The central theme of the forthcoming issue, guest-edited by cultural theorist and curator Nancy Adajania, and edited by Bhavna Kakar, is the Sacred. It deals with a complex question that people fear to address: In a society where the intelligentsia are wary of religious experience, while political forces instrumentalise religion through the politics of identity, is it possible to discuss the sacred as a source of regeneration? TAKE/ Sacred will reflect critically on the resources of the sacred and the varied interpretations it has received from artists, architects, sociologists, poets, historians, theorists and other actors in the cultural domain; the focus will be on the visual arts and their relationship to other cultural articulations.

TAKE/ Sacred includes a number of special contributions by eminent Art critics, Theorists, Poets, Architects, anthropologists and artists exploring this tendentious theme like Nikos Papastergiadis, Hammad Nassar, Ala Younis, Nancy Adajania, Nilima Sheikh, Anita Dube, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Ram Rahman, Baiju Parthan, Agung Hujatnikajennong, Vivek Menezes, Lina Vincent Sunish, Valsan Koorma Kolleri, Deepika Sorabjee, Neha Choksi, Smita and Mustansir Dalvi, Gieve Patel, Ranjit Hoskote, Rudi Heredia, Kaiwan Mehta, Wael Shawky, Valsan Koorma

Also, we have our book and exhibition reviews and regular columns by Nivedita Magar, Himali Singh Soin, Rosalyn D'mello, Anushka Rajendran, Sujata Assomul Sippy, Georgina Maddox, Manisha Gera Baswani, Pushpamala N, Bhavna Kakar and Hemant Sareen.

Civilization and architecture are perhaps synonymous. As much as built architecture is a ubiquitous model to tame and direct space, air, and light in their most utilitarian sense, the lived qualities that it enables, such as the experience of natural phenomena, memory, history and the relationships it nurtures are what distinguish it. Yet, as Walter Benjamin suggests, it may not be possible to ‘get hold’ of a building, at least not in the way that it might be possible to get hold of a painting or a sculpture. But through photography, one might be able to get hold of architecture. While a physical building is owned and used, a photograph of it is able to isolate, define, interpret, exaggerate or even invent a cultural value for it. The cultural value of buildings is what we call ‘architecture’ and that it is inseparable from photography. Often, what we end up equating with the essence of the original structure is merely the quality of the photograph. However, as a publication, we are capable of generating discourse around architecture only through its representation — in words, images and sketches, and our focus on photography have been one way to remain self-aware of this symptom and limitation. 
Excerpt from editorial by Bhavna Kakar, contributions from: Adwait Singh || Anushka Rajendran || Ashok Ferrey ||Asim Waqif || Avni Doshi || Bharath Ramamrutham || Bharti Lalwani || Bhavna Kakar ||Dayanita Singh || Devika Singh || Diwan Manna || Dominic Sansoni Fabien Charuau||Gunjan Gupta || Hera Büyüktaşçıyan || JJ Valaya || Madeleine Klett || Manisha Gera Baswani ||Martand Khosla || Mila Samdub || Nityan Unnikrishnan || Peter Nagy  Premjish Achari || Radhika Chopra || Rahul Sharma || Rajeev Lochan || Randhir Singh || Rattanmol Singh Johal || Samar Jodha || Saryu Doshi || Shalmali Shetty || Shanay Jhaveri  Sharmini Pereira || Shaunak Mahbubani || Shrinjita Biswas || Shrinkhla Sahai Sumesh Sharma || Skye Thomas || The Phantom Lady || Thukral and Tagra || Vir Kotak

