Contemporary art works up for sale by Madhur Tankha

NEW DELHI: Art connoisseurs in the Capital will get a chance for a sneak preview of a special auction at Hotel Taj Mansingh here this coming Saturday.

Conducted by the Kolkata-based Emami Chisel Art, the preview will focus on modern and contemporary Indian art and include some rare and significant works of art by leading artists.

The highest priced work is a Tyeb Mehta masterpiece titled “Kali III”. Other leading artists whose works will go under the hammer include S.H. Raza (“Landscape”), Bikash Bhattacharjee (“Over The Dark Clouds”) and Amrita Sher-Gil.

Some of the other major names at the auction include F. N. Souza, Ganesh Pyne, M. F. Husain, Satish Gujral and Himmat Shah, while first-time entrants in an auction list include Sekar Roy, Chattrapati Dutta, P.R. Narvekar, Amitava Dhar, Sunil De and Ganesh Chandra Basu. Carefully handpicked from reputed galleries, artists and collectors, all the works have been selected by a panel of experts for their value, authenticity and auction viability.

“For the auction we have outsourced works from collectors who are based in different parts of the country. Through online bidding the sale is targeted to embrace bidders from India and around the world,” says Vikram Bachhawat of the auction house.

Pointing out that the authenticity and value of the works will be endorsed by the artists if he or she is living, Vikram says paintings by those who have passed away will be certified by experts on the artist concerned. “There will be an experts’ group for each auction. As things stand, we plan to stage about four auctions every year. With the first one kicking off in February, we aim to reel out three more auctions in April, September and December every year. While the debut auction will encompass modern and contemporary art, others would revolve around different exclusive genres like sculptures, drawings, prints and contemporary art.” The auction will also be held in Mumbai on February 10 and in Kolkata from February 16 to February 22. Finally, the auction comprising 89 works of art will go under the hammer at the Emami Chisel Art auction house in Kolkata on February 23.

We will buy Indian art worldwide by Archana Jahagirdar

The Indian art market’s success has been well-documented in recent years with paintings selling for record prices.

Further vindication of this interest can be seen by the setting up of The Indian Fine Art Fund by The Fine Art Fund Group of UK which also runs the Chinese Fine Art Fund, launched in 2006. The Fine Art Fund currently handles a total investment of $100 million.

The Group’s head Philip Hoffman, who has worked with Christie’s and KPMG, was in Delhi to launch The Indian Fine Art Fund and spoke to Archana Jahagirdar about why investing in art is always a good idea.

Outline your plans for The India Fine Art Fund.

We set up the Fine Art Group five years ago and the current fund size is $100 million and we expect this to grow to $200 million in a year.

For instance, the fund brought Frank Auerbach for a million dollars in January 2006 and we sold it for $2.6 million in 2007.

Our investors like that we have an excellent team, that we have the approval of major British banks. We will also look at lesser known artists.

What kind of Indian art will you be investing in?

Principally, we will invest in modern and contemporary Indian art and buy Indian art worldwide.

Our investors will get an opportunity once a year to see all the works in Geneva and this will include both our international as well as Indian art works.

So far, we have had 20 to 30 Indian families who have shown a strong interest in investing with the fund. The fund is a very exclusive club, we will not deal in the retail segment.

How good is the idea of art being another "alternative asset class’?

Dealers sell art for profit, artists sell art to make a living. Damien Hirst has made millions by selling and investing in art.

The art that our fund buys is lent to museums. Our investors also get to hang paintings from the fund’s collections in their homes.

Most private collectors think of art as an investment. Money is vulgar and that’s a fact of life. And scarce things become popular.

Apart from the obvious benefit of growing one’s money, what are the other benefits of investing in a fund like yours?

We also offer co-investing deals. For instance, we bought a Peter Doig painting for $880,000 and we sold that for $2 million. Our co-investor doubled his money. We also let investors know if we are buying a piece of art, and if they too want to buy it, they can.

How viable is an art fund compared to traditional funds?

The nice thing about an art fund is that it is transparent. We are like a gold, oil or property fund. Our fund is evaluated by KPMG. The reason that we have pension funds investing in us is that we have met the criteria.

