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.)
