NYC Auction Results – Buyers in a Sunny Mood

Sales have concluded at Christie’s and Sotheby’s New York, and like a spring typhoon, have left quite an impact in their wake. The final combined take for the two events was over $23,000,000--a very large pot of gold at the end of the Indian contemporary art rainbow.

Wednesday, March 21 was the day of the Christie’s auction, and although no works broke the million-dollar mark (Tyeb Mehta’s Diagonal XV was passed), prices remained solid for PAG oils on canvas—and did particularly well for their works on paper. The story on this day, though, was demand for pieces for painters not affiliated with this influential movement. If a sign of things to come, watch out for such names as K. K. Hebbar, Biren De, B. Phabha, Sakti Burman, Bhupen Khakhar, Manjit Bawa, Santish Gujral, and Jitsh Kallat. They and others on the “second tier” may be the next big thing for this genre.

Among other highlights at this auction, M. F. Husain’s Woman with Veena went for $132,000 with the money donated to Pratham UK and NGO charities aimed at eradicating illiteracy in India. Total sales for the 119 lots available were $8,593,080.

At Sotheby’s the next day, everything was coming up green—as in $15,007, 880 for the 172 lots up for bid. A majority of the works, which included miniatures and illustrations, sold at or over their pre-sale estimates, seemingly regardless of the artist or the medium. Whether a Tagore watercolor, a Mehta oil, a Shandi Dave work in mixed media, or a page from an early 19th century Bhagavata Purana, collectors snapped up pieces throughout the entirety of the morning session in a thunderous display of enthusiasm.

As the sales floors cleared, it seems the forecast for Indian contemporary art market will remain sunny and hot, hopefully for the full year ahead. At present, there seems to be no downturn in prices from 2006.

(To browse catalogues of these auctions or to review complete results by lot, click on the auctions houses link to the right of this blog).

TamarindArt To Celebrate 1 Year Anniversary with Progressive Artists Group Show

If you are planning to be in New York for the upcoming Christie’s and Sotheby’s auctions (see “Spring Sales Speculations” below) or live in that city, be sure to include a visit to TamarindArt for their exhibition “Pinnacle-Progressives”, a celebration of their first anniversary. Located at 142 East 39th Street between 3rd and Lexington, the show will feature works by the PAG’s most legendary and important artists selected exclusively from the private collection of gallery owners Marguerite and Kent Charugundla.

Originally opened as a museum in April 2003, TamarindArt housed "Lightning", a mammoth 12-panel, 10 ft x 60 ft mural by MF Husain, the legendary artist’s largest painting. “Lightning” will be included in this exhibition, as well as masterpieces by Bal Chhabda, VS Gaitonde, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamesee, SH Raza, and FN Souza. (See “The PAG Revolution” below for a brief history of the movement and its members).

From the start, TamarindArt’s vision was to curate exhibitions that reflect a healthy balance between established senior artists and younger talents working with experimental forms of conceptual installations, and as part of an on-going effort, to support other art museums and cultural communities around the world. In addition to developing a reputation as the place to be for many art organizations, other events are hosted there as well, including book readings and signings.

Year One was very impressive, as "50 Years of Bal Chhabda: Paintings in New York," was their inaugural show as a full-time gallery. The extraordinary showcase of over half a century of never-before-seen works was the first in the United States for the reclusive artist and only the third solo show of his prolific career.

TamarindArt also held a summer show in 2006 presenting the works of a group of talented younger artists from India, and exhibitions that highlighted the career of Akbar Padamsee of over six decades, a show entitled “Edge of Reality, which portrayed the liminal spaces that a select group of artists has explored through various forms of representation, “Reverse Depth” that brought together one of the most dynamic group of abstract and conceptual artists, and “Parallel Facets” a unique exhibition that incorporated sculptures by Niranjan Pradhan and paintings by Samir Aich.

Although the March 21st opening reception for this special occasion will be by invitation only (RSVP required), “Pinnacle-Progressives” will be open to the public by appointment only for its limited run from March 22 until April 7. For more information call 212-990-9000 or visit their website at http://www.tamarindart.com/. The Charugundlas and their expert staff have many reasons to celebrate and you should make a point to join them!

Spring Sales Speculations

Next week, New York City will be the place to be for Indian contemporary art, as both Christies and Sotheby’s will be holding their first auctions of the year for this genre. Six months and a long winter have passed since their last—and by perusing the online catalogues posted on their websites, a few casual observations can be noted that indicate some trends since 2006.

One, breaking the million-dollar mark has become passé. It wasn’t too long ago when this barrier was celebrated; now, the question seems to be how many more will join the club. Several works by PAG masters have reached the seven-figure record recently—it will be interesting to see how many more will this year.