When the credit crunch has been happening in the US, the art market is booming. China, Abu Dhabi and India are building or will build their own museums. The Russians, the Arabs want art and when they start spending on art, it will put pressure on art prices.

The economist William Baumol called forecasting art prices as "floating carp game." Your comment.

He’s absolutely right. The fact is that we buy art to make capital gain. Our business is not about forecasting prices but in forecasting trends. It’s purely a skill and it’s called listening as opposed to forec

‘I shot people I knew and never went out to look for subjects’ by Paromita Chakrabarti
Source: Express India

New Delhi, January 30 The last time Delhiites had a chance to view his works was over two decades back, at a show in Shridharani Gallery in 1988.Ever since, veteran photographer Ram Rahman has shown his works elsewhere in India and abroad, but not in his home city — “it has taken me 20 years to recover from the labours of that show,” he jokes.

The curtains go up again for his latest: Bioscope: Scenes from an Eventful Life, at the Rabindra Bhavan Gallery on February 1.On display are over 200 images, mostly black and white, taken over a span of 30 years, usually with his faithful Plaubel, capturing his life and times in the political and cultural capital of India.

Portraits of politicians and Delhi’s culturatti intermingle with street shots of the Capital.The photographer says it took him almost a year-and-a-half to compile the collection. The present montage speaks volumes of the strange juxtaposition of the urban sophisticate and the common milieu.One image captures classical singer Shubha Mudgal singing to an ailing Kaifi Azmi. In another, Manmohan Singh and Sitaram Yechury are deep in conversation at an iftaar. A bevy of photographers flank artist MF Husain as he gets ready to paint on a horse in one.

One of the most poignant images is an aerial shot of Safdar Hashmi’s funeral procession. There are other shots too — images of billboards and cutouts of political icons, of wedding parties and street art like grafittis, posters and billboards.The 52-year-old, born to noted architect Habib Rahman and danseuse mother Indrani Rahman, claims that much of his success came because he was at the right place at the right time.

“I usually shot people I knew. I never went out of my way to look for subjects. Rather, my photography developed as a diary,” says Rahman, one of the pioneers of independent photography in the post Pablo Bartholomew generation, and a contemporary of Ketaki Seth and Mira Nair.

In fact, for his present exhibition, organised by Bodhi Art Gallery, he has the same philosophy. “I did not want it to become like a series. I wanted vignettes from different times and different issues that interested me to come to the fore. In fact, I have deliberately not made it a continuous documentary. People should be led to draw their own inferences,” he says.

The exhibition, which is on till February 16, has another special significance for the veteran photographer. It is being hosted at a gallery designed by his father in 1961.

Auctions in February 2008: the new rhythm of contemporary art

New schedule! Traditionally the two giants of global art sales - Christie’s and Sotheby’s - organise their auctions of impressionist and modern art followed by sales of post-war and contemporary art in the same week.

For 2008, Sotheby’s has decided to break with tradition by scheduling its contemporary art sales for 27 / 28 February in London, i.e. three weeks after the modern art sales. Sotheby’s will not however be alone; Phillips de Pury will be hosting its London sale of contemporary art on the same dates.
Devoting a separate week to contemporary art, independently of its modern art sales, allows Sotheby’s to take full advantage of the contemporary segment’s current effervescence. In effect, contemporary art is currently the most dynamic segment of the market. Between January 2007 and January 2008, its price index gained 69%, a much stronger increase than for any other art period, including the post-war period which also posted strong growth of +22% over the same period. Remember also that Sotheby’s New York sales of contemporary art in November 2007 generated a record revenue figure of 315.9 million dollars!

The highlights of the upcoming February sales from the two auction houses will include major works by Francis BACON. The artist was already the star of the November 2007 sales in New York with his Second version of study for bullfight N°1(1969) fetching 41 million dollars, the top figure from the two days of contemporary art sales (Sotheby’s). Since 1997, Bacon’s index has more than tripled and multi-million dollar sales of his works are becoming more frequent: of his eight sales that have fetched over 10 million dollars, seven took place in 2007!

