Publisher's Note

 

A big thanks to all of you out there who have written back to us regarding our previous two issues dealing in Prints and Printmaking. To tell you the truth, the idea of coming up with a series on Prints and Printmaking struck us when we found that there was so little written on the subject, especially when it pertained to India.

Yet on closer examination, it was revealed to us that actually the corpus is not that slim as it appears, but is scattered and have hardly ever been looked upon as a definitive whole. It was this scattered nature of the corpus that emboldened us to come up with a series on Prints and Printmaking, focussing on old 'masters'if we may say so to modern, contemporary and cutting edge. After all, India has had a very rich history of Printmaking and Printmakers, with such doyens as the celebrated Raja Ravi Varma setting the trend, irrespective of what interest they may have served commercial or artistic.

At this point, let us share with you a secret. We had originally conceived this as a double-bill but the enormous volume of material that we stumbled upon, thanks to our contributors and our guest editor for the series, Waswo X. Waswo, that we were almost forced into extending it by an issue more to the third. We, as the publishers, do not regret it a bit. It has been a pleasure as well as a learning experience for us to be exposed to such intricacies and such different schools of thoughts in this field.

Coming back to this issue of artetc. news & views, it is our pleasure to introduce two more sections from this issue onwards Random Strokes and Corporate Corner. Random Strokes, just as the name suggests will incorporate everything newsy bits, trendy-bits, off-track bitsin short everything happening in the art scene in India as well as internationally. Corporate Corner, again as the name suggests will focus on corporate art collections, focussing on the modern day patrons, their tastes and their peculiarities. We hope that you, dear reader, will enjoy both these sections.

It is with great pleasure that we also take this opportunity to inform you that artetc. news & views makes its first foray to foreign shores with this issue. This edition will be a fixture at Art Toronto between October 28 and October 31, 2011, and we hope that it will find many kindered souls at this particular Canadan art event. We hope this will bring a greater and better understanding of Indian contemporary art, as, may we humbly pronounce, artetc. news & views is one of those few art magazines which have always given equal importance to global as well as the Indian art scene.

To round up, we reiterate, dear reader, do write back to us as your inputs and suggestions are, we repeat, an invaluable source of sustenance, in this journey of ours to understand and imbibe art as a way of life.

Happy Durga Puja, Happy Dusshera and may we wish all of you, a happy reading with that too.