The Dialogues Series explores the concerns, careers and contexts of some of India’s most acclaimed artists. Each book in the series takes the form of an extended conversation between an individual artist and the authors, Ranjit Hotshot and Nancy Adajania, two of India’s best known and most authoritative critics. The Dialogues Series provides sharply etched portraits of the artists and critically engaged accounts of their work. It sees each artist’s journey un review, with its distinctive transitions, breakthroughs and evolutionary rhythms. The Dialogues Series also situates the imagination and life world of the artists within larger art-historical genealogies, both Indian and global. The series aims to create a discursive space in which both enthusiasts and scholars can reflect on the arguments that art and criticism conduct with history. The series is founded on the belief that the history of art does not simply revolve around the personalities of individual artists or the trends of the day; it also records the vital historical and philosophical questions that are posed and played out on the contested terrain of art.
Foundation b & g is a contemporary arts publishing and curatorial initiative, launched in January 2009 by Popular Prakashan, an 87-year-old publishing house that pioneered high-quality publishing in the social sciences, history and literature in India. The Foundation aims to develop a serious knowledge infrastructure for India’s contemporary visual arts. Its mission is to inform the enthusiast and to augment the bandwidth of the informed. The Foundation’s objective is to achieve a convergence among artists, critics, curators, viewers and readers. It has planned a publishing programmer that includes entry-level, intermediate and specialist books. At school level, it will model an art pedagogy that is responsive and participatory: to cultivate new generations that will not regard culture as alien to normal life, but will embrace it as a necessary condition of being.
Foundation b & g, which already has seven exhibitions and three monographs to its credit, now presents an important publishing initiative, The Dialogues Series, which is targeted to art enthusiasts in general and students of art in particular.
The Dialogues Series explores the concerns, careers and contexts of some of India’s most acclaimed artists. Those featured in this continuing series of books include Anju Dodiya, Ashim Purkayastha, Atul Dodiya, Baiju Parthan, Gargi Raina, Iranna G R, Madhvi Parekh, Manu Parekh, Jagannath Panda, Justin Ponmany, Ranbir Kaleka, Riyas Komu, Sumedh Rajendran, and Veer Munshi. They represent several generations and positions within the richly diverse domain of contemporary Indian art.
Each book in The Dialogues Series engages with an individual artist. It takes the form of an extended conversation between the artist and the authors, Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adajania, two of India’s best known and most authoritative critics.
These books are not. Intended to be mere interviews, but will create an understanding of the artists’ work at different levels. As the authors themselves put it, “The Dialogues Series performs three functions. First, it provides sharply etched portraits of the artists and critically engaged accounts of their work. We see each artist’s journey in review, with its distinctive transitions, breakthroughs and evolutionary rhythms. Second, it situates the imagination and life world of the artists within larger art-historical genealogies, cultural narratives and political discussions, both Indian and global. And third, this series aims to create a discursive space in which both enthusiasts and scholars can reflect on the arguments that art and criticism conduct with history. We believe that the history of art does not simply revolve around the personalities of individual artists or the trends of the day; it also records the vital historical and philosophical questions that are posed and played out on the contested terrain of art.”
A note on the methodology of The Dialogues Series would be relevant. These conversations have unfolded over space and time, across sites in India and overseas: the artists and the authors have traveled together, sharing thoughts, views, anecdotes and arguments. They have continued these exchanges over email, chat, telephone and Skip. The participants have gone away, reflected on their exchanges, researched their positions, and met again. What The Dialogues Series presents, therefore, is not simple transcripts. But compositions that have been crafted, textured and woven into their present shape.
Importantly, these are not interviews, but dialogues among fellow stake-holders. The authors are long-time participants in the Indian art world and contributors to its development since the late 1980s (Hoskote) and the mid-1990s (Adajania). As such, they share a unique proximity with their interlocutors: as friends, colleagues and collaborators in the making of the vibrant globalization-era Indian art scene. Together, the artists and the authors draw out the oral histories, the untold narratives of this scene. Through The Dialogue Series, many of the accepted notions of Indian art history are in-evaluated and new, surprising discoveries are made. The artists HIHI the authors pose questions to one another, not only to draw out answers, but also to re-draw the contemporary cultural debate.
Each book in The Dialogues Series also offers its readers a concise biographical text about the artist and a set of 16 images of key works from her or his oeuvre. On behalf of foundation b & g, I would like to thank Nancy and Ranjit not only for authoring this series, which we hope will become lie important source book for students of contemporary Indian art. but also for their active participation and involvement in all the activates of the Foundation. This is but the first important step taken by the Foundation in moving towards a greater role in the documentation of subjects related to visual art in the Indian context, more particularly in a format that is accessible and affordable.
Manu Parekh (born Ahmedabad, 1939) took a Diploma in Drawing and Painting at the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy School of Art in 1962. While at the J. J., he began to act on the stage, under the Gujarati eatre director, Tarak Mehta. Having earned his diploma, Parekh eturned to Ahmedabad and dedicated himself both to painting and the theatre, acting under the direction of Jaswant Thakore and Jaishanicar ‘Sundari’. He designed the sets for two Tagore plays, Mukta Dhara’ and ‘Chitrangada’, and also acted in the former. In 1963, Parekh joined the Weavers Service Centre, an initiative of the All-India Handloom Board, headed by the cultural activist and scholar Pupul Jayakar. Between 1965 and 1975, Parekh lived in Kolkata, where he met and inaugurated lasting friendships with the writer Shakti Chattopadhyaya and Subhash Mukhopadhyaya; the artists Somnath Hore, Jogen Chowdhury, Ganesh Pyne and Shyamal Datta Ray; as well as Bansi Chandragupta and Subroto Mitra from the world of cinema. In 1975, Parekh shifted to New Delhi as a design consultant to the Handicrafts Handloom Export Corporation of India. He resigned his job in 1990 and embarked on a fresh phase of life as an independent artist. A benchmark exhibition of his mixed-media paintings, made in homage to the victims of the infamous Bhagalpur blindings, opened at the Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai, that year, followed soon after by his ‘Banaras Landscapes’ at the Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 1991. Since then, Parekh has held periodic solo exhibitions, participated in a series of group shows and been shown in crated exhibitions, most recently, ‘The Pursuit of Intensity’ (FoundationB & G, 2009). Penguin Published Parekh’s book, Banaras: Painting the Sacred City, in 2005; and Mapin/Lund Humphries published a collection of essays on his work, Manu Parekh: Banaras, Eternity Watches Times, in 2007. In 1992, the Government of India honoured Parekh with the Padma Shri.
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