Vertical fins on the facades to block the direct sun while enabling cross ventilation

India Today Story Bricks and mortar Purvi Malhotra January 10, 2008

The hour glass moves at its pace, drifting through civilizations, dynasties, kingdoms and wars, leaving behind eternal symbols like temples, stupas, monasteries, forts and tombs. After Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic traditions came colonial influence and post independence, the legacies of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn prevailed. In the 70s, ethnicity was the call of the hour and the 80s was the era of post modernism. “The contemporary architecture of India is an interaction between a global culture and our rich past,” says Brinda Somaya.

In the last 15 years, Indian architecture has seen a huge change in terms of trends. It has taken great leaps ahead in terms of technology, material and design. Architects have branched out to various realms like Brinda Somaya who restored the St. Thomas Church in Mumbai, Pratima Joshi plans slums in cities and Anupama Kundoo works with low energy building technologies. They are not alone. The ratio of men and women architects has increased to 60 and 40 today. Though still few in number, women architects have tried to be different rather than be typecast as ladies who lunch and occassionally do home interiors.

“India produces quality women architects but very few trend setters,” says Abha Narain Lambha, architect. Iconic architects like Zaha Hadid and Gae Aulenti are hard to find. Being a demanding profession, many women opt out due to family pressure. But these architects have gone against the tide and created a niche for themselves. [...]

ANUPAMA KUNDOO

Her work is slotted as contemporary vernacular, many of her projects built with low energy technologies such as water harvesting and renewable energy sources. But this aspect of Anupama Kundoo’s work emerges more from an attraction to efficiency. “My designs are not driven by the worry that the world will end, but by finding ways to make the most with what one has,” says the 40-year-old, who has been practising for 17 years.

After graduating from Sir J.J College of Architecture, Mumbai, in 1989, she found the creative options, which were to become interior designers or to produce facades of buildings without working on the interiors, either frivolous or boring. She didn’t surrender to either and headed off to travel, landing in Auroville. Some of her projects include Creativity, an attempt at an urban eco-community in 2003 in Auroville and Keystone Foundation in the Nilgiris in 2005. She describes her work as natural, without any make-up. The other area of her expertise is housing, where she recently researched tropical high-rise housing for the urban area. After working in Berlin during the building boom she got a chance to teach at the Technical University, Berlin, and Darmstadt in Hesse, in 2005.

SEEN HERE AT FRENCHMAN PIERRE TRAN’S HOUSE, AUROVILLE
Year 1990-1991
Concept Exploring alternatives to the regular RCC slab, out of environmental and socio-economic concerns.
Challenges There were design innovations that meant having to teach masons things I myself didn’t know, but was determined to learn along the way. Like learning how to prefabricate high quality ferro-cement panels that we had to produce on the site. These are used as vertical fins on the facades to block the direct sun while enabling cross ventilation.
Cost Rs 25 lakh for 450 sq.m

Salingaros supports Alexander’s tying religion to geometry

Nikos Salingaros
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nikos A. Salingaros (born in Perth, Australia) is a mathematician and polymath known for his work on urban theory, architectural theory, complexity theory, and design philosophy. He has been a close collaborator of the architect and computer software pioneer Christopher Alexander, with whom Salingaros shares a harsh critical analysis of conventional modern architecture. Like Alexander, Salingaros has proposed an alternative theoretical approach to architecture and urbanism that is more adaptive to human needs and aspirations, and that combines rigorous scientific analysis with deep intuitive experience.

Influence [edit] Architecture
Salingaros has had a significant theoretical influence on several major figures in architecture. Christopher Alexander, author of the seminal treatises A Pattern Language and Notes on the Synthesis of Form, describes Salingaros' influence: “In my view, the second person who began to explore the deep connection between science and architecture was Nikos Salingaros, one of the four Katarxis editors. He had been working with me helping me edit material in The Nature of Order, for years, and at some point -- in the mid-nineties I think -- began writing papers looking at architectural problems in a scientific way. Then by the second half of the nineties he began making important contributions to the building of this bridge, and to scientific explorations in architecture which constituted a bridge.” [5]

Prince Charles, an influential critic of contemporary architecture, expressed Salingaros' influence in his own preface to Salingaros’ A Theory of Architecture: “Surely no voice is more thought-provoking than that of this intriguing, perhaps historically important, new thinker?” [6]

The End of Tall Buildings (2001), co-authored with James Kunstler, [7] argued that the age of skyscrapers is at an end, and that 9/11 marks the beginning of the end of modernist typologies dominating urban form. While the world has not stopped building skyscrapers, this became one of the most cited and controversial essays on the topic. Referring to this essay, Benjamin Forgey of The Washington Post said: “What many are feeling today goes right to the marrow: the fear of being a target. And who today can deny that tall buildings such as the World Trade Center towers make ideal targets?” [8] [edit]

Urbanism
Salingaros contributed to the New Athens Charter of 2003, which is meant to replace the original 1933 Athens Charter written principally by the highly influential modernist architect-planner Le Corbusier. That blueprint segregated urban functions and contributed to generating post-war urban typologies such as monoculture and sprawl. Through this and other writings Salingaros sought to retrofit suburbia, and reconnect US and European cities at the human scale. This work can be seen as allied with the New Urbanism movement to replace sprawling development with compact, walkable cities and towns.

Philosophy
Salingaros has been a harsh critic of deconstructivism in architecture, and its uncritial application of the philosophy of post-structuralism. His essay “The Derrida Virus” [15] argues that the ideas of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, applied in an uncritical way, effectively form an information "virus" that dismantles logical thought and knowledge. Salingaros employs the meme model earlier introduced by Richard Dawkins to explain the transmission of ideas. In so doing he provides a model that validates earlier claims by philosopher Richard Wolin that Derrida’s philosophy is logically nihilistic.

Even though Salingaros uses Dawkins’ ideas, he nevertheless strongly disagrees with Dawkins’ evaluation of religion as just another meme, as expounded in Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Supporting Alexander’s most recent work tying religion to geometry, Salingaros argues for the important historic contribution of religious tradition to human understanding, both in architecture and in philosophy.

Geometry is not merely a technical device; it is the very means by which to infuse inner meaning

Joy Sen: The Search for Unity: the Goal of Indian Aesthetics - Viewpoints from Architecture Muse India Issue 15, Sep-Oct 2007

“This aesthetic side of a people’s culture is of the highest importance and demands almost as much scrutiny and carefulness of appreciation as the philosophy, religion and central formative ideas which have been the foundation of Indian life and of which much of the art and literature is a conscious expression in significant aesthetic forms.” Sri Aurobindo The Foundations of Indian Culture

Introduction: Study on Built environments show that they have layers of purposes. One, to shelter people and their activities and possessions from the elements, from human and animal enemies, and from supernatural powers; two, to establish place; to create a humanized, safe area in a profane and potentially dangerous world; to stress social identity and indicate status; and so on. Thus the origins of built-environment or architecture are best understood if a wider view of causal factors is taken into consideration. These factors indeed are more important than climate, technology, materials, and economy as they form the inner core of human existence. It is this inner core that gradually evolves surpassing the outer influences of economy, climate, materials and technology and other external factors. In effect, the highest expressions of human mind-interaction and communication skills are only then formed, of which art, literature, music and architecture and even sciences becomes a conscious truthful expression.

