V S Gaitonde - Indian Art News

Indian Modernist masterpieces to go under the hammer at Christie’s auction in New York

visionsart — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 08:48:00 +0000

Spanning more than 70 years of modern and contemporary art in South Asia, the sale features seminal works, led by artist V.S. Gaitonde, among many others.

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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From Husain to Picasso, the Indian buyer is getting eclectic

visionsart — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 11:47:00 +0000

After years of selling Indian art to affluent NRIs, international auction houses are now looking to expand the market to Indians at home.

After years of selling Indian art to affluent NRIs, international auction houses are now looking to expand the market to Indians at home. Neelam Raaj spoke to Edward Gibbs, chairman and head of the India department at Sotheby’s London, and Yamini Mehta, senior director for South Asian art, about the changing tastes of the Indian collector.

Your first India office is opening in Mumbai next month. Is there now an India auction on the cards?

EG: We’re certainly listening to the needs of our clients, and at the moment we are bringing a series of travelling exhibitions, lectures and other bespoke events. In the future, auctions are a strong possibility. Indians have become more active in our international sales. Just last year, there were 25-30% more Indian buyers.

You recently described Indians as buyers and not sellers. Is it difficult to make them part with their works?

EG: I stand by that. Indians are primarily buyers. Indian clients start with items of cultural heritage, transition into luxury categories such as jewellery and watches and then trophy pieces like impressionist and modern paintings. There has been a five-fold increase in Indian buyers in 2015 in the jewellery and impressionist-modern categories.

Have Indians taken a shine to jewellery auctions?
EG: If you look at a five-year span from 2010-2015, Indian buyers have bought and bid $400 million in jewellery alone in our global sales. Some look for stones, others for heirlooms and yet others shop for weddings. There is no typical buyer but they are very active in the top end and are driving global sales.

Has the Indian art market recovered from the slump post 2008, especially contemporary art?
YM: There have been multi-million-dollar prices for the modernists like V S Gaitonde, S H Raza etc. Even mid-career artists are getting more visibility. There’s a collector in Ohio who is going to showcase Sudarshan Shetty, Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher at the Pizzuti museum later this year. Nasreen Mohamedi is having a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new space which was formerly the Whitney. It’s such a coup that this brand new space will open with an Indian artist. Come summer, Bhupen Khakar will be featured at the Tate. So Indian artists are beginning to be shown in new places.

With modern artists so much in demand, isn’t it tough to get your hands on that special piece that can be the star at an auction. Aren’t there just that many Gaitondes or Razas?
EG: You have to scale the mountain every time. But it’s a challenge we relish. We are like hunter-gatherers, looking for trophies, and the next cover lot. This time we’re very fortunate, and we have sourced a Gaitonde for the South Asia sale in March that’s become a talking point.
YM: It’s the largest work he’s ever done on canvas, and was initially done for Air India. It has that airy feel, and a sense of space and eternity. It eventually didn’t go to Air India and ended up with another artist-collector called Bal Chhabra who supported many of these artists. Chhabra parted with works like Raza’s Maa but this was the one piece that he didn’t want to part with in his lifetime.

Edward, you’re an expert in classical Indian art. Are miniatures a good investment bet?
The miniature market is extremely buoyant. In October 2015, the collection of a Londoner, Sven Gahlin, which included many miniatures went on sale. It was a 95% sell-through rate. There are a lot of new buyers from India. We see some collectors of modern and contemporary looking at it seriously as they expand their collections to the classical period. It’s a niche area and the quality is fabulous. Compared with other areas of the global art market, they do represent very good value for money.

Indians have always had a comfort level with art from their own country. Is that changing and are they open to looking beyond their borders?
YM: As people are travelling and becoming more global in their mindset, you’ll have all kinds of eclecticism in collecting. Even here you can have a home that looks completely western in its decor or completely traditional or a mix of both. So you have people who have an M F Husain and a Damien Hirst on their walls. There are several Indian collectors who buy top names in western art like Picasso and Van Gogh.

Any other highlight of the South Asia sale?

YM: There’s a wonderful Amrita Sher-Gil titled In the Garden. This comes from the Hungarian side of her family. It was painted in her grandmother’s garden. It has influences from Bruegel, Gaugin and Cezanne and elements of Indian miniatures such as the multiple perspectives.

The recent India Art Fair changed its focus to art from the subcontinent this time. How do you see the South Asian art scene shaping up?

YM: India is still dominant but new markets are coming up. After the India Art Fair, collectors and curators have headed to the Dhaka Art Summit which is going on as we speak, and this time it has big international artists like Tino Sehgal taking part. A Lahore biennale is also in the works. Sri Lanka is doing quite well, especially works from the 43 group. In fact, we have an early work by Senaka Senanayake, one of Sri Lanka’s best artists, in the New York sale.

Credits – Neelam Raaj | TNN | Feb 6, 2016, 10.20 PM IST

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Indian art shines in foreign markets

visionsart — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 09:10:00 +0000

Works by veteran artist V.S. Gaitonde that were sold during the recently-concluded auction of modern and contemporary South Asian art in London.

Works by Indian masters sell for £13,70,000 at a recent auction.

Modern and contemporary Indian art has had much success at auctions held overseas, with international buyers taking note of the talent and works by artists from India.

At a recently-concluded auction organised in London by Bonhams, works by masters like S.H. Raza, Krishen Khanna, M.F. Husain and V.S. Gaitonde sold for a total of £13,70,000, with over 90 per cent of the lots being sold.

Six works by Gaitonde, estimated between £20,000 and £35,000 each, sold for a total of £7,27,000. The works were from the same series of drawings that are part of the same set as a collection in the National Gallery of Modern Art here.

A work by Husain, “Untitled (Self Portrait)”, sold for £56,250, while a work from his horse series sold for £47,500. Tahmina Ghaffar, a specialist in modern and contemporary South Asian art at Bonhams, said each of the works was fiercely contested at the auction. She added that in a market dominated by buyers of Indian origin, international buyers of non-Indian heritage too have started taking note and participating at a high level.

Ms. Ghaffar feels that various institutions and biennales have contributed to global attention Indian artists have been receiving of late and there has been a notable interest from international buyers in works by modern Indian artists in recent years, which is not just a fad.

Earlier, she said, artists were casually disregarded as imitators of western modernists, but they are finally being recognised for their distinct prowess across the globe. Currently, the market is strongest for modern masters, Ms. Ghaffar said. However, contemporary art by Indian artists is forging its way internationally as contemporary artists are tackling the unanswerable questions of place and identity, much like the modern artists of post-Partition India.

“In an increasingly globalised society, this process of achieving self-awareness appeals to an international and not solely an Indian audience. As a result, we are finding more international buyers of contemporary art at auctions,” she added.

Former international director of Asian art at Christie’s Hugo Weihe, who is currently CEO at Saffronart, said Indian art has been extremely well-received internationally, notably in New York and most recently in London, and there is now a global interest in all things Indian.

He feels that while the masters represent well-established values and are, therefore, a safe bet, less time has elapsed to fully evaluate the works of contemporary artists.

But all art was once contemporary then and now it is important to understand the creative process in the context of its time and think about who will hold up to be a “modernist” in the future.

On the lack of experts who can authenticate Indian art, Mr. Weihe feels his new role in this organisation will contribute to nurture specialists and provide pertinent information and historical context for collectors to make an educated decision.

Source – The Hindu – Updated: June 17, 2015 07:36 IST

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Indian Modernist, Artist of Mystery

visionsart — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 14:56:00 +0000

V. S. Gaitonde’s Art Gets a Guggenheim Retrospective

Sandhini Poddar, adjunct curator at the Guggenheim Museum, has organized a retrospective on the Indian modernist painter V. S. Gaitonde, that opens Friday. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times

When Sandhini Poddar first saw the paintings of V. S. Gaitonde, their silence spoke loudly. Displayed in a group show in 1997 at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai, the large abstract canvases, with layered colors and textures, invited long contemplation. “This was a feeling that wasn’t ephemeral, it stayed with me, and I could recall it whenever I wanted to go to a place of silence,” she said.

Gaitonde, in his early 70s at the time, was living in a one-room rented apartment in New Delhi. Although fellow artists and knowledgeable collectors admired his work, he remained in the shadows, as he preferred. He had friends but never married. He gave few interviews. “He was a special kind of fellow,” said the New Delhi painter Krishen Khanna, a friend. “He didn’t doubt himself. He didn’t go around beating his drum. He was very quiet.”

By the time Ms. Poddar, 38, adjunct curator at the Guggenheim Museum, was in a position to help raise awareness of Gaitonde’s achievement, the painter, whom she never met, was no longer available to assist her. He died in 2001. Exploring the residual traces of his life, she discovered that he left remarkably little trail. There were no heirs. No one had inventoried his output. In a long career, he produced relatively few paintings. “There’s always been a kind of mystery surrounding the artist,” Ms. Poddar said. “He’s almost abstract as a person in that way.” As she researched his self-effacing craft, in preparation for a retrospective that will open on Friday at the Guggenheim, the mysteries of Gaitonde only deepened. His obscurity, however, ended with a dramatic flourish

Indian modernist painter V. S. Gaitonde. Credit Shalini Saran

Last December in Mumbai, as part of Christie’s first auction in India, a painting by Gaitonde sold for $3.8 million, the highest price ever for a work of modern Indian art. The auction signaled the arrival not only of this singular painter, but also of an entire generation of postwar Indian artists. Almost every work in the sale of Indian modern art fetched a price that was triple its low estimate, said Deepanjana Klein, the Christie’s vice president for South Asian modern and contemporary art.
For Gaitonde, it helped that the Guggenheim show was on the horizon. Hugo Weihe, then Christie’s international director of Asian art, told his listeners that the painting they were bidding on might well be displayed in a major New York museum the following year. In the audience was Sandhini Poddar’s mother, Rashmi, an art historian and philosopher of aesthetics. (The Poddars, who are part of the prominent Marwari business clan, had consigned work by another artist.

“What have you done?” she texted Sandhini, who was in London, as the gavel descended on the record-setting amount. Her daughter wrote back, “This is nuts.”

A untitled 1979 painting that sold for $3.8 million at auction last year. Credit Lee Ewing

The sale price was certainly startling, but as mother and daughter knew, it could be explained. The growth of the Indian economy over the last two decades has swelled the fortunes of the Indian business class, and with it has come an increased interest in India’s art. The trade in Indian antiquities is tightly restricted; its most fervent collectors are outside the country, in the United States and Europe. Modern Indian art awaited discovery.

The leading Indian modernist painters belonged to the Progressive Artists Group, a loose clique of painters that formed in 1947 in Bombay (as Mumbai was then called). They borrowed the techniques and formal devices of avant-garde Western painting. However, as has happened over the ages, the imported aesthetic would change as it was synthesized in India.

Gaitonde was raised in Bombay and lived there until his move to New Delhi in 1972. In 1950, he joined the Progressive Artists, painting pictures that were heavily influenced by Paul Klee. “Klee was a great god here,” said Mr. Khanna, who affiliated himself with the Progressive Artists. “Everyone felt he had opened a whole new book in painting.”

“Painting No. 6” from 1962. Credit Anil Rane/Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.

Gaitonde, who developed a deep interest in the teachings of Zen Buddhism, gradually eliminated all figurative representation from his work. He used a roller to build up thin washes of color in translucent complexity, and a palette knife to create contrasting patches of thick impasto. In 1964, he moved for a year to New York, where he could view actual paintings by Western artists instead of reproductions.

Mr. Khanna went with him to visit Mark Rothko. “We saw Mark doing his big paintings, the black ones,” Mr. Khanna recalled. “We were both suitably impressed — Gaitonde greatly impressed.” Although Gaitonde’s paintings don’t resemble Rothko’s formally, they inspire a similar meditative mood. “When you concentrate on the painting, you are sucked into the painting,” Mr. Khanna said.

In his later years, Gaitonde would apply cutout strips to his canvas and apply his roller over them until they hovered as ghostly forms. He created only a half-dozen or so paintings in a year. Although he could be adamant about his pricing — Mr. Khanna remembered once seeing the director of the National Gallery of Modern Art approach Gaitonde to suggest a discount, then walk away quickly in obvious defeat — he showed no interest in material possessions or commercial success. “After the work was taken away, he didn’t have any relationship with it,” Sandhini Poddar said. “He went on to the next idea.”

An untitled ink on paper from 1987. Credit Anil Rane/Collection of Ram Kumar

His dedication to his art and self-imposed absence from the persiflage of casual daily life obviously appeal to Ms. Poddar. “She lives in a world of abstraction, almost,” her mother said. “It’s not just the notion of silence, but the experience of silence.” In 2008, Sandhini spent 10 days in a silent retreat at a Buddhist monastery in Massachusetts. On her return, she shaved off all of her long hair. “She wanted to experience detachment,” Rashmi Poddar said. “One of the things she was attached to was her hair as a sign of beauty. So she cut it off. ” It has since grown back.

