The peaks and troughs of art from the East
It ended in tears in the financial crisis of 2008-09, and values for modern Indian art tumbled
Next month, the talks programme at the Abu Dhabi Art Fair will turn the spotlight on the art market – not the $450million Leonardo bought for the Louvre Abu Dhabi last year, but the rise of local museum and corporate collections in a developing market for Middle Eastern art. The subject will have added poignancy in light of the Islamic art sales at Bonhams and Christie’s last week, when 140 ancient, modern and contemporary Middle Eastern and South Asian works owned by businessman Arif Naqvi and the investment company he founded, Abraaj Group, were put up for sale.
Until its dramatic collapse earlier this year, Abraaj was the largest private equity group in the Middle East. It was also a major player in the art world: the main sponsor of the leading art fair of the region, the internationally renowned Art Dubai.
Meanwhile, though, the company was facing a seemingly insoluble debt of $1.1billion, Abraaj filed for provisional liquidation and the art collection had to go.
As collectors, Naqvi and his wife, Fayeeza, (a member of the Tate Modern International Council and formerly of their acquisition committees for the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia) started with modern and contemporary Indian art in about 2005. Hailing from Karachi, he teamed up with Neville Tuli, an art speculator who created an art investment fund to ride the boom in modern Indian art – with an auction house, Osian’s, in Mumbai, to sell it. In the boom years of 2005 to 2008, Naqvi bought the best modern Indian art he could find. But his relationship with Osian’s ended in tears when Tuli’s art funds collapsed in the financial crisis of 2008-09, and values for modern Indian art tumbled. Naqvi sued Tuli for negligence and ended up with the fund’s art collection.
At Bonhams last week, with estimates set low and sometimes no minimum reserve price (at the bequest of the liquidators), some of it returned the prices he paid. A painting by Manjit Bawa, for instance, for which Naqvi paid a record $117,500 in 2006, sold last week for £476,500 ($612,000). Several works by Uk-based Francis Newton Souza also cleared their costs. A drawing of Louis Armstrong for which Naqvi paid a triple estimate £56,000 some 10 years ago was chased by the Grosvenor Vadehra Gallery, before selling to a phone bidder for a record £125,000. But just as many Indian works were sold at a loss.
Naqvi’s Middle Eastern art was also linked to market tastes, and aspired to mirror the geographical reach of Abraaj. However, political instability, economic sanctions and restrictions on movement, especially from Iraq, have put a damper on the market.
Among the better results at Christie’s, which was selling Naqvi’s personal collection, was a bronze of lovers by Iran’s star sculptor, Parviz Tanavoli, which Naqvi bought in 2009 for $37,500 and sold to the Meem Gallery in Dubai for £50,000 ($64,000). Taking a drubbing was an abstract calligraphic triptych by Tunisian artist Nja Mahdaoui, which Naqvi bought in 2009 for $490,500 and sold for £65,000 ($83,000).
Meem was also pursuing Tanavoli at Bonhams, but was outbid for a bronze, Poet and the Bird, that doubled estimates to sell for £236,750 ($303,600) – still a big drop from the $480,000 Naqvi paid in 2008. Similarly, vivid calligraphic paintings by Iranians Mohammad Ehsai and Charles Zenderoudi, once the toast of the market, sold for two or three times less than costs of between $300,000 and $400,000 some 10 years earlier.
In the end, the Bonhams sales garnered £4.6million, while Naqvi’s personal assets sold for close to £2million – not much of a dent in Abraaj’s debts, but a good result under the circumstances. The comparisons with prices paid in the boom tended to show a market in decline, but Nima Sagharchi of Bonhams says the prices of 2007-08 were excessive.
Perhaps fittingly, the talks programme in Abu Dhabi will end with a screening of the documentary The Price of Everything, a cynical take on the way art is valued, which ends with footage from the Leonardo sale.