Many, says Dinesh Vazirani of Saffronart. The Online art giant's forthcoming Spring auction is as impressive as it is expensive. The Guide looks at three of the costliest pieces
Many, says Dinesh Vazirani of Saffronart. The Online art giant's forthcoming Spring auction is as impressive as it is expensive. The Guide looks at three of the costliest pieces
The art web only keeps getting bigger. Both, figuratively and actually. It's been a decade since India's first online art auctioneer, Saffronart, also one of the world's finest, has been in operation. And a grand Spring auction is marking the milestone. Forty-seven leading modern and contemporary Indian artists make the gala event fascinating, and the sky-high prices, a fantasy.u00a0
S H Raza's Prakriti Purush (2006) for instance, is the highest priced piece in this auction, with a total low to high estimate of Rs 81,00,000 - Rs 99,00,000 ($180,000 - $220,000). And, there's good reason, explains the man behind the website, Dinesh Vazirani. "Raza's recent paintings ostensibly champion precision and symmetry.
However, they do not advocate a methodical or strictly ordered view of the world. Rather, the artist's use of squares, circles and triangles in various combinations aims to transcend scientific rationality by presenting the viewer with nature in the most elemental form."
The intertwined nagas or snakes at the centre of the piece reflect the same couplingu00a0-- the eternal duality of male and female, day and night, light and darku00a0-- that sustains the cosmic cycle of birth, death and rebirth. And, of course, bustling business.
This season's repertoire also includes iconic works by modern masters FN Souza, Manjit Bawa, Ram Kumar and Akbar Padamsee, alongside contemporary artists such as Shibu Natesan, Atul Dodiya, Subodh Gupta, Anju Dodiya and TV Santhosh.
If you are wondering who really buys this stuff, the collectors come from all over the world. "Our Winter Art Auction last year attracted buyers from 30 countries, with more than 60 per cent of buyers from outside India. This, I feel, is the result of the confidence in the Indian art market and its masters as well," Dinesh believes.
It is, however, works by Indian modernists that are in demand among both seasoned collectors and amateur buyers.
"Buyers today are especially focused on important, high quality pieces that have an impressive provenance and exhibition/publishing history," he adds. Here's the stuff you shouldn't miss.
At: Rs 81,00,000 onwards
Subodh Gupta's Doot, 2003
This work playfully meditates on both the desirable and adverse dimensions of globalisation, and particularly on their dualistic effect on India's burgeoning middle class. It was executed almost a decade after the liberalisation of the Indian economy and the Ambassador's replacement as an icon of Indian roads by newer brands and models. This one represents Gupta's attempt to capture the monumental changes that swept the country in the preceding years and the complex present they ushered in. The Ambassador represents both the homogenizing changes that accompany the processes of globalisation, as well as the sentimental tendency of 
some sections of the Indian population, particularly its leadership, to cling steadfastly to the past.
At: Rs 67,50,000 - Rs 90,00,000
FN Souza's Gothic Head, 1957
The artist's series of 'Heads' from the 1950s are probably his most important figurative works. In addition to exploring the nuances of figuration, these portraits served as channels for his scathing social commentary, frequently centered on the dual issues of pleasure and suffering. In this one, Souza offers his irreverent take on the portrait of a dignified man, executed in an austere palette and bordered by the artist's thick line. With his elongated head, high-set eyes, tubular nose and half-hidden jaw, the subject here, probably an ordained member of the clergy, is robbed of all nobility and grandeur save for the spare detailing around the neck of his tunic. Instead, Souza labels him 'gothic', a remnant of the medieval ages, representative of beliefs and systems that are outdated and duplicitous.
Rs 81,00,000 - Rs 99,00,000
SH Raza's Prakriti Purush, 2006 
In this painting, one of the artist's large-format geometric meditations on colour and shape, Raza uses upright and inverted triangles, radiating outwards from a central bindu, to convey the concept of dual female (prakriti) and male (purush) polarities, around whose interplay and balance the universe is structured.
Saffronart Spring Auction
Where: www.saffronart.com
When: March 10 and 11
Collectors can place bids on the website, or through Saffronart's proprietary
Blackberry and iPhone mobile applications.
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