Like the chicken and the egg, it’s difficult to understand which came first — the recession in the art world, or the debut auction of photographs “to encourage younger people to come in and buy at lower price points,” according to Dinesh Vazirani of Saffronart.
“The market is in a crisis,” he conceded as the morning of the two-day online auction got underway, “and everyone is unsure of what the market looks like.”
At any rate, the results were interesting. For the first time 17 photographic works by photographers as varied as Raghu Rai, Prashant Panjiar, T S Nagarajan, Ram Rahman, Prabuddha Dasgupta, Pushpamala N and Claire Arni, and Swapan Nayak, among others, came together on the same platform.
Photographer Dayanita Singh’s silver gelatin print of Gandhi’s room at Anand Bhawan in Allahabad sold for Rs 7 lakh (against estimates between Rs 4-6 lakh). Mounted on aluminium, it was one of a limited edition of seven prints.
Vivek Vilasini’s inspired archival print, again from a limited edition of seven, of kathakali dancers in costume, sitting down to tea, based on van Gogh’s Potato Eaters, fetched Rs 4.56 lakh, new media artist Shilpa Gupta’s thought-provoking landscape sold at Rs 3.04 lakh, and Raghu Rai’s limited edition print of Ladakh commanded Rs 2.14 lakh.
Others who commanded over a lakh were Gigi Scaria (Rs 1.52 lakh) and Prabuddha Dasgupta (Rs 1.15 lakh).
“A lot of our clients have been buying photographs,” Vazirani said, “but they don’t know enough about it, or have little name recognition. For them, it’s akin to buying a print of a painting.” The idea behind its inclusion in the auction was “to make data about photography public and to give it a platform”.
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Other than the photographs, Saffronart’s winter auction held no surprises, with prices of artists reeling under the shock of global recession.
With auctioneers and gallerists making much ado about “quality” and this being “the right time to buy”, it seemed not all collectors are paying heed to their call.
Of the 115 lots at the auction, only 72 sold. Leading the pack in value was Subodh Gupta at Rs 1.35 crore, down from his peak pricing but ahead of Modernists Akbar Padamsee (Rs 1.32 crore), J Swaminathan (Rs 1.20 crore), V S Gaitonde (Rs 1.13 crore), with Gupta again bringing up the crore vanguard with a second work at Rs 1.10 crore.
Others who did reasonably well at the auction were Arpita Singh (Rs 88 lakh), a second work by J Swaminathan (Rs 67 lakh), S H Raza (Rs 44 lakh), Ram Kumar (Rs 42 lakh) and Manjit Bawa (Rs 42 lakh).