In view of above, the purpose of organizing space and time in architecture is to structure communication (human interaction, avoidance, dominance, and so on). Through ritualized behaviors (or habits) and various ways of marking territories explaining these habits, meanings after meanings are given to places (habitations) and behaviors (habits). From lower to higher, complementarities are achieved, one after one, shades after shades till the highest raptures are formed. This takes the search of creative instincts through layers of lower to higher reasons and logic to a crescendo of poetry that is embedded in the fountainhead and heart of an all-embracing creative inspiration.

Habit-Habitation Complementarities: In the case of human beings, when environments are being organized, it is these four elements – space (sparsha-sabda), meaning (artha), communication (bhava-bhasa), and time (kala-parikrama) – that are being organized. That is, the organization of environment as a series of relationships between things and other things, things and people, and between people and other people are established. These relationships are complementary and orderly; they have pattern and structure; and it is finally realized that the human environment is not a random assemblage of things but a conscious expression of a settled and ever-expanding human mind.

The nature of organizations can vary from space to space; from one level of interaction to another level of interaction and it is finally available as a tangible physical expression of domains. In fact, in the scheme-making of built-environmental design at all levels and their variations, from vast regions to furniture arrangements, the structuring and organization of space in effect reflect the needs, values, and desires of the groups of individuals doing the organizing. Complementarities of the two – inner habits and expressed habitations are effected.

Symbolism Embedded in Complementarities: In India for centuries and ages, a deep-set system of tradition has evolved through experiments happening in the inner laboratory of the human mind. That is the Indian way. But the outward was exempted. The experiments of contemplation had held the key to realizations of the powers of human mind that does not deny the world and its material expressions but is the very driver-fashioner of complementarities of the two – between all external sustainable traditional situations and the sustainable minds behind the bearing of these traditions.

This is particularly true when one attempts to penetrate and understand the very origins of Indian system of art-aesthetics and architecture. In effect, an ordering schema has evolved based on the sacred, since the realization termed as ‘religion’ and the externalities as support termed as ‘rituals’ are central to such schemas. In the level of highest complementarities of built environments and the true humanization of these environments, livable places tend to become sacred or sanctified. In Indian traditional set-up of religious built-environments – which encode and manifest ideals – the tangible expression that are formed are also expected to encode the sacred, since that represents the most significant inner meaning. So a journey from the outer to the innermost is established to retrace the ‘trickle-down’ from the inner-most to the outer. In the icon there are contrasts i.e the inner-most, which is a dot (a bindu) is the whole, where as the outermost, which is a large visible schema over space (kshetra) is only a part of that whole. This inversion is the very heart of Indian ethos and the root of the symbolic model.

Symbolism of complementarities: American Architect-anthropologist Amos Rapoport has viewed the traditional system of Indian Art-Architecture as dynamism of space, time and matter. In this dynamism manifestations are that of an all-pervading creative mind and in that mind material space and material things (bhuta-akâsha) make visible the centrality, the pivotal and ideational role of that universal schema (realized as interconnected universal spaces called chida-akâsaha). This is the model of the universe called the Mandala. In his words, the art-architectural environment is a reflection of this model and this has three necessities:

It stresses limits of control: one changes oneself rather than the environment. Thus, building –which is a major modification of the environment – requires rigorous adherence to the appropriate cosmological model and also requires stress on ritual purity. Behavioral change complements evolving environmental situation from chaotic to orderly.

In effect a cosmological model is realized emphasizes the centrality and the peripherals, which are the two classes of akashas or spaces. Centrality is most and this is expressed socially (ritually) and aesthetically (materially).

Ideational space are transformed by symbols (like stupas, mandalas, yupas, skambha) and the various physical-mental rituals (like darshana-âswadana, pradakshinâ, parikramâ, tirtha-yâtrâ, pranâma, dhyâna-chestâ) are embedded in the model that the makes the divine visible in material reality. This is the whole purpose of Indian creative surge encoded in ‘Vâstu Stahaptya Vidyâ’ and ‘Nandan Kalâ Vidyâ’.

To understand this universal science of art-architecture, we must understand this divine cosmological model that underlies the design components like sculpture (bhaskarayam), axis (yupa) and grid (panjarâ) to erection of house-units (nibâsam and prâsâdam), temples (mandirams), landscapes (bithis), villages (purams); and finally to towns (nagaris) and settlement conurbations or regions (mahâjanapadas or mahâkhetras).

Even secular architecture (lokavâstu, grhavâstu) carries in them the implication and strengths of the ancient tradition of India. The parallelism of Sulva and Silpa is constantly demonstrated, as in the case of the Yupa, or sacrificial post, and its anthropomorphic transformation in the image of the Purusha or the universal spirit behind the cosmological model. Again, the common element which justifies the title Vâstusutra (the tread of construction or nirmâna) is the sacred geometry underlying sacrificial altars (Sulva), anthropomorphic images and image-panels (Silpa) and sacred or secular architecture (Vâstu). But here geometry is not merely a technical device; it is the very means by which to infuse inner meaning (bhâva and artha) into the work of art-architecture. This infusion is the spirit of Indian aesthetics.

The Crescendo: It is a psychological fact that sense-impressions through the eyes and ears have a more compelling, a more direct action on the sub-conscious strata of the soul (inner Koshas) than discursive arguments. The subconscious obeys and is directly dependent on universal cosmic laws. When art forms take their being from fundamental cosmic principles, they participate in the essential structure of the universe and contain a natural symbolism to which unsophisticated human beings respond instinctively, unconsciously. Thus in effect one arrives at a transcendental unity of all art-manifest body-forms at the higher level of human mind and spirit. Frijtof Schuon, in his book: ‘The Transcendent Unity of All Religions’ (De l’unite’ Transcendente des Religions, Gallimard, 1948) says that the sensible form is what corresponds most directly to the intellect, by reason of the inverted analogy (by a step-by-step evolutionary ordering of human behavior) which plays between the ‘Principle’ and the manifest (order of things), so that the highest realities (summits of cultural expression) manifest themselves in the most striking manner in their most distant reflection, which is the sensible or ‘material’ order (built-environment).

In India, art and sciences, even the every mundane realities of domestic life, are covered with a mass of poetic conceptions [(marriage of ameliorated rhythms (chhanda-rasa) with refined mental attributes (bhâva-artha)]. This is the very basis (cause) and intent (effect) of a deep-set aesthetics system, which are pressed forward till the material-sensuous (personal) touches the universal-super-sensuous (impersonal) and the real (the small) gets the rose-hue of the unreal (the vast). It is this aesthetic side of a collective people’s culture is of the highest importance and demands very careful appreciation as the philosophy, religion and central formative ideas which have been the foundation of Indian life and of which much of the art and literature is a conscious expression in significant aesthetic forms.

The "naturalistic" or "illusionistic" is no less subjective than the "expressionistic"

Re: Corrections to textual excerpts of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs
by Debashish on Thu 16 Oct 2008 09:24 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link the issue of cultural representation is more important and interesting. There seem to be accumulated responses of taste here.

During the period of the Indian nationalist struggle, this in fact became one of the major stakes for distinction of identity. The Greco-Roman Gandhara Buddha was preferred by the western critics for its naturalism. Coomaraswamy would argue that the less naturalistic, more "ideal" Mathura images were more authentic to the Indian consciousness. Sri Aurobindo's response to Archer is also keyed along similar lines. In fact, this becomes in some ways the cornerstone of his argument for national freedom from colonial rule - the right to express its own subjective tastes free from the standards and constraints of alien subjection. [...]

It's interesting though, that in the genre of portrait painting, I have yet to come across a "subjective" interpretation of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. It seems here that the closer to reality the painting, the truer to the "divine image." But then, if this "reality" betrays any "physiological blemishes", it is not considered satisfying. If there is anything to these cultural histories of taste, then we have to ask the question as to whether these are unchanging essences and "never the twain shall meet" or whether they can be related or even synthesized? And if the second is possible, is there only one way to relate and synthesize them or many?

Contemporary western art practice also grapples with issues of this kind. The mid-19th c. saw a wholesale rejection of "naturalism" in art in favor of "subjectivism." But contemporary practice has come to assert that the "naturalistic" or "illusionistic" is no less subjective than the "expressionistic." The photographic signifier hides and discloses the subjective signified. Our practices of reading have tuned to an objective-subjective taste as a result. This indeed is one kind of synthesis... Perhaps our friends with the so-called "Indian look" can try to do the same in their own way, instead of this sad rejection and aggressive hostility? DB Reply 7:32 PM

With its chastity we can certainly live in our own worlds

Santosh Verma
Friday, November 28, 2008
Inflections of Delight

An artist like Santosh discards the outward appearances of nature, not as material for observation but as an idiom of expression. He needs nature and cannot divorce himself from it. But he can pierce the outward in search of the inward life. At its base are still the varied patterns of unfolding life, in flowers, plants, grasses; the texture of the stones, shells, bark; the sound and movement of water and of bird and insect life; the subtle inflection of cloud and mist and the changing sky are still the sources of his delight.

Many in these days of abstraction believe they have transformed nature to a still more elevated articulation. Unfortunately, quite a bit of what is described as abstraction is random and inchoate. These artists do not seem to have felt the charm of root reality, that is, of nature on their pulse. I believe Santosh is one of those who has so felt it. What he has succeeded in doing is to give nature a fresh incarnation. He draws out its essence. Here, in his work, it is this we invariably taste with our eager eyes.

He has evolved new ways of suggesting the interwoven rhythms by which the visible word is permeated. Thus he does something far more ‘deeply interfused' as binds together the patterns of shell, the thrust and the swell of the sea, the slant of light upon a leaf, the flight of a bird and a feather fall upon a mossy stone. But none of all this is literally so, purely imaginatively.

This is well groomed art, which can do more than delight. It can also enlighten. Experiencing works of this chaste order we as if stand at the mid point of a pendulum's swing--a pendulum of experience that swings outward into both the light as the life around us, and inward into ourselves. Resultantly, thanks to it we seek to penetrate and inform ourselves about the reality that lives deep within us. With its chastity we can certainly live in our own worlds; look upon it and sense it, for it is the stuff of experience that the artist in the viewer, also, seizes upon, and invests with fresh meanings.

I do think Santosh's 'abstraction' enriches our vision. It is not a mere escape or sedative. The overly jangled big city nerves will surely calm themselves with the decorum that there is in his compositions Keshav Malik Posted by Santosh at 7:43 AM Santosh Verma, Residence SRB-94B, SHIPRA RIVIERA, INDIRAPURAM, GHAZIABAD-201 010 E-Mail – santoshverma1956@hotmail.com Studio B-403, NEELPADM-1, VAISHALI, GHAZIABAD-201 010 View my complete profile Thursday, November 27, 2008 Paintings
65X65cm Acrylic On Canvas, 65X65cm Acrylic On Canvas, 90X120 cm Acrylic On Canvas, 60X75cm Acrylic On Canvas, 90X120 cm Acrylic On Canvas
7:13 AM Sunday, November 23, 2008 Water Colour 8:12 AM

A stunning modern-day architectural conception

Matrimandir Meditation Centre
Posted under Religion by gems78 on Monday 22 December 2008 at 5:58 pm

Auroville, in the former French colony of Pondicherry, is an independent settlement inspired by the spiritual teachings of Sri Aurobindo. Intended to be an ideal city for spiritual seekers, it is steadily evolving according to the master plan drawn up by Mirra Alfassa, known for Aurovilians as the Mother, the Paris-born spiritual partner of Sri Aurobindo.
A stunning modern-day architectural conception, situated in an expansive landscaped area referred to as Peace, the meditation centre takes the form of a golden globe appearing to rise out of the earth as a symbol of spiritual consciousness. The centre takes its golden hue from cladding formed of stainless-steel discs coated with gold leaf.
There are no organized rites or symbols within this space to distract visitors from their thoughts or direct them toward a specific religion. The Matrimandir Meditation Centre was conceived simply as an embodiment of peace. In its remarkable meditation chamber, one can rethink one’s self – an experience truly worth having. Design and Culture Dance floor of design and culture

Jacques Rancière: Aesthetics is Politics

Everything you wanted to know about Jacques Rancière but were afraid to ask…..
Sophie Berrebi

The essays by Jonathan Dronsfield and Steven Wright included in this issue were first presented at the conference Aesthetics and Politics: With and Around Jacques Rancière co-organised by myself and Marie-Aude Baronian at the University of Amsterdam on 20 and 21 June 2006.
One of the elements that triggered the organisation of the conference was a passage of his then recent book Malaise dans l’esthétique (2004). In it, Rancière discussed several exhibitions of contemporary art that had taken place around the year 2000.[1] The way he approached these group shows was particularly refreshing in a context marked by heavy discussions about curatorial practice et al.: Rancière responded to exhibition concept, presentation and individual works without dissociating the one from the other. In other terms, and while his writings were already proving to be influential to the contemporary art milieu, he wove these exhibitions into his text, reacting to them more as a random albeit attentive visitor than as an expert. This attitude inevitably provoked the desire on the part of the reader to stroll alongside him and ask him everything we ever wanted to know about his views (but were afraid to ask).

