Madrid (Spain), Feb 18 (IANS) Special invitee India’s show at global art fair ARCO-Madrid 2009 was robbed of some of its lustre due to a wary market and a panorama section that had a narrow focuss on post-contemporary movements.The highlight of the five-day ARCO-Madrid this year was the India Panorama, an exhibition of works by 54 artists from 14 galleries across the country, the guest nation in 2009.
But, despite drawing large crowds and hundreds of enquiries on acquisition and sale, it did not translate into brisk business at the fair that ended this week.
“I am sure India has a lot more art; I wish there was more space to display a bigger spread and variety. Last year, Brazil, the guest country at ARCO, was more comprehensively represented,” Pilar Baselga, a Spanish art historian, told IANS. The India show focussed on the post-contemporary movements of the 1980s, 90s and this decade. German art critic, writer and curator Heinz Schutz, a regular at the fair, felt the Indian panorama did not reflect a fixed identity because of two reasons.
“The exhibition was too small and there was too much pop art around. The artists were young and new. It would be good to go deeper into the history of Indian art,” Schutz told IANS.
Experts, artists and gallery owners at the fair attributed the slowdown to two factors. One, the acute recession in Europe which has dented the sale curves of quality artworks across the continent. Two, the unfamiliarity of the conservative and largely insulated Spanish market to trends in contemporary Indian art and the young panorama.
Art historians, reviewers, market watchers and auction analysts said Spanish buyers should have been acquainted through a well-documented showcase tracing the history and chronology of Indian contemporary art over the last 50 years and accompanying discussions on the country’s art history.
Spanish curators also rued that several Indian regions, especially West Bengal, often dubbed the cradle of modern and contemporary art, was not included in the Indian panorama. Even states like Gujarat and Tamil Nadu were ignored.
But the deepening recession in Europe was the primary stumbling block that crippled the pace of commerce. This downturn is seeping into the contemporary European art market as well.
At ARCO – which strategically did not put out too many exorbitant art works on sale – high-end Indian art did not find too many takers.
Two works by Jitish Kallat, one of the most popular young Indian artists in Europe, on display by the London-based Haunch of Venison gallery at the fair, lured throngs of curious art buffs and collectors, who enquired about the prices but refused to bite the bait.
The works, “Universal Recipient (showing a Sikh man with a turban)” and “Aquasaraus (a dinosaur-like water truck)” were priced at 100,000 euros and 300,000 euros respectively.
In comparison, another contemporary artist, Shilpa Gupta, whose installation works were priced at 50,000, 10,000 and 8,500 euros respectively managed to sell because of their pragmatic price bands and quality.
Photographer Dayanita Singh’s landscapes and figure studies – one of the highlights of the huge cache of limited edition photographic prints at the fair – were tagged at 5,500, 4,000 and 3,800 euros respectively. And they sold too.
The fact that museums – one of the largest bodies of buyers in Spain – are battling cuts in acquisition budgets further muddied the market dynamics at ARCO. Last year, Reina Sofia, one of the country’s most prestigious museums of contemporary art, spent 2.3 million euros at the fair, but this year its art spend had dwindled.
The commerce trends at ARCO are an echo of the greater picture of the art market across Europe.
In an auction held at Sotheby’s in London Feb 5, experts were unusually restrained in their estimates. Gone were the $10 million plus works.
On Feb 12, Christie’s figures for its 2008 global art auctions across 14 vends globally showed an 11 percent decrease over 2007 because of the bleak global economic backdrop. The amount raked in by the London-based auction house in 2008 was $487 million.
“But as we move into 2009, recent results give good reasons to remain positive about the global art market where demand remains strong for well-estimated, unique and sought-after works of art,” said Edward Dolman, the London-based chief executive officer of Christie’s International.

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KOLKATA: Sotheby’s is uncorking Indian contemporary photography at its September auction in New York. The auction is projecting photography as the next big development on the Indian artistic horizon. Each photographic image is estimated in the range of $5,000-15,000.

Among the lots is ‘Fragments of a Wedding Diary’, the 3rd edition of 5, which is a digital image on archival paper. This is a set of 33 framed photographs executed in 2001.

Estimated at $10,000-15,000, the work has been exhibited in museums in Finland and the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre.

Another piece includes Sunil Gupta’s ‘Homelands’.

The work was showcased in the seminal exhibition, ‘India: Public Places, Private Spaces, Contemporary Photography and Video Art’ in Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey in 2007. It was included in a show in Switzerland in 2007. Gupta’s work at Sotheby’s is estimated to fetch between $5,000-7,000.