 That list is likely to grow longer on 6 February with another of Bacon’s masterpieces coming up for sale at Christie’s. The work is the last triptych of a series painted in homage to George Dyer, Bacon’s companion who committed suicide in 1971. Christie’s has produced an independent catalogue specifically focused on this work.

Three week later, Sotheby’s will be offering Study of Nude with Figure in a Mirror which could fetch more than 30 million dollars considering the 2 sales of over 40 million dollars that took place in November 2007 at the same auction house!

 Another key event in February 2008: the charity sale (entitled RED) organised in New-York by Bono (the U2 singer), Damien HIRST and the Gagosian gallery with the proceeds going to the United Nations Foundation to support HIV/AIDS relief programs in Africa. Sotheby’s has scheduled this sale for a symbolic date: Saint Valentine’s Day (February 14).

Damien Hirst has been working on this project for over a year and is contributing seven works to the sale around the theme of the colour red. He has invited some of the major names on the international contemporary art scene to donate or create works based on this evocative colour for the sale. Among the participating artists: Matthew Barney, Georg Baselitz, Cecily Brown, Douglas Gordon, Antony Gormley, Subodh Gupta, Andreas Gursky, Jasper Johns, Anish Kapoor, Anselm Kiefer, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Marc Newson, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Richard Prince, Marc Quinn, Ed Ruscha, Yinka Shonibare, Sam Taylor-Wood, Keith Tyson and Bernar Venet.

Among Hirst’s contributions to the February 14 sale, there will be two Butterfly paintings including All You Need Is Love, a red heart-shaped work measuring over 2 metres and carrying an estimated price of between 1 and 1.5 million dollars. The highpoint of the sale is Hirst’s Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way, a 3-metre pill chest filled with antiretroviral pills for the treatment of HIV. This piece alone could fetch between 5 and 7 million euros. Remember that a similarly themed work by Damien Hirst entitled Lullaby Spring generated Hirst’s all-time price record in June 2007 at 8.6 million pounds sterling (over 17 million dollars)!
 

Buying art is different from enjoying art by Dibeyendu Ganguly

Source: Economic Times

Using brilliant colours, with tropical flora, fauna and wildlife as his themes, Senaka Senanayke creates what can best be called ’happy’ art. And why not? Born into one of Sri Lanka’s most prominent political families, recognised as a prodigy at the age of eight, invited to create paintings for The White House and the United Nations building while still in his teens, a graduate of Yale University with over 100 one-man shows behind him, Sananayke has a had a very successful career and, to all intents and purposes, a very happy life.

And Harsha Bhatkal couldn’t have found a better subject to launch himself as an author. The 45 year old chief of the Mumbaibased publishing house Popular Prakashan first met Sananayke three years ago, when he was in Colombo to finalise an educational book project with the Sri Lankan government. "My uncle had a Senaka painting in his drawing room, so I’d grown up seeing his work," says Bhatkal. "The idea of producing a book to document his work over the past fifty years then emerged in the course of our conversation. I decide to write it myself rather than commission an art critic because we wanted it to be done in a simple style, accessible to ordinary art enthusiasts."

 
Harsha Bhatkal & Senaka Senanayke 
Simply titled Senaka, Bhatkal’s book is light on text, and concentrates instead on displaying the artist’s work - from his early paintings at the age of 8 to his most recent work at the age of 58. Sananayke is by far Sri Lanka’s most popular painter and the book, priced at Rs 1995, has proved to be a best-seller there, with the first print run of 3,000 copies already sold out. Bhatkal is now planning a second print run for the Indian market, and has plans to produce a mass market edition priced at Rs 250. "Art has become too elitist in India," he says. "People are confused between buying art and enjoying art, which are essentially two different things."

A graduate of Sydenham with an MBA from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Bhatkal has been the one responsible for taking the 80 year old Popular Prakashan into art books, beginning with a tome written by 92 year old painter Paritosh Sen last year. Bhatkal has been organising art camps for Indian artists in places like Morocco, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Mexico, Egypt and Jordan - where he pays for the artists’ travel and receives a painting or sculpture in return - and has a collection of over 700 valuable works. In its latest initiative, Popular Prakashan has commissioned a series of books on senior artists like Atul Dodiya, Jahangir Sabavala, KS Radhakrishnan, Arpita Singh, Shakti Burman, to be written by well known art critics like Ranjit Hoskote in Mumbai, Manasij Majumbar in Kolkata and Geeti Sen, Ela Dutta in Delhi.

And what about Bhatkal the author? "I’m not planning to write any more art books," he says. "I’d like to write fiction. I once wrote some plays in college and I want to try my hand at it again." 

The fall and rise of the art mart by Kishore Singh

Source: Business Standard

With newer auction houses debuting in the space of modern and contemporary art, collectors could gain.

 
It must have been about a decade ago when I stumbled, quite literally, into Dukan in Bangalore, after cajoling various people into pointing out places that dealt in antiques. Interestingly, most such places in what was then still the Garden City, operated from homes, so you had to ring doorbells, state your intent, answer cross-sounding queries from servants before being let in, and Dukan was no exception. 

 
Except, here was no artificially weathered furniture masquerading as the old thing; the ceramic collection and a few other pieces were genuine finds, and there were enough mounted etchings and lithographs to keep you engrossed, even if you got the feeling that old books had paid the price to end up on collectors’ walls instead of in the hands of readers. 

 
This week, Dukan gave birth to its next sibling: the pretentious sounding Bid & Hammer, an auction house with M Maher Dadha as its chairman and managing director. The Dadhas, entrepreneurial immigrants from Rajasthan with a history of dealing in chiefly pharmaceuticals, were also keen buyers from the rajwadas of yore, ending up with a fabulous collection of jewellery and collectible art. 

 
In Delhi, where he previewed selected works that were auctioned on Thursday in Bangalore, Dadha says his interest was never triggered from the point of view of selling anything. It was, he says, his wife who started dealing in a bit of antiquarian stuff in the mid-nineties in a purely amateurish way. 

 
Later, he decided it could be a full-fledged business opportunity, and following the success of auction houses in the past years, set things in motion towards this, his first auction which flags off his expectation of doing 4-5 sales annually to begin with, growing to 10-12 sales in a couple of years time. 

 
Dadha’s optimism notwithstanding, and in spite of the auction boom in India, he may have a tougher time of it than expected, and not only on account of the new entrants getting into the space. 

 
In recent years, Bowrings has come to grief, allegedly falling foul of the law — the case is in court, and Patrick Bowrings expects to be fully cleared of any irregularities. Even Osian’s has not escaped the taint of grey-area regulations, but there is no gainsaying that it and Saffronart between them have created the market (and benchmarked skyrocketing prices in the process) for auctions of Indian art. 

 
Internationally, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams have conducted sales in New York, London, Hong Kong and Dubai, mostly successfully. But back home, Apparao has had somewhat less success though it has built itself up steadily thereafter, and the hyped launch of Nina Pillai’s Triveda has been unable to sustain any promise. 

 
Still, it has not been able to inhibit other entrants from foraying into a market currently estimated at around Rs 500 crore. In Delhi, Naren Bhiku Ram Jain’s Art Mall has plans for a series of auctions. And in Kolkata, Emami Chisel Art, which will have its own gallery this month, will debut with its first auction of modern and contemporary art next month. 

 
But unlike the others, ECA (as it prefers to label itself) is hoping to leverage transparency and tax rebates to its advantage. Kolkata, unlike other centres, does not levy the 12.5 per cent VAT on art, thereby saving collectors a chunk of money in the process. 

 
In addition, says Vikram Bachhawat, director, “We will not accept any works from contemporary artists that are less than three years old” — traditionally, works wet with paint from artists’ studios have been consigned to auctions — “and except in the rarest of cases, will not accept anything for auction that has itself been auctioned within the previous seven years.” 

 
That, should you be curious, is to kill speculation and quell prices in an already heated market. “We want to build our collector base, not the investor base,” he says, with the sort of idyllic vision on which the art movement of Bengal was first raised. 

 
While ECA, even though it has started with a Rs 50 crore budget in its first year, expects to take things slow and easy — its two other auctions planned for this year are on modern artists, and sculpture and collectible art (“like postcards,” says Bachhawat, “or wooden toys made by [M F] Husain”). 