The format of the conference developed out of that desire for a conversation, and Jacques Rancière proved to be extremely generous in his response, agreeing to a two-day visit to Amsterdam to give a lecture and respond to a series of papers discussing aspects of his work.
The plenary lecture Rancière delivered on the evening of 20 June, entitled ‘Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art’ was attended by an audience of more than 150 people ranging from students to artists and academics. The following day, during an intense day-long conference, academics of different backgrounds presented papers derived from their encounter with Rancière’s work. Sessions on literature and politics, on performing and contemporary arts succeeded one another, separated by panel discussions in which Rancière gave informal replies to questions raised by the speakers. More than once these replies triggered animated discussions, although, predictably perhaps, a climax was reached in the discussion which ensued from third panel dedicated to contemporary art. A substantial part of that panel is reprinted here, with papers given by Jonathan Dronsfield and Steven Wright and the exchange that followed, which was kindly recorded by a member of the audience.

In addition to the elements of the conference that are reprinted here is ‘Jacques Rancière and Indisciplinarity’ an interview conducted with Jacques Rancière by Marie-Aude Baronian and our colleague from the University of Amsterdam and ASCA, Mireille Rosello. A version of this extensive interview, which took place several months after the conference, was published in Dutch by Valiz (NL), in a volume of studies on Jacques Rancière that appeared in the Netherlands in late 2007. In this exchange, Ranciere discusses his position with regard to democracy, politics, film, literature, art and research.
Finally, my short article ‘Jacques Rancière: Aesthetics is Politics’, also reprinted here, was prompted by a visit to the pavilion of Central Asia at the Venice Biennale in 2005. It was originally commissioned and published by the Dutch art magazine Metropolis M No. 4 (2005), pp. 64-71.

[1] Notably, Bruit de Fond, (Centre National de la Photographie, Paris), Let’s Entertain, (Walker art Centre, Minneapolis, and Centre Pompidou, Paris) and Voilà, le Monde dans la tête (Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris), all three organised in 2000. Volume 2. No. 1. Summer 2008 ISSN 1752-6388

Educating the synthesizing power of imaginal (thinking in images) thinking

Seeing Meaning Looking at Images and Understanding Sunday, August 31, 2008
Visual Philosophy
“A consciousness that proceeds by sight…is a greater power for knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker.” Sri Aurobindo, A Greater Psychology

When I first used the term “visual philosophy” a student in the class said, “Wait a minute, are you talking about aesthetics?” It was natural to think I was referring to philosophy about art and beauty because we don’t generally think of art and images in their capacity to express ideas, to evoke a philosophical stance through a visual depiction. Beyond simply communicating information, an image shows how to see the information. We equate seeing with understanding.

We are drowning in information and need the wisdom to know how to filter it. Insight sees the significance within the whole. Wisdom depends on perception. The metaphors of seeing attest to our underlying trust in what we ”see with our own eyes.” We “believe what we see”. As we enlarge our picture of reality, our understanding grows.

Observation lies beneath the methods of art and science. As science separates the world into smaller and smaller parts, art should be equally important in pulling the whole back together, to see the forest as well as the trees. Ideas expressed visually can include the multiple variables that we live with in actual experience, the influences from every direction that controlled experiments leave out. Artists enlarge the range of what we are able to see. By sensitizing people to significant pattern, capacity for insight is developed. Understanding how feeling represents the meaning of what we see tunes our intuition and our trust in its guidance.

Educating the synthesizing power of imaginal (thinking in images) thinking may allow us to evolve a new level of intelligence. Arguing for the superiority of visual communication, Barbara Stafford writes “Perceptually combined information… avoids the intellectual limitations of linearity.” She believes that in the graphic world of the internet, artists will be more important in explaining reality, understanding the display of knowledge, allowing an immediate apprehension of connections.

Art reveals consciousness. It offers multiple windows on the deepest and broadest aspects of being human. This is a physical improvement in the most evolved parts of our brain. Like any other activity, the parts of the brain that are used are strengthened. More benefit comes from the self-understanding arising from what you choose to see. Perception is not passive. It’s always scanning for what will be useful to us. Joseph Campbell said, ”The eyes are the scouts of the heart.” We are drawn to what resonates with our own inner state, often mirroring it, sometimes compensating for it. Given that neuroscience has shown that feelings precede and direct thought, letting the eye make choices from the world of art could likely take us deeper into understanding our feelings than talking about them.

The mission of visual philosophy is to see more, to become aware of the complex web of relationships that visual intelligence deals with best, and to express meaning visually. Knowledge of all kinds can be communicated with images. Even in regard to invisible realms and deep level patterns, artists can help us understand consciousness more fully by what they reveal of it. Posted by Susan Waters-Eller at 3:35 PM

Santosh Verma at Jehangir from August 26

An Exhibition of Paintings By
Santosh Verma

26th August To 1st September
At
Jehangir Art Gallery
161-MG Road, Mumbai

Please oblige us with your benign presence.
Santosh Verma: 09891398249 7:13 PM
Location: SRB-94 B, Shipra Riviera, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, UP - 201012

De-privileging the masculine spectatorial gaze in context-less galleries

A Chronology of Modern Indian Art and Thematic Considerations By Debashish Banerji
by Debashish on November 18, 2005 10:25PM (PST)

An Introduction to the history of modern Indian art along with an approach to its categorization, as expressed in the curatorial practice of the exhibition "Contours of Modernity" held at the SOKA University, Irvine from February-April, 2005 and curated by Debashish Banerji and Nalini Rao. more » 1 Attachment Leave Comment Permanent Link

In concluding this section, I would like to draw attention to the powerful body of art produced by contemporary Indian artists focusing on gender issues. The homoerotic fantasies of Bhupen Khakkar or the feminist polemics of Nalini Malani, Arpana Caur, Arpita Singh, Gogi Saroj Pal, Nilima Sheikh and others constitute a prominent direction of contemporary Indian art. It is unfortunate that the present exhibition has not been able to adequately represent this stream. This omission has been entirely logistical and the curators of the exhibition hope to remedy this lacuna in future presentations.

Moreover, with the exception of photography, logistical reasons have also been responsible for the omission of work in contemporary media other than painting, such as printmaking, video, computer, installation or performance art. The attempt to de-privilege the masculine spectatorial gaze from its vantage as viewer in context-less galleries or possessor of collections, has led increasingly to the movement of art from the pictorial space of walls to more intimate and participatory social contexts. This may be seen as a movement from the modern to the postmodern in art, and, since the late 1980s, increasing numbers of Indian artists are presenting their ideas, interpretations and social questions in these forms.

