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| Sunil Sethi: The price of a filmmaker's estate |
| Sunil Sethi / New Delhi Oct 17, 2009, 00:00 IST |
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London: This multicultural capital has been celebrating India in the run-up to Diwali in its own inimitable way. Major shows of contemporary art are on — by the Indian-born Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy, Subodh Gupta across the street in Picadilly at the prestigious Hauser & Wirth gallery and a lively Indian representation at the international Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park. Betwixt and between, many of London’s leading salerooms organised auctions of Indian and Islamic works of arts and textiles.
Among the more diverting was a sale held at Christie’s South Kensington on October 7 of many of the artworks and contents in the late filmmaker Ismail Merchant’s apartments in London, Paris and New York. His long time partner, the director James Ivory, running his eyes over the melange of objects and film memorabilia spread in the preview hall, told me: “The odd thing about many of these objects is that they come from Ismail’s homes in different parts of the world but have never met one another before.”
A person's accumulated possessions are the markers of a life. And here was a wide, eclectic mix acquired by Ismail Merchant, who died, aged 69, in 2005. The extraordinary global film company Merchant Ivory Productions that he founded in 1961 in Bombay and New York went from producing black-and-white small-budget classics such as The Householder and Shakespearewallah in the 1960s to Hollywood blockbusters such as Heat and Dust, Room with a View and Remains of the Day that won a total of six Academy awards.
Of the 188 lots in the Merchant sale were large collections of film posters not only of MIP films but also those of Satyajit Ray, valued at upper estimates of Rs 35,000 (at current exchange rates), clapperboards and film props. These included fake Picassos and production models of Picasso’s Paris apartment (Rs 55,000-70,000) for dud MIP films like Surviving Picasso that few will remember except for the legal battle that Picasso’s heirs waged against it.
From the sets of Heat and Dust (1983) shot in Hyderabad, there was a dinner service and lime green glassware set etched with the crest of one Nawab Ahmeduddin Khan, a decaying remnant of the old princely state, which no doubt Ismail had acquired quite cheaply for the filming. Like several other objects this was enticingly displayed in the sale catalogue in film stills in which they made an appearance, thereby enhancing their merit and value they did not intrinsically possess. The china and glass was estimated at about Rs 35,000 but went, in the end, for Rs 2.2 lakh. Such is the sentimental association bidders will show for owning a highly breakable piece of film history.
There was much more pricey stuff on offer. A splendid 18th century Indian cabinet inlaid with ivory that appeared in The Golden Bowl (2000), one of several films based on Henry James novels that MIP adapted, was estimated at Rs 8.5 lakhs but went for Rs 14 lakhs. The sale included valuable Kashmir shawls, Indian metal ware and sculpture and a wide collection of Indo-British art. The piece de resistance was a 19th century canvas of proponents of the cult of thugee that was valued at Rs 5.6 lakhs but fetched Rs 73 lakhs. In all, the sale realised Rs 5.2 crores, a figure that would have delighted the ebullient, honey-tongued film producer famous for squeezing money out of stone.
More than anything Ismail Merchant would have loved the publicity of being included in a line-up of celebrities such as Andy Warhol, Jackie Onassis, the Beatles and, more recently, Yves St Laurent and Pierre Berge, whose personal belongings have raised millions of dollars for their estates. Auction houses are as star struck as the buying public. And in a time of recession both are secure in the knowledge that if there is no cash to spare in a lifetime, there is plenty of loose change after death.
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