London, June 1: Indiansare now rich enough to buy back some of their artistic treasures, according toan expert at Christie’s, the London auction house which has placed a pricebetween £1.3 million and £1.8 million on a painting by Syed Hyder Raza.

If Saurashtra, the 200cmx200cm acrylic on canvas, achieves itstarget, it will exceed the previous record of £1,273,250 for La Terre, 1973,another of Raza’s works, set at a Christie’s auction in June 2008.

Well-heeled Indians are flooding London for two auctions onconsecutive days — the estate of Francis Newton Souza on June 9, followed by asale of works by, among others, Raza, M.F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Bhupen Khakhar,Subodh Gupta, Ganesh Pyne, and Jamini Roy on June 10.

The latter auction has three other works by Raza, valued at£5,000, £8,000 and £150,000 but is led by Saurashtra whose £1 million plusestimate has not been plucked out of the air.

This reassurance was given by Yamini Mehta, a Mumbai girl whogrew up in America but moved over after seven years with Christie’s New York toChristie’s London to be its senior specialist and director of the contemporaryIndian art department.

“Raza himself considers Saurashtra to be one of the 10 mostimportant works he has done in his life,” she told The Telegraph.

Raza, who is 88, has been invited to attend the auction.

“The artist, though living in France for more thanhalf-a-century, is a revered master in India and the painting is one of hismost ambitious works he has ever created as homage to his homeland,” Mehtasaid.

“Its size, scale, and expressive brushstrokes radiate thebrilliant colours of India and has a deeply spiritual subtext. In this onework, the artist has worked through all of the themes of his long and variedcareer and serves as the shining example of one of the best works in this fieldto come to auction.”

The value depended on “the size of the painting, the palate,where it fits into the artist’s oeuvre”, Mehta explained.

She also described Jamini Roy’s depiction of sunset over theHooghly, valued at £5,000 to £7,000, as “a very nice work, very charming. Itwas bought by an Italian diplomat who met (Roberto) Rosselini, when he wasfilming in India (and did a bunk with a Bengali housewife, Sonali Das Gupta).So there are stories attached to these paintings”.

Raza’s Saurashtra, painted in 1983, comes from a Frenchcollector who acquired it directly from the artist.

Whenever Raza is asked about what inspires him, he comes outwith the same answer: “I have never left India. I love my country and I amproud of it.”

On who is likely to spend over a million pounds on acquiring theRaza masterpiece or indeed any of the other works in the auctions, Mehtaspeculated: “It’s so iconic it could go just about anywhere. We have sent 3,500catalogues all over the world. It could go to an NRI or someone in India. Thepurchasing power of Indians has gone up a lot, we have noticed.”

In London, revealed Mehta, “we have Lakshmi Mittal’s wife (Usha)who is on the board of Christie’s holding private events.”

The Hindu newspaper reports that art collector and co-sponsor of the India Art Summit, Rajshree Pathy is to open an art institute and museum of contemporary art in Coimbatore India by 2011. She has named the entire venture Contemplate. She says: The art institute will have post-graduate, under-graduate and short certificate courses. We will have a world-class faculty, including those from abroad, and will focus on all kinds of media separately – visual art, video, audio, digital, new media, et al.” The museum will display works of contemporary artists. To begin with, it will have works mounted from her own collection, from Raza to Rameshwar Broota and Souza to Chintan Upadhyay. Rajshree Pathy, art collector and co-sponsor India Art Summit Rajshree Pathy, art collector and co-sponsor India Art Summit Big plans, big stakes and a big venue says The Hindu but points out that Coimbatore is a city that has had little exposure to art. Rajshree replies rather contemplatively, “Coimbatore is a university area with over 100,000 students. It is peaceful – a must to think and produce art.” Moreover, the course fees, she promises, will be “very affordable”. “My intention is to spread awareness of art to the masses. Today, our students don’t even know who Raja Ravi Varma is, forget contemporary artists. On the other hand, abroad, even small children are aware of Picasso. This is because art teaching has not been taken seriously at the primary level. We have IT, engineering and medical colleges, but how many art institutes do we have? There is nothing called art journalism in India. Courses on art as a business, how to curate art shows, art appreciation and its aesthetics; there is so much to explore for an art student.” Discussions on affiliation with foreign faculties are on, and Contemplate is likely to be “fully operational” by 2011. “With a residential programme as an added feature, we also plan to expand to other cities,” says a smiling Rajshree. Source: The Hindu

