The two houses will do almost anything to outmaneuver each other, and the friction between them will likely only increase under new CEOs. by Stephanie Baker and Katya Kazakina Illustration: Greg Kletsel/Bloomberg Markets This May, after billionaires had outbid billionaires in New York’s contemporary art auctions, something became immediately clear: Christie’s had just clobbered Sotheby’s […]

The opening sequence of Laurent Bregeat’s Ram Kumar: Nostalgic Longing, a documentary on Ram Kumar, shows the ageing artist, bent over his easel, drawing lines and curves with charcoal on a white canvas. “Ultimately nothing may remain of these shapes, but this is just an exercise in trying to find out something (…) important,” he […]

Shattered sales records have become standard fare in recent years, so something extraordinary was afoot when even industry veterans did a double take last month. Christie’s sold a Picasso in New York for $179.4 million – the highest price paid for a single work of art at auction. That heady news capped a furious two-week […]

Works by veteran artist V.S. Gaitonde that were sold during the recently-concluded auction of modern and contemporary South Asian art in London. Works by Indian masters sell for £13,70,000 at a recent auction. Modern and contemporary Indian art has had much success at auctions held overseas, with international buyers taking note of the talent and […]

One aspect of Indian artists who have lived and worked overseas is their concern with identity. S H Raza became the first Asian (or, more correctly, the first non-European) to win the prestigious critics award in Paris in 1956, paving the way for a successful career in France. During its early decades, collectors of his […]

Merely in its second edition, the Kochi Muziris Biennale has begun to reveal the impact of exhibiting art in public spaces, integrating the city and its people into a narrative that is less intimidating or exclusionary than art fairs or other expositions. No wonder the 56-edition-old Venice Biennale is among the most powerful of art […]

According to Knight Frank’s The Wealth Report 2015, “it is always possible to commission a new yacht, but nobody can paint another Monet or build a classic Ferrari” “Gold has lost its lustre. That’s the conclusion global asset managers are making as condominiums and contemporary art emerge as more attractive investments” – as reported in […]

Kathmandu: Aiming to strengthen their close cultural relations, India and Nepal today signed a MoU to promote cooperation in the field of art and culture. The MoU was signed between Nepal Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and New Delhi-based Lalit Kala Akademi as part of the Nepal-India Art Exchange Programme. The two academies will work […]

Photo: The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford PanARMENIAN.Net – The Deccan plateau of south-central India was home to a succession of highly cultured Muslim kingdoms with a rich artistic heritage. Under their patronage in the 16th and 17th centuries, foreign influences—notably from Iran, Turkey, eastern Africa, and Europe—combined with ancient and prevailing Indian traditions to create a […]