Sotheby’s London—Is Indian Contemporary Art Market Resistant?

Two diametric figures stand out in Artprice’s most recent edition of ArtMarketInsight: one, that Contemporary Indian art has made spectacular gains--in January 2008, the sector’s price index was up by 830% over the decade; and two, that in the first quarter of 2008, international art prices were 7.5% below those recorded in the last quarter of 2007. So, collectors may have been wondering which trend would prevail at Sotheby’s Indian Art sale held this morning in London.

Apparently the former, as both established names and younger artists in the secondary market performed very well, with 65% of the sold lots going above their pre-bid estimates. A total take of $8,463,437* may be the bellwether that indeed Indian art may be able to sustain its ferocious climb it has made over the past decade.

The auction showed strength early on when four George Keyt oils and five Jamini Roy tempera on cards all sold at least double their estimates, with two Keyt’s selling in the $50,000 range. Next up, two Rabindranath Tagores’ sold extremely well—a pen and colored ink on paper titled Bird for $138,213; Death Scene, a gouache and colored ink on paper, for $284,904.

By mid-sale, PAG works went up for auction and, for the most part, did not disappoint those who were watching to gauge the resiliency of the country’s most established artists. An Akbar Padamsee untitled nude, painted in 1956, sold for $498,000 and an archetypal “metascape” from 1983 for $521,630. F. N. Souza’s The Red Road, representing the personal, the political and the spiritual struggle of the artist, and one that Shelley Souza, the artist's daughter, wrote that “so emphatically belonged to my mother, meaning more than any other Souza painting in her collection” sold for $1,144,208. Two other Souzas’ went down for $450,390 and $222,584. S. H. Raza’s La Source, an acrylic on canvas, went for $213,977; an F. M. Husain for nearly $300,000.

But the most positive signs of an Indian contemporary art market not willing to concede to global market forces were yet to come. A 2005 untitled oil by Subodh Gupta went for a final, eye-opening bid of $521,780. Atul Dodiya’s Each Father, Lost (VIII), a mixed media installation in three sections produced shortly after his father's death, sold for $273,163. Bharti Kher’s Missing, bindis on composite aluminum panel, for nearly $210,000 and Thurkral & Tagra’s Stop Think Go, a work that addressed the problem of HIV and AIDS in India, for $202,160. T. V. Santhosh, another young artist who also remains red hot, had an oil on canvas titled A Handful of Ashes, go for $202,478. Jitish Kallat’s mixed media on canvas Humiliation Tax – II, a piece dominated by the centralized image of a young underprivileged child, a symbol for the most vulnerable and impoverished members of Indian society, went for $114,588. And two Sakti Burman’s cashed in at $154,860 and $72,005.

Other names that did well today at Sotheby's include Ambadas ($72,019), Prajakta Palav ($48,320), Chintan Upadhyay ($57,788), Nalini Malini ($71,989), and Shilpa Gupta ($48,333 and $43,595).

Although 26 of the 123 lots (21%) were withdrawn, passed, or unsold, including four works each by Avinash Chandra and F. N. Souza, it seems the 2008 market for Indian Contemporary art remains stable, if not even increasing in value, even when other genres around the world may be waning a bit. Time will tell in upcoming summer and autumn sales if this is indicative for the remainder of the year.

*All prices quoted include the Buyer’s Premium, but do not reflect any Value Added Tax. They were also converted from Great Britain Pound (GBP) to United States Dollar (USD) on 5/2/08. Actual conversion rates may fluctuate from time to time.