Art/Culture

By IANS Pune : An online auction of Indian contemporary art, first in 2008, reported a sale of over $7.15 million (Rs.286 million) against a target of $5.1 million. The event, which closed on the weekend, set a world auction record for 21 most sought-after artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists. These included Surendran Nair, Subodh Gupta, Atul Dodiya, Shilpa Gupta, Anju Dodiya, Bharti Kher, T.V. Santhosh, Shibu Natesan, Baiju Parthan and Jagannath Panda.

By DPA, Los Angeles : Magician David Blaine held his breath for 17 minutes and four seconds Wednesday to beat the previous world record of 16 minutes and 32 seconds, set in September by Switzerland's Peter Colat. Blaine, 35, performed the feat on live television, submerged in a tank of water on the Oprah Winfrey Show after breathing pure oxygen for 23 minutes. After surpassing the record he took several deep breaths of air before telling Winfrey that he felt great by achieving "a lifelong dream”.

By TwoCircles.net staff reporter,

New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia’s Academic Council has, in its recent meeting, approved the setting up of the Fayyaz Khan Center for Music and Research which will serve as a forum for practitioners and as a centre for research and documentation.

By IANS, New York : Works by Indian artists totaled $1,748,500, exceeding expectations, in Sotheby's spring series of Contemporary Art sales in New York. The offering was highlighted by a work by Subodh Gupta, one of the most important contemporary artists to emerge from India in a generation, Saat Samunder Paar VII, 2003, which achieved $825,000, a record for the artist at auction, in the evening sale.

By IANS, New Delhi : President Pratibha Patil Monday mourned the death of noted Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar. Tendulkar, 80, one of the greatest Indian playwrights of the post-Independence era, died Monday in a Pune hospital after prolonged illness. He had had been suffering from diabetes and myasthenia gravis, a disease affecting the muscles. A Padma Bhushan awardee, Tendulkar was best known for his plays "Ghashiram Kotwal" and "Sakharam Binder". He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and honoured with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship for lifetime achievement.

By IANS, Mumbai : Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi had announced at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) last November that movies of both 2006 and 2007 would be considered for the 54th National Awards. However, last year's films will have to wait for recognition due to the alleged apathy of bureaucrats. The National Awards for movies released in 2006 were announced in New Delhi Tuesday, while the awards for films of 2007 were postponed by a year.

By IANS, Santiago : Eight perfectly preserved mummies, believed to be some 4,500 year old, were found by workers engaged in a restoration project in Chile's far north, Spain's EFE news agency reported Saturday quoting media report. "These mummies date back to between 2,000 B.C. and 5,000 B.C." archaeologist Calogero Santoro told the daily El Mercurio. The mummies are remains of individuals belonging to the Chinchorro culture, which was one of the first to practice mummification and the perfect condition in which the mummies were found is indicative of their advanced techniques.

By NNN-PTI, United Nations : Thirty-six Indian women, rescued by a non governmental organisation from the degrading task of manually cleaning human excreta, are all set to walk on ramp with leading models before representatives from more than 150 countries here. The women, rescued by Sulabh International Social Service Organisation from Alwar in Rajasthan, yesterday met diplomats and dignitaries at the United Nations and talked about the changes which, they said, had made them for the first time feel like human beings.

By IANS, Chandigarh : Having attracted a large number of foreign tourists year after year, Kerala is now wooing Indian middle-class tourists and holding roadshows to promote the coastal state in several places. “We realise that Kerala has got an image that it is an expensive destination to go to within India. We are now focusing on a special campaign with a 'Dream Season' for domestic middle-class tourists to bring Kerala within their reach,” Kerala tourism director M. Sivasankar said here Friday.

By IANS, Patna : The builders of three Buddhist monasteries under construction in Bihar's Bodh Gaya are to be booked for violating the master plan, an official said Saturday. Irked by the open violation of the master plan near Mahabodhi temple, Buddhism's holiest shrine in Bodh Gaya, Magadh Divisional Commissioner K.P. Ramiyah directed the officials concerned to lodge a report against three Buddhist monasteries and a school on charges of illegal construction.

By Xinhua, Ankara : Two ancient piers belonging to the first centry A.D. have been discovered by archaeologists in the ancient city of Aphrodisias in western Turkey, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported Thursday. The nearly 2,000 year-old piers were discovered by a team of archaeologists led by Roland Smith, a professor of the Oxford University, during their excavations in the ancient city located near Karacasu town in Aydin province.

By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS, New Delhi : India and China are the new faces of Asian art in the global market with works of artists from the two countries commanding high prices, according to experts analysing the commerce of art at an ongoing summit here. Panellists at the India Art Summit Saturday said that the two Asian economic giants were indeed calling the shots in terms of prices. The average price of individual works of high-end Chinese contemporary art was in the range of $19 million, whereas top-of-the-chain Indian artists commanded around $5.5 million.