Artists like Vivian Sundaram, Ranbir Kaleka, Subodh Gupta and Ajay Sinha have been at the vanguard of Indian installation arts and producing some of the most exciting contemporary artworks of our time. It is regretted that we could not present any of this work at this exhibition, but we are hopeful that the quality of the works that we have been able to present will generate enough interest and support in the community to enable us to offer a more thorough representation of modern Indian art and its diverse tendencies in the near future. Keywords: Art Attachments: ContoursHistoryandGrouping.doc (58KB)

V5: Group Show by Puducherry Artists at Auroville

V5: Group Show by Pondicherry Artists
Kala Kendra, Bharat Nivas, Pavilion of India ::: 11:00 AM
KALA KENDRA
BHARAT NIVAS
THE PAVILION OF INDIA
PRESENTS
V5
an exhibition of paintings by artists from pondicherry
danasegar s.
ezhilarasan e.
sridar k.
vengadesh b.
tirounavacarassou g.
August 10 - August 24
Open Daily 11 am till 7 pm
inauguration: 5 pm, Sunday, August 10, 2008
All are welcome
posted by dharmesh

+++

Exhibition "Miniatures" by Firooza

Exhibition of paintings on silk by Firooza
15th July to 13th August at Pitanga
Daily 8-12.30 & 2-7pm
posted by Pitanga

Tushar Nair captures the playful and frolicsome aspect of Puducherry

Of hues varied and wonderful The Hindu Friday Review Delhi Friday, Jun 20, 2008
A group exhibition by SAIMC students is proof of their talent.
We are like that only A photo from the exhibition.

It might have been their first exhibition, but it wouldn't be their last. Students of the Creative Photography department, Sri Aurobindo Institute of Mass Communication (SAIMC), recently held their first annual photography exhibition at the Alliance Francaise. Guided by Raghu Rai, the works of the seven students have an honest freshness to them. While the quality varied from excellent to average, each student certainly has a signature style.

The locations are common, but the photographers highlight different aspects of each, be it Anandpur Sahib, Puducherry or Delhi. Some students concentrate on the location, others on the people. Some use candidness to their advantage, while others use posturing skilfully. While Siddharth Kumar brings out the sheer scale of the festival ground, Nilay Jyoti Talukdar brings out the power and ferocity of the Hola Mohalla festival. Tushar Nair captures the playful and frolicsome aspect of Puducherry. His subjects even seem to pose and smile for the camera. Bharat Choudhary, on the other hand, evokes the serenity of Auroville in Puducherry. His camera frames people lost in solitude under the shade of the banyan tree. Sagar Heerani's photo of the Mitra guesthouse removes the specificities of the location and creates instead a moment rather than a scene. The only pure black and white collection is by Kiranjit Baruah, who uses foreground and background interestingly.

Uniquely Indian
Some of the most memorable photos include Tanul Trivedy's Bike Rickshaw. The front of a motorbike is attached to a cart. It's the kind of photo that makes you smile and say, "We are like this only!" India is colour, and this photo shines with greens and reds. Bharat Choudhary's photo at Nizamuddin Dargah is magical in its over-layering. It's the kind of photo that reveals itself slowly to the viewer - the longer you stare - the more layers appear. It makes phantasms of people and creates illusions of reality.

At the end of their course at SAIMC each student has ambitions. Some want to pursue fashion photography while others have aspirations of "activist photography". While they do agree that photography can't be learnt, they admit that it can be better understood. And this exhibition was proof that they've certainly understood the art and are en route to mastering it.
NANDINI NAIR

Rare portraits by S M Pandit at Chaitanyamayi Art Gallery, Gulbarga

Visual treat in store for art enthusiasts Gulbarga, April 25:

Art lovers are in for a visual treat at the Chaitanyamayi Art Gallery in Gulbarga city for a week from April 24. On show will be true-to-life rare portraits by renowned painter the late S M Pandit.

The exhibition has been arranged to mark the fifth anniversary celebrations of the gallery that was established in memory of the Mother of Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry. It was on April 24 that the Mother came to Puducherry and made it her home.

The rare paintings, which are part of a private collection, are being put up for public viewing for the first time. The works will include the true-to-life portrait of S M Pandit’s teacher B G Sathe. It also happens to be the artist’s first painting which he sketched when he was a student at the J J Art School in Mumbai. The other paintings include those of Sir M Visvesvaraya, the Mother, Sri Aurobindo, the former legislator Gangadhar Namoshi, the former chairman of the erstwhile Gulbarga City Municipal Council Neelkantrao Patil. There will be also 35 other paintings of leading businessmen and industrialists of Gulbarga district. These were sketched between 1976 and 1982.

The gallery’s founder chairman and painter A S Patil told presspersons that it was for the first time that these paintings were being exhibited. These paintings would go a long way in perfecting the art of mixing the right kind of colour and bringing the right ambience in portraits, he said. Dr Patil said that besides the breathtaking portraits of world leaders such as Saddam Hussain, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher there were also landscape and realistic paintings and those highlighting important episodes in the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Bhagvad Gita and Shakuntalam.

S M Pandit had won several awards and the Royal Arts Academy of London has conferred a fellowship on him. Some of his rare paintings are put up at a private art gallery owned by his family members in Gulbarga city.

Artist Mohan Panchal, who has done a PhD thesis on the works of S M Pandit, will deliver a special lecture on the inaugural day and portrait painters Vijay Sindhu and M C Chetty will make on-the-spot portrait paintings on April 25 and 28. Dr Patil said that the exhibition would be open from 9 am to noon and from 5 pm to 8 pm every day from April 24 to 30.

When I discovered the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother it changed my life and work fundamentally

Home After Hrs Drawing artistic inspiration
Ismat Tahseen Thursday, April 24, 2008 23:59 IST

The splash of colours brightens the face of Buddha on an otherwise darkened canvas followed by another with a frenetic burst of dots.
Ask artist Hufreesh Dumasia about the titles of the paintings and he will say that it’s a mere formality. “It’s for the audience to take inspiration from my paintings. The title is a mere formality,” said Hufreesh.
The canvasses are part of the group of artists from Auroville that are on show at the Indusvista Art gallery at Fort. Back in Mumbai for their second art exhibition, the artists are happy to be in the city that offers them a different pace of life. “Back in Auroville, the pace of things is slower,” smiled Hufreesh.
“We have more than 128 nationalities in one place, yet everyone is so friendly to each other, more than life it’s an experiment in human unity,” she added.
That feeling has certainly spilled onto their canvases. Like Nele Martens’ work that employs structural modelling with rhythmic brush strokes.
“It seems chaotic but aims to create a harmony straight from my heart, which comes from the serenity one feels in Auroville,” she explains.
Amsterdam-born sculptor Henk van Putten admitted had been using a limited scale of forms since 35 years and says he was inspired too.
“When I discovered the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother it changed my life and work fundamentally,” he said. “For two years I did nothing there and then I think as my life underwent a change in terms of thought, I felt inspired to paint too.” Among the interesting artworks, there’re steel boxes which Agnus had put aside for months until, Agnus said, “nature gave them a rusted robe. I just painted on them to symbolise important human emotions.”
i_ismat@dnaindia.net Home After Hrs The man on a mission

