As the year draws to a close, we take this opportunity to share with you a few thoughts that have shaped Artetc: news & views since January 2011. Firstly, it has been our constant endeavour to provide you, dear reader, with a complete reading experience relating to art and culture. It was primarily with this thought in mind that we merged the erstwhile Artetc: news & views togetherso that we can bring together a more specialised and complete approach towards providing you with a sound reader-friendly, all-in-one art mag. It has been truly emboldening that you, dear reader, has not only accepted our approach but has also responded enthusiastically to our efforts. We remain grateful to you for this encouragement. Secondly, in the new avataar, we have continuously tried to look forward when it came to our themes. Trying to break the existing mould, we have tried to take a very incisive view of contemporary trends as well as deal with niche areas that have been around but have never been dealt with in detail.

Thus we had come up with a three-issue series on Printmaking and Printing, while this, along with the previous issue, have dealt with Cutting Edge Art in India.  As we had already pointed out in our previous introduction, Cutting Edge Art in India is still looked upon with suspicion and a certain amount of scorn, especially when it comes to archiving them. You response to the first issue on Cutting Edge Art has been remarkably enthusiastic, and thus in this issue, we decided to give you a further insight into the world of Cutting Edge Art in India by letting the creators/artists speak for themselves. It is for this reason that you will find a lot of artists writing in this issue, making their case. And for their efforts, we take the opportunity to thank our contributors-- Surekha, Pushpamala, Priyanka Dasgupta, Shubhalakshmi, Waswo. X. Waswo, Kartik Sood, Premjish Achari, Tanya Abraham, Sandhya Bordwekar, Uma Prakash, Paula Sengupta, Sonia Khurana, Johny ML, Marnie Dean and others. We also thank Johny ML for guest editing this issue with the same elan that he exercised in the previous one. As a year-end issue, we have also focussed on the art market in great detail, and tried to give a crux of the market trends as they emerged from the auctions around the world.

We would, as always, be happy if all that fulfils your thirst for art-reading. Meanwhile, we also take this opportunity to make a very happy announcement. Emami Chisel Art (ECA) was honoured to host a restrospective of the noted artist Shuvaprasanna and we were honoured to welcome the respected Chief Minister of West Bengal, Smt. Mamata Banerjee, who took time off her extremely busy schedule to inaugurate the show and grace our gallery with her presence.

Do write in with your responses. As I have always stressed, they are the ones that keep us going. A very happy reading, merry Christmas and

a happy New Year.

Richa Agarwal                                                                                                   Vikram Bachhawat