If these faces belong to singer Todd Michaelsen — the chakra and crescent are an effective disguise — he must’ve endured hours of face painting for the video for ‘Pagan Blues.’ His wife Reena Shah (Sita Sings the Blues) dances during My Pet Dragon’s live gigs — Brooklyn, Burning Man, L.A. Love the chakra […]
Cartoonists Tom Toles (above) and Ruben Bolling (Tom the Dancing Bug) argue that a satirical drawing, like a turbaned Obama on a New Yorker cover, are only successful if they work without context:
… it’s actually less clear what the satirical intent of The New Yorker cartoon is. It just shows an America-hating, terrorist President […]
Check out Our Delhi Struggle by a Brooklyn couple working at an MNC in South Delhi. The title is a play on ‘daily,’ not just a snarky reminder of heat and dust. They snapped guerrilla 8-bit video game art affixed to the walls of Varanasi:
These imagers were placed here by an artist called Invader. He […]
Sculptor Anish Kapoor who has taken the Freudian fascination for big, shiny things to whole new level talks to The Art Newspaper. Excerpts (emphases mine):
TAN: How has the reception of Indian art changed recently given the success of artists like Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Jitish Kallat and T.V. Santosh?
AK: It’s been a long time coming. […]
The Institute for Contemporary Art is currently floating a large ‘Kapoor’ banner into the Boston skyline. It advertises their Anish Kapoor retrospective, for which they had to slice a hole in the side of their brand-new architectural showcase.
But all I can think of as I’m being driven past on the Silver Line is that levitating […]
The movie version of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis is playing in a couple of theatres in the city, including the PVR in Saket’s Select Mall and the pointlessly named PVR-Europa in Gurgaon. (I think Europa was originally meant to screen…
‘Luncheon Party’ by Raghu Rai. (via Chasing Iamb)
It recently struck me that if you look at even non-cliché South Asian lit covers, such as the U.S. cover for Gifted, they usually have fabricky patterns or some kind of foliage. This is true even of novels on weighty topics, such as A Golden Age, about the Bangladesh genocide. There are some exceptions […]
Bodhi Art Gallery organises talks with reasonable regularity. It is generally sparsely attended. A good show is one where 80% of the chairs are occupied. Yesterday, critic Ranjit Hoskote was in conversation with Atul Dodiya, one of the few artists who can cheerfully call himself a figurative painter without any fear of being outdated, and […]
Apologies in advance - this is a VERY long post. But trust me, it will probably feel shorter than some of the performances described below felt.
Day 5 at Live ‘08
Alliance Francaise (stupid PC keyboard is crap at reproducing the cedilla) is a lovely building in Lodhi Estate. The Indian International Centre - pretty rose garden […]
If you tell anyone Live ‘08 that the performances at the galleries feel a bit like their hired spectacles, like jesters at medieval European courts or Shah Rukh Khan at the Mittal wedding, it’s most likely that you’ll get a spontaneous lecture on the politics of being a performer and how interesting it is to […]
The last time I saw Rehaan Engineer, I glimpsed his red underwear. Last night when I saw him in the distance, he was wearing a Superman t-shirt. Hmmm….
I’m not stalking Mr. Engineer, as much as I’m tempted to. In fact, I could have been in a room with a bed in close proximity to Mr. […]
Badmash’s obligatory Amitabh for President campaign rolls into town again now that the nominees are almost settled. But this year they’ve slicked up the artwork, posting it on a site with a gauzy blue heaven background like Obama’s.
[Obama] looks terrible in a turban… This is a serious weakness. Listen to me, America! There are many […]
A quick word about Amruta Patil’s dark, intense graphic novel Kari: it’s the story of an alienated young woman working in an ad agency in Mumbai while dealing with acute loneliness and the heartache of separation from her soulmate Ruth. (The book o…
The new Goldspot look is unapologetically desi, a courageous choice for an emo band from LA with only one desi member. Crowned with a lotus, their new logo looks like the gold leaf stamped on a sack of atta. It’s rendered in a non-cliché faux Indic font, which is hard to pull off, and reminds […]
Pravin Sathe shows us what overlapping multiple versions of the same TV news story look like in How You See It. [ via waxy]
The afternoon I ran into a former Miss Universe at a Bandra candle shop, I spontaneously decided to spend half an hour there browsing these Indian Christmas ornaments. You’ve never seen knicknacks inspected with such care.
Happy Christmas, Hannukah, Eid.
Some great origami made from money from around the world. Our favorite is Abraham Lincoln wearing a turban.
Thanks PCLD!
Super 7 has just released four new shirts (Ganesha, Kali, Devi and Krishna) from Sanjay Patel and Ghee Happy just in time for the holidays. Right now only children’s and women’s sizes are available. If you are a male hipster, I’m sure you could wear a women’s size and no one would question […]
Looking for that perfect gift this holiday season? May we suggest “Match Book - Indian Matchbook Labels” from Tara Publishing. A great collection of the miniature artwork found on Indian matchbooks. Over 500 illustrations are showcased in this book shaped like, what else, a matchbook.
This book makes the perfect companion piece […]