Sahib, HPB aur Ghulam: Khandala’s verdant and perfumed abyss
01/24/2010 · Alexander Keefe
Rani Mukherjee wants to know what there is to do in Khandala. H.P. Blavatsky has some advice for her, in From the caves and jungles of Hindostan, a sensationalist post-spiritualist travelogue of India, written during 1879 and 1880 for the pages of the Russki Vyestnik and translated into English in 1902. In this excerpt, HPB and her entourage are sitting out on their bungalow’s veranda in the famed hill station, trading stories about Atlantis and discussing Dayanand Saraswati’s theory that the Sanskrit word pātāla (i.e. “hell”) originally was used for the Americas (i.e. underworld), which were visited by ancient Indians via the Bering Strait. Suddenly, their innkeeper issues an ominous warning:
It was long past midnight, but we still sat listening to this legend and others of a similar kind. At length the innkeeper sent a servant to warn us of the dangers that threatened us if we lingered too long on the verandah on a moonlit night. The programme of these dangers was divided into three sections—snakes, beasts of prey, and dacoits. Besides the cobra and the “rock-snake,” the surrounding mountains are full of a kind of very small mountain snake, called furzen, the most dangerous of all. Their poison kills with the swiftness of lightning. The moonlight attracts them, and whole parties of these uninvited guests crawl up to the verandahs of houses, in order to warm themselves. Here they are more snug than on the wet ground. The verdant and perfumed abyss below our verandah happened, too, to be the favourite resort of tigers and leopards, who come thither to quench their thirst at the broad brook which runs along the bottom, and then wander until daybreak under the windows of the bungalow. Lastly, there were the mad dacoits, whose dens are scattered in mountains inaccessible to the police, who often shoot Europeans simply to afford themselves the pleasure of sending ad patres one of the hateful bellatis (foreigners). Three days before our arrival the wife of a Brahman disappeared, carried off by a tiger, and two favourite dogs of the commandant were killed by snakes. We declined to wait for further explanations, but hurried to our rooms. At daybreak we were to start for Karli, six miles from this place.
Aur kya?
Eqbal Mehdi’s Charcoal Drawings
01/23/2010 · Mansi Shah
“It all started at the age of eight when he drew a picture on a wall with a piece of charcoal, stolen from his mother’s stove.”
NGUZUNGUZU DISCOPRANCA
01/23/2010 · Mansi Shah
(via Tagbanger)
The plant hunters: or, Adventures among the Himalaya mountains (1859)
01/20/2010 · Alexander Keefe
Illustrations from The plant hunters: or, Adventures among the Himalaya mountains, written in 1859 by Irish-American writer Mayne Reid, who specialized in pulpy adventure novels. On a side note, the young Vladimir Nabokov was a big fan of Reid, especially of a book called The Headless Horseman (1866), which Nabokov later remembered as his favorite childhood adventure novel…
A Mysterious Monster
Lost in the Cave
The Fishing-Birds
The Death of the Man-Eater
Ossaroo Chased by Wild Dogs
Brotherhood of the Boat
01/18/2010 · Mansi Shah
Brother Marvin — Jahaji Bhai
The indentureship and the slavery
Bind together two races in unity (Achcha dosti)
There was no more Mother Africa
No more Mother India, just Mother Trini (Jananbhoomi)
My Bahut Ajah planted sugarcane
Down in the Caroni plain
Ramlogan, Basdeo, Prakash and I, Jahaji Bhai
Brotherhood of the boat, Jahaji Bhai
Brotherhood of the boat, Jahaji Bhai
Coverlets of Chamba
01/17/2010 · Mansi Shah
Chamba Rumal
Himachal Pradesh, India
Late 19th c., satin stitched silk on linen, 24″ x 24″
Chamba Rumal
Himachal Pradesh, India
Early 20th c., silk on linen, 16″ x 16″
Pyasa Shaitan
01/15/2010 · Grant Davis
Starring Kamal Hassan, this rare Hindi horror gem was released in 1984.
Creepy synthy Goblin-esque title track and title sequence in beloved HOBO!
Babu Eshwar Prasad
01/10/2010 · Mansi Shah
Untitled, 36 x 48 in., Acrylic on canvas
Untitled, 48 x 65.5 in., Acrylic on canvas
Anish Kapoor
01/08/2010 · Alexander Keefe
Confession: I’ve walked by Anish Kapoor’s Chicago “bean” (ok, ok: Cloud Gate) one too many times, and if familiarity has not, in this case, bred any real contempt, it has bred something akin to disinterest. It is an expensive-looking, starchitectural funhouse mirror cloaked with the same solemn air of profundity that the art directors of BMW web-ads achieve with a far greater economy of means, and far less self-importance. In a sense, it is perfectly emblematic of the corporatized busy funness and funny business of the Millenium Park vibe in general, and of the AT&T Plaza in particular, where the orecchiette-shaped behemoth sits demanding attention, looking a bit like a random freeze frame snatched from a sci-fi film: the part where a giant malevolent metallic demonoid robot shape-shifts into a fast-moving blob of all-devouring, extraterrestrial mercury.
