Setting the Record

Will the India auction be a regular feature?

It’s going to be an annual auction. People suggested that we should conduct it in Delhi,but for now it will be in Mumbai. With regard to artwork,among other things we are looking at Modernists. The next step would be to consider antiquities,miniature paintings,and bronzes.

This year,Christie’s has also became the first international auction house to acquire a license to conduct an auction in China. Are you looking at a global expansion?

This year is about Asia,India as well as China. The future lies here. We look at it as a larger South Asian entity.

When did you develop an interest in Indian art?

I studied art history in Switzerland and was particularly interested in cultural exchange. So I studied Asian art — Japanese,Chinese and Indian. I was interested in,for instance,how Buddhism originated in India and went across Asia,how ideas travelled and then how art evolved. India was the motherland for so many things. The power of the Indian culture was perhaps the strongest in Asia.

You were the auctioneer when Indian art fetched its record prices — both when Tyeb Mehta’s Mahishasura sold for US $ 1.5 million in 2005 and SH Raza’s Saurashtra for US $ 3.49 million in 2010.

It’s amazing how art is always related to people and we are the facilitators. An auction starts a new chapter in the life of the work. I remember Tyeb was present when we sold Mahishasura,everyone was applauding for him. He said he hadn’t been to New York for 40 years and does not benefit from the sale as the work doesn’t belong to him anymore. I said everything he did now,he’ll benefit from and he replied,“I’m an old man and paint slowly. My dream is that one day my work will be in MOMA,and now I think it will be possible.”

Single Screening

Printed by Nandalal Bose after Mahatma Gandhi’s arrest for protesting the British tax on salt in 1930,the linocut of Gandhi walking with a staff was not just one of the most iconic images of India’s nationalist movement but also the work that brought the leader and the artist closer. Eight years later,Gandhi was to approach Bose once again,this time to design posters for the 1938 Indian National Congress meeting in Haripura. Years later,four of the posters — that till now were with the Bengal artist’s family — are coming under the hammer at the Christie’s New York sale on September 17. The single-owner sale featuring the collection of Bose’s US-based grandson Supratik Bose,primarily comprises his inherited collection of 81 modern Indian works of art,including Abanindranath Tagore and Rabindranath Tagore. The highlights include postcards shared between Abanindranath Tagore and Bose that speak of their friendship,and Rabindranath Tagore’s handwritten poem from Gitanjali,Where the mind is without fear.

mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com