested in sustaining critical writing practices in India not just through its own capacity as a publication but also by organising initiatives that try to generate discourse, and keep conversations alive. In the past, the publication has organised writing workshops under the TAKE on Writing series as well as hosted the TAKE TALK series. Significant projects in this direction include TAKE on Residency, in collaboration with IFA at 1 Shanthi Road, Bangalore in 2013, TAKE on Writing, Critic-Community: Contemporary Art Writing at Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts, Goa in 2014 and more recently, Take on Writing - Critical Writing Ensemble (CWE) Baroda Chapter at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda in December 2015 and the CWE Dhaka Chapter, conceptualised by Katya Garcia Anton, in collaboration with OCA, Norway at the Dhaka Art Summit in 2016 supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council. The most recent TAKE on Writing initiatives included The Book – The New Writing Group, a workshop led by Chus Martínez and Ingo Niermann supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council and The Book – Ensemble, both held in New Delhi in December 2016.

The magazine has travelled internationally to events such as Art Basel, Art Basel HK, Art Basel Miami, Dhaka Art Summit and Asia Triennale Manchester, as well as collaborated with landmark events locally such as Experimenter Curator's Hub (2011 - 2016), Insert 2014, Sarai Reader 09: Episode 1, 2 and 3, Amrita Sher-Gil National Art Week and Delhi Photo Festival.