J'AIPUR Journal

02/11/2024

Little pleasures lately (October edition) 🤎…
1.) Stepping into the lobby of the Plaza Hotel and being enveloped by timeless beauty and elegance.
2.) Relishing every last bite of a delicious barfi tarte at Indian Accent .
3.) Watching Central Park transform into a shimmering golden canvas, celebrating the beauty of the season.
4.) Indulging in a creamy cup of hot chocolate at on Lexington Avenue, making it a perfect stop on crisp autumn days.
5.) Exploring the thoughtfully curated Quarters design showroom, a feast for the senses.
6.) Admiring exquisite plate ware at the new Ganori Café at the Bergdorf Goodman department store.
7.) Attending enchanting fall ballet performances at Lincoln Center .
8.) Taking a break during the workday at favourite midtown coffeeshop .
9.) Gallery hopping in Tribeca to discover new inspiring exhibitions.
10-11.) Enjoying fresh mint tea amidst the serene surroundings of the lovely .
12.) Book shopping at the beautiful new Assouline boutique on Madison Avenue.
13.) Appreciating the refreshed and refined spaces of the iconic Hotel.
14.) Wearing new shoes in a luxurious shade of chocolate brown, the colour of the season.

09/10/2024

I came across this incredibly interesting exhibition whilst gallery-hopping in Tribeca this afternoon. The installation, titled Sound Lines, is by New York-based artist Aki Sasamoto (b. 1980, Kanagawa, Japan) and on view at Bortolami Gallery until Oct. 26th. It’s comprised of oversized, handmade fishing lures suspended from a network of motorized springs. If you scroll through the slideshow, you will hear the sounds.

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Each of Sasamoto’s suspended lures houses a kitchen tool; a knife, a strainer, a whisk, a spatula, which quake at seemingly random intervals, triggered at the turn of a motor. The effect is a choreography of catalytic movements set to a metallic soundscape as the coils zip and the kitchen implements rattle within. Historically, sounding lines are among the oldest navigational instruments. Composed of a rope and a heavy weight, the simple tool has been used to measure the depths beneath a ship for hundreds of years. In the gallery, however, Sasamoto’s sounding lines might quantify the profundity of interpersonal relationships rather than measure the depth of water. Situated between sculpture and performance, the constellation of lures in the gallery, tethered via supple springs, allude to the physical and psychological distance between things, people, and places, relative to each individual position.

Fishing lures might be categorized into two types: those that look like a fish, and those that move like one. Within the niche fishing culture, an aphorism says that the first type of lure (conspicuous and flashy) is said to catch only fishermen—an apt metaphor for function over form, substance over style, quality over quantity. For the artist, it is the latter category of lures—those with life-like movement (or action) that matters. The same might be said of relationships. Sasamoto’s trembling, tenuous network manifests how an action causes a reaction, how each lure or locum might be affected and how it might appear.

Notes 🖊️ via Bortolami Gallery

28/09/2024

It’s officially gallery-hopping season in New York. Here are some photos from the opening exhibition I attended the other day at Aicon Gallery featuring ‘The World is a Loose Stitch’ by artist Ruby Chisti which is on view through October 26, 2024.

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“Chishti focuses on a motif that has permeated her practice over the years: her cloth women. Made from assemblages of stuffing and recycled pantyhose, these women are lovingly created, allowed to exist in natural shapes and poses, relaxed and resting–the hand of their maker driven by an unmistakable veneration of womanhood and the female form.

The cloth women in this new series rest on sofas, type at laptops, and even hold miniature cloth children against their shoulders. As they engage in these seemingly mundane tasks, however, they each wear their own ornate helmet, a shiny signifier of their strength. Chishti affectionately refers to these figures as her “everyday warriors.”

Her female warriors highlight the invisibility of women’s labor. By crowning them with these helmets, the power in these acts become clear. Chishti has long sought to honor the overlooked and underrepresented women who have preceded her. The homemakers, the seamstresses, and the caretakers–women are constantly supporting the world around them. When they see a tear, they patch it up; when they see a loose stitch, they sew it back together. Using a traditionally domestic medium, Chishti emphasizes the ways that invisible women’s work actually keeps the world going.”

Notes 🖊️ via Aicon Gallery.

22/09/2024

Here’s a small selection of works I recently saw as part of the Asia Art Week exhibition ‘Francis Newton Souza: The London Years, Masterworks from the Collection of Navin Kumar’ assembled over the course of more than forty years by Navin Kumar, one of the first Indian gallerists based in the United States.

The exhibition focused on works created by Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002) between 1949 and 1967, the almost two decade period when the artist was based in London, which came to define his career and cement his status as India’s most legendary modernist.

Goa-born Souza was expelled from school twice as a youth before ultimately deciding to become an artist. Opting to join the company of other radical artists and revolutionaries, he joined India’s Communist party in 1947 and co-founded the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). However, Souza quickly grew frustrated with the lack of patronage and aesthetic identity in India. Looking for acceptance, he left his native country in 1949 bound for London.

