At the fall of the hammer

Apparao's attempt to gatecrash the market has met some resistance and not a little loss of face.

Sharan Apparao's maiden attempt to enter the professional auction market in India seems to have come unstuck at the seams, with more negative than positive feedback on the event that aimed at combining an online auction with the physical event.

Overall sales (including buyers premiums) of just over Rs 3 crore may have appeared paltry compared to seasoned auction houses Osian's and Saffronart (last sale, approximately Rs 45 crore), but Chennai-based Apparao isn't sitting on a fence, and has already declared that she will conduct two major and four minor auctions every year.

"I'm aware that there has been more negative than positive feedback," she asserts, "but we have learnt from the experience."

Apparao also insists that her auction arm (Apparaoart Auctions) is a separate profit centre from the gallery, and that over 60 per cent of the first works on auction in Delhi (but also bid for online) sold at market prices, citing Rs 75 lakh for Ram Kumar, Rs 22 lakh for Anjolie Ela Menon and Rs 23 lakh for N S Bendre as examples.

But it is precisely this that those who attended the auction are critical of, the attempt to combine two vastly different models.

As a result, serious bidders were left waiting since each online bid took two minutes (typically, a physical bid in an auction is much faster by comparison).

Also, in some cases, even though the lowest reserve prices were met, the sale did not go through, thereby robbing the auction of what bidders call "transparency".

Finally, of course, the whole show turned into a drinking tamasha, to which fellow-auctioneer Neville Tuli of Osian's reacted by saying "there were more waiters than bidders in the room".

For Tuli, it's important that an auction house is seen to "respect knowledge and professionalism, and nurture credibility", perhaps the reason, he points out, that internationally too, there are only two giants in the art auction world "" Sotheby's and Christie's.

And in India, even though art auctions are merely a decade old, the shutting down of Bowrings "because it did not understand the legalities in a country like India" have acted as a portend for Osian's and Saffronart, both of whom have attempted to restrict their auction activities to the domain of contemporary art.

But Sharan Apparao is already planning her next event "" "perhaps a Bengal [school] auction in Kolkata, though authentication for it is a problem".

Part of the reason auctions excite her is because "you find the best prices in the market at an auction".

And where she hopes her company will find a niche is in cutting through the clutter of "certain artists who do well in auctions" to introduce newer, younger players to the market.

The Apparao auction seems to have grabbed half its buyers online, and a half of the sales were to overseas bidders. But is there room for another player in the art auction market, given the limited number of collectors?

"Absolutely," says Tuli, "but the player must know its business." "There's room for another person," agrees Apparao, "this isn't entertainment; this is serious business".

But having broken that rule herself, she's charting a more rigid (or, as she prefers, "intimate") course for the auction company, even as she prepares to withdraw from some of the smaller shows of her gallery. But warns Tuli, hardened by experience, "there's a long way to go to be taken seriously".