The National Gallery in London is showing an original commission by its first contemporary fellow, the Indian artist Nalini Malani
Artwork from My Reality Is Different by Nalini Malani. (Photos: Luke Walker)
The National Gallery is Britain’s most revered art institution along with the equally venerable Royal Academy. For many decades, these were the two pillars of the British establishment’s conception of great art. Even as all sorts of modern art movements swirled around them, the ‘National’ and the ‘Academy’ stayed grimly besieged, sticking to their guns of the large portraits and Biblical set-pieces and so on. For the longest time, the most modern and radical painter either pile displayed was one Joseph Mallord William Turner, and not because they recognised his radicalism but because they loved his classicism