Sandhini gravitated to the orbit of Rashmi and other art lovers in the family. (A cousin by marriage owns two drawings and a painting in the Guggenheim show.) “When other kids were doing cartwheels, I was at the Louvre,” she said. She melded a passion for modern Western art with a devotion to traditional India. Earning postgraduate degrees in ancient Indian culture and Indian aesthetics from the University of Mumbai, she added a master’s in arts administration at New York University.

Coming late to art history, she draws on her interdisciplinary studies as a source of insight. Referring to the rich reds and yellows in Gaitonde’s palette and to his calligraphic forms, she said: “What aspect of the miniature painting tradition is Gaitonde taking? What part of the Zen tradition?” In her view, medieval Indian art and Eastern philosophy are as relevant as the Progressive Artists Group to an understanding of Gaitonde’s accomplishment.

An untitled painting from 1955. Credit Florian Biber/Chowdhury Family Collection, Vienna-Mumbai

Before taking on Gaitonde for the Guggenheim, Ms. Poddar oversaw exhibitions there on two Indian expatriates: the sculptor Anish Kapoor and (in a show organized by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles) the printmaker Zarina. With an eye to enlarging its global profile, the Guggenheim is devoting more space to artists from outside the United States and Western Europe. More controversially, as part of its worldwide mission it is establishing a branch in Abu Dhabi. Like New York University, which built a campus there, the Guggenheim has faced criticism over the conditions for construction workers.

Acquiring art from the Subcontinent that will be displayed in Abu Dhabi, Ms. Poddar is aware that people from the region constitute by far the largest demographic group, but they are there mainly as temporary workers and may never enjoy the museum’s offerings. “You have a public to serve, but it is not a museum-going public,” she said. “It is not just enough to put the collection together. Abu Dhabi is so young. At the end of the day, the question is the same: Who are you serving, and how are you going to serve them?”

Positioning Indian artists within the overall narrative of modern art is another delicate challenge. In recent decades, many Latin American artists of the mid-20th century have been recognized as central to art history. Will any Indian artists attain comparable status? Rashmi Poddar, for one, is skeptical. “Much of it is derivative,” she said. “In Indian art, we’ve always had this love of embellishment and the decorative. Indian art has never been abstract.” Christie’s Ms. Klein, on the other hand, maintains that as more museums explore modern and contemporary Indian art — she noted exhibitions in Philadelphia, Chicago and San Diego — the scholarship will deepen, winning wider acclaim for artists. It is not only the scholarship that has a way to go. Within India, the conditions for displaying art are still so undeveloped that Sandhini Poddar was unable to find a financially stable museum that could accept the Gaitonde show.

Ms. Poddar lives in England, where she is engaged to marry William Sargent, the co-founder and C.E.O. of a company that creates special effects for movies, “Gravity” among them. She is also planning to return to school to get a Ph.D. She seemed confident about Gaitonde’s stature as a world-class painter, but when the topic turned to India’s place in the history of modern art, she became a bit less certain. Asked who stood on the same rung as Gaitonde, she hesitated. “I think he is rather exceptional,” she said.

The answer on India’s role in modern art is pending; happily, the scholarship that can settle the question has begun.

By ARTHUR LUBOWOCT. 18, 2014

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Indian art needs a discerning market

visionsart — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 14:39:00 +0000

What is the new buzz about the art auctions? asked a non-arty friend of mine last evening when he found me thumbing through a couple of auctions catalogues. What about them, I wondered? Considering the whole premise of an auction is that there should be more than one buyer for any work, who in turn are willing to compete to acquire those works and the highest bidder finally bags the work in question. Simplistic? Yes. Over simplistic. And illogical too.

For every gallery owner tells me that the business of art nose-dived during the recession and is yet to pick up. There is little interest in art buying for the moment, and in this scenario holding an auction is to my mind, completely illogical. I mean why go through the angst of collecting the works, getting provenances, printing a catalogue – a huge exercise in itself by any stretch of imagination, holding a physical auction – with all the related nitty-gritty of the event, getting audiences, media et al. I know hope springs eternal in the human heart, but hoping against hope is hardly business sense.As I was waxing eloquent, my non-arty friend continued to look at me in a very perplexed manner. Unable to bear it any more, I halted mid-diatribe and said: What is so mystifying? He retorted: I thought you all were the art types, not concerned about the business of it. You should be glad that at least someone is willing to put in money for art if not in art to let it remain in the news, if nothing else.