 
Triveda, on its part, has been silent, its website not updated on the results even of its second auction many months ago. Apparao, like ECA, seems to be rooting for artists from the east and the south. And Bid & Hammer, though offering a mixed mélange, is simultaneously linking art with collectibles, accessories and the innards of house sales. 

 
While Bangalore may not have the advantage of Kolkata’s tax rebate, it has, according to Dadha, “the third biggest art buying market after Delhi and Mumbai, and can be a catchment area for Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Coimbatore, together a large chunk of wealthy HNIs”. 

 
Bid & Hammer is already exploring the possibility of doing sales not just in New Delhi and Mumbai, but also in New York, London, Dubai and Hong Kong — this last because it may be exploring options to work with a Europe-based auction house. 

 
It may seem like an awful lot of art on offer, but the gavel coming down frequently in the time of art funds, could be a signal of competitive pricing for art buyers – a welcome change after the recent galloping prices.
A LARGE NUMBER OF AUCTIONS LAUNCH THE SEASON FOR 2008.

Osian’s
Its 100 years of modern and contemporary art on January 19 saw prices spiralling again after some market correction. Works by J Swaminathan and S H Raza commanded Rs 3.1 crore each, Tyeb Mehta Rs 2.6 crore, M F Husain Rs 2.2 crore, F N Souza Rs 2.1 crore and Ram-kumar Rs 1.2 crore. The sale, part of which consisted of the collections of Mukund and Neerja Lath, and Suhridchandra Sinha, grossed a total of Rs 32 crore (including 20 per cent buyer’s premium but not the taxes).

Bid & Hammer
The Bangalore-based auction house debuted this week with a mixed bag of modern and contemporary Indian paintings, even including an early S H Raza. At the time of going to press, we learn from promoter M Maher Dadha that Bangalore warmed up to artists who were inexpensive and the collectibles, but also sold Husain, Raza and Jamini Roy, though there were some timing hiccups. But then, his aim is also to promote unknowns, such as R Raja “who is very good”, he said.

Apparao
Online from February 28 to March 2, the Chennai-based gallery will plug the gap in sculptors from the south. The pick of the lot, need one say, is a resin head by Ravinder Reddy, who is already the highest grossing sculptor in the country.

Emami Chisel Art
Also debuting with its first show next month (February 23) in Kolkata, at a physical-cum-online auction of Indian modern and contemporary art, at what director Vikram Bachhawat touts as the most competitive prices on the auction circuit, he asks: “When was the last time you saw Souza from the ’50s (Rs 1.5-2 crore), Tyeb Mehta (Rs 4-5 crore), Amrita Sher-Gil (Rs 12-16 lakh for charcoals), Husain’s ‘Safdar Hashmi’ (Rs 2-2.5 crore), Bikash Bhattacharjee (Rs 40-50 lakh), Ganesh Pyne (Rs 12-16 lakh), Manjit Bawa (Rs 40-50 lakh) and Swaminathan (Rs 80 lakh-1 crore) together in an auction?” Point taken.
 

Art market goes desi by Anubha Sawhney Joshi

Times of India

The new year is not even a month old and India has already had it’s first successful art auction. By a desi auction house. The Osian’s Indian Modern and Contemporary Art Auction held in Mumbai witnessed the resurgence of the Modern Masters and registered a total sale of Rs 32.18 crore. This sale presented a range of masterpieces and high quality paintings from a number of private collections.

Another art auction took place last week. Brand new auction house Bid & Hammer presented a collection of Husain, Raza, Souza, Gujral and Jamini Roy, besides others. Says Maher Dadha, CMD of the Bangalore-based Bid & Hammer, "A Rs 10 crore lower estimate was up for sale. Our highest selling work has been a Souza that went for Rs 34 lakh. We have learn a lot from our first auction and believe we have a long innings ahead."

Cut to 2003, when Bowrings, the much hyped auction house, shut shop after about two gruelling years in the Indian market. The auction house had a spate of problems, including fakes and licence issues. The times, they are a-changing. Today, Dadha - who has no previous experience of selling art - has the guts to enter the market and the conviction to stay on. "I have put together a team of experts who understand the aesthetic as well as the business of art. Together, we hope to catalyze the art and antiques auctioneering business in India," says a confident Dadha, who plans to take his next two auctions abroad.

