Arts and Humanities Blog - Net Catalogue

The famous auction company Sotheby is going to hold a two day auction of contemporary art at its New York gallery and it seems Indian are dominating the scene. Of late young artists from India have been going places with prices of their art work soaring to new heights each time they were put under the hammer.

This time it is Subodh Gupta who got top billing among Indians with a reserve price of $500,000-$700,000 for his work called Across The Seven Seas (Sat Samundar Par). Raqib Shaw, who originates from Indian art and literary capital of Kolkata, is also present with his work which is untitled but a masterpiece done in 2004 of acrylic, glitter, rhinestones and metallic paint on paper. The auctioneers have deliberately set a low reserve price for it ($40,000-$60,000), but it is expected to fetch more because it is him whose Garden Of Early Delights III fetched $5.54 million making him the highest paid Indian contemporary artists beating Tyeb Mehta’s Mahisashura which was sold for $1.584 million at Christie’s in 2005 in New York

Another notable Indian participant in the forthcoming auction is Anish Kapoor whose lacquered bronze sculpture Blood Solid  got a reserve price of $250,000-$300,000.

It should be noted here that, at a time when economic recession in the USA is looming large and the art market is kept alive by Chinese, Indian and Russian art connoisseurs, the reserve prices for contemporary art is not bad.