I took visitors frequently to the Other Criteria pavilion at the India Art Fair because it gave me a chance to pore over Damien Hirst’s edition pieces. Not too many gave the beautifully foiled skull lithographs, or his pharmacy cabinets, a second glance, but his butterflies arranged symmetrically enough to please fastidious Indian aesthetics drew crowds through the day with their fields of “diamond dust”. By the last day, I’d taken my wife’s permission to sign up for one of the works at Rs 2.3 lakh, and so was both relieved but also dismayed to learn that all six pieces had been snapped up by a single buyer.
I’m not sure why I wanted Damien Hirst except that it meant owning a piece of international art that is inevitably becoming available in the Indian market. At the Fair, there was enough evidence of both, and at the Australia-based Karen Woodbury Gallery’s pavilion with silicon sculptures, visitors shared their fascination at the lifelike quality of, especially, a newborn baby that, it was rumoured, had been picked up by Kiran Nadar on the last day for Rs 17.5 lakh.
Kiran Nadar, more famously, had got the paparazzi in a tizzy in 2009 when she’d picked up a work by Anish Kapoor for Rs 1 crore. This time round, there were no big-ticket buys from the foreign galleries — Bharti Kher and Rashid Rana being “ours” even if they were shown in “their” galleries — but there was a nice happy sound of Indian buyers eyeing and buying the cheaper phirang art.
At Vadehra Art Gallery in the city, Yoko Ono had passed by like a dirge, more an idea than something buyers could sink their teeth into, but there was also Pablo Picasso next to our own F N Souza with, mostly, edition etchings and aquatints that at least communicated the idea that buying a Western master wasn’t going to diddle you out of a fortune.
It is this tide that Saffronart will be counting on when, on February 15 and 16, it goes online with its debut auction of impressionist and modern art that includes works at affordable estimates — limited editions by David Hockney (Rs 1.5-2.5 lakh), Francis Bacon (Rs 5-6 lakh), the very avant-garde Roy Lichtenstein (Rs 5.5-5.5 lakh), Joan Miro (starting at Rs 1.5 lakh), Salvador Dali (from Rs 1.25 lakh), Henry Moore (under Rs 1 lakh), Marc Chagall (upwards of Rs 3.5 lakh), Picasso’s ceramics (from Rs 3 lakh on), the delightful Andy Warhol (Rs 2.4-3 lakh) — though, of course, the din is about the originals at, shall we say, sweatier prices.
There’s Picasso’s tiny Le Transformateur estimated between Rs 2-2.25 crore, March Chagall’s Stairway to Heaven (Rs 1.40-1.75 crore), Vincent van Gogh’s Lane with Two Figures, an early work from 1885, the year the artist lost his father but resolved to become a painter and not a preacher (estimated between Rs 4-5 crore). There’s plenty more in the 73 lot auction, and I am drawn to Raoul Dufy’s effervescent Group of Jockeys and Horses which, at Rs 40-45 lakh, lives up to his capricious depictions of high society lifestyles — though it remains to be seen whether Indian high-society will make a bid for it.
This, though, is only the beginning of a trickle as Indian travellers who see works by Camille Pissarro and Fernand Leger in museums overseas now get a chance to own them in India. With Western collectors showing an interest in Indian art for some years, maybe it’s time we returned the favour.
Kishore Singhis a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated
