[private_subscriber][private_bundle]Since 2008, modern and contemporary Chinese art has not been offered in Christie’s or Sotheby’s Asian art sales in the Western hemisphere. From 2005 to 2008, however, average prices in the East and the West changed in congruence with one another, even though prices in the West increased and decreased more dramatically (Fig. 10). But when it comes to modern and contemporary South Asian art, the yearly change in average prices sold in the West was practically the inverse of that exhibited in the East (Fig. 11)—an indication that there may be substantive differences between the category’s Eastern and Western markets. Fig. 12, which lists the top five prices for works by Chinese and South Asian artists sold in the East and West since 2005, illustrates that difference. The Chinese artists listed may occupy different price points across hemispheres, but the artists are all native-born, household names of Chinese painting. By contrast, the South Asian artists maintain similar price points in the East and West, but they represent completely different periods, styles and birthrights. For instance, four of the East’s five top-sellers were not born in South Asia (three immigrated from Europe and Russia and one is a Chinese national). All of the top selling artists in the West, meanwhile, are Indian. The houses seem to be catering to two completely different buying audiences: An Eastern market that favors early 20th-century European-inspired painting by non-native South Asians, and a Western market that thrives on Indian postwar abstraction. Last year, the West’s Indian Expressionism far outdid the East’s outsider Orientalism. With major lots from the likes of M.F. Husain, Vasudeo Gaitonde, and S.H. Raza on offer next week, the houses are clearly hoping that the New York market for modern and contemporary Indian painting will continue to thrive.
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