Mahisasura - Tyeb Mehta's work expected to fetch £1.2 to 1.8 m

Mahisaura - Tyeb Mehta

THE SEASON of auctions in contemporary Indian art starts in London in June and the three main auction houses, Christie’s Sotheby’s and Bonhams, have major sales coming up in the first half of the month.

The highlight of the Christie’s auction of South Asian modern and contemporary art on June 11 is Tyeb Mehta’s Mahishasura, 1996, the most important painting from this groundbreaking series, estimated to sell for between £1.2 million and £1.8 million. A painting, Untitled (Figure on Rickshaw), by Mehta, who passed away in 2009, was sold for record price of £1.973 million at the Christie’s auction in London in June in 2011.

Mehta’s Mahisasura was the first Indian contemporary painting to have crossed the million-dollar barrier in 2005 when it was sold for nearly $1.6 million.

The Indian modern and contemporary artists do not command high prices in auctions compared to European artists — Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s iconic pastel drawing, The Scream, made history in May as it was auctioned for $119.9 million by Sotheby’s in New York.

The Christie’s auction is also offering Cinq Sens, 1958, a quintessential work by M.F. Husain, which was formerly in the collection of the world renowned Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini and his Indian wife Sonali Dasgupta. The painting, estimated to sell for £400,000 - 500,000, was a gift from Husain to his friend, Rossellini, who left India with newfound love, awareness and creative consciousness. “Christie’s is delighted to be offering the seminal painting, Mahishasura, by Tyeb Mehta; one of the artist’s best and most iconic works to come to auction,” Yamini Mehta, director of South Asian modern and contemporary art at Christie’s, said.

“Heavily inspired by ancient mythology and Hindu literature, Mahishasura recounts the legend whereby the Brahmin demon-king Rambha produces an invincible son through his union with a she-buffalo,” Christie’s said.

The auction house also compared the Tyeb Mehta painting with Picasso’s Guernica. “Mehta fuses ancient imagery with simplicity of form, colour and line, resulting in powerfully modern works full of fresh vitality. Stylistic devices evident in the present work — such as the simultaneity of perspective and figures, the juxtaposition of linear and volumed representation, and varying frontal and profiled angles of vision — conjure images of Pablo Picasso’s pivotal work, Guernica. Just as Mehta was inspired by the bull, Picasso also regularly depicted multiple forms of the bull and most often the mythological creature, the Minotaur,” the auction house explained.

(As printed in The Asian Age )

Read more about the Modern Masters of Indian art - on how they became the auction house favourites

Pots, Pans and art - truely Subodh Gupta

LINE OF CONTROL

Line of Control, a monumental steel sculpture by the country’s leading contemporary artist Subodh Gupta.

The sculpture — a public art installation — is shaped like a giant mushroom cloud with a base, symbolising the troubled borders and times we live in — and also redemption, said Subodh Gupta

Described by critics as one of Gupta’s largest works, the installation measures 36 X 36 ft and weighs 20 tonnes.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/nation/north/subodh-gupta-work-mall-372

Masters and the Economics of Art - Times of India

S.H Raza

When Syed Haider Raza moved home from Paris to Delhi last December, it was a monumental decision for him. Personally, it meant the artist was giving up a city that had made him an internationally recognised artist.


Professionally, the only surviving member of the four top-selling masters of modern Indian art was shifting back to the land of his inspiration at a time when the other great of this quartet, MF Husain (1915-2011 ), had quit the country due to controversies.

Art watchers know well that any movement in the lives of Husain and Raza always came loaded with possibilities as the two, along with FN Souza (1924-2002 ) and Tyeb Mehta (1925-2009 ), commanded - and continue to command - 50-60 per cent of the total Indian art market.

Though there is no established monitor for Indian art - with the field relying mostly on independent estimates by various agencies - a majority of the experts agrees that the Big Four hold more than half of the total market. The market itself is valued at anywhere from $100 million to $ 400 million (roughly Rs 1000-1600 crore).

This is, however, a finite market, as Husain, Souza and Mehta have passed away. Mehta, anyway, was not a prolific painter and created only about 200 canvases in his lifetime though it was his 'Mahishasura' that had first crossed the million dollar mark when it fetched $1.54 million at a Christie's auction in September 2005. Husain and Souza were productive but the frequency with which their canvases will come into the market will depend on the collectors who hold them.