For nearly two decades, Souza would remain in the English capital. It was during those years that, through challenge and hardship, the artist would define his career and cement his legacy as one of India’s most celebrated modern painters.

🖊️ Notes via Christie’s

23/05/2024

A home without books is like a body without a soul…📚

14/05/2024

📸 Homai Vyarawalla (1913–2012), commonly known by her pseudonym Dalda 13, was India’s first woman photojournalist. 🖋️ She began her career in 1938 working for the Bombay Chronicle, capturing images of daily life in the city. Vyarawalla worked for the British Information Services from the 1940s until 1970 when she retired. In 2011, she was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award of the Republic of India and was amongst the first women in India to join a mainstream publication when she joined The Illustrated Weekly of India. Google honored her with a doodle as India’s “First Lady of the lens” in 2017.

“People were rather orthodox. They didn’t want the women folk to be moving around all over the place and when they saw me in a sari with the camera, hanging around, they thought it was a very strange sight. And in the beginning they thought I was just fooling around with the camera, just showing off or something and they didn’t take me seriously. But that was to my advantage because I could go to the sensitive areas also to take pictures and nobody will stop me. So I was able to take the best of pictures and get them published. It was only when the pictures got published that people realized how seriously I was working for the place.”
— Homai Vyarawalla in Dalda 13: A Portrait of Homai Vyarawalla (1995)

{Photo: Sam Panthaky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images}

12/05/2024

An appropriate day to share this tender artwork titled The Bath (1891) by prolific American artist Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) who is associated with the Impressionism art movement (developed in France in the 19th century and based on the practice of painting out of doors and spontaneously ‘on the spot’ rather than in a studio from sketches.)

🖋️ In 1890, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris held a large-scale exhibition of Japanese prints that strengthened Mary Cassatt’s interest in printmaking. The exhibition inspired her to create a series of 10 color aquatints. The Bath is the first print in the series and derives from an extensive group of related works of mothers and children.

Japanese art influenced not only Cassatt’s choice of subject matter but also her technique and composition. Japanese woodblock prints commonly depicted women bathing children.

Cassatt’s woman and child are neither clearly European nor Asian. She rendered the figures and tub as two-dimensional shapes. Indeed, she almost completely eliminated the traditional shading and tonal variations that create the illusion of depth in Western art.

{Soft-ground etching with aquatint and drypoint on paper, 12 3/8 x 9 5/8 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts , Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; Photo by Lee Stalsworth}

30/03/2024

It’s always delightful to receive photos from J’AIPUR readers enjoying the magazine at home. Thank you ! 💛

26/03/2024

Molly Hatch, “40 Porcelain plates, hand-painted”, 2023, USA.

26/03/2024

Happy Holi 🖼️ “Prince Playing Holi in Harem” (c. 1800), National Museum, New Delhi.

🖊️ Holi, the festival of Spring, is also when love and sensuality bloom as this Deccan-style painting by an unknown artist depicts. The countryside is bathed with color and fragrance whilst the subjects seem to be maddened by the colors of Holi and the season’s compulsions. The passionate young prince is touching his beloved and she makes no resistance. Her shyness however is shared by some of her companions who look away, perhaps feeling the same pull of love as their mistress. The artist has symbolized the festival through the spray-pipe in the hands of one of the attendants and the colour-spots scattered all around. Two women are playing on the flat and round drums while another is probably singing the song of Holi.

25/01/2024

30/12/2023

From the archives: a tiny selection of photos of the magazine received from readers all across the globe. I look forward to bringing you more beautiful content across print, digital and social media formats in 2024. Thank you dear readers for your continued support.💛🙏 - Rupi

30/12/2023

East-meets-West at Studio Frantzén, a restaurant in London’s Harrods department store designed by Joyn Studio. Notice the gridded geometry, warm woods, curved walls, glass bricks and paper lampshades that contribute to this ‘Japandi’ design style in which Scandinavian and Japanese influences come together.

“Inspired by the journeys of our predecessors to the far east, where they assimilated influences and pioneered a style known as Swedish Grace, we embraced the resonances between traditional Japanese and Nordic architecture and craftsmanship.” — Ida Wanler, Joyn Studio

{Images via Dezeen & Joyn Studio. Photography by Åsa Liffner.}

28/12/2023

Princess Durri Shehvar Berar, only daughter of the former Sultan of Turkey, wearing a jewelled sari in India, circa 1944. (Photo by Cecil Beaton/ Imperial War Museums via Getty Images)

24/12/2023

“The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive. They dream vividly, and can often recall their dreams the next day. They love music, nature, art, physical beauty. They feel exceptionally strong emotions—sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear. Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments—both physical and emotional—unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss—another person’s shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.” ~ Susan Cain, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Artwork: The Lady with a Mirror (1894), oil on canvas by Raja Ravi Varma