17th November, 2010
Mural is estimated to fetch Rs 10 crore at Saffronart’s Winter Art auction
For once, SH Raza, FN Souza, Akbar Padamsee and their ilk will have to be content with being confined to the sidelines. It is veteran Arpita Singh who will be the belle du jour at Saffronart’s upcoming Winter Art Auction, when one of her works will go under the hammer carrying a price tag of $1.9-2.3 million (Rs 8-10 crore), making it not only the highest-estimated work by a female Indian artist - living or dead- at an auction, but also the first work by a female artist in the country to be pegged at the magic Rs 10-crore mark.
The record-breaking piece, titled ‘Wish Dream’ (2001, oil on canvas), is an enormous 24 x13 ft, 16-panel mural that took the Delhi-based artist one year to complete. It is part of Mumbai-based online auction house Saffronart’s tenth anniversary auction of modern and contemporary Indian art, which will take place on December 8-9. The catalogue boasts 99 other artworks by 45 modern and contemporary artists, including Souza, Raza, Padamsee, Subodh Gupta, Mithu Sen and Anjolie Ela Menon.
If the bidding meets the estimated price, Singh’s work will break the existing record, set earlier this year by Bharti Kher’s life-sized sculpture of an elephant, ‘The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own’, which fetched Rs 6,90,30,000 ($1.6 million) at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in London. By contrast, the record for the most expensive auction sale by any Indian artist is $3,486,965 (Rs 15,69,48,288), that was set by SH Raza’s ‘Saurashtra’ (1983, acrylic on canvas) at a Christie’s auction this June.
Commenting on the valuation and importance of the mural, Dinesh Vazirani, co-founder and CEO, Saffronart said, “It’s the rarity of the work that determines its value. This is one of the most significant and largest works by any woman artist at any auction ever. It’s not a work that any artist will do again in their lifetime.”
Originally commissioned by late Nandita Jain, sister of a media baron, ‘Wish Dream’ portrays the lived experience of the central woman figure through use of familiar motifs and vivid colours. “It’s a vertical work that goes from bottom to top, showing everything she (the central woman figure) experiences. It portrays the power of the feminine form,” explains Vazirani.
“This (recognition) has been a long time coming. Arpita has a lot of foresight and is sensitive and a sincere person, which is reflected in her art and aesthetics,” says artist and art curator Alka Raghuvanshi. “It’s fabulous for the artist, fabulous for contemporary Indian art - though she’s not exactly in the category of early-modern art. It shows Indian art is having deeper value,” says Alka Pande, consultant arts advisor and curator, Visual Arts Gallery.
But the 73-year-old artist is unaffected by the commercial success. Speaking over the phone while preparing for the launch of Cobweb, her upcoming solo exhibition at Vadehra Art Gallery, she says, “I don’t have any reaction. The work is not with me anymore, so I’m not concerned (about the price).”
She adds, “When Nandita asked me to do the work, I actually said ‘no’, because it was so huge and challenging. Then, I didn’t have a clue (about) where I should begin, so I started reading books on epics and old literature. Someone lent me a book about a Tibetan play, which was a version of the Ramayana. I was reading the introduction and came across the words ‘Wish Dreams’. Immediately, I could start thinking about what to draw.”
Explaining the symbolism of the work, Singh says, “The mural shows the wishes and dreams of a woman within our society and how it progresses and how it’s related to other women through ritual. The most important ritual is wedding, so you’ll find a woman standing and from behind, two hands of a man holding her. I don’t like to keep space empty, so I fill it up with objects I see everyday. When I gather everything together, the whole pattern is meaningful. Individual forms are not very important to me.”
With Singh’s works putting up a good show at recent auctions (Munna Apa’s Garden fetched over four times its estimated value of $100,000-$150,000 at Sotheby’s South Asian art auction in New York in September), it remains to be seen whether Wish Dream’s estimated price is realised on D-Day.
A preview of the works that are part of the auction, including Singh’s pièce de résistance, will take place on November 20 at the Trident hotel, Gurgaon.
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