2010 auction recap - I

• In March 2010, The Osian’s Masterpieces Series Auction had on offer a wide range of fine art by some of India’s Modern & Contemporary Art masters. The proportion of lots sold was close to 60%.
  
  
• Saffronart managed to sell 75% of the lots, totaling $ 4.6 million, in its Spring Online Auction. At its Summer Auction, a new record was made for Jehangir Sabavala with ‘The Casuarina Line I’ grossing Rs 1.7 crore ($ 374,900). Its Annual Winter Online Art Auction featured 100 works by 43 modern & contemporary artists that closed with an impressive total of $7.1 million, registering excellent prices for several modernists like Raza, FN Souza, KG Subramanyan and Husain, indicating that the modern masters still remain highly sought-after.
  
  
• Bharti Kher set a new auction record for a female contemporary Indian artist in June with her enigmatic elephant sculpture. The fibreglass and bindi work fetched Rs 6.94 crore ($1,493,947) at Sotheby’s auction in London. Her life-sized work, entitled ‘The Skin Speaks a Language Not its Own’, created history in an auction sale in June. ‘Wish Dream’, a monumental mural (16-piece; 24-by-13-ft) by Arpita Singh broke the record, fetching Rs 9.6 crore (close to $2.25 million) in December.
  
  In 'The skin speaks a language of its own', Kher used thousands of tiny white bindis to cover the surface of a full-sized fibreglass elephant, which appears to be on the brink of death. The elephant is revered across Asia as a symbol of dignity, intelligence and strength. The animal was used to carry royalty. Ironically, the term ‘white elephant’ is used to describe something very large and useless. The artist used the symbolism of the white elephant to question ideas of cultural value. The title of the work suggested that such values may be skin deep.