It’s no secret that in recent times Indian art has been attracting big money. Not long ago, Philip Hoffman, founder of the UK-based The Fine Art Fund Group had expressed interest in raising Rs 100 crore for an Indian Fine Art fund. Saffronart’s 2007 winter auction sold art worth over Rs 30 crore and had bidders from all over the world. Osian’s January auction represented an annualized increase of 21% over the total average lot price achieved by them last year. It might not be long before an Indian auction house goes global in the real sense of the word.

"Yes, a lot of auction houses have sprung up and I think that just means there are more places to sell your art," says gallery owner Sharan Apparao. "This also means a standard for conducting auctions will soon evolve and prices and systems will become transparent and competitive." Apparao got into auctions in 2006 as a ’logical expansion’. "We needed to work more actively in the secondary market and that needed more visibility," she explains. Vadehra Art Gallery’s Arun Vadehra believes it’s good to have new players in the market. "But entrepreneurship is not enough. One must have great aesthetic sensibility along with understanding the historical context of a work."

Is setting up an art auction house the next big thing for budding entrepreneurs or is the bubble bound to burst? "Naturally, the springing up of new auction houses indicates a growing and booming art market," says Osian’s Neville Tuli. "However, so far only Osian’s and saffronart.com have dared to take on and have succeeded against Christie’s and Sotheby’s in the small world of Indian modern and contemporary art. The true test of India’s success is when Osian’s and saffronart.com go global and increase the types and scale of artworks under our umbrella of sales, which so far Christie’s and Sotheby’s have dominated."

Though no permissions are required to set up an auction house, the amount of diligence, expertise, infrastructure, resources and goodwill required to sustain it is enormous. "Where there’s an opportunity for people to start a business, they will. But frankly, I believe there are enough niches in the market to accommodate everybody" says Saffronart’s Dinesh Vazirani. Do more auction houses mean more scope for fraud? "Not at all," says Vazirani. "They will only bring stringent international standards. Plus, we must not believe the buyer is ignorant. Be it the Indian buyer or the independent international collector, everybody who’s putting money into art is savvy about what he wants."

Contemporary Art Market Confidence Slumps 40%, Survey Shows By Scott Reyburn

Source: Bloomberg

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Confidence in the contemporary art market has dropped 40 percent over the past six months, according to a survey by ArtTactic, a London-based research company.

The biannual survey, based on the responses of 155 buyers of contemporary art, mostly international private collectors, said the decline in confidence followed the credit crisis in the last quarter of 2007.

The full survey, published on Jan. 23, follows a snap poll in August that showed contemporary art buyers were increasingly worried about the prospects for the economy, said ArtTactic.

``It is clear that the respondents no longer think that the art market can be detached from economic realities,’’ ArtTactic said in the survey. ``Confidence in the primary market is down only by 10 percent, and is holding up significantly better than the auction market.’’

The ArtTactic Market Confidence Indicator was first published in November 2005. According to ArtTactic’s survey’s methodology statement, data is collected and made available every six months.

Respondents are asked six constant questions on their perceptions of present and future conditions in the general economy and the contemporary art market. Answers are in the form of the response options ``positive,’’ ``negative,’’ and ``neutral.’’

The overall November 2007 Art Market Confidence Indicator, computed from the totality of the received data, fell by 40 percent since the last reading in May 2007, said ArtTactic.

`Economic Realities’

The primary market refers to art offered for the first time in galleries and by artists in their studios. Prices are often lower than when the same works reach the secondary market of auctions and resales by dealers and collectors.

``There are so many collectors in the primary market now and they want to carry on buying,’’ especially works by younger artists that have relatively low prices, said the London-based contemporary art dealer Thomas Dane.

ArtTactic’s findings come less than two weeks before Christie’s International, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury hold Impressionist, modern and contemporary art sales in London that have a record overall low estimate of 429 million pounds ($838 million), according to figures released on Jan. 22 by the auction houses.