True to form, in less than a year after his shift from Paris, Raza mounted an exhibition of his latest works, 'Punaraagaman' (Return), in Delhi recently. Given the gestation period that each painting has to go through before it becomes hot property, the paintings may not immediately set the auction world afire. But they are important in a market that is beginning to expand beyond Mumbai, Delhi and overseas where 90 per cent of it is located.
Ashish Anand of Delhi Art Gallery, who had hosted the most ambitious show of the Progressive Artists earlier this year (Souza, Husain and Raza were founder members of this group and had blazed a trail by giving an Indian identity to modern art), says, "An established collector would aim for paintings from Raza's best phase from the past. But for those who have just got acquainted with art and want to possess one of the top signatures, these new paintings are important as older Raza paintings don't come up easily in the market. That's significant for Indian market if it wants to expand."

The Indian art market that has come under sharp focus ever since it started growing rapidly in the early years of the last decade is highly lopsided - the collector base is of just about 500, largely located in two cities. That's ridiculous if it wants to make a dent internationally like China has done. The Chinese art market is 40 times that of India's.

If the market has to grow, it will soon have to expand base to newer territories. Art watchers hope that as Tier II and III cities acquire more money power, art will find takers beyond Mumbai and Delhi. Sapna Kar of the India Art Collective initiative, whose online art fair, the first in the country, concluded last evening, says, "I have received queries from Hyderabad, Surat and Gaya. The database of Indian collectors is not more than 500 in number. How much art will an individual consume? A big chunk of the future of Indian art lies in smaller cities where the people have the money to buy art but no exposure yet." Menaka Kumar-Shah, the Mumbai-based head of New York auction house Christies, cites the example of collectors in Coimbatore who are beginning to set up art institutions.

Another big push that Indian art would soon need is in the form of non-Indian foreign buyers. Dr Hugo Weihe, who heads the Indian and Southeast Asian Art department at Christies, New York, says, "At one of our sales last year, a Husain canvas was picked up by a non-Indian American buyer for $1 million plus, and there is a lot of interest in Indian art by Chinese and Indonesian buyers at our ongoing Hong Kong sales. This curiosity will help Indian market to grow."

But even as the market grows and embraces new collectors, a demand for canvases by the big four continues to remain high because anybody with enough money to buy top-end art wants to own a Husain, a Raza, a Souza or a Mehta. The enduring popularity of the super sellers had even survived the recession with aplomb, taking a dip initially but recovering quickly. The November 2011 report on the state of the Indian art market by London-based analyst ArtTactic also says market experts remained strongly positive about modern Indian art though the overall ArtTactic Indian Art Market Confidence Indicator was down by 28 per cent from April 2011 due to a drop in confidence in the Indian economy by 69 per cent.

Maithili Parekh, director, Sotheby's India, says that it is the historicity of modern masters - a term that would also include, besides the top four, artists like Jamini Roy, the Tagores, VS Gaitonde, Akbar Padamsee, Ram Kumar and a few others - that makes them so attractive. "They forged a new identity for Indian art with their path-breaking work when a newly independent India was seeking its own identity. They captured the strong political and social influences of the time beautifully," says Parekh. Arun Vadehra, Christie's consultant in India who also heads the Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery (and host of Raza's latest exhibition), adds that buying a canvas by a top-end modern master is like buying "a piece of history."

As printed in Times of Inida

RAZA profile

Delhi artist's mural set to break record



ARPITA SINGHWish Dream, 2001, Oil on canvas, 287 x 159 in 




The leading ladies of Indian art seem to be on a roll. Just five months after Bharti Kher's elephant sculpture fetched a record Rs 6.9 crore, Delhi artist Arpita Singh is set to establish a new high. The sale of her mural — estimated at Rs 8-10 crore — will make her the country's top-selling woman artist.

The 16-panel mural, an impressive 24 ft x 13 ft in size, will go under the hammer on December 9 at the Saffronart winter auction. Thus far, women artists were not in the all-male charmed circle of sky-high prices.

Both Kher and Singh are changing that. So in art, as in life, does gender matter? Not for the flamboyant Amrita Shergil, the first to reach the crore-mark, but then came a slump. Says Dinesh Vazirani of Saffronart, "During the era of the Moderns, male artists such as those from the Bombay Progressive group dominated the art scene."

In a way, it's fitting that Arpita Singh has turned the spotlight back on female artists. The unbeautiful middle-aged woman has always been a central figure in her paintings. "I begin by painting a figure and it turns out to be a woman," Singh said.

The work going on sale has two women as pivotal figures, both elevated to goddess-like beings that seem to hold together and direct the rest of the painting's diverse cast of characters and everyday objects.



Times of India, 16 November 2010
 
 
 
Bharati Kher's Elephant