9th June 2007

Tyeb's triptych: Quality, rarity & top price
At Saffronart's Summer Online Auction Tyeb Mehta's Kali, a 1969 oil on canvas, estimated at $875,000-1,125,000/Rs 35,000,000- 45,000,000 sold for $987,500/Rs 39,500,00. Over the past five years Mehta's work in an international auction has always found itself a coveted cover price.

A study in the West says bad markets tend to produce better art as there's less pressure on artists to produce and fewer temptations to sell out. Plus they're dealing only with collectors and galleries willing to ride out the hard times. Looking at that theory, there is no better example than that of Tyeb Mehta, the master of the metaphor.

'I learnt to paint with very little money when I started in the 1950s,' Tyeb Mehta points out in an exclusive interview to ET. 'It totally makes you struggle, but it can be done. But the art that is born out of a struggle is different. Yes, it is an artist's dream to capture a market like Picasso, but I did not create art for a market, it was for myself,' he said.

'My Trussed Bull series was born out of the haunting echoes of the slaughterhouse next to my house. It made me turn vegetarian, it also gave me my imagery. The Santiniketan series of Celebration was again the outcome of a different experience. Even now, after Mahishasura has sold for $ 1.5 crore, and with so many galleries at my doorstep, I am not producing, I cannot churn out works. I am not prolific, I create at my own pace. Thought goes into my works,' says the famous artist.

Working in January this year, the Falling Bird series invitedthe viewer to meditate in silence. Tyeb says that even his Falling Bird series doesn't have many works. 'The best art comes out at the worst times because suffering gives you an impetus which nothing else does. It is like the contradiction and confluence of opposites that Italo Calvino talks about. It is true a bad market can give good art,' he said.

If we go back in time to the year 1995 one could easily pick up top works by Indian artists anywhere between Rs 40,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh.

Interestingly, at the Sotheby's sale on November 12, 1995, the estimate of Tyeb's work was a mere $8,000 to $12,000, while M.F. Husain's work was estimated at $20,000 to $30,000. But things began changing. The hammer price of a Mehta painting sold in an auction in 1996 was Rs 4,82,160. An untitled painting by the artist sold for Rs 5,91,100 at a Christie's auction in London in 1997.

A similar painting (keeping certain constants in mind, such as the time of creation, medium, similar subject and more or less same dimensions) sold for Rs 12,14,720 in 2001. Mehta's price remained steady till 1999, averaging at Rs 5,54,665 since 1996. His auction highs began in 2002 when his Celebration, a triptych of Santiniketan owned by the Times of India Group, touched an all-time high at Christie's surpassing the $100,000 mark to realise a record price of $317,500. Only three years after the historic sale, in September 2005, his Mahishasura set another milestone by effortlessly exceeding the $1000,000 threshold.

The striking red, black and white painting known for its cosmic aura, a case of karmic reflection that swung between being and nothingness, went for $1,584,000 (Rs 69,458,400), a new world auction record for any contemporary Indian painting.

March, 2006: At Sotheby's New York auction Mehta's Falling Figure with Bird (1988), sold for $1,248,000 (est. $800,000-$1,000,000) to New York hedge fund manager Rajiv Chaudri. Soon after, the Christie's September 2006 sale had the number two lot, Mehta's Untitled (Figures with Bull Head, 1984), going for $1,136,000 (est. $800,000-$1,000,000) to an Indian private collector.

Last year in an interview Tyeb Mehta said: 'The art-creation is based on personal intuition, not art-marketeering. If artists, are beguiled by the promise of financial reward, the creation will become a production.'

Obviously, in that scenario, artwork possesses a whiff of spectacle, market calculation and consciousness of its own position relative to the spectrum of stylistic options available to artists.

So then, what is the recipe for Tyeb's success? Sterling compostion, cosmic quality, unique rarity and provenance.

- By UMA NAIR

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