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NORTH AMERICAN SPECIAL:
PROFILE
Maiden Success
At Christie's New York auction of Indian art, 26-year-old
Mallika Sagar broke the glass barrier several times over
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HIGH BID: Sagar at the podium
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Young,
pretty and confident, Mallika Sagar strode up to take the podium-and the
gavel-in a room full of art connoisseurs in New York recently. The occasion
was Christie's auction of contemporary Indian paintings. The 26-year-old
unassumingly broke the glass barrier several times over that October day.
For never before had Christie's employed a woman to auction contemporary
Indian art. And Sagar earned the distinction of being the first woman
auctioneer of Indian origin at Christie's.
"I wasn't really nervous. It was just a
wholly different atmosphere," Sagar smiles. "The positive energy
in the room and knowledgeable bidders made the process specially exciting
because we set three world records for Indian paintings."
Sagar may well give credit to the buyers, but
she spun her own brand of charm at her first-ever auction to create the
three records. A large Sayed Haider Raza work (La Terre), estimated to
sell between $20,000 and $25,000, actually went for $50,000! An untitled
Vasudeo S. Gaitonde canvas, which was estimated between $12,000 and $18,000,
was snatched up for $45,000. And a figurative 1959 Ram Kumar went under
the hammer at $35,000-far beyond expectations that it would fetch $15,000-20,000.
The canvases of Raza, a living master of Indian
contemporary art, and Gaitonde, a renowned abstract artist who died in
August, attracted many Indian-American bidders, some on the telephone
which Sagar handled with the professional panache that three years at
Christie's gave her. Now, Sagar is Christie's India representative and
is based in Mumbai.
But it was a step at a time. After a sound base
at Cathedral School in Mumbai, Sagar went to boarding school at Suffield
Academy in Connecticut. A major in history of art in 1998 from Bryn Mawr
College in Philadelphia, a 116-year-old institution, put her on her career
track.
Then it was time for her to understand all facets
of the business: the art, marketing techniques and much more. A year's
rigorous training did the trick followed by work with Christie's Indian
and Southeast Asian department in New York and on a construction project
"responsible for putting together the brand new offices here at Rockefeller
Center".
Training also involved being aware of regulations
and auction procedures that are announced before every sale as a requirement
of the Department of Consumer Affairs in New York state, where the state's
sales tax and buyer's premiums are applicable. Christie's charges a premium
to the buyer on the final bid price of each lot sold.
But it took a little more to actually auction.
"I practiced a lot to talk in public in front of a room full of people
though it is not like acting in a play or being in a debate," she
says. "But every situation is different, every lot of sculpture or
paintings has a different background, and we try to anticipate every kind
of scenario."
Interestingly, all the Husain paintings at the
New York auction fared very well, proving yet again that M.F. Husain,
at 86, continues to remain popular. Sagar, a specialist in 20th century
paintings (contemporary painting) says, "Husain's works, prior to
the 1960s and '70s, tend to have very good quality and are difficult to
get." But for the first time since he executed the artwork, explains
Sagar, the early Husains came on the auction lot and the bid prices were
higher than normal because ownership was changing hands.
The youngest of four siblings from an industrial
family, Sagar's achievements would show she prefers the number one.
—Raj S. Rangarajan
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