Most artists’ careers are made at the overlapping point of various subject positions - of critics, curators, dealers, historians, collectors, enthusiasts and media houses. And steering these subjectivities, profitably or non-profitably has become the business of art. This issue hopes to somewhat loosen this knot of various strands, and observe if there indeed is a method to the madness of the art world.
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The TAKE Memory is an endeavour to expand the many meanings entailed in the discipline of memory. The issue emerges from this context to identify the ground of inclusive perspective on the lived experiences by extending critical inquiry on the constellation of photo-archives, monuments, memorials, visual culture and digital technology.
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My filter for books is purely an integrity of purpose and the creation and articulation of new bodies of knowledge. Books featured across this issue include those on paintings, botanical drawings, photography, cinema, textiles, design, architecture, ecology, children’s publication, material culture, exhibition catalogues and more; all made public within this new era of the Anthropocene.
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While the pandemic may have killed the viability of running several physical bookstores, the endless lockdowns nevertheless brought us closer to the printed matter and the written word than ever before.
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Wherever you are, the first few months of 2021 has seen a continuation of the widespread devastation marked in 2020 by the global escalation of COVID-19 and the subsequent shift of international discourse, geopolitics, and the liveability index. This issue, Quarantine, responds to our new-found conditions and outlines a multiplicity of viewpoints on the topic highlighting the inherent tension, anxiety, and withdrawal marked by this period.
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This issue of TAKE on Art tries to re-explore the history and the contemporary situations in Bengal in order to regenerate an alternate form of history-writing. Situating the narrative within the framework of a number of iconic images that define art in Bengal, spanning across different historical periods, the idea is to delineate a history in parts to create a whole through a visual narrative.
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The last decade has been the most tumultuous for Indian contemporary art. The 00s witnessed an unprecedented boom that lasted until almost two years ago, when the economic downturn and worldwide recession caused the inflated art balloon to burst with a spectacular bang.
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The quotient of ‘modern’ in Indian art has woven itself around some very potent and receptive expositions. Tracing a transverse path through the delicate transition from the Pre to Post-Independence periods, TAKE on art focuses on the period of 1950-60s.
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With the latest edition of TAKE on Art, we stepped into hitherto unchartered territory bringing a completely fresh perspective of looking at fashion. Breaking away from the traditional essay format, we explored the Indian fashion landscape spanning a century, from the 1920s to contemporary times.
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Between 2011-12, Take on art and I had the chance to collaborate on a special issue on Indian Design. Raising the question of what design means in the context of the country, this attempted to provide a broad set of references and insights from the late 19th Century to the early 2010s, hoping to start a conversation on the need for reflective writing on a subject, trajectories of which have been particularly distinct in the Indian subcontinent.
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