CEO of on-line Indian auction house Saffronart explains that the collector base for Indian art is changing Dinesh Vazirani is the CEO and Co-Founder of Saffronart, the world’s largest online auction house for fine art and jewelry. In the Podcast interview with ArtTactic, he reviewed the performance of the Indian art market in 2009. He also shared his observations on the changes in the Indian art market in the recent year. Moreover, he shared part of his formula of success in running an online auction platform of such scale. How was the performance of the Indian Art Market in 2009? To what extent has the Indian Art Market recovered from the financial crisis in 2009? A lot of changes happened in the post financial crisis period. The initial six months was a difficult time for the art market. The base of the investors and collectors changed quite dramatically. Investors and speculators that are active in the post financial crisis disappeared from the market. There are real collectors looking for good value and premium quality. In the later part of the year with the Indian economy getting better, confidence and perception changed. We saw some of the collector base come by and want to buy the best of the best. In the early part of the year, prices of modern art retreated by around 30-50% and contemporary art by 50-80%. Modern art prices recovered by 15-30% later in the year and contemporary art came back by 10-15%. In 2009, the Indian market underwent a transitional change. The players changed. Some galleries and auction houses shut down and some opened. How is the heavy presence of speculators a threat to the sustainability of the Indian Art Market? Speculators come into the market and drive up the prices. In 2005 to 2008, prices rose dramatically which brought in a whole slew of speculators, investors, private dealers, collectors and funds. In 2009, after the financial crisis, these players disappeared but they will come back if the value is right. However, it is not expected that they would be jumping into the market as fast as in 2005. This downturn in Indian Art is the first ever downturn in the history of Indian art. Most people have not gone through a downturn to understand the implications of it. What pattern has been developed in the collector base? The previous collectors of Indian Art are large corporate houses and business houses in the India subcontinent. However, in the last five years, the collector based has moved from a business house concentrated end towards a broader collector base, which constitutes a lot of professionals, younger collectors from the finance field and young business people. Interestingly, some are from outside of India. In 2006, more non-Indians collected Indian contemporary art and wanted it as a cultural bridge. What is your outlook for the Indian art market in 2010? Players will be coming back to purchase work and a new base of buyers are expected too. There were people wanting to come in to buy during 2005 to 2008, but the price rose too sharply then, so they want to come in now and see if they can get premium values. 2010 will be dependent on two things. One is the perception and confidence of the Indian base customers and the other is the participation of non-Indian buyers in the post finance crisis period in the art market. Why has Saffronart been so successful as an online auction house when no auction houses have found equal success in this format? For the past 10 years, we have been building up the collector base, giving them the confidence and transparency and improving the technological platform. On the other side, we have been doing physical exhibitions and previews all around the world, including San Francisco, L.A., Mumbai, New Dehli, Hong Kong and London. To make people confident, we added the brick and mortar side. It is the “the click and the brick” that has made Saffronart so successful. Nearly every business is heading to the direction of going online. Is the art market fundamentally changing because of the web? Over time, there will be a strong shift towards online transactions. People will transact more online or even leaning more to mobile bidding platforms. These mobile bidding platforms have been enormously successful.

