Indian Contemporary Art Journal, a quarterly art magazine commonly known as Art Journal is founded in 2009 by a Mumbai-based art institution Kalavishkar. The Art Journal has its genesis in the BAS Art Journal published by the Bombay Art Society (BAS), primarily on the occasion of its All India annual art Exhibition held every year. BAS Art Journal was published annually since 1910 and circulated mostly among society's life members. In 2009 it was made quarterly but could not sustain. As it was obligatory to bring out the next issue of Art Journal for advertisers - artists and art galleries – the responsibility of its publication was entrusted to Kalavishkar during the intense recessionary times in 2009. Since then, Art Journal is published quarterly after renaming as ‘Indian Contemporary Art Journal’.
Each quarterly issue of Art Journal features exhibition reviews, interviews with leading artists, artists’ profiles, in-depth essays by critics, curators, and art writers, along with many other articles & reports on current events, art market etc shared by art writers from different parts of India and the world over.
The print edition of Art Journal is circulated widely and enjoys appx 2,00,000 readership which includes art collectors, dealers, historians, artists, art students, museum directors, curators, connoisseurs, architects, interior designers, and corporate-art-enthusiasts. The copies of the Art Journal are also made available for sale at major Art Galleries at Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Baroda and many other cities.
The Art Journal highlights emerging talent along with established and master artists. As a part of our mission, Art Journal unearths the talented artists who deserve attention but anyhow remained unappreciated and unrepresented.
The COVID-19 pandemic compelled us to halt the print edition temporary and shift to online edition. The Jan 2020 issue was our last printed and circulated issue amongst subscribers and art gallery-book stalls. Once Covid-19 situation normalises, we intend to return to print edition, keeping digital edition too started now for wider reader base.
Rajendra, the founder editor of Art Journal is also the founder and managing director of India Art Festival, a contemporary art fair in India organized since 2011 at Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru. The ‘India Art Festival’ itself was born out the need for funds to sustain the publication of Art Journal. He has edited the Bombay Art Society’s Art Journal from 2004 to 2009;
He has been on the managing committee of the Bombay Art Society for the last fifteen years and has also served on the management committee of Artists’s Centre. Rajendra has written extensively on contemporary art and had contributed to Art India, Creative Mind and Art & Deal, Mumbai Sakal, Tarun Bharat, LokPrabha, Nandan, Metropolis, Every Tuesday among other magazines and newspapers. Currently he is the President of the Bombay Art Society, editor of the Art Journal and Managing Director of the India Art Festival.
Minakshi Patil, a gold-medallist at M.A-Marathi Literature & Aesthetics from Mumbai University has been instrumental in exploring the creative expression and inquiry at the crossroads of visual art, poetry and music. In order to explore how poetry responds to the visual arts, and the visual arts reacts to poetry and influence each other, Minakshi has mounted many fusion shows since 2004 bringing poets, artists, musicians together. The symphonic co-existence of visual art and poetry has seen wonderfully creative results at the fusion shows Minakshi has organised at various venues.
Minakshi, herself an artist, poet-writer and documentary filmmaker juggles with multiple disciplines. Her documentary film on 'Social impact of climate change' has won accolades and was selected in World Bank competition' as top 15 documentaries in hundreds of entries from the world over. Her poetry collection book 'Is it in your DNA' is published by Abhidhanantar Publication. Minakshi's creative and analytical writings, poems, essays have been published in various newspapers and literary magazines since 1995 and her poems are included in the senior college art faculty curriculum of SNDT University, Mumbai. This broad spectrum of her personal and creative life generated in her a kind of aesthetic commitment that is reflected in her poetry, paintings and the time she devote to Art Journal to make it a serious literary work.