Speaking of the million-dollar mark, this is the first auction that has set a pre-sale high-end estimate for that figure. Christie’s will offer up Tyeb Mehta’s oil on canvas entitled Diagonal XV, set at $750,000 to $1,000,000. With the market shooting upward the past few years, it will no doubt surpass the asking price. Which brings us to observation number two—pre-sale estimates in general seems to have escalated since last year. Of course, this is mere conjecture and is based solely on a very general comparison of last fall vs. current catalogues. With that obviously, are other factors including quality of the work, name value, market factors, and media used.

That leads into observation number three—a rundown of the works for sale seem to show an increase in watercolors, sketches, and sculptures. Perhaps this is not surprising since PAG oils and acrylics on canvas are out of financial reach for most of us. To own a Souza or Husain, one may have to settle for a pencil drawing that will sell for a fraction of their masterworks. These pieces, some estimated in the lower four-figures, may satisfy the average collector’s pocketbook and may likewise prove to be a wise choice of investment in the future.

Before exiting out of the online catalogues, one last observation should be noted, and this centers on the offerings of second and third generation Indian artists who have also been selling very well recently. It will be most interesting to see if this trend continues and if they will become the “next hot thing” beyond the Progressives. With bounding international appeal unabated, will they also continue their dazzling upward performances?

It will be only a very short time until these speculations are answered—Christie’s “Modern and Contemporary Indian Art” auction will take place on March 21st; Sotheby’s “Indian Art including Miniatures and Modern Paintings”, the following day. It’s probably not much of a prognostication to suggest that prices will keep climbing higher.

The PAG Revolution

In 1947, after gaining its independence from the British Empire, India experienced tremendous national historical, social, and cultural changes. Riding on the crest of this wave of transformation was the Progressive Artists' Group, formed to consciously seek new visual imagery which could describe the new Indian reality during and after this tumultous era.

Founding members declared that they intended to go forward, and being “progressive”, summarily denouncing the influence of past Indian artists as too sentimental and old-fashioned. With an intentional, unabashed homage to European contemporaries, the artists created pieces that drew parallels of the tension between the local and the global by creating art within the framework of international modernism. Each worked in dramatically different styles, from Expressionism to abstraction, as well as the creation of imagery and landscapes unmistakenly Indian. PAG artists included:

K. H. Ara was the first contemporary Indian artist to paint the female nude as a subject realistically, not in the abstract as did many of his colleagues. The influences of European artists Cézanne and Matisse are evident in his still life pieces painted in the 1940's and 50s. His favored media initially were watercolors and gouaches, which would at times resemble oils in the impasto effect; although he later painted successfully in oils.

Bal Chhabda, a self taught Mumbai-based artist who began paining in oils in the late 1950s. His works seem abstract, although one can see traces of shapes and forms that produces faintly discernible boundaries of the form in lyric dispositions.

VS Gaitonde is considered one of India’s foremost abstractionists. Gaitonde's works are known for evoking subliminal depths. Plain, large surfaces with paint layered subtly characterize his work. His paintings have a quality of light that seems to be complete in its self.

MF Husain is a self-taught artist who began his career painting film billboards. Husain is a uniquely celebrated and honored figure in contemporary India. His work is figurative using a visual language that blends folk, tribal and mythological imagery and a modernist aesthetic that draws equally from music, dance, sculpture and cinema.

Krishen Khanna, learned to paint at evening classes conducted at the Mayo School of Art, Lahore. In the wake of India's partition he moved to Simla and thereafter to Delhi where he currently lives and works. Khanna is known for his gestural style and thick impasto surfaces.

Ram Kumar took classes at the Sarada Ukil School of Art, and then went to Paris and studied further there under Andre Lhote and Fernand Léger. He was befriended by S.H. Raza who was living in Paris at the time. Ram Kumar paints abstract landscapes, usually in oil or acrylic.

Akbar Padamsee’s painting style is difficult to articulate, for his work ranges from the figurative to the non-objective. Regardless, the reverberating expressions of form, volume, space, time, and color in many of his works are both cerebral and sensual. Padmasee is best known for his Metascapes.

S.H. Raza’s works are mainly abstracts in oil or acrylic, with a very rich use of color. They often feature the "Bindu" (the dot or the epicenter of Hindu philosophy).

FN Souza was the first avant-garde artist from India to achieve widespread recognition in the West. Souza is best known for his inventive human forms--particularly his expressionist heads--and impious Christian themes (see blog below).

