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| Bharti Kher, Hungry Dogs Eat Dirty Pudding, 2004. Photo by Herry Lawford |
LACMA is making an effort to display modern and contemporary art of the Indian subcontinent. Planned for 2027 is an exhibition of the British-born Indian artist Bharti Kher. Melding the hybrid forms of Indian folk art with Dada-esque provocation, Kher's art is widely exhibited in India and Europe, yet is hardly known in the U.S. The exhibition will be LACMA's first solo show of a living Indian artist.
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| Bharti Kher, Black disturbance, high frequency, 2015 |
The small dots are stick-on bindis, a modern version of the ash dot worn on the forehead by Hindu and Jain women.
Comments
> LACMA's first solo show
> of a living Indian artist.
I just hope it's not in a gallery located next to old Indian/Southeast-Asian sculptures and paintings, presumably in the Geffen. However, the LA Times art critic implied the current Realms of the Dharma exhibit in the Resnick indicates a lot of its works (obviously) - some from India - won't therefore be in the Geffen upon its debut.
It's patronizing when curators believe that a contemporary artist's race, ethnicity or home nation somehow requires that his or her works be located based on country, race, geography.
Kher's works look quite similar (style-wise, design-wise, era-wise) to what's in a gallery at Hauser & Writh, the Broad or BCAM, etc.
As for the Whitney, its mission statement of being into American art and American-based artists, has to me always seemed too provincial and limit its full potential.
Now, this is truly rich. The rube calling the Whitney provincial.
--- J. Garcin
The writer instead favors a "throw everything in a bingo wheel and synthesize art history that way" approach.
BANANAS!! Where do they find these people?
> continues to exhibit
> non-Americans.
But in its permanent-display galleries too? I recall when the gatekeepers of the Whitney (or those based in its general location) treated anything not too far beyond the boundaries of NYC as foreign territory. However, the museum's namesake, who died in 1942, was facing a more insular world. Travel and communications during her time were slower and less convenient. But insularity still existed as recently as 1976:
Saul Steinberg's "View of the World from 9th Avenue," published March 29, 1976 on the cover of the New Yorker famously depicts a Manhattan-centric worldview, where the foreground shows 9th Avenue and 10th Avenue, while the rest of the US (including a distant West Coast) and the world are compressed into a tiny, distant horizon. [End quote]
^ For some reason, I thought that provincialism dated back to no later than the 1960s.
> Now, this is truly rich. The
> rube calling the Whitney
> provincial. --- J. Garcin
LOL. I figured your way of commenting was linked to the same person who has also posted texts without using a sig line. I liked thinking this blog had at least one other regular.
BTW, I just notice Bharti Khar is a native of the UK. In effect, she's a British artist. I originally interpreted the listing of her ethnicity (or "in an effort to display modern and contemporary art of the Indian subcontinent") as at least referring to her birthplace. But since she's British (who happens to be of Indian ancestry), describing her as "Indian" really seems overly conscious of her background, maybe even a bit bigoted---inadvertently? purposefully?
It comes off like saying, "some of my best friends are Asian (or black, or Indian, or Latino)."