‘Onanism’, 1969. Photo: Vadhera Art Gallery

Altogether, it was a very rich atmosphere.” This is how Nalini Malani described her experience at the Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW), the multidisciplinary initiative run by veteran artist Akbar Padamsee from 1969-72 out of his Napean Sea Road apartment in Mumbai, with part funding from the Union government’s Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship. “But, unfortunately, with very few women participants,” was the caveat during a 2014 interview with Shanay Jhaveri, assistant curator of South Asian art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, for part 3 of his series Building On A Prehistory: Artists’ Film And New Media In India.

Was she the only female member of the workshop? asked Jhaveri. “Yes, I was,” she replied. The interview was republished in an eponymous tome featuring a collection of essays on her work, released after Malani’s three-part retrospective, You Can’t Keep Acid In A Paper Bag, in 2014 at Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA).

In October, the 71-year-old artist opened The Rebellion Of The Dead at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the first of a two-part retrospective spanning the years 1969-2018. Instead of basking in the limelight, however, she is already absorbed in the impending second installation of the retrospective at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, slated from 27 March-22 July. “The relevance of the huge body of work produced by her over the years has grown multifold in the times we live in,” wrote KNMA director Roobina Karode in her curatorial essay in the 2014 publication. Karode sees her practice as so cutting edge and dynamic that it allows for exciting curatorial propositions that prompt new ways of seeing and interpreting works that have already been written about at great length. It’s no surprise then that each of the two venues will host unique selections, with no works repeating.

The Rebellion Of The Dead cements Malani’s reputation as one of India’s foremost feminist artists. “My own art was from the start female-oriented,” she told Sophie Duplaix, chief curator at Centre Pompidou, in an interview. From the outset, Malani was drawn to the interiority of feminine narratives, beginning with the subjectivity of diary-based explorations, and moving into the multiple dimensions of the world of Indian and Greek mythology, extracting her female protagonists from the patriarchal set-up of the societies that had conjured them. It was not a popular practice to adopt, and the unprecedented, theatrical nature of Malani’s video, installation and performance art triggered an unfair share of criticism. For instance, in 1999, when she exhibited Remembering Toba Tek Singh (1998) at the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai, Indian art critics accused her of being an “installator”, a pun on gladiator, for creating a spectacle for the public.

Similarly, one of the highlights of The Rebellion Of The Dead is the rarely exhibited Onanism, a 3:51-minute, 16mm film made at VIEW in 1969, exploring female angst through the quasi-cathartic movements of a dear friend suffering from mental issues. “You must try to understand that period; it was as if women had swallowed the concept that we are incapable,” Malani had told Jhaveri. “It was almost as if doors were shut. It was a very, very strange situation because there was no openness on the part of the men. None.” Was the attitude patronizing or did they view her with some sort of suspicion? Jhaveri asked. “Neither. They simply ignored me.”

One senior modernist who helped further Malani’s career was S.H. Raza, whose recommendation letter helped her get a French government scholarship that took her to France from 1970-72, soon after her diploma from Mumbai’s Sir JJ School of Art. In Paris, she was given the freedom to design her own education since the École des Beaux-Arts was still to reconfigure its new syllabus. This would be a foundational period for Malani, who practised printmaking at Atelier Friedlander and immersed herself in Marxist politics while attending lectures by Noam Chomsky, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as film screenings at the Cinémathèque Française, where she met directors like Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker.

‘In Search of Vanished Blood’, site-specific medium, single channel, video play, sound. Photo: Rafeeq Elliasi/Centre Pompidou

Like her predecessor Amrita Sher-Gil, Malani decided to return to India in 1973. She soon began to document a Muslim slum in Bandra, Mumbai, striking a deal with Pundole Art Gallery, which offered her Rs300 a month for a year’s output of oil paintings. She was devastated when, one day, the municipality razed the slum. The footage languished for decades till her archivist Johan Pijnappel rediscovered and digitized it, a few years ago.

This slum project is a part of Malani’s corpus of work that is yet to be exhibited. However, on display at the Pompidou are other early works such as Tabloo (1973) and Utopia, a film diptych (1969-76), as well as two other significant later pieces. One, Alleyway, Lohar Chawl (1991), an installation of five reverse-painted transparent Mylar sheets with stones—the result of her long-term residential engagement with Lohar Chawl in Lower Parel, Mumbai. And the second, Remembering Mad Meg (2007-17), a four-channel video with 16 light projections and eight reverse-painted rotating Lexan cylinders with sound that was first shown as part of the landmark Paris-Delhi-Mumbai show at Centre Pompidou in 2011 and was eventually acquired by the Musée National d’Art Moderne at Centre Pompidou. In Search Of Vanished Blood, a six-channel video/shadow play, is an immersive feminist interrogation steeped in literary references to mythical characters from Greek and Indian mythology, created for documenta(13)—it will be exhibited at Castello di Rivoli.