"This issue of TAKE, returns to an often-quoted maxim: “Writing about art is like dancing about architecture.” There is perhaps some truth to this. Is writing any less of a creative exercise than art making? Or does the creative in writing reside only in its fiction? Artists and writers of fiction have always been inspired by each other, occasionally drawing further close to generate analyses of each other’s work. This issue forks in its intent. It is, as several of our issues have been, an homage to art criticism, by emphasizing the importance of its form with respect to the subject it describes, salvaging it from the footnotes of art history. On the other hand, it is also an experiment in publishing art writing that takes on a language comparable to that of art making, a narrative that is ostensibly an instance of creative practice." - Excerpt from editorial by Bhavna Kakar
With contributions from:
Adwait Singh | Anoop Panicker | Anushka Rajendran | Avantika Bhuyan | Avni Doshi | Asad Lalljee | Ashish Rajadhyaksha | Belinder Dhanoa | Bharti Lalwani | Bhavna Kakar | Gayatri Rangachari Shah | Himali Singh Soin | Iftikhar Dadi | Ingo Niermann | Karthik Shankar | Natasha Ginwala | Madhu Jain | Manish D Mishra | Manisha Gera Baswani | Manoj Nair | Mario Fusco | Meera Menezes | Rachael A Rakes | Sarnath Banerjee | Sarover Zaidi | Seema Bhalla | Shubhalaxmi Shukla | Simon O'Sullivan | Stephanie Bailey | Sujata Assomull | V Sanjay Kumar | Varun Rana

"The current issue of TAKE proposes a careful examination of the myth-lore and utopias with the view to excavate disused frames and imaginative designs that would help us build a metaphorical ark preparatory for the times of ecological turbulence that lies ahead. This has translated into an anthology of experimental/utopian writings seeking to revise and ethicise the existing relational configuration between the human and the more-than-human with a specific focus on the ‘botanies of desire’ and dietetics. 
 The modern kitchen — how we think of kitchens, what they do, and how we can reconceive their role, and the role they play in bringing people together — is constantly being revisited in contemporary cultural and artistic practice. Food has become a hotly contested discursive entity in the current geopolitics — from the homogenising rhetoric leveled at the European Federation of Food Banks to the hegemonising politics of the biotechnology giants like Monsanto. As a consequence, food and botany are the two domains that this issue of TAKE undertakes to investigate in order to churn novel ways of thinking about ecology." - Editorial Excerpt by Bhavna Kakar

With contributions by 
Adwait Singh | AES+F | Ana María Bresciani | Ashish Kothari | Bhavna Kakar | Bronislaw Szerszynski | Chloé Wolifson | Chus Martínez | D. Graham Burnett | Elin Már Øyen Vister | Fernanda Garcia | Gopal Mirchandani | Gopika Nath | Gulammohammed Sheikh | Heather Davis | Himanshu Kadam | John Xaviers | Jyothidas K. V. | Kamayani Sharma | Katharina Domscheit-D’souza | Liv Bugge | Manisha Gera Baswani | Mario D'Souza | Nabil Ahmed | Owais Husain | Paroma Maiti | Radhika Mulay | Ramya Sharma | Ravi Agarwal | Rita Datta | Ritika Kochhar | Sasha Engelmann | Stefanie Hessler | Sugata Ray | SymbioticA (Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr) | T. J. Demos | Tausif Noor | The Center for Genomic Gastronomy (Zack Denfeld and Cathrine Kramer) | Tomás Saraceno | Wood Roberdeau

TAKE Studio

Contrary to the white cube, the artist’s studio is where the art object is vulnerable, not sacrosanct. It is touched, moulded, destroyed, built, lived and not merely displayed, subject to sanctioned iconoclasm and vandalism. The studio houses not-so- sublime back-stories of painstaking labour, paint-smeared overalls and the odd worn out desktop running on Windows XP. It is an incubation space: for ideas – tangible or intangible, art – material or immaterial, commodities – sellable or impending dismantlement. It is often treated as the assembly line for artworks. Then there are the apparent paradoxes that remind us that the studio and its constituents too have their aura, not just charm. It is the temple for the process, and the process is no less. The process too is art. Francis Bacon’s studio was meticulously recreated and displayed, down to the last speck of dust at the Hugh Lane Gallery, for permanent display. Rabindranath Tagore’s pocket book with doodles and notes, a prototype for the idea of the mobile studio, was recently auctioned for Rs. 20,625,000 by Christie’s in India.
In guises varying from computer desktops to massive industrial spaces, studios escape essentialised definitions. This issue of TAKE tours this expanse of implications to map and question the conceptual and physical domain of the studio.

