Mike Boehm explores the ambiguities of the antiquities trade:

A 1,000-year-old stone stele of the god is scheduled to be unveiled at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon on Valentine’s Day. Having already drawn criticism from the anti-looting advocacy group SAFE –Saving Antiquities for Everyone — the Ganesha could soon be exhibit A in the back-and-forth between those who favor a hard line against collecting ancient works whose paths since before 1970 are murky, and those who think it makes more sense to give museums some leeway when hard proof is lacking. [ . . . ]

Although it’s “a fine example” of its style and period, the Ganesha isn’t a rare item, Graybill said, so adding it to a collection in Oregon creates no gap in the art-historical record available to scholars and the public in India. Also, she said, it has lost any sacred attachment to its place of origin: Muslim invaders 800 years ago destroyed all the Hindu and Buddhist temples in northeastern India, so there is no existing ruin to which it could be restored. Also, Graybill said, in South Asian faiths, an image ceases to be sacred “if it is not actively venerated,” so the Portland museum feels it isn’t violating religious sensibilities by owning the Ganesha.

Is Portland’s Hindu Statue a Looted Antiquity? (Culture Monster/LA Times)

The Washington Post looks at New Delhi’s public art program:

“Public space is shrinking in this city, and we are trying to reclaim and reengage with it through art,” said Pooja Sood, curator of the public art extravaganza, which ends Sunday. “We broke through prevailing social, cultural and political barriers to bring contemporary art out of the elitist, white-cube galleries.”

In the past decade, New Delhi has witnessed an unprecedented boom in the construction of high-rises, overpasses, malls and multiplexes at the expense of countless trees and old buildings. Conspicuous consumption and changing lifestyles are depleting the city’s underground water supply and slowly edging the once-sacred Yamuna River out of people’s consciousness.

“The installations ask a question, ‘Where are you in this debate about environment versus progress?’ And many people have looked at the installations and asked, ‘Is this art?’ ” Sood said. “This is the beginning of a conversation between art and the city.”

New Delhi Reclaims Public Space Via Art (Washington Post)

It would seem that the Japanese are just as curious about India as everybody else is:

“When you talk about India,” says Miki Akiko, chief curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, “people think of the technological boom on one side and the spiritual side on the other; or on one side, the rich, and the other side, the poor. But there are a lot of people living just like us, having similar problems, similar hopes and dreams.”

Miki is curator of “Chalo! India,” a new exhibition at the Mori Art Museum that focuses on contemporary art from the country. “There is a lack of information about contemporary Indian culture,” she says. “The idea is for visitors to the show to get an idea of today’s India, its society and people, through the artworks. The exhibition aims to give people a different perspective, a different vision.”

With “Chalo! India,” the Mori continues to introduce the contemporary art of often overlooked regions of the world to Japanese audiences — a theme established with previous exhibitions such as 2006’s “Africa Remix,” and “The Elegance of Silence: Contemporary Art from East Asia” in 2005. Like these shows, “Chalo! India” faces the challenge of finding a way to present the art of people of varied backgrounds, languages, religions and lifestyles. [ . . . ]

over the last seven or eight years, with the emergence of a younger generation of artists, and also with the economic situation, the whole art scene in India has become more diversified. We thought it was important to present the artistic scene of India at this moment, and it was possible to do it on a large scale.

The Subcontinent Shows Its Heart (Japan Times)

Contemporary Chinese: No

In London there are somewhat dueling exhibitions of hot collecting categories, Contemporar Indian and Chinese art. The Evening Standard’s Ben Lewis takes the coincidence as an opportunity to validate Indian art:

The global contemporary art boom of the past decade has produced substantial contemporary art scenes in the swiftly growing economies of India and China, and you can see survey shows of both these worlds in London at the moment — one at the Serpentine and one at the Saatchi Gallery. But what a difference a bit of curating can make! Everything that Saatchi gets wrong in his Chinese show, the Serpentine gets right in its Indian one. While the Duke of York’s Barracks show is a chart of the cheesiest Chinese auction-house hits, the Serpentine is a treasure trove of subtlety and surprise. [ . . . ]