By Brij Khandelwal, IANS, Agra : Tourism circles and conservationists are concerned about the safety of the Taj Mahal in the wake of terror attacks in a number of Indian cities, the latest of which claimed 24 lives in capital New Delhi. Because of frequent power shutdowns here, the electronic surveillance system, metal detectors and closed circuit TV (CCTV) cameras at the Taj don't function for hours on end. Some months ago, a couple of CCTVs were reported stolen. At any given time, three of the six cameras don't work.

By IANS, Abu Dhabi : An initiative to promote understanding about Islam and the Muslim world to the US entertainment industry and a special tribute to veteran Hollywood star Jane Fonda are among the highlights of this year's Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF). The second edition of MEIFF, to be held here Oct 10-19, will also see prize money across various categories totalling over $1 million, the official Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported.

By IANS, Amritsar : Amritsar's Gobindgarh Fort, built in 1760 and associated with the Sikh warrior king Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was Monday formally handed over by the army authorities to the civil administration here. The fort was in the army's possession from the British times for nearly 150 years. The British authorities had put the fort under the army possession in 1849. The fort had been named after the 10th Sikh guru, Gobind Singh, by Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

By IANS, Lucknow : The India Carpet Expo, the country's only fair for handmade carpets and floor coverings will begin Oct 17 in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, an official said Tuesday. The four-day carpet expo being organised by the Carpet Export Promotion Council (CEPC) is a central government initiative to promote Indian rugs. According to CEPC chairman Ashok Jain, on display will be various types of oriental and contemporary hand-knitted and hand-tufted carpets, as well as flat weaves made of wool, silk and staple fibre from Bhadohi-Mirzapur, Jaipur, Agra, Panipat and Kashmir.

By IANS, Patna : Hundreds of prisoners, including women undertrials, have been performing Chhath puja inside the jail premises across Bihar, observing fasts and offering prayers to the sun god, officials said Tuesday. Nearly 30 prisoners, including 22 women, in Patna's Beur jail participated in the festivities and prison authorities said they had given new clothes to the inmates. The prisoners have also been provided the materials needed for the rituals associated with the festival - like fruits, rice, sugar and coconuts.

By Neena Bhandari, IANS, Sydney : Tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain dazzled Sydneysiders by demonstrating his ability to fuse orchestration, virtuosity and showmanship into a seamless outpouring of music. The tabla maestro's first-ever concert at the Sydney Opera House Sunday was a sell-out success, featuring the traditional repertoire on tabla in solo and duet, as well as collaborations exploring the frontier between traditional and contemporary, folk and classical.

By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS, New Delhi : James McGarrell, one of America's best-known post-war painters, is in India for his first solo Asian show with a collection of 36 paintings - "Astronomies and Pleasures, A New Ragamala" - influenced by Indian classical music and the traditions of Rajput miniature art. The paintings, mostly 11X15 inch frames of water colour and gouache in bright shades of orange, yellow, red, brown, blue and green with Rajput-style borders, are each named after an Indian raga - beginning with the morning Raga Bhairavi and ending with Raga Kedar.

By IANS, Dhaka : Six decades after the death of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the hunt continues for memorabilia connected not only with him, but also his family members, in Naogaon district of northern Bangladesh. The latest to be found, but in a state of neglect, are rare letters written by Rathindranath, the son of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore junior wrote some of them to his wife. They have been found at Potisar area in Atrai upazila of Naogaon district recently along with Rabindranath Tagore's memorabilia like chairs, mirrors and cupboards.

By IANS, Jaipur : The third edition of the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival, which will get off to a gala start Wednesday, will host 116 authors and 30 artistes, including Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, in a unique blend of performing arts and literature. The festival will celebrate the great diversity of writing and writers as well as music and musicians from the US, Britain, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, Mali, Sierre Leone, Algeria, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, a communiqué issue by the organisers said Monday.

By IANS, New York : An Oscar award would be a "great honour" and help do "bigger things", says Indian music maestro A.R. Rahman, a hot favourite to take home a trophy for his music in "Slumdog Millionaire". "It would be a great honour," Rahman told the New York Times in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where he was preparing to perform at the ceremony. "It would help me to do bigger things." Asked to elaborate, Rahman named "some Western directors he would like to work with". "Baz Luhrmann... Ridley Scott. I'm a big fan of Ridley."

By Arpana, IANS,

(A tribute from friend and neighbour Salim Khan) By Salim Khan, IANS,

By IANS,

By IANS, New Delhi : William Dalrymple's "The Last Mughal" continues as number one on the non-fiction list, but Kiran Desai has been dislodged from the top slot by Mohsin Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" as fiction favourite this week. The top 10 in the non-fiction and fiction lists are: Non-Fiction 1. "The Last Mughal : The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857" Author : William Dalrymple Publisher : Penguin Viking Price : Rs.695.00 2. "The War of The World" Author : Niall Ferguson Publisher : Penguin Books Price : £5.50 (Rs.451) 3. "The Secret" Author : Rhonda Byrne

By Prasun Sonwalkar

IANS

Leeds : Two of India's greatest passions - cricket and cinema - came together at the historic Headingley stadium Friday and ignited the emotions of thousands of people from the Indian sub-continent who enjoyed every moment of the IIFA Celebrity Cricket Match.