The Significance of Indian Art by Sri Aurobindo

Books › "Sri Aurobindo"
97. Psychic Being: Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution by Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, and A. S. Dalal (Paperback - Jun 1, 1999)
7 Used & new from $6.63
98. On Nationalism (First Series) by Sri Aurobindo (Paperback - 1965)
1 Used & new from $29.95
99. THE LIFE DIVINE - BOOK TWO, PART TWO by Sri Aurobindo (Paperback - 1977)
2 Used & new from $23.00
100. ESSAYS ON THE GITA by Sri Aurobindo (Hardcover - 1944)
1 Used & new from $17.00
101. The significance of Indian art by Sri Aurobindo (Paperback - 1964)
3 Used & new from $17.94
Other Editions: Unknown Binding
102. THE LIFE DIVINE: BOOK ONE & BOOK TWO, PART ONE by Sri Aurobindo (Paperback - 1977)
1 Used & new from $24.00
103. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary by Sri Aurobindo (Hardcover - 1972)
Currently unavailable
104. Savitri / A Legend and a Symbol by Sri Aurobindo (Hardcover - 1973)
1 Used & new from $37.50
105. Essays on the Gita by Sri Aurobindo (Hardcover - 1950)
1 Used & new from $12.95
106. Hymns to the Mystic Fire by Sri Aurobindo (Hardcover - May 1999)
5 Used & new from $15.00
(2) Other Editions: Paperback
107. The Riddle of This World by Sri Aurobindo (Paperback - 1969)
1 Used & new from $15.00
108. Kena Upanishad by Sri Aurobindo (Paperback - 1952)
1 Used & new from $13.50

Lalit Bhati, Adil Writer, and Auroson Bystrom

Adil Writer is a ceramic artist based out of Auroville, Pondicherry. Adil’s works exemplify a fearlessness to explore. Some of his pieces feature written text on textured clay bearing poetry, ruminations, lyrics & mantras in Sanskrit. Posted by MASALA CHAI at 10:10 PM Labels: Ceramics

+++

Auroville is an under-construction town from south India that plans to create a harmonious way of life for all its inhabitants. Lalit Bhati is an urban planner, an architect and resident of Auroville, and will be presenting the project at the Ecocity World Summit. The Auroville site states that the ultimate purpose of this city is “to realise human unity”, and to be a town where “men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities”. (ecofuss.com) dátum: 12:30 Címkék: architecture, future

+++

Auroson Bystrom- furniture design
Dear Shaded Viewers,
Designer Auroson Bystrom is an anomaly. The Indian Born 37 year old of Swedish descent integrates not only his complex surroundings of India but melds them with his sense of minimalism which comes from his Northern European routes.

Bystrom was raised in Auroville, India. For Bystrom opposites play a role constantly pushing against one another to create an integrated baseline– his work is an ordering of chaos, an emission, a message and ultimately manifest aesthetic. “There is an elemental language in the stone, wood and metals. The process is the transformation into a new language of form.” states Bystrom.

His first piece was a commissioned series of stone and wood. This quickly led to international attention in key magazines such as Elle Décor and i-D as well as sold out gallery shows in his native country and abroad. Press: Peoples Revolution Later, Diane Posted by Diane Pernet at 02:00 PM Permalink

Eco-friendly building materials, alternative technology, and an architecture that is energy-efficient and climate-responsive

Building the Indian way DESIGN Gargi Gupta New Delhi Business Standard March 29, 2008

Is there an architectural style that you can identify as “contemporary Indian”? Jagan Shah, architect and historian, feels there is and picks on 20 mid-career architects — he calls them the “new moderns” — for an exposition of the “contemporary Indian” (Contemporary Indian Architecture, Roli).

So what is the “contemporary Indian”? No, it’s not an architectural style that merely tacks on “Indian” motifs or symbols to the structure, or mimics vernacular architecture. No, in a globalised world, an architect can’t simply get by on national identity.

What ties together the architects Shah picks on are “multidisciplinary insights” and a widening of respective agendas to include concerns about climate, ecology and gender. It is through the description of structures by them that he comes to a definition of the “contemporary Indian”.

Shah refers to two other vital issues which have had an impact on “creative” expression — the diminishing role of the state in commissioning public buildings, and the fact that with globalisation, architects are concentrating on delivery schedules, quality, detailing, engineering and programming skill. Here’s a look at some of the architects whose works he holds up

Walls have eyes

Auroville-based Anupama Kundoo is first on the list and it is her own residence that Shah holds up as an example of the “contemporary Indian”, identifying it in her attention to three areas: “Eco-friendly building materials, alternative technology, and an architecture that is energy-efficient and climate-responsive”.

Called “The Wall House”, Kundoo’s house is only 2.2 metres wide, made of exposed brick that’s scaled down to the smaller proportions of the local achakal brick.

It’s most distinctive feature is a two-storey-high vaulted verandah at the entrance, made of interlocking clay tubes, which is not just cheap, it is also great for insulation. Energy and costs have been further lowered by the use of solid stone and recycled wood.

Aurodhan Gallery has the city’s finest collection of contemporary Indian art

Pondicherry’s French Connection By MATT GROSS NYT: March 30, 2008

Farther north lay the Aurodhan Gallery, perhaps the city’s finest collection of contemporary Indian art. After browsing three floors of brilliant Ganesh portraits and somber neo-Expressionist scenes of old men drinking and playing checkers, I asked the gallery owner’s wife, Shernaz Verma, what to do next. She suggested I visit the French Institute and Auroville — a utopian community founded by the Sri Aurobindo Society, whose followers were, for many years, Pondy’s main tourists — but warned I shouldn’t expect a vacation crammed with activities.
In Pondicherry, she said, “there’s not much to see, but a lot to feel.”

Auroville, just over the border in Tamil Nadu state, was founded by a society devoted to the guru Sri Aurobindo in the 1960s and is now home to more than 1,700 people from more than 40 countries. At the center of this “ideal township” is the Matrimandir, a dimpled golden globe where the late guru’s followers meditate. Auroville also has the closest beaches to Pondicherry.

For Deleuze, art is to be thought on the side of production, but without a centralized designer be it God or man

larvalsubjects Says: March 12, 2008 at 8:44 pm

Both Deleuze and Whitehead see being in aesthetic or artistic terms as creations or inventions. This is one of the key claims of Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, which proposes to united the two sundered halves of the aesthetic. Whitehead sees beauty as a central principle in the production of beings. Shaviro has done truly outstanding (and humbling) work on the intersection of Deleuze and Whitehead which you can find over at The Pinocchio Theory. You might find his article entitled “The Wrenching Duality of the Aesthetic” especially interesting in this connection. These can be found here: http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/articles.html
Remember, one of the key issues at work in these questions is that of immanence. That is, how are we able to think the emergence of order without presupposing design or a maker. This is why I hesitate in response to your remarks about aesthetics (Kant famously argued that Beauty is a trace of design in nature in the Critique of Judgment).