- Excerpt from the Editor's Note, Bhavna Kakar

With contributions from Amrita Varma, Andrea Fernandes, Anushka Rajendran, Bharti Lalwani, Bhavna Kakar, Dayanita Singh, Deepanjana D. Klein, Diana Campbell Betancourt, Dr. Alka Pande, Dr. Seema Bawa, Georgina Maddox, Gopika Nath, Ina Puri, Juliana Driever, Manisha Gera Baswani, Meera Menezes, Mustafa Zaman, Nikhil Raunak, Oindrilla Maity Surai, Pooja Iranna, Raqs Media Collective, Samit Das, Shivani Chandra, Shubhalakshmi Shukla, Suresh Jayaram, The Phantom Lady and Waswo X. Waswo.

What are the mysterious ways in which the art world works? It is undeniably built upon commercial transactions and consequently the market. The circuit gives the impression that it can easily be mapped by defining networks that include the dealer, galleries, auction houses, collectors and museums. Yet it is not as simple as that. Not merely because the art world in its current form comprises much of non-collectible, site specific and performance art (whose traces have found ways to even be commodified to generate revenue) but also because it is a complex system that encompasses commissioning, funding, production, labour, specialised-labour, conservation, presentation, lighting, display, travel, documentation, archiving, criticism and curation that escapes the traditional channels that commodities that can be owned traverse. The ways in which art can be marketed does not reduce itself to billboards, commercials or advertorials - the idea itself seems absurd. Auction houses, galleries and art fairs probably indicate a straightforward economy, but throw in the proliferation of biennales, foundations, residencies, and funding agencies, and the possibility that one work can simultaneously access all these spaces, we have an alphabet soup, not a sure shot formula of demand and supply.

We are thrilled to present Take - Critic, Issue 15, edited by Bhavna Kakar. This issue focuses on contemporary art writing and criticism given that art criticism has faced large shifts in the last decades, consequently so has the role of the art critic. TAKE - Critic feature critics and their writings, along with several annotated pieces by various acclaimed art critics and writers like Dr Alka Pande, Kishore Singh, Girish Shahane, Geeta Kapoor, Ranjit Hoskote, Nancy Adajania, Sneha Raghavan, Oindrilla Maity Surai, Sophia Powers, Anushka Rajendran, Sabih Ahmed, Vidya Shivadas, Sourav Roy, Dr. Seema Bawa, Abhijeet Tamhane, Raqs Media Collective, Ankita Deb, Sumesh Sharma, Bharti Lalwani, Sunil Mehra, Uday Jain, Gopika Nath, Meera Menezes, Georgina Maddox, Franck Barthelemy, Lina Vincent Sunish, Parni Ray, Kaushik Bhaumik, Gopal Mirchandani, The Phantom Lady, and Manisha Gera Baswani.

We are revisiting a theme from 2012 as we feel that art collecting is something that could benefit from further introspection and study. The issue will be a reading of the collecting practices of several influential collectors of art from South Asia including Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal | Akshay Chudasama | Arjun Sawhney| Darshan Shah | Dara Mehta | Dattaraj Salgaocar | Dolly and Lovraj Talwar | Dr Dick Quan | Dr. Oei Hong Djien | Harsh Goenka | Lekha Poddar | Radhika Chopra | Raj Salgaocar | Rita and Yogesh Mehta | Rudy Akili | Samir Modi |Sandhya Jain - Patel | Shalini Passi | Sunil Hirani | Sunita Choraria | Taimur Hassan | The Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani Museum | Tom Tandio | Uli Sigg | Waswo X. Waswo | Walter Vanhaerents.

