Modern and Contemporary Indian Art, Sale 3 December 2007 | News

FIRST MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ART Auction IN FRANCE

Monday 3 December

4 October 2007

Modern and contemporary Indian art has become a major focus in the international art scene. Similarly to contemporary Chinese art, Indian art has gone from success to success, beating record prices time and again in India, but also in London, Paris, and New York.

In 2006, a painting by Sayed Haider Raza, born in India in 1922 and living in France since the 1950’s, was one of the first in the history of Indian modern art to exceed the symbolic threshold of one million dollars. A monumental sculpture by Subodh Gupta, a new star in the Indian contemporary art firmament, is now enthroned before the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, inviting tourists to discover the collection of the French billionaire François Pinault.

After having organized the very successful first sales of contemporary Chinese art, Artcurial, number one in the sale of modern and contemporary art in France, will hold the first auction in France dedicated to modern and contemporary Indian art on Monday 3 December 2007.

The sale is part of Artcurial's strategic interest in Asian art and inaugurates a department devoted to modern and contemporary Indian art. This first sale is meant to be both modest and ambitious – modest for its commitment to a representative choice of still affordable modern and contemporary works, and ambitious for its determination to present major works that are both rare and exceptional.

Farhad Hussain: Untitled, 2006; Estimation: €18,000-22,000

Art lovers and professionals will have the opportunity to discover work by young artists who have just had their very first one-person show in both prestigious and experimental galleries from Mumbai to New Delhi, such as Farhad Hussain.

Farhad Hussain, born in Calcutta in 1975, is among those young artists who have been contributing with panache to the current renewal of contemporary Indian art. One of his works was recently published on the cover of Asian Art News (the Sept./Oct. 2007 issue), one of the two most influential magazines that cover contemporary art in Asia – a market that ranges from India to China, from Singapore to Hong Kong. Paintings by Farhad Hussain have the direct, fresh gaiety of a Matisse cutout, and the nuclear family his iconographic focus. These paintings could be family photos taken by a Walt Disney in the throes of a psychedelic episode. The illusion of happiness is omnipresent, the ecstatic atmosphere redolent of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” family-style.

Atul Dodiya: Sabari Streching, 2007; Water color on paper; Estimation: €32,000-32,500

The work of artists born in the 50’s and 60’s will also be represented, such as the emblematic and spectacular photograph by Anita Dube that offers ceramic eyes – the same eyes used to give life to innumerable sculptures of Indian divinities.

The artistic maturity of the generation of artists now between 45 and 55 years of age will also be represented by a superb, enigmatic watercolor on paper by Atul Dodiya, another major figure in contemporary Indian art. Dodiya’s watercolor combines the perfection of two apparently opposed qualities – fluidity and precision. His work reminds us that the watercolor medium, a cultural heritage from England but also influenced by the Chinese and Japanese traditions, has become a significant part of Indian art that constantly evolves both in terms of pictorial innovation and a widening range of themes that include all conceivable subjects, including the political. Thus, modernity and tradition combine to give birth to a shared achievement.

Anita Dube: Sea Creature; Edition of 10; Estimation: €3,000-3,500

Photography also plays an important part in this catalogue. For several years the Indian photography market has been evolving, encouraged by the international art market's feverish enthusiasm for the medium. Some investors and collectors have turned to photography, more affordable than painting, sculpture, and installations, even for works by a master such as Raghu Rai. They see an opportunity to support an art that is by nature more realistic and thus more accessible. Collectors say that the medium appears to be developing an increasingly introspective mood, presenting a chronicle of the contradictions and changes of modern India.

Finally, the sale will be an opportunity to discover exceptional works executed by some of the most respected “Masters”, such as Jagdish Swaminathan, Prakbar Barwe, Jogen Chowdhury, Viswanadhan, Francis Newton Souza, and Akbar Padamsee as well as the renowned Sayed Haider Raza, whose work is currently being exhibited in a major retrospective in New York City.

Artists included in the auction:

Indra Dugar, Haren Das, Jamini Roy, K. S. Kulkarni, F. N. Souza, Sayed Haider Raza, Akbar Padamsee, Rabin Mondal, G. R. Santosh, Prabhakar Barwe, Viswanadhan, Jogen Chowdhury, Jeram Patel, Jyoti Bhatt, Sakti Burman, Sohan Qadri, Amitava, Shooba Broota, Arpana Caur, Thota Vaikuntam, Raghu Rai, Jivya Soma Mashe, Pushpa Kumari, Atul Dodiya, Uday Shanbhag, Subba Ghosh, Vivek Vilasani, Ravi Agarwal, Naveen Kishore, Binoy Varghese, Roy Thomas, Mithu Sen, Shibu Natesan, Bose Krishnamachari, Anita Dube, Barmak Akram, Debesh Goswami, Prakbar Kolte, Manish Pushkale, Anju Chaudhuri, Farhad Hussain, Riyas Komu, Surekha, Baba Anand, Rahul Mukherjee, Bari Kumar, Sunil Gupta, Manjunath Kamath, Gauri Gill, Ram Rehaman…

Sayed Haider Raza (Born 1922): Untitled, 1984; Estimation: €450,000-550,000

Sayed Haider Raza: an exceptional painting

Sayed Haider Raza will be represented at the auction by an exceptional piece dated 1984. In an imposing format rare in the work of the artist, the 175x175 cm painting illustrates the two major forces that influenced the artist: European abstract art and Hindu thought characterized by Bindu, an abstraction in itself as it is by definition a symbol of the sacred in its non-manifest state (commonly represented in the form of a simple dot applied to the forehead).

“In the sixties and seventies visits to India re-sensitized his perceptiveness for a final supreme and universal viewing of nature, not as appearance, not as spectacle but as an integrated force of life and cosmic growth reflected in every fibre of a human being.

The five elements which in Hindu thought build this and other words khsiti-earth, jala-water, pawak-fire, gagan-sky, and samira-ether and thier correspondence, on the one hand, to areas of consciousness in the human mind and, on the other, to the colours yellow-padma, white-sulka, red-tejas, blue-nila, and black-krishna captured Raza’s imagination to the point of complete identification of himself with his painted work.

Nature became to Raza something not to be observed or to be imagined but something to be experienced in the very act of putting paint on canvas. Painting acts itself out as a natural force, struggling in darkness, breaking into light, shivering in cold, burning in heat, trying to find form and yet dissolving into chaos.

In some of his paintings, a partition into four quadrants or four triangles appears to contain the forces within, compelling them to structural form in the turnoil of creation like crystals forming in a plastic matrix.”

Extracted from Rudolf von Leyden “Métamorphose” in Raza, Chemould Publications and Arts, 1985

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