Royal court paintings from the collection of Colonel R K Tandan, fine stone sculptures of Vishnu, 11th century bronze and copper sculptures and private collections lead Christie’s fourth India sale. By Team Viva
The global art market has slowly begun to sit up and take notice of contemporary Indian. An interest that has prodded a deeper investigation into our art history. “The boost for Indian art has already begun, with the opening up of new galleries, art fairs, the Kochi biennale and similar art events,” says Deepanjana Klein, international Head of Department, South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art, Christie’s.
The sale this year (December 18, Mumbai) will offer around 150 lots, including 71 lots of classical Indian art, which Christie’s introduced as an auction category for the first time last year. All works in this section are registered antiquities and are, therefore, non-exportable.
Carved in deep relief with extraordinary detail, an impressive stele of Vishnu demonstrates the masterful craftsmanship of 12th century artists working in northwestern India. This grey stone figure of Vishnu, estimated at Rs15,00,000-20,00,000, depicts the deity surrounded by an entourage of his avatars, attendants and other deities, all fitted in microcosmic detail.
Another large and elaborate stele of Vishnu, from the 11th century, depicts the lord in a powerful frontal stance emerging from an ornate niche. Apart from this, royal court paintings from the collection of Colonel R K Tandan, dating from the 15th to mid-19th centuries, are the highlights of the auction. There will be a folio from the Tandan Ragamala: Shri Raga, (estimated Rs70,00,000-1,00,00,000) circa 1700. This is one of the four paintings to come from an iconic Pahari series of Ragamala painting attributed to the small Himalayan foothill of Basohli.
The sale will feature bronze and copper works from the collection of Sohrab K Bhedwar, architect of the Eros Cinema, Mumbai. This is considered as one of downtown Mumbai’s most recognised art deco buildings. There’s a bronze shrine of a Jina (estimated at Rs4,00,000- 6,00,000) and a 15th century bronze figure of a goddess (estimated at Rs4,00,000-6,00,000).
“If you have quality, it will bring in collectors from all the regions. That increases their chances of taking a look at contemporary works too, not just modern. It’s all about diversifying the market, cross-selling and cross-marketing. I would say that Indian art has become more global,” says Klein, sounding optimistic.
There will also be 41 works from the private collection of Abhishek and Radhika Poddar, known patrons of contemporary Indian art. The Sale, this year, will be divided into two sales. The Classical Indian Art Sale and The Modern Contemporary Art Sale with the latter featuring exceptional works.
On the ongoing trend in Indian art, Deepanjana says, “New collectors are coming up in the market after doing a substantial amount of research. The market here is becoming very educated and sophisticated.”
Art is no longer seen just as an investment. Rather auctions are being seen as an apt platform to refine one’s awareness about art. “We would never ask someone to buy a work for its own sake. Our job, rather, is to work towards developing a taste for what you acquire. The days you wake up seeing the work and the years you lived with it are the added pleasure. There is a great potential for the future of art investment in India. Sky is the limit”, she concludes.
The masters include Jehangir Sabavala. Paintings like Under the shadow of…IV, part of a series of works that the artist undertook in the late 1980s, are carefully planned and constructed based on meticulous linear schema and highly nuanced colour plans comprising several minutely graded “broken tones.” The end results are images of land, sea and sky unlike any others, at once restrained and emotionally charged. In this mysteriously titled series of works, the interplay between light and shadow is particularly important and is based on a lifetime’s study of natural Indian light without resort to banal naturalism (estimated at Rs1,80,00,000-2,50,00,000).
Bhupen Khakhar, whose work has just been exhibited in a comprehensive exhibition at Tate Modern in london, is represented in the auction with a work of art dating from his later years. In this impressive work on paper, Khakhar returns to the seascapes and fishing communities. The sale offers a particular panorama, painted in 2002, inspired by the coastal district of Ratnagiri in Maharashtra. Under a sky full of menacing grey clouds, a group of sail boats loaded with the day’s catch has pulled into a cove along a sandbar populated by a stand of coconut palms and a solitary green mosque. Contrary in palette, mood and style from the painting it frames, the red and gold border offers a witty comment on the genre of landscape painting and its place in Khakhar’s essentially figurative, narrative idiom (estimated at Rs70,00,000-90,00,000).
Akbar Padamsee’s series of Metascapes, begun in the early 1970s, represent the artist’s long, unique involvement with the genre of landscape. As the word Metascape suggests, in these paintings Padamsee is concerned with the mythic or archetypal landscape, which is expressed visually by a stringent ordering of timeless elements, such as the earth, the sun and the moon, in temporal space. The use of a bold palette, and the importance the artist places on texture and construction, complements his choice of landscape as subject, their earthy tones heightened with swathes of vibrant red and blue. The colours evoke a sense of movement in an unmoving space; one without any specific chronology or geography. This large canvas from 1973, with its deep crimson horizon, is one of the earliest metascapes painted by Padamsee (Rs1,50,00,000-2,00,00,000).