For Deleuze, art is to be thought on the side of production, but without a centralized designer be it God or man. Deleuze is thoroughly Darwinian, in this sense, not because he accepts natural selection as the central mechanism, but because like Darwin he thinks the emergence of forms and order without any form or design preceding these forms and organization. The forms of life, existence, society, art, etc., are thus creations in a quasi-artistic or aesthetic sense. I’ve discussed this quite a bit on the blog in relation to Deleuze.

An Exhibition of Ceramics by Anna and Saraswati

Pottery Poetry
Pavilion of Tibetan Culture until 10 March) ::: 10:00 AM
The Russian Pavilion Group presents POTTERY POETRY
An Exhibition of Ceramics by Anna and Saraswati
Opening Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. until the 10th of March, 2008 at The Pavilion of Tibetan Culture International Zone, Auroville posted by jill

The dawn of spirituality, human unity and goodwill

Other States - Puducherry Images that capture the spirit of Auroville on display
Serena Josephine. M The Hindu Saturday, Mar 01, 2008
Aurodhan’s Lalit Verma has showcased rare photographs at Bharat Nivas
— Photo: T. Singaravelou Speaking volumes: President of Aurodhan Lalit Verma takes exponent of classical dance Mallika Sarabhai on a tour of an exhibition of his rare photographs at Bharat Nivas on Thursday. PUDUCHERRY:

Transcending barriers of language and culture, a photography exhibition here attempts to convey the values that Auroville stands for.
Words apart, the pictures at the photography exhibition display some of the golden moments in time.
As part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of Auroville, president of Aurodhan Lalit Verma has put up some of his rare collections of photographs at Bharat Nivas.
The exhibition was inaugurated on February 28 and will be on till March 31.
Mr. Verma established Aurodhan nearly 10 years ago in Puducherry “to try and raise the art consciousness” here. He created the statue of Sri Aurobindo that was installed at Savithri Bhavan on the 40th birth anniversary of Auroville.
Titled ‘les moments d`ores’ (golden moments), the photography exhibition has Auroville as its central theme. This is Mr. Lalit Verma’s first exhibition at Auroville.

Highlights
“One of the highlights of the exhibition is a photograph which was taken on the last birthday of Auroville. It shows a gap in the cloud and sunlight passes through the banyan tree at Matrimandir. There are 12 rays of the sun representing The Mother’s symbol. It was like a gift to me,” Mr. Verma said.
While the eye searched for inner meanings in the photographs, Mr. Verma explains, “It shows all the values that represent Auroville, including the dawn of spirituality, human unity and goodwill.”
Going a step further, he stressed the need for people to act always with the highest aspirations to bring harmony in the world.
“I have displayed a photograph of a tsunami girl who lost her family in Puducherry. Her smile is simply unbelievable,” he said of one picture.
Thirty-three photographs have been displayed at the exhibition. The photography exhibition will be open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day till it closes.

To switch fluidly from the scale of the atom to the scale of entire cities

Design Review 'Design and the Elastic Mind' The Soul in the New Machines By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF The New York Times: February 22, 2008 Bioengineered crossbreeds. Temperamental robots. Spermatozoa imprinted with secret texts. Although the fascination with organic form has been around since the Renaissance, we have now entered an age in which designers and architects are drawing their inspiration from hidden patterns in nature rather than from pretty leaves or snowflakes. The results can be scary, but they may also hold the key to paradise.

“Design and the Elastic Mind,” an exhilarating new show opening on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, makes the case that through the mechanism of design, scientific advances of the last decade have at least opened the way to unexpected visual pleasures.
As revolutionary in its own way as MoMA’s “Machine Art” exhibition of 1934, which introduced Modern design to a generation of Americans, the exhibition is packed with individual works of sublime beauty. Like that earlier show, it is shaped by an unwavering faith in the transformative powers of technology.
Yet the exhibition’s overarching theme, the ability to switch fluidly from the scale of the atom to the scale of entire cities, may sound a death knell for the tired ideological divides of the last century, between modernity and history, technology and man, individual and collective. It should be required viewing for anyone who believes that our civilization is heading back toward the Dark Ages.
Organized by Paola Antonelli, the show opens with an act of high-tech graffiti. A can of spray paint is suspended from a system of cables and pulleys in front of a wall. A small motor guided by computer software winds and unwinds the cables, moving the spray can methodically across the white surface to spell out the show’s title.
It is a nice, mischievous touch. And the precision of the script, in contrast to the paint’s fuzzy edges or the occasional drip, reinforces the show’s point that the old Manichaean duality between the artist and artificial intelligence, nature and machine, no longer holds.
To create “The Honeycomb Vase,” for instance, Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny designed a temporary frame in the shape of a squat vase with a slender neck. A colony of nearly 40,000 bees then went to work for a week constructing a hive over it in what the designer calls “slow prototyping” — a pointed reference to the methodical repetition of the old assembly line.
The resulting voluptuous, translucent form reflects a close collaboration between man and nature in which the artist serves as a gentle guide before allowing the bees to take over.
Similarly, Joris Laarman’s “Bone Chair” was created with computer software that mimics the creation of human bones. The weight and stresses on a typical chair are programmed into the computer, which then works out an appropriate “bone” structure, churning out a series of increasingly refined prototypes. (The final computer version has a raw, undigested quality, but Mr. Laarman couldn’t resist adding a final dash of aesthetic refinement by smoothing over the rough edges, a nice little example of how reluctant some designers are to yield control.)
Other designers are more concerned with developing strategies that allow the machine to adapt to individual tastes rather than with creating the perfect prototype. Using rapid manufacturing systems, the Swedish team known as Front Design have developed a process in which a person sketches a piece of furniture in the air, which is then recorded with motion-capture video technology and transformed into a digital file. The file can then be used to generate a laser-cut piece of real furniture. Individual desire takes precedence over mass consumer tastes.
In all of these cases the computer’s grasp of complex underlying patterns allows the designer to create objects that are not only superefficient but also remarkably adaptable.
But the show is about more than gorgeous, environmentally sensitive design. The human body is repositioned as part of a fluid, elastic chain that extends from minuscule atomic particles to global communication networks.
The best example of this approach is Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch’s “Rules of Six,” which uses algorithms to fashion an organically based architecture. Mimicking the growth patterns of microscopic nanostructures, they envisioned an unpredictable, self-generating landscape that can multiply indefinitely without sacrificing stability. Their design is indifferent to scale: the sprawling matrix of three-dimensional interlocking hexagons could represent rooms, buildings or entire urban neighborhoods.
In another fascinating if fanciful application of nanotechnology, the typeface designer Oded Ezer proposes using it to imprint incantatory typed messages on spermatozoa, the high-tech equivalent of a primitive fertility ritual.
The ease with which human designers can shift from the atomic to the global is driven home by the show’s layout, designed by Lana Hum. Visitors pass between two walls that converge slightly, to create a forced perspective — an architectural trick that extends all the way back to Palladio in the 16th century but here makes you feel like Alice tumbling through the looking glass.
Suddenly you are in a space packed with unfamiliar objects, like a trade fair. The scales shift once again; dystopian visions seep into the picture. “New City,” a projected three-dimensional display of a virtual world by Peter Frankfurt, Greg Lynn and Alex McDowell, is a model of an idealized society where buildings, cities and entire geographic regions all flow seamlessly together. It suggests how the Internet could be used as a testing ground for an emerging utopia.
Perhaps the most unnerving project here is “Architecture and Justice” from the Million Dollar Blocks Project, a graphic study by Columbia University’s Spatial Information Design Lab. Using the computer to filter through masses of data on prison populations, the group studied several American cities and identified the blocks where the highest concentration of prison inmates lived when they were arrested. That more than $1 million a year is spent on incarcerating people from each one of these blocks is shocking misuse of resources.
The graphic display on a blood-red grid is a bold expression of how the computer can be a powerful analytical tool for dislodging received wisdom and enabling us to examine entrenched social problems through a new lens.
If the show has a weakness, it’s when it introduces artsy expressions of futuristic societies that tend to be technologically crude: images of heavy plastic tubes that potential sexual mates can use to sniff each other, for example, or robots that refuse to respond until they are lavished with affection.
The almost unwieldy scope of the exhibition, however, is a virtue: it sends our imaginations spinning in endless directions. The technological optimism and trade-show ambience, for example, may conjure Charles and Ray Eames’s gigantic slide displays from the 1959 Moscow Trade Fair, which flaunted the peacetime technology of cold-war America. I left MoMA already dreaming of a followup show that would map out the link between today’s new design technologies and the wartime military research that generated them.
Or how about a show that looks at the relationships between technology, modernity and fundamentalism?
But I don’t want to detract from the mood. “Design and the Elastic mind” is the most uplifting show MoMA’s architecture and design department has presented since the museum reopened in 2004. Thanks to its imaginative breadth, we can begin to dream again.
“Design and the Elastic Mind” opens on Sunday and continues through May 12 at the Museum of Modern Art; (212) 708-9400, moma.org. Richard Perry/The New York Times “New City” by Peter Frankfurt, Greg Lynn and Alex McDowell in a show opening Sunday at MoMA. More Photos >