How do you go about choosing just one artist in 2009 who continued doing what an artist does best: painting with consistency, experimenting, picking up commissions of a certain scale, and commanding top-of-the-bracket prices in that genre? And who would most likely take this forward in 2010 as the face of Indian art and as, probably, its safest blue-chip investment? Trends across 2009 were mostly erratic. Even top artists took a sabbatical, gallery movement before the India Art Summit was almost comatose, plummeting prices meant that most contemporary artists went out of circulation, and investor confidence in art was so low it impacted artists’ morale. It is indicative of contemporary art continuing to remain off-stage in 2010: these artists will show more than they sell, they will experiment more, and some like Jitish Kallat will have a huge impact as ambassadors as they present the intellectual face of Indian art internationally. But no contemporary Indian artist can singly take on the onus of being the face of 2010 — they are showing less, prices still have to rise, and what many of us are getting to see at shows in India or abroad are old works. Others have still to achieve a record of consistency — something that had been ignored in the euphoria that was largely responsible for the crash in prices — and which is why the likes of Sunil Gawde or N S Harsha will have to wait for their spot in the sun. Among the old guard, gallerists I spoke with put forward interesting suggestions ranging all the way from A Ramachandran to Krishen Khanna, whose works I admire but who have not had any path-breaking shows or created an especial stir to qualify for the role, to Satish Gujral, who it was pointed out has perhaps been India’s most consistent artist and one whose prices have not been impacted by the market. While that may be true, his largely “decorative” features and tag as a “society” artist continue to trip him up. Another friend’s suggestion that Paresh Maity be considered for his ability to re-invent himself held some merit, but Maity too has to fight off the “romantic” tag and travel some more distance to move from “investment-worthy” to “collector-worthy”. It was surprising that almost no one I spoke to took cognizance of S H Raza’s great influence on the market — there is a frenzy around collecting him, his prices have remained high, there is a buzz around him every time he returns to India (even if the reason is the artist being invited to inaugurate a show of fakes of his own works!), and at auctions or in galleries, he continues to sell well. But the artist is slowing down because of health-related issues, likely to shift to India, and may take some time settling down before he resumes painting again. That hardly qualifies him as the face of 2010, though his success through the year is at least assured. But by a huge margin, and quite clearly the face of 2009 that will remain the face of 2010, is M F Husain. There was a brief time a few years ago when Husain’s genius was eclipsed, when younger artists were being feted, when some of his peers commanded higher returns at auctions, when he was even dismissed as being too gimmicky or too market-driven. All those nay-sayers can now eat crow. Not only does he make news all the time, and despite staying away from India because of threats to his life (largely exaggerated, I believe, but adding to his aura as an artist-in-exile), Husain continues to thrive. Recent auctions have confirmed his price hierarchy among Indian artists (Tyeb Mehta, who died this year, has not been included in this survey of only living artists), and the scale of his commissions on the Arab civilisation will leave him richer by millions of dollars. Love him or not, you cannot ignore Husain, and if he remained in the news in 2009, he will continue to make headlines in 2010. While many in this informal survey voted for Husain, Saffronart’s Dinesh Vazirani summed it up beautifully: “[Husain] has been working consistently throughout the year, mounting some very large exhibitions internationally. The beginning of the year saw his work in the Serpentine show, followed by a large commission from the Sheikha of Qatar. Even with no exhibitions in India, he is still present in the minds of the art world. He travels the world as an ambassador of Indian art bringing in new collectors at every stage. In spite of the slow year for Indian art, his prices in auctions have been good. He has taken his exile from India in the best possible spirit and continues to work with the same passion that he has had over the last 50 years.” Nothing more need be said.

I hope that the locked doors of Bodhi Art Gallery serve as a warning to the Indian artists that big talk and grand gestures are best believed only when sustained. The clink of empty cocktail glasses make a hollow sound and show up their chips and cracks without the camouflage of our own desperation. It's high time to roll up the imaginary red carpet that you think is beneath your feet, and with it roll up your sleeves instead. There is no substitute for good old fashioned humility and hard work, and let's raise a toast to that!

After the grotesque drama of the past few years, there's more talk of art (as opposed to prices) these days

Over the past couple of years, the volatility of prices of contemporary Indian art made even the most exotic commodities look tame. I realised this when I saw that a 2006 Subodh Gupta painting, part of his Untitled series of paintings of kitchen utensils, sold on Saffron Art last week for $209,000; significantly, there were only two bidders for the work, suggesting also that may not have been a market clearing price. What is amazing is that a similar work — from the same 2006 series, almost identical content, identical in size — had sold for over $1.4 million at Saffron’s June 2008 auction. Its price has fallen by more than 85 per cent from just over a year ago!

For comparison, the Dow fell by 46 per cent from June 2008, and, incidentally, has already recovered more than half of its decline; the BSE fell by 53 per cent, and has recovered all and more of its losses.