Nalini Malani.

“Is the female voice in the 21st century gaining momentum, and how important is this?” Pijnappel asked Malani in an interview published in the Irish Museum of Modern Art exhibition catalogue in 2007. “It is now a voice to contend with,” she replied.

The Rebellion Of The Dead is on view till 8 January at Centre Pompidou, Paris. For details, visit Centrepompidou.fr/en.

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It is a strange fate of many famous artists that they earn far more posthumously than while they’re alive. Bhupen Khakhar, one of the foremost figures of Indian modernism, has set a new sale record. The painting De-Luxe Tailors from his Tradesmen series, whose pre-sale estimate was £2,50,000-3,50,000 (Rs2.1-3 crore), was sold for £1.1 million (Rs9.5 crore) on Tuesday at Sotheby’s in London, breaking his previous record of £4,34500 for Night (1996) sold in 2014.

The painting was part of the British artist Howard Hodgkin’s personal collection, which was sold in the much-awaited auction Howard Hodgkin: Portrait of the Artist on 24 October. Hodgkin, who loved India and Indian art, considered Khakhar a close friend and often hosted him in the UK, helping him build relationships in the art world.

Hodgkin was drawn to Khakhar’s bizarre, uninhibited style, which avoided abstraction and often focused on the human body, once remarking, “Khakhar has been able to paint what he lives, nothing about art and everything about life—without hang-ups.”

The eye of the global art fraternity, much active in the neighboring China, is slowly turning towards India. A major retrospective of Bhupen Khakhar at Tate Modern in London last year could probably be credited for the significant leap in the commanding price of Khakhar’s work. The painting, then owned by Hodgkin, was one among the many displayed.

Yamini Mehta, international head of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at Sotheby’s, said after the sale that Khakhar’s works “are now being sought after by major museums and his reputation will only continue to grow in stature.”

First Published: Wed, Oct 25 2017. 03 24 PM IST

Source : http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/xPsLh8MEmLi2sCwDToOM7J/Bhupen-Khakhar-sets-sale-record-at-Sothebys-auction.html

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A 900-year-old brush washer from the Northern Song dynasty broke the auction record for Chinese ceramics after it was sold in Hong Kong for HK$294.3 million (US$37.7 million) including commission on Tuesday.

The rare piece, fired in the 11th century Ru imperial kiln in present-day Henan province, drew strong demand at auctioneer Sotheby’s sale room in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Bidding began at HK$80 million and some 30 bids were made before the bowl was knocked down for HK$260 million excluding Sotheby’s commission. The winning bid was made by phone by an anonymous Asian buyer.
The final price was nearly triple the pre-sale estimate of HK$100 million.

There wasn’t a great deal of expectation ahead of the autumn auction season after fairly flat sales in spring. Market watchers predicted the Chinese authorities’ continuing crackdown on corruption and restrictions on capital outflows would have a negative effect on the autumn sales in Hong Kong just as they did on the spring auctions.

“The stock market has certainly been a factor. We are also seeing more young Chinese buyers becoming interested in building up their own antique collections, which means that more people are buying,” Wilson said.
The eight-day “golden week” holiday for national day in China drew many more mainland Chinese visitors to the auction previews than normal, he said, but the real buyers were still largely the familiar faces who come to Hong Kong every season.

There was plenty of speculation about who the buyer of the Ru brush washer is. Dealers said privately that very few ceramics collectors would have HK$294.3 million to spend, and the most likely candidate was Liu Yiqian, the Shanghai collector who set the previous record price for a Chinese ceramic piece when he bought a Ming dynasty “chicken cup” for HK$281 million in 2014. However, a query sent via WeChat to Liu’s wife, Wang Wei, elicited in response only a polite Mid-Autumn Festival greeting.
Collector Liu Yiqian with his wife, Wang Wei. An inquiry to Wang about Tuesday’s record auction purchase was met with a polite Mid-Autumn Festival greeting. Photo: Sam Tsang
The dish is one of just 87 known pieces to have survived from an imperial kiln that was only in operation for a short period of time between the late 11th century and early 12th century. Only four known Ru wares currently remain in private hands.

The seller is Robert Tsao, the Taiwan-born founder and former chairman of United Microelectronics Corporation.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Brush washer breaks ceramics auction record

source : http://www.scmp.com/culture/arts-entertainment/article/2113821/chinese-bowl-auctioned-record-us377m-hong-kong-buyer-rare

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The art world is evolving to cope with the fragmentation of the market. Traditional auction business models are now facing tough competition from exclusively online auctions, with lower running costs

When you think of an art auction, what do you picture? A man with a gavel, standing next to a priceless masterpiece while a well-dressed audience make bids with furtive hand gestures; twitch, and you might accidentally lose a small fortune. Yes, it’s thrilling theatre, but it can also be a little daunting.

Enter Tim Goodman. After a career spanning 40 years in the auction business, he is a man on a mission to shake up the industry.

While the internet had a massive effect on many auctioneers, the worlds of fine art and antiques remain dominated by the same few historic houses. But for how long? “I believe the future lies in a new business model for fine art auctioneering,” says Goodman, formerly Australian head of Bonhams and later Sotheby’s. “The traditional auction business model is no longer sustainable.”

That is why Goodman has just launched an online auction: Fine Art Bourse (FAB). His desire is to refresh the entire auction world and attract completely new audiences. The aim of FAB, he says, is to “democratise the secondary art market and make more art more accessible to more people”.

FAB’s first sale, “Erotic, Fetish & Queer Art & Objects”, takes place on 25 September, and has already attracted controversy following Facebook’s refusal to post advertisements for the sale.

The images include La Toilette by Bernard Fleetwood-Walker and a 19th-century silver cigarette case featuring a nude after the French Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Facebook blocked the images and locked FAB’s account on grounds of indecency.

Following what he saw as unfair censorship, Goodman addressed an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, expressing his outrage over the platform’s inability to distinguish between pornography and fine art.

“Facebook seems to be using its monopoly over social interaction to impose absurd standards of political correctness,” he wrote. “The problem is not… conservative advertising guidelines, [but] a system that doesn’t allow for real judgement.”

But Facebook is not the only big name that Goodman is now up against. His new venture is adopting digital technology to break apart the stronghold of the industry’s power players. Unlike traditional auction houses, with their expensive galleries and doorstopper catalogues (which are environmentally unfriendly, says Goodman), FAB focuses on what really matters to both buyers and sellers.

“My model lies in slashing costs in three areas: bricks and mortar, human resources and printing,” explains Goodman. Auctions take place purely online, specialists are hired for specific projects as needed and there are no printed catalogues.

These cost efficiencies, combined with locating the business in Hong Kong, which has no indirect tax nor copyright and artist resale royalty charges, have allowed FAB to offer the tempting prospect of 5 per cent premiums. With fees at traditional auction outlets nearing 20 per cent for sellers and 25 per cent for buyers, Goodman sees the internet as a way to overturn the more old-fashioned models of auctioneering.

It’s not just about cutting costs; FAB offers impressive flexibility, too. “As the world unremittingly grows more dependent on mobile devices,” says Goodman, “it only makes sense for art to join the ranks of industries disrupted by digital technology.

“With each coming generation, the leap to purchasing art online gets smaller and smaller, with portals like Instagram changing the dialogue by providing a platform for a new generation of younger people to admire influencers, source artists and purchase art without third-party intervention.”

Credits – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/barnebys-auctions/why-fine-art-auction-world-is-in-flux/
Tom Jeffreys

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Akbar Padamsee, Untitled (Mirror Image), Lot 424. Estimate: $600,000-800,000 Image Courtesy: Christie’s.

At Christie’s Asian Art Week, works by artists, including Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta, Adi Davierwalla, Akbar Padamsee, Jehangir Sabavala, Ganesh Pyne, Manjit Bawa, and others, will go under the hammer at the South Asian Modern + Contemporary art auction in Rockefeller Center.

Manjit Bawa, Untitled (Krishna and Cow), Lot 475. Image Courtesy: Christie’s. Estimate: $350,000-500,000.

The auction will offer a total of 76 lots led by an important work painted by Vasudeo S. Gaitonde (1924-2001) in 1996. ‘Untitled’ (Lot 414) is an incandescent painting from 1996; while immediately striking, it maintains the restrained balance of light, texture, colour, and space that the artist perfected over the course of his career.

VS Gaitonde, Untitled *1996). Image Courtesy: Christie’s. Estimate: $2,800,000-3,500,000.

Against a ground methodically layered in tones of vermillion, orange and yellow, Gaitonde inscribes a series of enigmatic hieroglyphic forms that seem almost like embers scorched into the translucent surface, pulsating with a unique meaning for each viewer (estimate: $2,800,000-3,500,000).An advocate of Zen Buddhism, Gaitonde saw painting as a spiritual endeavour and not something to be rushed, either in conception or execution. He painted, on average, just five or six canvases a year.