The Serpentine show takes a careful look at the Indian contemporary art scene, and instead of attempting an overarching survey, presents an essayistic tour of a handful of contrasting artists. [ . . . ]

Lewis falls hard for Subodh Gupta’s Indian courtroom re-assembled at the Serpentine gallery. He finds it a refreshing contrast to Gupta’s increasingly iconic stainless steek cookware paintings and sculpture:

I had become rather disillusioned by all the repetitive pots-and-pans pieces I’d see by Gupta over the past few years, and I loathe the terrible spin-off photorealist paintings of the same kitchenware which have been on show in every auction preview. The new work shows what resources this artist can tap as long as he doesn’t pander to the tastes of his dimwitted market of millionaire collectors.

New Stars in Indian Highway (This is London)

Reuters reminds us that the Taj hotel in Mumbai was the repository of a huge trove of Indian art, including many works by M.F. Husain. Ratan Tata, owner of the hotel, has pledge to return it to its former glory and Husain has offered to pitch in as well. But the damage is immense:

“The important thing is just picking up every broken piece and fragment,” Dhar said.”For the cleaning crews this may not be a priority. But it is important there are people in there that understand their value and see how much can be salvaged.” [ . . . ]

The hotel, where gunmen took scores of guests hostage and battled commandos last month, includes some of the finest examples of modern and contemporary Indian art, including three large M.F. Husain panels commissioned for the main lobby.

There are also sculptures, chandeliers, photographs, and visitors’ books signed by kings, rock stars, business barons and heads of state.

“Nearly everything in there is of some value. Of great financial value for sure, but also of sentimental value as it is connected with the history of the hotel and this country,” said Sanjay Dhar, a senior vice president at auction house Osian’s.

Husain, arguably India’s best-known artist, is reported to have offered to paint again for the hotel, which began collecting contemporary art at a time when other Indian hotels were content with colonial-era hunting scenes and stern portraits of royalty. [ . . . ]

The Taj art collection is a roll-call of India’s biggest names from the 1960s to now, including V.S. Gaitonde, Jamini Roy, Krishen Khanna, Laxman Shrestha, S.H. Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Jehangir Sabavala, Anjolie Ela Menon and Bose Krishnamachari.

Bullets in the Husains? Art lovers await Taj report (Reuters)

Indian Tycoons Lose Wealth But Cling to Luxuries

That’s the International Herald Tribune’s take which ran this story on the decline of India’s substantial class of millionaires but their thirst for luxuries:

A falling stock market, a weak rupee and slowing economic growth have shaved about 60 percent off the wealth of the 40 richest people in the nation, Forbes said in its annual compilation earlier this month, with their net worth plunging to $139 billion from $351 billion a year ago. [ . . . ]

India had 123,000 millionaires in 2007 and showed the fastest pace of expansion, a Merrill Lynch/Capgemini report said. But a stock market rout has meant local investors have “notionally lost almost a year’s GDP,” Credit Suisse said in a recent report titled “Wealth destruction aftermath.” [ . . . ]

But while the notional value of their wealth has taken a hit, Indian billionaires still have plenty of loose change for luxury cars, art and wines. Sales of cars priced at more than 2 million rupees have remained strong, bucking the slump in overall Indian car sales. [ . . . ] Read the rest of this entry »

Everything You Wanted to Know About Contemporary Indian Art

. . . But Were Afraid to Ask!