Meditative play of light...searching for silence

Aura of Auroville Ruchika Talwar Expressindia: Saturday , February 23, 2008

A Franco-Swiss family and an Italian, who have left Europe to make Auroville their home, are in the Capital with paintings, which have an almost meditative play of light; gigantic installations embellished with mantras and the red sand of Aurobindo’s ashram; and haiku-like photographs with the aura of Auroville.
The Hymn of Silence, an enormous installation by Veronique Nicolet (above, in picture), a 51-year-old who has been an art teacher at Auroville for the past 11 years, consists of three sheets of glass, painted in blue and engraved with the mantra Om Namo Bhagawataya. But the photographs of the Italian Ireno Guerci, who is enamoured with “the visual paradise that India is”, are simple. “They are an invitation to contemplate the little ideas that we tend to ignore in the lust for big ones,” he says.
Then there is 55-year-old Michel Nicolet, with his installation Prakriti and Purusha, and 36-year-old Karine Applanat Nicolet, who is an interior decorator at the quaint township in Pondicherry. Her paintings probably have the softest colours one has ever seen on canvas, as though they are searching for silence.
The exhibition at the India International Centre comes with a probing title: “Why Art?” Rajan Ghosh, who has written a book on the relationship between art and Aurobindo, explains, “The title is interrogative, but the answer lies in the search within. Aurobindo believed that art doesn’t give what nature does; it gives much more.” The exhibition at the India International Centre Annexe is on till February 29

Surreal-metaphysical imageries and mystical symbolism

Exhibition: ‘South Calcutta Artists’ Academy’
Aurelec Cafeteria & Art Gallery (until 16 March) ::: 8:00 AM 17 February to 16 March 2008
Exhibition by members of the South Calcutta Artists’ Academy
Aurelec Cafeteria & Art Gallery
The ‘South Calcutta Artists’ Academy’ is an artists’ organization, consisting of painters, sculptors, graphic and ceramic artists, and so on. It is the quest for empathy, for togetherness, that led us to establish the Academy in 2001.
Our Academy aims to provide a broad platform for artists to overcome their personal and commercial handicaps, without compromising their individual identities. Just as parallel lines can progress together, similarly different ambitions and thought-processes are sought to be accommodated under the umbrella of our Academy.
Representation at ‘Aurelec’ Exhibition :
The members of the South Calcutta Artists’ Academy aspire to represent the Eastern Region, especially Calcutta, at the Pondicherry Artists’ Workshop. All the members of the Academy are upcoming contemporary artists, experimenting with the various genres of both contemporary and traditional Indian art.
Calcutta as we all know is known as the cultural capital of our country. It amalgamates the traditions of Indian classical and folk art forms along with the influence of colonialism.
The artists of the Academy seek a forum to bring international exposure to the artistic traditions of Eastern India, as well as to exchange knowledge of existent and emergent art forms and techniques.
Ten painters will exhibit their work in the forthcoming exhibition in ‘Aurelec’:
Sujit Karmakar seamlessly blends Indian traditional art symbols and monochromatic colour schemes with contemporary themes and concerns.
Pinaki Acharyya’s surreal-metaphysical imageries are juxtaposed with Indian spiritual and mystical symbolism.
Sharmistha Acharjee likes to experiment with lines and form. She focuses on inanimate objects, which she then invests with a new dimension.
Ashok Kumar Dey draws inspiration from folk art forms. His lines are cleanly and firmly etched, giving his figures a certain fixity of purpose.
Sujit Saha uses primitive art forms and animal motifs to highlight his contemporary concerns.
Tapan Biswas likes to place spiritual art forms against contemporary images.
Pradip Laha goes back to Bengal folk art and figurative style for inspiration. The female images in his paintings create a new niche to highlight feminine forms and feelings.
Mahua Roy mixes her fantasies and innocence to express herself.
Amitava Banerjee amalgamates bold brushwork with his simplified folk forms.
Rajib Deyashi works with naturalistic forms and realistic colours.
Lal Malsawma is from Mizoram (North-East ). His paintings portray with honesty the environment to which he belongs.
Aurelec Cafeteria, Auroville, is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
posted by Franz