Granted that paintings are not commodities or stocks, although the art “market” certainly resembled a financial market over the last few years. But it is clear — and widely acknowledged — that the prices of Subodh’s work (and of several others) had, by 2008, been pumped up by spectacular speculation, lubricated by the lugubrious prose (sorry, couldn’t resist that) of a handful of “critics”, who, like the credit rating agencies in the financial crisis, were the handmaidens, politely speaking, of the small group of players — art dealers, businessmen, traders and even some art galleries — that burst on the scene about five or six years ago and drove the bubble to such grotesque heights.

Long before the madness — say, around 1999-2000 — contemporary Indian art had come into its own and was evolving a unique balance where even mid-range artists could make a good living selling their work at prices that were affordable to a growing band of middle-income buyers. There were, maybe, a few thousand people involved — artists, gallery owners, a sprinkling of academics, old-time collectors and new buyers.

However, by around 2003, the steadily rising prices — 15 to 30 per cent a year — began to attract hordes of cash-rich culture-poor people, many of them recently enriched by the globalisation of our economy, and, particularly, our financial markets. By 2005, things had gotten crazy. There were artists and art dealers and art buyers under every rock. Nobody talked about art any more — the only thing that mattered was price.

To be fair, the parties did get a lot better, but it was increasingly unreal and you could feel the end coming. Prices accelerated further and by the time the music stopped — thank you, Chuck Prince — there must have been a couple of hundred thousand people involved in the contemporary Indian art market.

Most of these are gone. Probably half were just there for the money. They didn’t know (or even care) about the artist or the work. Tell me what will go up fastest. Shockingly, I got a mail yesterday from someone still asking that question.

Another 25 or 30 per cent were probably attracted by the hype — the parties, the tamasha, and the coolness of buying art. Most of these are also gone, although some were hooked and remain.

Which means that at the end of the day — or, better yet, the start of the new day — the art community is probably a bit more than twice as large as it was ten years ago. About the size it would have been without the hoopla, and without the terrible consequences for many artists, art dealers, and, perhaps worst of all, art students, who bought the hype and lost their souls.

Of course, there are dozens — hundreds — of artists who continue to produce work for themselves, rather than for the market. Some of them participated in and enjoyed the tamasha; some were more circumspect socially. But their art continues to mature and the prices of their work, too, remain on the steady 15-30 per cent a year growth path, which had prevailed before the insanity.

To be sure, many of the market darlings have also evolved — Subodh certainly has — and appear to have ridden the grotesque drama of the past few years to good effect. All drama takes us to a better place, provided we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

The drama isn’t fully over — I’m sure there are a few more shoes to drop. But the good news is that there’s more talk of art (as opposed to prices) these days, and the parties are starting up again.

The Purple Wall curated by Gayatri Sinha was a fantatic project showcasing the best of Indian Contemporary Art.

The participating artists were:

Subodh Gupta,Nataraj Sharma, Mithu Sen, Ranbir Kaleka, T.V. Santosh, Riyas Komu, Bharat Sikka, Ravi Aggarwal, Richard Bartholomeo, Asma Mudrawala, Manjunath Kamat, Neha Choksi, Subba Ghosh.

 

The presence of top foreign galleries at the India Art Summit is areminder of the worldwide interest in Indian art.

The western wind blowing at the ongoing India Art Summit at Hall No. 7 of Pragati Maidan has brought along happy tidings. There are as many as 16 galleries from abroad at the summit, who have come scouting for young talent in India. In fact, most of them have already pocketed some of the choicest contemporary names from India with great success, representing them in reputed A- list art shows globally.

Neither recession, nor swine flu has prevented gallery owners, art critics and collectors from abroad to pitch a tent at the second edition of India's biggest art fair. India, after all, has been next only to China when it comes to making news in the international art world, for quite some time now. In fact, it's the contemporaries (younger lot of painters) from the country who- ' ve for long been hailed as the next big things.

Sadly, however, they are all waiting in the wings right now, for the global economic recession to end and make it easier for connoisseurs to dig into their deep pockets to buy their art.

Till the economic downturn knocked sense out of our heads, the story from the world of Indian art had read thus - the masters had finally been acknowledged, they'd earned their crores and a place in history, and now, it was the turn of the contemporaries. Some among them like Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat and T. V. Santhosh had even begun scaling heights, but then, the juggernaut of recession hit us all.