Stilled in the midst of this collosal machinic alchemy, however, it evokes neither awe nor terror. A far better aesthetic journey can be had perusing the many amateur youtube videos featuring the object in question. And maybe, in the end, this simple technique could stand as a useful measure of the efficacy of any art object these days—and provide a telling spectrogram of its aura: ask yourself which is more interesting, the work itself or the youtube videos made of it by tourists goofing around? The Cloud Gate as it were, or the beloved “Bean”? Either way, it is most accurately categorized as an art-ertainment mega-bauble, one short step away from the Wynn Las Vegas. Watch out, Chicago: the Great Whore of our contemporary and cosmopolitan (remember, this is Anish Kapoor we are talking about!) Babylon has lost an earring on the way back to her suite, stoned and speeding, after a long and weird night at the Cirque de Soleil afterparty.
Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate (2004)
Anish Kapoor has made a career out of this sort of midbrow accessibility, engaging and cleverly surprising, producing gentle aha-moments and a sense of having thought something big and ennobling. This American Life, Wes Anderson, The English Patient and Malcolm Gladwell are all staring at me right now saying: “what the hell’s your problem?”
My strong feelings on the matter notwithstanding, when I was in New York last month I stopped by the Guggenheim to see his Memory. It is a corseted and ruddy corten-steel zeppelin, somewhat deflated looking although still plenty bulging and tumescent, belted and bolted and stuffed into a room seemingly too small to contain its swelling immensity. And that right there tells you that Anish Kapoor’s preferred brand of heavy-handed populism is about to nail you with a David Copperfield-style ship-in-a-bottle effect. Don’t fall for it. It’s the sort of thing that appears to have worked some magic over cosmopolitan sensibilities in this decaying late-capitalist moment of ours but the imagineer’s spell, after all, isn’t that powerful. There is a whiff of Andrew Carnegie’s megalomania about Kapoor’s work, an atavistic steel-baron gesturalism that imparts an old-fashioned appeal (this one is patinated with powdery-looking rust, an au courant steampunkish touch), and there is the inescapable stench of rampant Jindalism as well, the icy and soulless stainless-steel rot of maximalized modernist minitude.
Anish Kapoor, Memory (2008)
Memory wants so badly to be interpreted that it practically coerces it out of you. Jammed in to its undersized quarters, and forcing curious visitors to navigate uncertainly through the early-period Kandinskys and lavatory waiting-areas of the Guggenheim to take it all in, it is all about Memory, which also grows really big as time goes on, and also takes on a kind of slippery steel skin. The seams are visible, but they are tight. Nothing could escape from there… or could it? If you could open a window into it—but you can!—you would see a black square of absolute darkness—but I think I see a little light in there!—an unenterable black hole of memory and time past. I’m feeling like memory is empty and yet it is full. It is the past, but it is also endlessly protean and capable of creative change and refashioning! That black square sometimes looks flat and two-dimensional, like a painting, and sometimes looks three-dimensional, like a cosmic door. (I am at heart your guide on otherworldly journeys in time and space, says Kapoor with this, really working as a painter, but doing so surreptitiously by actually working as a sculptor). Much as in the David Bromberg joke about the original leather-bound edition of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet with all the significant passages underlined, here too every stinking word is underlined.
But you know I actually enjoyed myself standing there digging the op-art special effects emanating from this dead-black yolk of a hundred-year egg, this unplayable ocarina of the titans. It was much better than Cats, which is also about memories. I felt a yawning sort of gravity in front of that window-door, a dicey pull into the enclosed and yet bottomless black. It even felt safely dangerous for a moment. That and the fact that it doesn’t feature dildos (Chelsea’s galleries right now, wow, dildo-central)… it may be just enough. But if challenging and dark post-Minimalist beauty is what you’re after, go upstairs and see what Kitty Kraus did with a light bulb full of black paint and two panes of glass. Mr. Kapoor, if you insist on plying me with quasi-mystical promises, then offer me hard, maddening wine, not some sweet watery spritzer!
Amar Chitra Katha
01/04/2010 · Mansi Shah
Special Exhibition Lecture:
Heroes and Villains in India’s Amar Chitra Katha Comics
Sunday, January 10 | 2:00 pm @ LACMA
Karline McLain, assistant professor of South Asian religions at Bucknell University, will discuss the mythological and historical heroes and villains of India’s most beloved comic book series, Amar Chitra Katha. She will provide insight into the stylistic, editorial, and ideological choices that went into the making of these comic books. Her recent book, India’s Immortal Comic Books: Gods, Kings, and Other Heroes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009) was awarded the Edward Cameron Dimock Jr. Book Prize in Indian Humanities by the American Institute of Indian Studies. This lecture is held in conjunction with the exhibition Heroes and Villains: The Battle for Good in India’s Comics.
Brown Auditorium | Free, no reservations
This lecture is made possible by the Southern Asian Art Council at LACMA.