The single best story to read on the boom in Indian art comes from Abu Dhabi’s The National. Click through to read the whole story. It’s worth the time. If you’re not convinced, here is a capsule version:

Bharti Kher [is] one of India’s rising art superstars. A year ago, the 39-year-old was part of a growing group of struggling artists whose work was virtually unknown outside of India. [ . . . ] As interest in Kher’s work balloons, so have prices. Misdemeanours, a piece of sculpture of a snarling hyena made from fibre glass, wood and fur that examines the shattered harmony between man and nature sold for $167,000 (Dh613,000) at an auction as Sotheby’s this summer. Another work, Missing, sold through the auction house for $210,900 (Dh774,600) in May, while An Absence of Assignable Cause – a giant heart of a blue whale cast in fibre glass and festooned in bindis – was snapped up by Charles Saatchi [ . . . ]

Although she’s lived in India since 1992 and her work is conspicuously from the subcontinent, Kher was born and raised in Britain. She arrived in Delhi and ended up marrying a small town boy from Bihar who had not long arrived in the Indian capital himself. His name is Subodh Gupta, the current king of Indian contemporary art, who was the first Indian installation artist to sell his work for more than $1 million (Dh3.67 million). [ . . . ] Kher and Gupta symbolise the breakthrough of Indian contemporary art onto the international scene as it rides the wave of the nation’s fast-growing economy. Works are reaching prices never previously seen – or imagined. In the last three years alone, Gupta’s prices at auction for an oil painting increased by 5,000 per cent, while modern Indian artists, such as the 82-year-old Tyeb Mehta, who has lived a lifetime of financial struggle, have seen their paintings suddenly fetch more than a million dollars. [ . . . ]

(The best stuff, after the jump.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Where Does Subodh Gupta’s Market Go from Here?

In the month of September, more than $6 million worth of Gupta’s works were sold. If that weren’t enough, the artist’s top 17 prices were all achieved within the last six months.

If you were worried that you might have missed your chance to own a Gupta, don’t fret. The feeding frenzy isn’t over. In Hong Kong next week, Sotheby’s is selling this untitled painting which is similar to this untitled painting that made $962,500 recently in New York.

But the real fireworks are going to come during the Frieze sales in London when this pots-and-pans picture, Idol Thief, estimated at between £600-£800,000, goes on sale at Christie’s. The auction house got $1.166 milion for Steal 2 just a few weeks ago during New York’s Asia Week. This untitled pots-and-pans painting at Sotheby’s at the Frieze sale is estimated a little lower at between £300-£500,000. Cow, estimated at between £250-£350,000, follows the $866,500 sale of One Cow . The wall piece, Curry 2, carries a £250-£350,000 estimate too. But Miter, a corner piece, just sold at Christie’s for $1 million.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Indian Art expert, Zara Porter Hill talks about the works by Indian artists offered in Hong Kong next week. Her comments appear in India’s Economic Times:

“This is a market that has seen rapid growth in recent years and we feel that this is the perfect time to introduce Indian artists to our contemporary Asian art sale there. [ . . . ] Gupta’s work is one of the most important works by him to ever come to the auction market,” Zara Porter-Hill, director and head of Indian art at Sotheby’s, said in a press statement issued from Britain.

For those of you keeping score at home, Subodh Gupta was the big winner in the New York sales. Gupta led the pack with four works in the top ten.The remaining spots went to pairs of work by Tyeb Mehta, who had the most valuable lot of the week, M.F. Husain and Rameshwar Broota.

Here is Christie’s Hugo Weihe describing the category and his experience in it.

The Sino-Indian Rivalry Extends into Art

India is proud of its growing stature in the international art market but locals recognize they have a long way to go before they catch up to their rivals:

While experts agree that talent in both the countries is at par, they cannot say the same about infrastructure. Most importantly, they underline the fact that the support and encouragement that Indian art receives from the government is negligible in comparison to that received by the Chinese art circuit.

Art critic Gayatri Sinha says, “By 2015, hundreds of new art galleries and museums will open up in China. On the other hand, in India, probably four to five galleries or museums would launch,” adding, “China has many inhouse auction houses that push Chinese art aggressively through the year. In India, we hardly have such auctions.”

Chinese Art Scores Over Indian Works (DNA)