Thomas Erben of the reputed Thomas Erben Gallery of New York that represents emerging names like Chitra Ganesh and Yamini Nayar, among others, says, " Recession has ensured that only collectors, who buy only very good work, remain in the market. Some Indian contemporary names like Subodh Gupta and Nalini Malini are above market forces as their works sell irrespective of the state of the economy. We were the first to hold a mainstream show of contemporary Indian artists in 2004 and we have faith in the new talent from India." Young artists consistently producing quality works, Erben says, hold great potential post- recession.

Like Erben, Rob Dean from London, of Rob Dean Art Ltd., affirms the views of his New York counterpart. Dean, who was Christie's representative in India in 1998-2000, says, "In 2003, I had done a show with these artists which included Jitish Kallat and Atul Dodiya, and only one painting had been sold. Now most of them have made the move from domestic to international circuit." Dean calls it a drip-down effect and adds, "With many young collectors now, contemporary artists are going to be in demand." While London and New York are the first stops for any Indian artist travelling abroad, it's the representation from countries such as Germany, Latvia, Netherlands, Japan and China at the summit that makes the foreign interest in Indian art worth noting. Katja W. Ott, representing Beck & Eggeling gallery from Dusseldorf, Germany, (along with the managing partner Stefan Wimmer), says, "India is a very popular destination for German tourists. They are enamoured of the whole cultural package, and that includes art. Some Indian artists, such as M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza and S.H. Raza among masters and contemporaries such as Subodh Gupta are known very well to connoisseurs

In Germany. That's why we are here." The gallery promotes five contemporary names from India - Viveek Sharma, Desmond Lazaro, Sonia Mehra Chawla, George Martin and Hema Upadhyaya.

OTT adds that Beck & Eggeling has been following the response to Indian art abroad, such as the Hong Kong art fair which drew a great response. She adds that it is the element of exotica that excites the gallery's clients in Germany. Peter Louis, director of RL Fine Arts, a New York-based gallery, echoes the sentiments of all the other foreign participants at the summit. Though his gallery is not participating at the fair, he is in India to check out the vibrations in the art world in the country. We caught up with him at the party hosted by Bhavna Kakkar at the launch of her magazine, Take on

Art, a day before the beginning of the summit, at Agni at The Park, where he had come in the company of Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher. Talking about his interest in Indian art, he said, "There is a lot of interest in the US. Subodh Gupta is a name that is already very well known and we are consistently showing young, emerging artists from India in our show." Birendra Pani is one such name. Other international names, like the Arario, with galleries in Beijing and New York, and the HB Galerie of Hans Bakker from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, are also participating, though they are not showing any Indian artist. But, their presence affirms their growing interest in Indian art, and presumably, contemporary is the way to go. Now, only if recession would get over quickly.

EAST HAMPTON, NY.- The Vered Gallery in East Hampton has temporarily removed an Andy Warhol portrait of Michael Jackson from the auction block.

The Associated Press reported that gallery co-owner Janet Lehr said in a statement she wanted to offer the 1984 work to "the greatest number of prospective purchasers."

Pre-sale estimates ranged from one to 10 million US dollars. The painting shows Michael Jackson wearing a red jacket from his Thriller era.

Lehr told the new York Daily news last week that "the painting, which originally came from the Warhol estate, was consigned to the gallery by a New York private collector."

Michael Jackson's career as a recording star began at the age of eleven, with the popularity of the first single released by the Jackson 5, a rhythm-and-blues act composed of him and four of his brothers. In 1979 Jackson released his first solo album, and by 1984 he was being touted as the biggest star since the Beatles or Elvis Presley and as "the most popular black singer ever." In that year, he won an unprecedented eight Grammy Awards for his internationally acclaimed album Thriller.

Andy Warhol's name is synonymous with the Pop Art movement in America. Like other Pop artists, he often chose to use objects appropriated from popular culture as imagery for fine art. These were often photographs, which were then reproduced onto a canvas through a silkscreen process by assistants. Warhol then retouched them. As he put it, "I sort of half paint them just to give it a style."