Indian collectors and the enfant terrible of art

Fourteen works by controversial artist Damien Hirst will be shown for the first time ever in India.

He’s the world’s most expensive living artist, the most admired and the most reviled, and now he’s coming to show in India. Fourteen works by Damien “£50-million” Hirst will be exhibited for the first time ever at an exclusive viewing in New Delhi on August 28, as part of a select showing before a Sotheby’s auction in mid-September in London.

Credit it to India’s growing muscle power in the world of art. “A small group of Indian collectors is buying international art,” confirms Sotheby’s India representative (deputy director, business development) Maithili Parekh, “and it’s growing at a very fast pace”. And no, before you ask, it’s against Sotheby’s policy to give out names.

Two hundred and twenty three of Hirst’s works, two years in the making and titled Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, will be consigned to auction for value estimated to be in excess of £65 million. Interestingly — or perhaps ironically — Hirst’s first showing in India is attracting parallels with “the Damien Hirst of Delhi” as Indian artist Subodh Gupta is popularly regarded.

That, though, is where comparisons end. Gupta, making waves in the West, is the recognisable face of Indian contemporary art, whereas Hirst — the most prominent of the YBAs or Young British Artists — has been known to turn the stomachs of viewers and leave them heaving with his “art about death”.

His works have raised furious debates about what art constitutes, particularly his large works in formaldehyde in which he has “pickled”, according to some, a 14-ft shark, sheep, and grossly, a cow and a calf after being dissected. Less gruesome works consist of hundreds of dead butterflies, cancer cells, skulls and pills.

Born in 1965 in Bristol, Hirst lives in London, Devon and Mexico and was among the most powerful of his generation’s artists in the eighties, before succumbing to drug and alcohol abuse and increasingly wild behaviour in the nineties. His description of 9/11 as “an artwork in its own right” caused a furore, for which insensitive remark he subsequently apologised.

The enfant terrible of contemporary art who transcends realistic works, decorative pieces, bronze sculpture, spin paintings and spot canvases, sold For the Love of God for an astounding £50 million. The work, a macabre grinning skull covered with 8,601 fine diamonds, drew further parallels with death in the diamond trade when the film Blood Diamond was released. The title, so urban legend goes, came about with Hirst’s mother lamenting: “For the love of god, what are you going to do next?”

Hirst’s works in India — or at the forthcoming Sotheby’s sale — look less likely to disturb, and might find buyers among this country’s growing community of billionaires and millionaires (works start at £15,000-20,000, though they go on to £8-12 million).

Interestingly, interest from Indian buyers is more likely to be for homegrown artist Tyeb Mehta’s Falling Figure with Bird estimated in the range of $1-1.5 million at Sotheby’s New York auction. With Christie’s simultaneous auction of South Asian modern and contemporary art, also in New York, it will be interesting to see whether Hirst or Indian artists carry the day.