Maqbool Fida Husain, Untitled, Lot 452, Estimate: $200,000-300,000
The auction will take place September 13 at Christie’s, 20 Rockefeller Center, New York, 10 am.
Credits – https://www.architecturaldigest.in/content/indian-modernist-masterpieces-go-hammer-christies-auction-new-york/#s-cust0

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The art market recovered its momentum in the first half of 2010: + 71% in auction revenue from Fine Art alone! This fact has been quickly seized by the auction houses who are now predicting annual growth in 3 figures in order to reassure a still hesitant market.
In line with this market trend, the historical duopoly, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, have posted first-half revenue figures up 67% and 140% respectively versus their Fine Art revenue for 1H 2009. In a dynamic market context, these figures seem perfectly natural. Nevertheless, when compared to the duopoly’s growth figures in previous years, the picture does not look quite so rosy.

For example, the latest combined revenue figure for the two auction houses is 25% lower than in 1H 2007 and 20% below the combined 2008 figure. Compared to 1H 2006, i.e. before the market started its final ascension in 2008/2009, the auction revenue is only 9% up for Christie’s and 0.5% up for Sotheby’s. Moreover, although the two auction houses have posted market share gains, these gains are substantially dependent on “major” auction results: more than 340 hammer prices above the $1m line, representing 62% of their combined sales.

Between 2002 and 2008, the Christie’s and Sotheby’s duo never left more than 30% of the Fine Art auction market to their competitors. Since July 2008, this figure has been rising and in 2H 2009 the combined market share of the competitors amounted to 46% of global auction revenue.

While the Chinese auction houses account for most of this increase, the other Western auctioneers have not managed to take advantage of the gradual dilution of the duopoly’s market hegemony and the emergence of a highly globalised art market.

Phillips de Pury et Luxembourg, in constant decline since 2001, is today the number 5 auction company in the world behind the Chinese giants Poly and China Guardian. Phillips, acquired by Bernard Arnaud and his LVMH group between 1999 and 2003 to compete with Francois Pinault’s control of Christie’s, has not generated more than 4% of the global market share since 2002. Today, the Russian Financial holding Mercury controls the auction house founded by Harry Phillips in 1796. The aggressively seductive strategy adopted by Phillips de Pury & Company (e.g. a sale entitled “SEX” was organised in March 2010) does not appear to have had the desired effect: In 1H 2010, the English auctioneer was responsible for only 2% of global art auction revenue.

In France, the situation is hardly any better: apart from the scandal that hits the historic Hôtel des ventes Drouot, the French auction companies have once again lost market share this year. The first French auction house in the global ranking is Artcurial, in ninth position behind the Austrian company Dorotheum and a long way behind the Chinese and English houses. In 2006, there were 6 French auction houses in the global top 30; today there are just 3.

China is the big winner from the global art market crisis with 5 auction companies in the world’s top 15 and a market share that is steadily growing.

In the second half of 2010 it is just possible that the two global giants, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, will manage to re-affirm their domination… after all, their fine art revenue in 1H 2010 was better than their combined total for 2009. But if they do, it will be against what now looks like a well-established global trend.

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The post Sotheby’s Sees Art Market Bottom: Profit Declines 87% first appeared on Indian Art News.

HONG KONG— Held May 24, Christie’s Hong Kong spring sale of Asian contemporary and Chinese 20th-century art saw healthy results, due in large part to its more careful selection of works, smaller scale, and tighter focus on what old-money Chinese art collectors covet. Quality works by Chinese masters from the 1950s and 1960s held their prices or established new records, while art created on the mainland in the last 20 years — a category that had become fashionable in the last decade among American and European collectors, who account for 90 percent of the market — continued to underperform. Eric Chang, Christie’s senior vice president, international director of 20th century Chinese and Asian contemporary art, said after the sale: “The results, which nearly doubled pre-sale expectations and saw over 90 percent of lots selling within or above their high estimate, prove that our specialists brought together the right mix of works and matched them with attractive estimates to best meet the current market.” The auction brought in HK$181,657,500 (US$23,379,320), selling an impressive 34 of 38 lots, for 89 percent sold by lot and 98 percent by value. The top earner was a painting by the late, European-trained Sanyu, one of the biggest names among 20th-century Chinese artists. A collector paid HK$42,100,000 for the work, Cats and Birds, setting a new auction record for the artist.

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