He had a point. And a big one at that. Almost within a span of a month, five big auctions of Indian contemporary art have been held in New Delhi, London, Kolkata and Mumbai. Insiders tell me that nothing much sold at these auctions and makes me wonder if it was a mere tax write off. And at the same time, it makes me wonder if people across the cities had the same thought or was there something else at play apart from valiant attempts to give art markets a boost? Like off loading works for instance?

I know I sound like the proverbial broken record when I go on about the need for an educated and discerning art market that comprises art critics, buyers, cognoscenti, media and not merely its creators who must have a sense of historicity and must be able to position Indian art globally. It is just the correct time to do this in a sustained and organised manner when the buying and selling is not so brisk, we should use this time to tom-tom our wares correctly.

But whatever the commercial fate of these auctions, the one thing that I personally am delighted about is the fact that Indian abstract art is finally coming into its own, both nationally and internationally. Gaitonde’s work is being positioned

correctly. Some other works that one may not see anywhere are being dragged out of the closet and shown off!

The other news doing the rounds is the story of Sheetal Mafatlal allegedly replacing originals with photographs on canvas and blaming her friends for the switch. I read the whole story and wondered how on earth can digital photographs printed on canvas replace paintings even for the absolute layperson? Then of course there are others who actually practise this style: Of printing photographs on canvas and then painting on top of it as a matter of personal technique. What I think of it is another matter, but of that another time!

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@ yahoo.com

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How is art not luxury?

visionsart — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:40:00 +0000

The last few days of the current fiscal saw Indian art worth Rs 100 crore being auctioned at three separate venues over a few hours each, yet it failed to form part of what the cognoscenti consider the $6 billion luxury industry (minus real-estate). It’s not art alone that’s outside the purview of what is considered luxury, with the unorganised sector, which includes wedding trousseaus consisting of expensive jewellery and saris, firmly outside its branded firmament. Elsewhere, they might even call it bespoke, but here it remains, like art, under the radar of the luxury brand fraternity.

When paintings by an artist sell for several lakhs apiece, when a V S Gaitonde gatecrashes into the big league at Rs 5.5 crore, when a gallery mounts an exhibition with a value anywhere between Rs 25-50 crore, what’s not luxury about it? True, art is about creativity, but in each piece being unique and with the peer value it carries, it forms part of the universe of luxury. Yet, luxury real-estate developers who are at pains to advertise tie-ups with the house of Armani, Versace and the like for furnishings and furniture, or Philippe Starck for lights, have not even begun to consider art as part of their portfolios. It might be argued that art is about individual taste, but so is sofa fabric – yet you don’t see anyone at variance about that.

Which is why, at a recent luxury conference in the capital, watches and suits formed part of the inventory of talking points, but art remained firmly – strangely? – out of it. And yet, whether the size of the Indian art market was worth Rs 1,500 crore in 2008 (and, arguably, anywhere between Rs 500-1,000 crore currently) it remains larger than several other segments of the luxury industry. How many Rs 2 crore-plus yachts, for instance, are being sold in India? That answer, given Mumbai’s tacky dinghies anchored off its Gateway of India, is only rather obvious. But if the number of high-end luxury homes is increasing, art, without a doubt, is going to ramp up too, whether it’s considered luxury or not by the industry.

It does, however, need to shed some of its glorious uncertainties. While the value of jewellery, or automobile technology, can be explained to an extent, and designers can talk objectively about the creativity in fashion, or a pair of shoes, it’s more difficult to calculate in a painting, or sculpture, where the value lies only in terms of the artist’s context – and, of course, rarity, even though with terms like “mass luxury”, a prolific artist is no longer to be disdained.

With the exception of the most passionate collectors, it remains evident that the serious pursuit of art begins only when consumers of luxury goods have sampled, sequentially, the purchase of a car, property (including at least a second home), expensive branded jewellery, the ownership in whole or part of a jet or a yacht, while stumbling through foreign holidays, fashion, accessories and the like. Art enters their life when boredom begins to peck at their routine shopping impulses.

Sadly, neither the art fraternity, nor the luxury industry, have done anything to help move Indian art up that pecking order. With 2013 having started off better for Indian art than most previous ones at least as far as the market is concerned, it seems set to be staging a comeback. What value it will add to the luxury market though remains under a cloud and yet to be seen.

-Kishore Sing in Business Standard

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