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Sunday, February 18, 2001
Article

Selling Indian art world-wide
By Vimla Patil

COME April 2001, and many masterpiece paintings by modern Indian masters will be the buzzword in the international art market. On April 1, Christies will hold a major auction of South East Asian art in Singapore. Included in this event will be the works of M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, Bendre, Hemen Mazumdar, Ram Kumar, Akbar Padamsee, Anjolie Ela Menon and several other great names in art. Spearheading this major event will be Mallika Sagar, who has just taken over the Christies’ regional office in Mumbai, India. Mallika says that Indian art, modern or ancient, has been an incredibly rich treasure for thousands of years and the supply of artefacts from India can truly be inexhaustible.

"However, to safeguard ourselves from legal or media controversies, we do not source any auctionable items from India except modern art which is taken from the artist or an agent or a past owner. Indian law decrees that anything that is over 80 years old cannot be exported or taken out of India. We have no auction room in India as yet. Our office is small and except for helping with charity auctions and doing promotional activities, we have not ventured into any activities such as auctioning art or property in India.

 


Mallika Sagar"Here in India, our role is limited to consultancy and promotions. We advise collectors or owners of antiques — jewellery, paintings, sculptures, carpets, textiles, crystal, China, furniture and books or manuscripts — on how to maintain them. We evaluate the artefacts and advise on how a collection may be enhanced. We also support publication of books such as Ritu Kumar’s Costumes of Royal India. We sponsor lectures and shows. We source Indian art abroad and if it comes up for auctioning in any city out of India, we thoroughly check its authenticity and the manner in which it was acquired or exported out of India. Checking legal requirements and paperwork are very complicated exercises here and take an inordinately long time. We have a team of consultants and experts who check these details. If there is anything that causes doubt, we do not touch the artefact. But India being so rich and diverse in art and culture, many of its treasures have been bought and included in the collection of international celebrities. These collections come up for evaluation and auction regularly. No antiques are sourced from India for one more reason.

"A grand auction of Indian art is scheduled to take place in London in September 2001. Here, Christies will auction Mughal miniatures, antique furniture, jewellery, textiles and carpets as well as novelties and ornamental objects. These are all from outside India. Indian art is in demand and has hit top popularity now because of its richness, variety and beauty. Islamic, ancient Hindu, Buddhist and Jain, tribal, colonial and European, Far Eastern and modern — all schools and periods of art find exuberant expression in India. The artistic genius of India has absorbed every influence with alacrity and moulded it into its very own. Modern Indian painters are extremely popular and we have sold a Hemen Mazumdar at $ 40,000.00 not so long ago! We have also sold a Raja Ravi Varma also for a very high price."

Christies have only one small office in Mumbai and a consultant in Delhi — Wadhera Art Gallery. They have 17 sales rooms in 17 cities world-wide and though they have a presence in 119 countries, they have representatives only in 41 countries. The latest auction room is being set up in Paris, which means that the Christies auctions will now be conducted in Geneva, Hong Kong, Paris, London, Singapore, St. Moritz, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Amsterdam, Athens, Melbourne, Milan, Monaco, Rome, Taipei, Tel Aviv and Zurich. Though a British company founded in 1766, Christies became an international public limited company in 1973. In 1998, it was bought by French industrialist Francois Pinault, making it a proprietary company. Its present chief executive officer is Edward Dolman, who lives between London and New York.

Mallika Sagar comes to her job as India chief when India art is at a new height of popularity the world over. "We have auctioned Ravi Varma paintings, absolutely fabulous jewels of some erstwhile royal families and we have archival objects and papers which should take anyone’s breath away," says Mallika, "We have held huge auctions of Indian art abroad and many promotional events in India to increase our brand awareness. In 1955, we acquired Great Estates Inc in the US. This was the largest network of independent real estate brokers in North America, specialising in the sale of celebrity properties. We sold the property of Frank Sinatra for $10.67 million. We sold Princess Diana’s clothes for $5.7 million. In 1999, we opened the world’s finest auction centre in the Rockefeller Centre, New York.

"I look forward to bringing India onto the world art market map. I have been trained not only at Bryn Mawr, but intensively at Christies in the US. I have specialised in Indian and Chinese art. I co-ordinated the inaugural sale of Indian art in New York in September 2000. I am a licensed auctioneer and my scope of work is to increase the business, presence and visibility of Christies in India. Indian collectors world-wide are out to target clients and we would like to offer them our best services. We offer a full range of art related services including security, appraisals, books, catalogues and its own magazine!"

Mallika Sagar is one more Indian woman — young, vivacious and razor-sharp — who has made her mark in the international scenario of the hi-end art market!

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