Auction Records

Last July, before the global credit crunch triggered by the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, record prices for contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst, Piero Manzoni, Ilya Kabakov and Yue Minjun pushed the total for these auctions in London to an unprecedented 462.5 million pounds, including fees, compared with a low estimate of 322 million pounds.

Since then, Wall Street banks have declared more than $100 billion of writedowns. On Jan. 21, two days before ArtTactic’s survey was published, London’s FTSE 100 stocks index fell 5.5 percent, the biggest drop since Sept. 11, 2001.

Rising concern that a housing slump will damp consumer spending in the U.S., causing a recession, has dragged down stock markets around the world this year. London’s FTSE 100 index fell as much as 17 percent this year before recovering part of the decline.

``We’ll have to see how the stock-market volatility plays out before the sales,’’ said James Roundell, Impressionist and modern art specialist at London dealers Simon C. Dickinson Ltd. ``If anything, it should have more effect on the contemporary auctions. The Impressionist and modern market is much more static.’’

Roundell said Russian and Eastern European buyers are increasingly important at London’s Impressionist and modern sales. ``They’ve been behind quite a few of the stand-out prices in recent years,’’ he said. Sotheby’s said clients from the former Soviet Union bought 9 percent of the lots at its evening sale of Impressionist and modern art in London a year ago.

Soaring Estimates

The 89 million pound and 82 million pound low estimates for Christie’s and Sotheby’s respective February evening Impressionist and modern art auctions are the highest ever seen in London.

In July, Christie’s and Sotheby’s evening contemporary auctions carried low estimates of 54.5 million pounds and 40.5 million pounds, respectively. Both houses’ February sales in London are expected to fetch at least 72 million pounds.

Christie’s Feb. 6 contemporary auction includes a Francis Bacon triptych with a low estimate of 25 million pounds, a record for a work of art offered at auction in London. Three weeks later, Sotheby’s will offer a single-panel painting by Bacon with a guarantee of around 18 million pounds, also a record for London. At the contemporary art auctions in July in London and in November in New York, more than 80 percent of lots typically found buyers.

``I’d expect the general mood of buying everything and anything to come to an end,’’ said art dealer Dane.

Mood Change

According to the ArtTactic November 2007 survey, there has been a negative mood change toward some of the less established artists that saw a rapid and significant increase in prices during 2006 and 2007. Marlene Dumas, Neo Rauch, Franz Ackerman, Cecily Brown and Peter Doig were among the artists that had seen a ``significant decrease in confidence’’ from buyers.

ArtTactic said auction performance is a major influence on the market’s confidence in a particular artist.

``The auctions will be the test of what is happening,’’ said Thomas Dane. ``People are definitely putting off certain decisions until after the sales.’’

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Any opinions expressed are his own.)

Commission of a lifetime for Indian artist

Georgina Adam | 2.1.08 | Issue 187 The Art Newspaper

LONDON. The Dubai-based Indian painter M.F. Husain, aged 92, has been commissioned by the wife of the Emir of Qatar to make 99 paintings for the new Museum of Islamic Art in Doha.

Husain says the figure of 99 was chosen because of the 99 names of God in Islam. “Some of the works are small and some are big, but together they highlight what Arab ­civilisation has given to mankind,” he said.

Husain has started work on the series, entitled “History of Arab Civilisation”, and expects to complete it by mid-2008, after the museum’s scheduled opening on 22 March. Some works will already be on show by then.

Asked how the commission arose, Husain said:?“I mentioned in an interview that I have been working on Indian civilisation all my life, and I now wanted to work on Arab civilisation. Sheikha Mozah saw the interview, sent a message and commissioned this work.” He added that everything has been provided for him in Qatar, such as a “huge villa” and assistants to help him with the commission.

“I’m so excited to get such a marvellous opportunity,” says Husain.

Samsung accused of $64m art fraud

The conglomerate’s former house attorney alleges that the chairman set up a slush fund which his wife used to buy art

Lucian Harris | 2.1.08 | Issue 187 - The Art Newspaper

LONDON. Over $64m from a slush fund set up by Lee Kun-hee, chairman of Samsung, was allegedly used to buy art for his wife Ra Hee Hong Lee who is director-general of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, according to the Korean corporation’s former house attorney. None of the art has been exhibited in Korea and its whereabouts is presently unknown. Samsung denies the allegations.

