som - amit - 'visual trajectories' - 'throne of frost' - 'in conversation'

not posted for two days now. not much to report about the day before excpet that mukul and me had lunch with som who is here from the usa at the airport restarant. 'golden chariot' i think it is called.

i spent some time with ak yesterday after a long time. after lunch at 5 spice in bandra we drove to town and were early for the lecture / book opening at ncpa. so instead, we spent some time at the galleries at kalaghoda. i had no idea that at the ngma they were showing ‘visual trajectories’ – a collection of indian art from the pre-colonial era through the post independence experiments up to contemporary work. i saw so many artists work for the first time. i think i need to give myself a course on indian art history. anju dodiyas ‘throne of frost’ is on at bodhi. it was an on-site installation at a palace in baroda that has been dismantled and is on display here in a new form. the panels were two sided pieces with upholstered seats on one side and her paintings of stories, self portraits and ythologies on the other. i am sure it must have felt very different in the original space where reportedly mirrors reflected bits of the paintings on all sides.

the lecture in the evening was a book release of a ‘conversation’ between sen and doshi, two icons of modern indian architecture. i don’t know how we are ever going to be able to escape or go beyond the identity question that seems to be the only real inquiry that we seem to have regarding architectural production. it’s a shame that besides this, which regurgitates images and ideals of a romanticized past, or the exigencies of climatic response there is no other issue that we seem to consider worthwhile. modernity and modernism are confused with each other; the architect is constructed as a tragic hero; the process of creation is mystified by making it transcendental- and therefore only to be ‘felt’ intuitively and therefore beyond conversation, rationality and critique. an individual signature style is developed that makes up in charisma for what it lacks in genuine concern. and in all this a book that positions itself as a theoretical “dialectic”. i guess it is a good thing that at least a need is felt to articulate something in a field notoriously evasive when it comes to talking theory.