Yamini Mehta - Indian Art News

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

The post From Husain to Picasso, the Indian buyer is getting eclectic first appeared on Indian Art News.

Northward bound

visionsart — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:28:00 +0000

The Economic Times

The price curve of Indian art is shooting north in the global market because of ‘increased consciousness’ about it, say experts. This has been brought about by greater visibility of art and artists from the country and easy access to relevant information about Indian art from the internet, they say. “Indian art is becoming a part of international consciousness, which is why we have seen a spectacular growth in this field,” Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary Indian art at the London-based Christie’s, told IANS on e-mail. “Boundaries are becoming more fluid. We are seeing more Indian artists being represented in international museum exhibitions and art fairs. The exposure is helping create newer collectors who actively seek out works by the best of Indian artists to add to their collections,” Mehta said. On June 11, a painting by F.N. Souza, an Indian artist who spent the better part of his life in New York, sold for $2.5 million, while an untitled painting by Tyeb Mehta (Figure in a Rickshaw) fetched 982,050 pounds setting new price records at the Christie’s auction in London. Five of contemporary artist Subodh Gupta’s works were also sold in the same auction at record prices. Gupta’s ‘Bucket,’ an abstract canvas with the symbolic motif of his trademark bucket, was sold for 121,250 pounds while his ‘Magic Wands’ and ‘Cotton Wicks’ were sold for 169,250 pounds and 15,000 pounds respectively. Twelve artists set new records in terms of prices at the auction in London. According to experts, Indian art in general had a higher price profile in almost every international art show this year. A New Delhi-based dealer, Nature Morte, sold a set of three sculptures by Gupta for nearly $1 million, while a painting by rising star T.V. Santosh went out to a British collector for $170,000 at the prestigious Art Basel, the largest fair of modern and contemporary art in Switzerland. Gupta’s seven-metre wide ‘Triptych’ sold for $1 million in the same fair. In March 2008, M.F. Husain’s ‘Battle of Ganga and Jamuna’ sold for $1.6 million in New York. Auction houses and dealers attribute the boom to growing consciousness and appreciation of According to Mehta, the new breed of collectors, who are armed with more money, are incredibly well informed. “They usually look for a combination of three factors in an art work – lineage, the artist and its freshness. “For instance, the ‘The Birth’ by F.N. Souza which sold for a record-breaking price of $2.5 million, had the combination of all the three: it was a large museum quality masterpiece by one of the giants in Indian art and completely fresh to the market,” Mehta said. The freshness of the artwork, experts claimed, was instrumental in pushing up its price. Peter Nagy, director of Nature Morte Gallery in Delhi, which sold almost all its works at the Basel fair, says the increase in price is directly related to the demand for the works and the increased attention that the international art world is paying to contemporary art works coming out of India today.

The post Northward bound first appeared on Indian Art News.

Exposure makes Indian art prices gallop in global mart

visionsart — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:25:00 +0000

By Madhusree Chatterjee

The price curve of Indian art is shooting north in the global market because of “increased consciousness” about it, say experts. This has been brought about by greater visibility of art and artists from the country and easy access to relevant information about Indian art from the internet, they say.
“Indian art is becoming a part of international consciousness, why is why we have seen a spectacular growth in this field,” Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary Indian art at the London-based Christie’s, told IANS on e-mail.
“Boundaries are becoming more fluid. We are seeing more Indian artists being represented in international museum exhibitions and art fairs. The exposure is helping create newer collectors who actively seek out works by the best of Indian artists to add to their collections,” Mehta said.
On June 11, a painting by F.N. Souza, an Indian artist who spent the better part of his life in New York, sold for $2.5 million, while an untitled painting by Tyeb Mehta (Figure in a Rickshaw) fetched 982,050 pounds setting new price records at the Christie’s auction in London.
Five of contemporary artist Subodh Gupta’s works were also sold in the same auction at record prices. Gupta’s “Bucket”, an abstract canvas with the symbolic motif of his trademark bucket, was sold for 121,250 pounds while his “Magic Wands” and “Cotton Wicks” were sold for 169,250 pounds and 15,000 pounds respectively.
Twelve artists set new records in terms of prices at the auction in London.
According to experts, Indian art in general had a higher price profile in almost every international art show this year.
A New Delhi-based dealer, Nature Morte, sold a set of three sculptures by Gupta for nearly $1 million, while a painting by rising star T.V. Santosh went out to a British collector for $170,000 at the prestigious Art Basel, the largest fair of modern and contemporary art in Switzerland. Gupta’s seven-metre wide “Triptych” sold for $1 million in the same fair.
In March 2008, M.F. Husain’s “Battle of Ganga and Jamuna” sold for $1.6 million in New York.
Auction houses and dealers attribute the boom to growing consciousness and appreciation of Indian art internationally.
According to Mehta, the new breed of collectors, who are armed with more money, are incredibly well informed. “They usually look for a combination of three factors in an art work – lineage, the artist and its freshness.
“For instance, the ‘The Birth’ by F.N. Souza which sold for a record-breaking price of $2.5 million, had the combination of all the three: it was a large museum quality masterpiece by one of the giants in Indian art and completely fresh to the market,” Mehta said.
The freshness of the artwork, experts claimed, was instrumental in pushing up its price.
Peter Nagy, director of Nature Morte Gallery in Delhi, which sold almost all its works at the Basel fair, says the increase in price is directly related to the demand for the works and the increased attention that the international art world is paying to contemporary art works coming out of India today.
“This increased attention increases the demand and hence the prices go up,” Nagy told IANS.
Citing Basel as an example, Nagy said the “audience in Switzerland wanted unique Indian works and were not interested in works and prints by Indian artists. However, the prices of the works were dictated by the prices set in India”.
Another factor that determines the price tag is the stiff neck-on-neck bids, especially at auctions, and the wide client base. The competition among bidders triggers an artificial increase in prices.
The phenomenon is also gradually becoming applicable to Indian art, especially in international sales.
Describing the nature of the Christie’s London auction of Asian art, Mehta said the auction hall was packed right from the beginning with clients from across the globe.
“There was also spirited bidding on telephones and through Christie’s LIVE, which is a new platform for our clients to watch the live auction in real time and bid online from the comfort of home or office,” Mehta said.
According to an estimate by the Christie’s, the market for Indian art gathered steam over the last decade, totalling an impressive $42 million in 2006 from just $656,000 in a sale in 2000.
Before that, price milestones were generally one-time. In 2005, Tyeb Mehta’s “Mahisasura” sold for a record $1,584,000.

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