Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis
March 19
Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian
Sale total $3,203,225
91.67% sold by lot
*Auction world record achieved for Indian artist Bagta “Rawat Gokal Das celebrating holi in the zenana” sold for $302,500 (pre-sale estimate $30,000 – 50,000)
March 20
Fine Chinese Snuff Bottles
Sale total $1,022,900
98.25% sold by lot
Fine Japanese Works of Art
Sale total $1,485,188
74.92% sold by lot
Forbes India has this priceless interview with Bijay J. Anand of Kyozan Arts:
Who makes most money in art?
Artists. Husain would make more than the auction houses who make more than the dealers.
How much? Husain has a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a Rolls Royce, a Jaguar (two methinks) and a Bugatti Veyron. Go figure.How does an art curator earn a living?
By wearing “arty” clothes with designer labels. And by putting together shows that only their family members and dear exasperated friends go for. The wine and cheese is meant to be an incentive but nobody tells the curators that the wine tastes like acid and the cheese tastes like rubber/salt/yuck.
Which are the most promising schools of art to follow, from an investment perspective?
The Progressives. And other artists who are usually in the same age group.
Why do Indian art prices lag behind global levels?
Because a Picasso, Miro, Rothko or Mondigliani is coveted by billionaires from Russia, China, the US, UK. And Lesotho, Sudan, Mongolia as well as the Fiji islands. Whereas most Indian billionaires don’t own any art at all and neither do they want any. [Read more...]
The Economic Times warns that the supposed recovery in the art market has come too quickly to correct profligate and irrational behavior among collectors:
Consider that it was only a year ago that even works by the beloved Progressive Modernists were available for a steal at auction ; consider that the majority of Contemporary artists who were thought desirable when the going was good, are a tough sell today in both primary and secondary markets ; consider that there has been no trickle down effect to emerging art forms. A topheavy market may generate headlines, but it doesn’t speak for 99% of the market, which still needs its own adrenaline shot.
Semantics merely holds symbolic, not real, value. As much as the auction houses claim that collectors are buying and speculators are out; the truth is everyone, no matter what their net worth or disposable income levels, is buying to invest. Today, the art that sells has to be of the investible worthiness of real estate and gold to summon up buyer excitement . While that’s good news for Traditional and Modern art, which is finally getting its due, it doesn’t bode well for present and future art practitioners for whom the support infrastructure has contracted considerably . [Read more...]
With 78% of the lots sold and and the Rabindranath Tagore’s works making £1.6m, there were solid sales by Raza, Souza, Manjit Banwa and Chandra.
The Indian Art Summit has created a second art fair in the country just by moving it’s date:
After two years of being held in August, the organisers of India Art Summit decided to shift the annual event to January leading to a no show in 2010. But the Capital’s art circles will not be deprived of an art extravaganza in this calender year. Another art event, the India International Art Fair, will make its debut in autumn. Interestingly, it was the postponement of the Summit that led to the plans for the art fair. [Read more...]
Recently, the Telegraph tried to get to the bottom of why so many wealthy Indians were buying homes (and art) in the UK. Christening them the Bollygarchs, Clive Aslet describes the appeal:
Although India is moving very fast in economic terms, entrepreneurs do not yet have access to sophisticated capital markets, such as those in London – and if you have a lot of money, it is nice to be near it.
Over the past couple of years, it is Indians who have made the market for homes costing over £10m. In this, the newcomers have followed the lead of Lakshmi Mittal, who bought a town palace in Kensington Park Gardens for £70m in 2003. The suave and immaculate Cyrus Vandrevala, a technology investor in his 30s, who started Intrepid Capital Partners, lived at Claridge’s for six months with his heiress wife Priya before buying somewhere for £20m at the end of 2008.
“The wealthy Indian community are not highly leveraged and are therefore in a perfect position to buy property at a hugely discounted rate,” he has said. [Read more...]
In the New York Times, Akash Kapur explores the conflict in Indian culture that is drawing students and money away from the arts in favor of technology. It’s easy to understand the appeal. Young people want to succeed and the energy in India’s economy is in the tech sector:
As India grows richer, its culture is changing. The question is whether that culture will be defined solely by the nation’s new prosperity — whether a nation in the midst of a consumerist frenzy can maintain noncommercial islands of intellectual and cultural endeavor, and whether a population determined to get rich can appreciate pursuits whose returns are less immediately tangible. [Read more...]
Kishore Singh has lunch with Neville Tuli of Osian’s in India. They discuss the market for Indian antiquities which has government constraints. Singh claims to have more than $200 million worth of art and memorabilia that the company owns itself:
There’s nothing that angers him as much as accusations about the health of the organisation. “Osian’s,” he glowers into his plate, “has one of the largest collections in the world, of 265,000 original art works and memorabilia owned by us. It’s worth Rs 800-1,000 crore. It’s because of that we have been able to do what we have done, and we’ve sold barely 2,000 works from that collection (at auctions, to fund our ventures).”
Tuli also estimates the Indian antiquities held in the country at $1 billion in value. More important, he feels there is far more outside of the country. As India’s wealth grows, the desire to repatriate that patrimony should grow too: [Read more...]
Alexandra Peers went down to Chelsea for the opening of the new season. She reports on it for New York Magazine. One of the stops was Dennis Hopper’s opening (New York has more on that here.) There she ran into Salman Rushdie who praised Hopper’s work:
“I like the show, and there are already pieces I think are very special — the Paul Newman photograph, and the Andy Warhol holding the lily,” Salman Rushdie told us. [Read more...]