Though the Progressive Artists’ Group dissolved in 1956, it was profoundly revolutionary in changing the idiom of Indian art forever.

Souza's Brush as Sword

" I want to do everything: to make others suffer, to make myself suffer. I have no desire to redeem myself or anybody else because Man is by his very nature unredeemable.” This is Francis Newton Souza, the enfant terrible and father of Indian contemporary art. Few flew in the face of traditionalism, punctured conventions, or thumbed their nose at the establishment, as did he.

His rebel spirit was developed at an early age--Souza was expelled from school as the Jesuit teachers did not appreciate his suggestive drawings on the bathroom walls; in 1947, he started the Progressive Artist's Group (PAG) together with other upcoming painters like Husain, Raza, Ara, Gade and Bakre. With the formation of this group, Souza set the stage for contemporary Indian art with the anarchic rallying cry of “Today we paint with absolute freedom for content and technique.” In 1964, at age 40, he met a 16-year-old whom he married the following year.

His most enduring themes though, revolved around his Roman Catholic background and his antagonism towards it. Some of the most moving of Souza's paintings are those which convey a spirit of awe in the presence of a divine power--a God, who is not a God of gentleness and love, but rather of suffering, vengeance. With rhetorical brush and pen, he ridiculed church dogmas, beliefs, and rituals.

Souza held on to his wry humor and a healthy skepticism of the establishment in any form. He excelled at disparaging friends, relatives, foes, art dealers and anything else that stood between him and cynicism. His life ended in several failed marriages and alienated children from the unions.

For Souza, reality was merely an infrastructure to be demolished. Although he was a figurative painter, nothing about his art is descriptive; there is no celebration of nature, no beauty in his nudes, in actuality, there is nothing romantic about his paintings. In looking at Souza's work the most important thing is not that we understand what the painting shows us, but what he shows us forces us in turn to see visions within ourselves, visions of our shared humanity. "I often try to paint a bad picture, and I bloody well succeed," he boasted.
Perhaps his worldwide popularity lies in that fact that he did what he wanted, when he wanted without social mores weighing him down. Perhaps, subconsciously, it is an attitude we would all like to have at some point in our lives, if we had the guts to take that long leap to non-conformity.

Commodities on Canvas

Back in the days not very long ago, Indian contemporary art was collected because of the love for the genre, and not particularly for financial gain. Those given works directly from the artists or purchased with a minimal outlay of cash before the recent price escalations were at the right place at the right time as far as prices went.

An example of this most fortunate happenstance is Harold Leventhal, an American political activist, filmmaker, music manager and art lover. Stationed in India during World War II, Leventhal’s experiences there left a profound and deep imprint on him. His relationship with art and India continued over the following 60 years in his friendships with notable Indian artists including M. F. Husain and Satish Gujral. His estate collection will be included in Christie’s auction coming up March 21 in New York; and some of these painting will fetch prices well within 6-figures.

Most of us are not so lucky. Investing in art, like playing the stock market or putting money in other commodities, is a matter of timing. The rub is deciding when to buy, hold, or sell. 2007 could prove to be a pivotal year for prices, and there are many questions for the investor to ask.

Should one forgo the works of the Progressive Artist’s Group--which may have become out of fiscal reach for many by now anyway--and focus on second and third generation painters? Which ones? How about Souza, Husain, Raza drawings, sketches, and watercolors? Will they skyrocket in price, as have the oils on canvas within the past half-decade? Will sculptures be the “next big thing”? Should the works be sold now and make a nice profit or hold off, hoping their values will go even higher in the future?
Investing in Indian contemporary art requires the similar knowledge, skills, and decisions that go into investing in other commodities. Unless one has a crystal ball, though, there is no foolproof strategy. Successful payoffs are dependent on market forces, supply, demand…and a little luck.

Samir Aich's Abstract fugurative

Samir Aich has been painting almost for three decades now. He started out as a neo-realist and gradually moved into semi-abstract figurative themes.
He dapples with dark colors with an organic overtone, powerful, scratching and emphatic dots, which together conjure a spectacular visual imagery, which is at once sensitive and powerful.

In “The animal with firefly at night”, the artist has sought to portray abstract concept such as the primordial animal spirit at night. The dramatic use of blue-grey pigment virtually covering the entire canvas, articulates a mysterious ambiance. The ferocious gesture of a tiger foretells mystic threats or promises made at night.

Samir is a tireless experimenter, constantly searching for new concepts and structural details. His penchant for creating unique, bold forms is reflected in “Boy with green dots”. It is a minimalist painting that encapsulates essence of melancholy. His powerful lines breathe life into both animate and inanimate forms.