The National Assembly has now approved an independent investigation into the affair. With Samsung’s huge financial sponsorship of the arts under scrutiny, many other Korean corporations have ceased buying art until the waters settle, causing confidence in the country’s art market to plummet.

In a series of press conferences starting on 29 October, Kim Yong-chul, head of the legal department of the Samsung Group Restructuring Office from 1997 to 2004, unleashed a slew of allegations concerning a $225m slush fund which he claims was kept in the accounts of various Samsung executives and administered by the Restructuring Office.

In addition to the currying of influence in political and legal circles, Kim alleges that the slush fund was used to purchase millions of dollars worth of art for the chairman’s wife Ra Hee Hong Lee and other members of his family.

Kim Yong-chul’s allegations focused particularly on the acquisition of Roy Lichtenstein’s Happy Tears, 1964, which sold at Christie’s New York in 2002 for $7,159,500, a record price for the artist at the time.

He said that the painting was bought at the auction on behalf of the chairman’s wife by Hong Seong-won, director of the Seoul-based Seomi Gallery, who is believed to have handled art purchases on behalf of the Samsung group since the 1990s. He said that Mrs Hong Lee would regularly call the Restructuring Office to ask for funds to be wired to the Seomi Gallery for the buying of art.

To further back his claims, on 26 November Kim Yong-chul released a full list of the art alleged to have been bought with money from the Samsung slush fund as well as details of payments made to Christie’s. This list, seen by The Art Newspaper, details purchases of 30 paintings and photographs allegedly made at five different sales at Christie’s, New York between 2002 and 2003 with money from the slush fund. According to this list, in one sale alone—the post-war and contemporary art auction on 13 November 2002—over $20m was spent on ten works including Lichtenstein’s Happy Tears ($7,159,500); Barnett Newman’s, White Fire I, 1954 ($3,859,500); David Hockney’s, Portrait of Nick Wilder, 1966 ($2,869,500); Ed Ruscha’s, Desire, 1969 ($1,769,500); Donald Judd’s, Untitled (Ten Units), 1969 ($1,439,500); Agnes Martin’s, Untitled #4, 1980 ($1,054,500); and Gerhard Richter’s, Abstract, 1992 ($1,054,500). When the sale continued the following morning a further $1.3m was spent on seven more paintings.

The document also details a series of 57 staggered payments made by 15 different companies between January 2002 and December 2003. Of these, 33 were made by Seomi Gallery through banks in Seoul and New York, while other payments were made by finance and property companies through banks in Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore and London. Between 3 and 10 December 2002, over $6m was paid from ANNC Co Ltd through two different Korean banks.

Samsung categorically denies the allegations. In a statement to The Art Newspaper the company said: “These allegations are completely groundless. We are cooperating fully with the current investigation.”

“We understand the document that Mr Kim disclosed is a list of works of art purchased by Seomi Gallery. Neither Mrs Hong Lee nor Samsung Museum of Art purchased Roy Lichtenstein’s Happy Tears.”

“Mrs Hong Lee was invited to view the work but she decided not to purchase it. Mrs Hong Lee has never misappropriated funds. When she purchases works of art, she does so with her own funds. When Samsung Museum of Art purchases works of art, it uses its own funds. The 30 works of art included on the list were not purchased by Samsung, nor Mrs Hong Lee.”

Seomi Gallery did not respond to our emails asking for comment but according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, when initially questioned on 26 November it said that it had sold Happy Tears to a private collector.

However the following day, Hong Seong-won, director of Seomi Gallery, told Korean reporters that the work was still in her possession. “I bought it to sell in Korea but I could not find a buyer,” she said. “So I kept it and I will show it after sorting out shipping, insurance and security.” She admitted buying other works on the list and said that she had sold them to various Korean collectors.

She also said that four works by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto were bought for herself.

The affair has affected confidence in the Korean art market to such an extent that within weeks of the scandal breaking the country’s two main auction houses were reporting a 20% drop in sales.

As The Art Newspaper went to press the whereabouts of almost all of the works on Kim’s list remain a mystery.