Contributions by Sharmistha Ray ∙ Mayank Mansingh Kaul ∙ Charu Maithani ∙ Abha Housego ∙ Nivedita Magar ∙ Bharti Lalwani ∙ Dr Karen Exell ∙ Sonal Singh ∙ Priya Pall ∙ Alia Swastika ∙ Gayatri Rangachari Shah ∙ Bhavna Kakar ∙ Deepanjana Klein ∙ Fatima Karan ∙ Rebecca Anne Proctor ∙ Shireen Gandhy ∙ Darpana Capoor ∙ Anushka Rajendran ∙ Phalguni Desai ∙ Deepika Shetty ∙ Himali Singh Soin ∙ Waswo X. Waswo ∙ Rosalyn D'mello ∙ Hemant Sareen ∙ Niru Ratnam ∙ Varsha Reshamwala ∙ Julia Marchand ∙ Manisha Gera Baswani

TAKE has opted the role of a surveyor of various trends that shape the process and fetishizes the act of photographing – the realisation of various modes of photography, namely fine art photography, conceptual, documentary, archival/historical, activism, gender, fashion, and advertising, and at the same time this categorical understanding has been problematised by several of our contributors. Some of the issues that have emerged repeatedly is the accessibility of the medium and its possibilities in the digital age.

Residencies are increasingly following a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary approach, focusing on collaborations and cultural interactions. Moreover they are informed by their location, social and environmental challenges, and intellectual and political milieu. Given this rootedness in the setting of the residency, we have attempted to cover vast grounds with a geographical approach, featuring residencies from Maghreb [Alya Sebti], South East Asia [Alia Swastika], Brazil [Stefanie Hessler], Iran [Julia Marchand], India [Shreya Ray and Franck Barthelemy], Switzerland [Sibylle Omlin], Italy [Cecilia Canziani], Poland [Aleksandra Ksiezopolska], Netherlands with a special pick of 10 residencies by Robert Kluijver besides other numerous regions, incorporating the quality of an almanac as a goto resource for all interested in residencies featuring experiences, encounters, reviews and listings.

This issue is by no means a comprehensive survey of the topic of sculpture, but I hope it leaves you with some new ideas about the achievements thus far and the potential for sculpture in India. In a country where the climate makes it difficult to maintain any material object, does art have to be permanent? I was privileged to spend time with six artists in conversation about ephemeral sculpture. Their dialogue raised many questions in my head, including obvious ones, how can I support the type of work they are talking about? What is the process to take an idea into a newly commissioned work? How can platforms for public art improve in this country? What are challenges to curating exhibitions with sculpture, especially in the context of the failed India survey exhibitions?

Excerpt from the editorial note by Diana Campbell

Yves Klein in 1959 famously ideated a work called Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility where he sold empty space, an immaterial zone in the form of a certificate in exchange for gold; provided that the man who bought the certificate proceeded to burn it in front of the artist and other witnesses, making this purchase entirely ‘immaterial’. What drove Dino Buzzati and others who went along with this ritual, and paid for it in gold? Why would anyone acquire a work of art without ever being able to entirely posses it? Art makes a commodity and market out of something that has very little material value and at the same time is deemed priceless, which makes it almost impossible to formulaically predict the way the system functions. Yet Yves Klein was able to assume a buyer, a figure that was almost entirely necessary for this work to even come to exist, even as pure idea, and participate in completing it. While cynics would love to relegate collecting art to an investment like any other, driven by capital, what they often do not take into account is that this capital often contributes as much as it profits from the myth-making capacity of the art market. What we attempt to unravel here is the art of collecting, one that feeds and is sustained by the art world.

The biennale is the most widespread form of large-scale exhibition in the world today. It has already left the museum behind as the primary venue where an expanding global public can access the current manifestations and debates in contemporary art. Depending on which body of research you consult, there are between 200 and 250 biennales in existence, in varying states of animation and realised at different levels of scale and intensity. But certainly the number is growing, and while the traditional centres of biennale activity are situated in West Europe, most of the new biennales are located in the global South, in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and in the former Cold-War frontline states of East Europe and the Soviet Union’s successor states.

We have structured this issue as a symposium in several genres, so as to address various aspects of the biennial form, its contexts, achievements and possibilities. 

We have not commented on this scene from the outside; rather, we have reflected on it with empathy as well as criticality, in the artisanal spirit of those who are all too keenly aware of the occupational hazards of the form, and yet remain optimistic about its potential to effect actual cultural and political transformation.

