Indian contemporary art is starting to command prices as high as those paid for works by established western artists. As auction season begins, Sajeda Momin finds out who pulls in the money in the international market
LONDON: As the credit crunch in the West pushes property prices down, the place to invest if you have some spare money lying around is Indian art. Progressive modern artists like Frances Newton Souza, MF Husain, Syed Haider Raza and Tyeb Mehta have been popular inIndia for some time and in a position to command high rupee prices, but over the last five years their pulling power has been growing even in the international dollar market.
“The market for Indian art is extremely buoyant at the moment and there is a lot of international interest. Art Basel and even a festival in Spain next month are putting special focus on Indian art. More and more critics are looking at Indian 20th century masters and bringing them into the international mainstream,” explains Yamini Mehta, director of Indian art at the well-known Christie’s auction house in London.
In the 1950s and 1960s Indian art was popular in the West mostly among the expatriates, diplomats and NRI industrialists. As the second half of the 20th century progressed and the Indiandiaspora around the world spread outwards and
upwards, having a Husain or a Raza in the lounge became de rigeur, mainly to prove that you had ‘arrived’. But the artists’ influence was limited to the South Asian community. This is not the case today.
“Now institutions around the world like the Guggenheim, are introducing new audiences to Indian masters and more contemporary artists. Christie’s has also helped to foster the interest and raise the prices that Indian art can command,” Mehta says.
In 2005 Christie’s sold Tyeb Mehta’s Mahisasura for nearly US$1.6 million —marking the first time ever that an Indian contemporary painting crossed the million dollar barrier. In March this year,
Husain’s Battle of Ganga and Jamuna sold for over US$1.6 million at the Christie’s New York Contemporary and Modern Indian Art sale, breaking the world record for any work of the genre.
From the new generation of artists who have attracted interest in the last five years, Subodh Gupta joined the million dollar club by selling his Saat Samundar Paar for nearly US$1.2 million — nearly 10 times its pre-sale estimate. In fact, the Christie’s Hong Kong Spring 2008 sale achieved the highest sale total of Indian and Pakistani art in Hong Kong, raking in more than US$4.2 million with works from Gupta, Jitish Kallat and Justin Ponmany breaking records.
“The global appeal of this category grows season after season, and with 10 artist records, and 100 per cent lots sold, these results show the increasing glowing global
demand and demonstrate the exciting cross-currents within the Pan-Asian art context,” said Hugo Weihe, International Director of Asian Art at Christie’s.
The top spectrum of Indian artists is now comparable to the same stratum of western or eastern artists, feel most experts, and it is only now that the prices that they can command are catching up with international rates. “An Andy Warhol or a Picasso can easily command US$100 million, and the quality of Indian masters is just as good. It is just that they have not had that sort of exposure — either in marketing or selling,” says Mehta.
That is all changing, and fairly rapidly. “There is definitely room for prices to soar further. The 20th century Masters producing work today are only at the lower end of the price range that they can command,” she adds. Mehta suggests that top end works
can easily achieve a price of $5-10 million.
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