Documentation of contemporary art gaining momentum

Documentation of contemporary art is critical for its growth and popularity. Unfortunately, there haven’t been many good books available for laypeople owing to the art world’s sheer apathy. Having realized this lacuna, many leading galleries are now consciously working on quality publications.

For example, the Art Alive Gallery has also emerged as a leading publisher of art books. It entered this domain with a publication on veteran artist KS Radhakrishnan in 2004. Since then it has come out with about ten comprehensive books, like ‘A Life in Art: Raza, Faces of Indian Art’ (photographs by Nemain Ghosh). Two of its significant books released this year are ‘The World on a Canvas — A Visual Voyage’ tracing Paresh Maity’s life & art, and ‘Jayasri Burman: A Mythical Universe’.

This activity has been a labor of love for the gallery, as its director Sunaina Anand stated in an interview: “I’ve been personally involved at every stage of the production - from the initial discussions on the books with the researchers to briefing and coordinating with respective artists, writers, photographers and designers. It gives me a great satisfaction in collating and creating something of immense archival value to be read and enjoyed by posterity.”

The gallery has gone for an overseas foray through a tie up with several distributors in Europe, the US, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. There’s clearly a growing interest internationally in contemporary Indian art. Major art book publishers are looking to focus on it for their readers. For example, French publishing company Albin Michel has already published the book on SH Raza’s works, entitled’ Mandalas’ by Olivier Germain-Thomas along with Art Alive.

The books courtesy Art Alive are available on the galley website as well and on sales sites of invariably all major Indian and international bookstores and. They are also there in The Metropolitan Museum of Art collection. Mumbai based Guild Gallery’s Shalini Sawhney points to a lack of distribution channel for books for international reach so that the artists get proper exposed.

The gallery has come out with titles on artists like TV Santosh, A, Ramachandran, KG Subramanyan and Sudhir Patwardhan. Vikram Bachhawat of Aakriti Gallery and Chisel Arts underlines the need for institutional support.