Leda as supermodel
Helmut Newton’s1994 shot of Nadja Auermann for Vogue, an image cited by a desperate person as one of the reasons Vogue under Anna Wintour was/is different from the rest of the fashion pack. Cathy Horyn laughs.
Mad Men
There are a lot of wonderful things about the show Mad Men. Its lush visual style, the period (early 1960s), its location (Madison Avenue ad agency), a stunning leading man, slow-punch humour. But the most brilliant thing about the show is watching the male characters discover that women think. In a remarkable episode, the copywriters...
‘Traveling armchairs dream of staying put’
(image from here) My former boss when asked for soundbytes about the Taj used to quote Sahir Ludhianvi. ”Ek shehenshah ne daulat ka sahara lekar/ hum gareebon ke mohabbat ka udaya hai mazak,” he would yell at unsuspecting young TV reporters. Seeing the Taj is like meeting a celebrity. You feel like gushing about how unassuming it is....
Chinese Contemporary Art 101
BEFORE MELISSA Chiu became the Director of New York’s Asia Society Museum in 2004, she was the first curator of contemporary Asian art in the US. Her biggest challenge, then, was pretty basic — convincing people that there was such a thing as Chinese contemporary art. With the subsequent huge interest in Chinese art in...
Swapan Parekh
IN CONVERSATION, Swapan Parekh alludes to the annoyance that iconic photographer Raghubir Singh faced from casual viewers who felt, “I could have taken that picture.” He alludes to it in the context of a danger that he, too, could face. The photographs in his new show Between Me & I, do not possess prettiness, drama or...
Eastward ho…. um…. you know
Yesterday watched Rock on and Padre Nuestra one after the other. Should have watched in reverse order. Rock on was as slick as (to borrow Spellcheck’s phrase) as a used condom falling into an oil slick but also silly in bits. I mean Zahreela, Neela, Peela… lyrics from a 90s Bangalore rocker? Sorry Saar! Farhan...
Slips between the lip and the strip
Chitra Ganesh, Tales of Amnesia, Ghost Dhruvi Acharya, Words III The story about Amar Chitra Katha was great fun to do especially because everyone I talked to also seemed to be having a good time. WHEN ANANT PAI, an engineer from Karnataka, started Amar Chitra Katha in 1967 he wanted to bring entertainment into the...
Cui Xiuwen
The Chinese artist Cui Xiuwen has art that, I imagine, Buffy would like to hang on her walls. Her bloodied school girls are in turn vulnerable and spooky. What does it mean when the same figure is multiplied across an artist’s canvas and across most of the artist’s works? Yue Minjun, Execution Farhad Hussain, Untitled...
Steven Klein
I’ve been reading about W magazine’s old shoot of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt recently. This shoot was cited was yet another sign of insensitivity from Brad Pitt to Jennifer Aniston with whom he had just broken up. Steven Klein‘s feature Domestic Bliss turns out to be quite interesting. It’s as if one of the...
Manjunath Kamath
You know my heart is with NS Harsha but I could love Manjunath Kamat just for this. He is like Kay Ryan in watercolour.
Mathew and Ghosh
The architect couple who have redesigned the old Bangalore jail. BANGALORE’S OLD Central Jail is surprisingly busy for a prison that has been defunct for five years. Small, white structures have sprouted over the 27 acres of land as it is slowly being transformed into an urban park. Unlike Bangalore’s better-known parks, the focus at...
Looking for Sunil
Oh, I have always known Bent is a genius but here is evidence. He has been very into this particular shot by photographer Sunil Gupta for a while. Yesterday it struck him that the reason he likes it so much because it reminds him of this still from the Issac Julien movie Looking for Langston....
