Top picks on the contemporary world and Indian art scene

Art entrepreneur Dinesh Vazirani of Saffronart and art auctioneer Maithili Parekh in recent interviews to Riddhi Doshi in The DNA India gave their top picks on the contemporary world and Indian art scene. If Maithili Parekh referred to the major grosser of India, the former spoke of the top 5 cutting-edge artworks globally.

‘The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own’: This work by Bharti Kher sold in London for a record $1.5 million. The life-sized elephant is one of the most talked-about works of art by a contemporary Indian artist. The work took her ten months to create. The sculpture is akin to a beacon of India’s avant garde art scene at the beginning of the 21st century.

‘Garden of Earthly Delights III’: This currently holds the record as the most expensive Indian contemporary work to sell at auction. This Raqib Shaw’s work fetched $5 million at Sotheby’s. Working with metallic industrial paints, he pools his vivid hues and manipulates them with a slender porcupine quill to create a marbling and fluid effect. Every detail is outlined in gold. Abundant with flora, fauna and feathered plumes, he further adorns swords, chains, crowns, and eyes with glitter and gemstones, accentuating his vision of excess and the sublime.

‘Sunday Lunch’: This is an important works by Subodh Gupta in oil and enamel on canvas.‘The Artist is Present’: An unsettling piece, recently performed at the MoMA in New York, from artist Marina Abramovic who has dedicated her career to pushing the boundaries of what we perceive as art.

‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’: A revolutionary painting by Pablo Picasso that changed the course of art and which remains cutting-edge even today, over a century after it was painted.‘20:50’: A provocative site-specific installation, through which artist Richard Wilson engages with the idea of space. It immerses viewers in an alternate world where they can raise questions about their realities.

‘Line of Control’: A sculpture by Subodh Gupta that transforms and elevates India’s ubiquitous stainless steel vessels into harbingers of a new global era of consumption and violence.

‘Svayambh’: A monumental kinetic installation by Anish Kapoor with several possible interpretations, that marks and changes the space it inhabits and is also marked and changed by it.