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| 'Birth' by F N Souza that sold at $4.1 million at Christies |
An overdose of Agatha Christie novels coupled with an unabashed admiration for Sherlock Holmes has rendered me incorrigibly inclined towards investigation especially when clues are falling like showers of meteors. It is not shrewish suspiciousness but a serious desire to “get to the bottom of it” usually for my own understanding. It has almost become second nature to add up clues to make the larger picture and being proven correct too often has made me more convinced about its veracity. This twitchy nose for news in years of working in journalism, exploring dimensions of the art world has not gone waste: After all, one can figure out whether the rice is cooked by the proverbial single grain of rice.
The reason of these self-congratulatory musings is the recent spate of developments in the art world that has catapulted Francis Newton Souza to center stage in a far bigger way than ever before. It is not as if the cartels that control art have suddenly awoken to the fact he was part of the Progressive Group or that his lines have suddenly become more expressive. The very same art world that shunned his rather explicit nudes as repulsive and obscene is now running after his works with bushels of bucks to grab those same nudes. And interestingly it is not new collectors who are acquiring them, but senior and older investors who have seen
Souzas floating around for a while. So it makes me wonder if investors have acquired a big cache of his works and want to prop up his prices.
My Sherlock Holmes brain is twitching away for there seems to be an almost orchestrated attempt to buoy up his prices especially in the international arena. Actually it is about time he got his share in the sun, shunned as a pervert for his nudes in his lifetime. I remember in the 90s he had come to meet me in my office with his then muse and companion Shrimati Lal. His cap, smile and intense eyes are vivid in my mind still.
At the recent Christie’s New York auction Souza sold for a mind boggling $ 4.1 million bought by the Delhi-based Kiran Nadar Museum that is an amazing piece where a woman in labour is seen delivering a child with a still life on a window sill and through the window a landscape can be seen.
At the Saffronart auction in New Delhi too, the top lot was Souza’s Man and Woman Laughing (1957) that sold for Rs 16,84,00,000 (US$ 2,590,769) breaking all previous records for the artist at auction. Formerly from the collection of Harold Kovner, Souza’s most important patron, it belongs to a particularly vital period of the artist’s career.
Kovner discovered Souza’s work in 1956 and financially supported the artist to promote his works. The duration of this patronage, which lasted four years, was instrumental in allowing Souza more freedom to paint, and achieve greater creative success than ever before. As a strong modernist Souza’s early work made an impact both in India and abroad. His strong, bold lines delineated the head in a distinctive way where it was virtually re-invented the circles, hatchings and crosses. In later years his forms retained their plasticity but became less inventive.
The other favourites at the auction remained the evergreen stable buys M.F. Husain and Tyeb Mehta. S.H. Raza’s market seems to be looking up too, after a slump.
It is auction time again in Delhi with the Artdeal coming up with its autumn auction ‘Framed Sentiment’. This time the most promising attraction is a ceramic bowl by Pablo Picasso, a medium he began experimenting with in 1946 after visiting the Madoura pottery workshop in Vallauris. There are drawings and paintings by modern masters like F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, Ramkumar, Krishen Khanna. The Souza work is a passionately created canvas that emulates a raw energy with its powerful form, a remarkable work of the artist. The auction also boasts of unusual works by celebrated Bengal Masters like some early works by Jamini Roy and letters by Nandalal Bose.
This time Rajasthani miniatures that are hard to come by will also go under the hammer. These belong to the known schools of miniature art in India such as Nathdwara, Jaipur and Jodhpur, among others. There is one with a beautiful depiction of the battle of Kurukshetra in Jodhpur style; the gold still lustrous despite its age. Another Mewar-style miniature depicting a wedding scene with text describing it is an exemplary artwork of the time.
For me, only those pieces that are important works from the point of the artists’ journey or those that have an artistic/historic importance or are one of a kind deserve to be part of the auction circuit and not just any work of any artist. And auctions cannot be used as watermarks to decide/position prices. Hope investors and buyers are listening.
(Source: The Asian Age, 24 September 2015)