- Ranjit Hoskote
Excerpt from editorial essay

The word ‘design’ encapsulates both a tangible, visual, material entity as well as an abstract order and an area that continues to baffle me. What exactly constitutes design? These two connotations of the word define design in its noun and its verb, the end product and the process, safely locating its understanding at a confluence of both and this issue of TAKE on art dedicated to design attempts to provide an understanding from this vantage point.

Without trying to necessarily focus on the historiography or attempt such an elaborate project that would be unable to do justice to all manifestations of its avatars, given its ubiquitous and universal presence, we have tried to remain informed of such a history of design, going back to its defining presence in shaping Western Modernism through influential movements such as Constructivism, Bauhaus, Art Deco and so on. Also taken account of is the relationship industrial design has with craft and indigenous aesthetics in India, reflecting upon this history through its resonances in contemporary design contexts."

- Bhavna Kakar
Excerpt from editorial essa

TAKE Market

Who is the market maker? Does the bullish market follow a local or global mantra? Can its wobbling be attributed to some definite factors? Does a primary player transverse at a certain stage and don the role of secondary market player to pocket profits and sustain oneself ? Is there a ‘business model’, which can be endorsed as ‘the order of the day’? Is there anything called like the synergy levels of the two different market performers? Can the secondary market successfully manage a living artist’s primary market? These uncertainties and risks and misconceptions inherent in art speculation remain one of the most intriguing subjects of debate amongst the art fraternity.

Market analysts often focus on auction prices when it comes to research on the art market but TAKE Market steers clear of fluctuating figures and instead looks at its evolution through interviews and photo essays of connoisseurs, collectors and consultants like V.Sanjay Kumar, Nitin Bhayana, Dinesh Vazirani, Nirmalaya Kumar, Ina Puri, Rajashree Pathy, Malvinder Singh, Shalini Passi, Radhika Chopra, Lekha Poddar, Manisha Gera amongst others with a focus on collections vis-a vis the art market.

January - June 2018

July - December 2017

January - June 2017

July - December 2016

January - June 2016

July - December 2015

January - June 2015

Issue 15, 2014

Issue 14, 2014

Issue 13, 2014

Issue 12, 2013

Issue 11 2013

Issue 10, 2013

Issue 09, 2012

Issue 08, 2012

Issue 07, 2012

TAKE on art, the leading art magazine in India published bi-annually from New Delhi since 2009, comprehensively covers, reports and critiques art and cultural events from India and abroad. Led by Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Bhavna Kakar, TAKE follows a critical approach to the larger discourse on art through curated issues with contributions by leading writers and critics from across the globe. The magazine has been invested in sustaining critical writing practices in India not just through its own capacity as a publication but also by organising initiatives that try to generate discourse, and keep conversations alive. In the past, the publication has organised writing workshops under the TAKE on Writing series as well as hosted the TAKE TALK series. Significant projects in this direction include TAKE on Residency, in collaboration with IFA at 1 Shanthi Road, Bangalore in 2013, TAKE on Writing, Critic-Community: Contemporary Art Writing at Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts, Goa in 2014 and more recently, Take on Writing - Critical Writing Ensemble (CWE) Baroda Chapter at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda in December 2015 and the CWE Dhaka Chapter, conceptualised by Katya Garcia Anton, in collaboration with OCA, Norway at the Dhaka Art Summit in 2016 supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council. The most recent TAKE on Writing initiatives included The Book – The New Writing Group, a workshop led by Chus Martínez and Ingo Niermann supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council and The Book – Ensemble, both held in New Delhi in December 2016.

The magazine has travelled internationally to events such as Art Basel, Art Basel HK, Art Basel Miami, Dhaka Art Summit and Asia Triennale Manchester, as well as collaborated with landmark events locally such as Experimenter Curator's Hub (2011 - 2016), Insert 2014, Sarai Reader 09: Episode 1, 2 and 3, Amrita Sher-Gil National Art Week and Delhi Photo Festival. 

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TAKE on art - Issue 13, 2014

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