Wednesday, June 29, 2011

New Indian art buyers are now emerging

Recent auction results in London and online have thrown slightly mixed results, with works by some of recognized modern masters like MF Husain, who died in London earlier this month, and FN Souza not selling that well in all cases, whereas demand for Subodh Gupta, considered India’s contemporary art poster boy, has fallen, to an extent.

On the other hand, one of the top members of the Husain and Souza-initiated Progressive Artists’ group (PAG), Tyeb Mehta, manage to hit a record auction sale price of $3.24m (including buyers’ premium) at London courtesy Christie’s this month for an untitled figurative work, also doing well elsewhere.

Meanwhile, a different kind of record was set earlier this month by Tyeb Mehta with his work Kali that received a whopping bid of $1m (on its scaling an impressive peak of a $1.31m sale) on Mumbai based auction house Saffronart’s latest sale of art through an innovative mobile-phone bidding application. Both successful and unsuccessful bids totaling more than $3.85 million were received on this wireless auction route, which the online auction company claims is unique.

It also underlines the fact that a class of new Indian buyers is fast emerging for works of art, especially in the in the lower ranges (roughly around $150,000 mark), whereas moving up the price ladder, the news does not seem to be so good.

As is known, the modern & contemporary art market in India peaked in the early and mid-2000s before it witnessed a slump and then starting making a stuttering recovery a couple of years ago. A renowned London-based art market analysis firm, Art Tactic, points out the fact that the market is moving on a palpable ‘negative trend even as other global markets are on an upswing’ with recent auctions coming in almost 20 percent below estimates and close to 18 percent below results recorded last March.

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