Christie’s first Indian auction is a huge success; do it again

That Christie’s first-ever auction in India on Friday exceeded all expectations by netting Rs 96 crore ($15.4 million) cocks a snook at the atmosphere of economic gloom and doom.

The gamble of the auction house to hold the event in Mumbai to attract more India-based art buyers paid off in spades, with an untitled 1979 work by the late V S Gaitonde surpassing all expectations and fetching Rs 23.7 crore against its reserve price of Rs 8.5 crore. Considering Indians — resident and non-resident — are the main buyers of Indian art, it made sense to put up a superlative collection in the Mumbai auction.

As another Gaitonde sold for a record price in London this June and the Mumbai sale saw Tyeb Mehta’s fabled Mahisasuraselling for Rs 19.78 crore, it is puzzling that Christie’s took so long to come to India to sell art. After all, Sotheby’s also had a relatively good debut in India in 1992, when their sales totalled £1.2 million, a tidy amount back then.

Given the sums that Indian masters fetched at this sale, it may not be long before Indians — particularly India-based ones — will set their sights on international names, using their enforced reticence due to foreign currency curbs to identify the artists they would want to snag. For, this auction has shown that for a significant number of Indians, money is no object when it comes to art.