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Our first stop was a tour of the National Gallery of Modern Art and the viewing of the Skoda prize which was an interesting beginning.
I liked the work of Jagganath Panda when we went to visit his studio.
Jagganath in his studio in front of his ten-panel commission for Mumbai airport.
The homes were all tasteful and everything was beautifully placed, surrounded by Indian contemporary, modern European furniture mainly and Indian modernist art. The Indian families went out of their way to make us feel incredibly comfortable. We were all so honoured.<br><br>The gardens were beautiful, we ate out every night in another garden and usually the temperature was very cold - 7 degrees sometimes freezing and magnificent.
I liked this work by Subodh Gupta at Peter Nagy at Gallery Nature Morte
The Indian Art Fair was interesting but I did not make any purchases as the art seemed to me aimed for collectors and their homes rather than curators and their museums. Here are all the ladies at the fair.
The work of Sreshta Rip Premnath which I had previously acquired work from Art Basel at Galleryske in Bengaluru was most interesting,
This work of Hema Upadhyay called Mute Migrations at Chemould Prescott Road Gallery in Mumbai I thought was interesting.
The work of Rehoni Devasher was very beautiful, she was also competing in the Skoda Prize from Gallery 88 in Mumbai.
Outside there was the question of No art or Art which was scattered all over the streets. It was all quite sad to see all the tiers of Indian society: the very very poor, these people were not smiling. Then there were the clean, smiling and busy who lived in temporary homes along the roadsides.
Every building site was accompanied by a city of DIY homes made of brick and corrugated iron where the fat pigs and skinny dogs would comfortably live side by side with their human neighbours. Then the other tiers of society were not much different to ourselves in England.
The common denominator seemed to be everybody and every object had a purpose and a life unlike in our world where so much is neglected and taken for granted.
The locals could not do enough for us, they only wanted to please us and this was their reward, I wish us Brits were more like that.
All the ladies were out in force in the streets buying up every Pashmina in sight totally absorbed by the surroundings.
We ate yet another magnificent Indian banquet surrounded by the beautiful Indian countryside.
The oranges and yellows were everywhere to be seen and unlike England where we have crop circles there are beautiful flower circles all over the place.
Roy showing me some of the beautiful architecture scattered around. The Devi foundation was very interesting, which reminded me of the last Berlin Biennale where the artists had taken over spaces with some guidance. I liked very much this artist painting brick book after brick book. We were welcomed by Lekha Poddar.
We were one evening hosted by Feroze Gujral, Amin Jaffer with Christies in a wonderful ruin of a modernist home where Raqs Media had taken over and they had ripped to pieces and lit in unique ways and even managed to create an Urs Fisher type hole in the middle of the building where we could be viewed eating if you had the head to look down as it was a little disorienting to say the least.
My lovely hostess Farah Rahim Ismail poses for me in her new acquisition bought especially for her three year old son.
One of the most satisfying revelations was the Foundation of Kiran Nadar and her curator Roobina Karode, who had curated a museum quality show in a shopping centre. The show was called Difficult Loves. Roobina and Kiran welcomed us and gave us an inspirational tour.
We were struck by the beauty of the work by Amrita Sher Gil and the sadness of the dead artist Nasreen Mohamedi, also there was a selection of work by seven woman contemporary artists spread throughout the space including Bharti Kher’s sculpture.
In the shopping centre itself was the magnificent nuclear cloud of pots and pans that I wrote about when the work was first shown in Tate Britain. I wonder what the average citizen would make of this. Utilitarian objects placed in a shopping centre not for sale and not to be taken, just looked at and admired. We are living in a very strange world.
The streets of New Delhi were full of pollution and we were always in the car as the town spread for miles and miles but there were always so much to see.
For our last evening we headed to dinner to the Gallery of Peter Nagy called Nature Morte where we met wonderful people such as Lekha Poddar who introduced us to Dayanita Singh who will be having a solo show in the Hayward in October.
Jerome Sans was hanging out with his friend and artist Jitish Kallat.
Subodh Gupta the star of all the mid-career artists was there to support his wife Bharti as it was her show at the gallery.
We even managed to see some real street art even though there was not much of it around.
The highlight for me was the Talwar Gallery where the work of Sheila Makihjani was on show. This is her work on the roof tops.
Another work by Sheila
I was able to visit a couple of galleries where I saw the magnificent modernist artist called M.F.Hussain at the Chawla Art Gallery