Featuring in the selection of photographs is also Vivek Vilasini’s “humorous” work titled ‘Last Supper’. Here, he depicts people in Kathakali outfits seated around a dining table as Christ and his Apostles.

“The choreographed work showcases the beauty and ability of photography as a medium,” said Ms Maithili Parekh, Sotheby’s deputy director. The value of the photograph is between $10,000-15,000.

In the collection is also ‘There Is No Border Here’, a piece photographed by Shilpa Gupta estimated in the range of $6,000-8,000. In step, one finds Tejal Shah’s ‘Encounter(s)’ executed in 2006. Shah’s works have figured in solo exhibits in Mumbai, Berlin and New York. ‘Encounter(s)’ is pegged at an estimate of $6,000-8,000.

“As art prices for paintings and sculptures reach astronomical levels, collectors are turning toward photography which is an affordable and, yet, innovative medium. There are also photographic shows being staged in venues like Newark Museum, New Jersey. Now, Sotheby’s is bringing cutting-edge Indian photography at its Indian art sale in New York,” Ms Parekh said.

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The ShContemporary is a sign of a mature Chinese art market.

Come September, and eight galleries from various Indian cities will be travelling to the Middle Kingdom.

Their desintation, the ShContemporary 2008, or the Asia Pacific Contemporary Art Fair as it’s formally called, held in Shanghai from September 10-13. This is only the second year of the fair, which was instituted as something of a meeting ground for the best of contemporary art from the East and the West.

Quite successfully, since as many as 130 galleries from 23 countries participated last year, along with dealers, curators, museum representatives, artists and visitors numbering around 25,000. The Indian presence was not inconsequential (considering that Indian galleries are relatively recent to the art-fair scene).

Four galleries � Bodhi, Chemould Prescott, Sakshi and Nature Morte; three artists in the “best of discovery” curated section, showcasing young and promising talent � Shilpa Gupta, Sharmila Samant and Ravikumar Kashi; and another three in the “best of artists” section for the more established names � Jittish Kallat, Sudarshan Shetty and Zarina Hashmi.

Sales were good says Geetha Mehra, founder of Sakshi Gallery, adding “There was a lot of energy in the air.” Nivedita Magar, director with SKE Gallery in Bangalore, reports much the same.

“Many inquiries are still coming in,” she says. The gallery, which specialises in new age, mixed media kind of work, was recommended for participation at the inaugural ShContemporary by Pierre Huber, a Geneva-based dealer who was artistic director of the fair (he has since stepped down after allegations of “conflict of interest”).

Despite a few glitches like very high import duties � which meant Magar spent far more on transporting the art works within China than she did shipping them from India � and taxes on Chinese nationals buying foreign art, the Shanghai experience was valuable, Magar feels, “as it set off a network”.

This year, the Indian contingent to Shanghai is far larger than 2007’s � eight galleries, with such established names as Gallery Espace, Vadehra and Threshold, among them. The “best of discovery” section announced already has six Indians � Deeksha Nath (curator and critic), Tushar Joag, Vibha Galhotra, Ved Gupta, Sumedh Rajendran and Suhasini Kejriwal.

But there’s more to the China-India art encounter in recent times than the ShContemporary. The most important here is the 2006 exhibition at the Arario gallery in Beijing, “Hungry God”, which had a large selection of contemporary Indian artists like Subodh Gupta, Atul Dodiya, Tallur L N and Sonia Khurana.

Lately, these isolated encounters look set to become two way. “We already collect Chinese art and have been showing them selectively in our group shows at Sakshi,” says Mehra.

In art, as in their economies, there is a tendency in the West to see the two countries together as the two Asian giants with the most “happending” art that collectors must watch out for.

To give just one example, last year’s Rencontres D’Arles, arguably the most important international photography festival on the calendar, focussed on both India and China. The truth, however, is a little more complicated. While we celebrate the record $2.48 million that Souza’s “Birth” recently went for at a Christie’s auction, Yue Minjan’s 1995 oil “Execution” went for $ 5.9 million last year at Southeby’s, while the “Mask Series 1996 No.6” by Zeng Fanzhi fetched the highest price ever by an Asian artists � $9.7 million, at Christie’s Hong Kong auction in May.

High prices, of course, don’t mean anything. But fairs like the ShContemporary, especially the importance they are given by galleries and curators globally, show how much more mature the Chinese art market is.

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