CHRISTIE’S RESTRUCTURES CLASSICAL ASIAN SALES TO FOCUS ON THE ARTS OF INDIA

Christie’s will feature classical Indian art created from the third century through the beginning of the 20th century in a standalone sale for the first time this September.

The online auction is a break with the traditional approach of including Indian, Himalayan, and Southeast Asian art in one sale and responds to collectors of modern and contemporary Indian art who are “interested in following art history backwards,” finding links in the art of recent time to the faraway past, says Tristan Bruck, head of sale.

The previous model better suited “an old-fashioned collector who was buying works in all three sub-niches,” Bruck says. “A collector who bought Indian paintings, for instance, was likely to also go out and buy a Tibetan thangka (or tapestry).”

The Arts of India sale, open from 10 a.m. Sept. 13 to 9 a.m. Sept. 27, is paying particular attention to works that transition Indian art from the classical to the modern era, a period that until now hadn’t received close attention, he says.

Maqbool Fida Husain, Untitled (Naga), circa 1971
Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023

In the midst of the online offering, on the morning of Sept. 20, Christie’s also will hold a live sale in New York of mostly modern but also contemporary South Asian art, which is predominately from India in addition to Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.

Christie’s expectation is that collectors who attend, or dial into the modern and contemporary sale via phone or online, might be intrigued to also take a look at the online sale, where earlier Indian works provide inspiration for colours, style, and themes by 20th-and 21st-century artists. The auction house will also display the works together in its Rockefeller Center galleries in New York.

Collectors “realize that this art wasn’t created in a vacuum,” says Nishad Avari, Christie’s head of South Asian modern and contemporary art. “There’s thousands of years of tradition that modern and contemporary artists in the region drew on and continue to draw from.”

Consider Maqbook Fida Husain’s Untitled (Naga), a massive work of five female figures and a serpent (or naga) painted around 1971. The painting portrays four of the women with breaks at the neck, hips, and knees, alluding to physical forms expressed in temple sculpture of the Gupta Empire from the fourth- to early sixth century, Avari says.

The painting, expected to achieve between US$700,000 and US$1 million, likely was created to commemorate the launch of a monograph of Husain’s work that was published by Harry N. Abrams, who acquired the painting, Christie’s said in a catalog note. Abrams, a vast collector who also published art and illustrated books about Old Masters through artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, had displayed the work in his offices and later in his family’s home for more than 50 years.

A very large and important Pichvai of Vishvarupa Amidst A Lotus Pond, India, Rajasthan, 18th-19th Centuries
Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023

Going further back in time within the Arts of India sale is a Pichvai painting of Vishvarupa—a form of the god Krishna—painted in the 18th to 19th century. The work, originally a temple banner, is a traditional Indian form and concept, “but by the 19th century you can see artists are working with different types of perspective,” Bruck says. They are also using a more modern color palette, with vibrant pinks and blues, and the canvas is large—about six by eight feet.

“This could go in a gallery with the modern works, which are on these large canvases,” Bruck says. The painting “tells a great story alongside 20th-century work, being able to see the origin of a lot of these concepts.”

The Pichvai—a term that refers to devotional folk art paintings—is estimated to achieve at least US$120,000.

Another popular category are so-called company-school paintings that came out of India’s princely courts beginning with the imperial Mughal around 1600 through to the 19th century, when they were commissioned by British administrators, Bruck says.

Each court had its own style that may have been influenced by other courts and changed over time, he says. The works, often called miniature paintings because of the small, precise figures and scenes they depicted, were typically created in albums, or series, making them highly collectible.

Until recently, a group of collectors had focused solely on this sector somewhat in isolation, but Bruck says, Christie’s is seeing an “explosion of interest” in court painting albums, such as an illustration from the “Bharany” Ramayan series that is being offered in the upcoming sale.

A collector “can see what the other pages from that album have sold for and sort of put them together as an album in [their] mind and ideally collect more than one or try to get a few from the set,” Bruck says. The fact they exist within series also gives collectors confidence in what to pay, he adds.

Sayed Haider Raza, Rajasthan, 1983
Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023

The Bharany Ramayan work in the sale, titled The Monkey Army Intruding Upon a Demon’s Cave, from “Punjab Hills, Kangra or Guler, first generation after Nainsukh or Manaku,” from 1775-1780, is being offered for a minimum of US$80,000. A Patna court painting of a marriage procession at night, from around 1810 and painted in a more European style, is being offered for a minimum of US$10,000.

For many collectors, those price points are more accessible than, for example, the estimated US$250,000 they would pay for a work by Sayed Haider Raza, whose Rajasthan, 1983, is included in the modern and contemporary sale. The structure and primary-colour palette of Rajasthan, in fact, is intentionally drawn from court paintings, Avari says.

“The way in which their discrete sections, cells, in which he paints and the way in which he surrounds it with the red border is a direct reference to Pahari or Rajasthani (court) painting,” he says.

When collectors can see the court paintings that inspired a modern work they own, and they can acquire them for far less, “why not hang them side-by-side?” Avari says.

Chanel Robinson achieved exactly what the gold rush of blockbuster weight-loss drugs promised: She lost nearly 100 pounds, lowered her cholesterol to normal levels and reined in her polycystic ovary syndrome.

Yet, nearly three years into her journey on Mounjaro, the 30-year-old from Atlanta, Ga., is discovering the hidden costs of the slimmed-down life.

Robinson experiences muscle fatigue daily, feeling physically weak, frail and often cold. Robinson said she experiences bursts of sluggishness sporadically during the day, and has trouble with basic tasks like opening a jar. “It shouldn’t be this difficult,” she said.

GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro and Zepbound have been a success for public health and the pharmaceutical companies that make them. Obesity rates are falling, the volume of food consumed in America is declining and retailers report a slump in sales of plus-size apparel. It has improved health and happiness for millions of people.

But for at least some of the 13 million Americans taking them, losing muscle along with fat is an unexpected downside that isn’t broadly discussed or immediately apparent.

The drugs can cause rapid and significant loss of lean muscle mass, up to 10%, comparable to a decade or more of aging, according to an analysis published by the American Diabetes Association.

The loss of lean tissue is similar to weight loss from dieting, but the magnitude over a short period can lead to frailty, instability and lack of coordination, doctors and researchers say. Another concern is that losing muscle could slow down patients’ metabolism, leading to weight regain.

“We are curing obesity by encouraging frailty,” said Daniel Green, principal research fellow at the University of Western Australia, who contributed to the analysis. Many taking weight-loss medications initially lose fat and feel great, but quickly start to feel weak and lethargic, he said.

Green’s research showed that the rate of muscle loss could be slowed significantly by regular strength workouts. “It should say ‘must be taken with resistance training’ on the box,” he said.

Drugmakers say weight-loss drugs should be taken only on the advice of a physician and as part of a long-term plan that includes diet and exercise.

A spokesperson for Eli Lilly, maker of Zepbound, said Food and Drug Administration guidelines say it should be used “with increased physical activity.” The spokesperson added: “Sustainable weight loss is about more than a number on a scale.”

Both Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk said clinical trials showed users did lose some lean muscle tissue, though at far lower rates than fat. Liz Skrbkova, a spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk, said that trials for its drug Wegovy showed changes in muscle mass didn’t “significantly differ” from patients who took a placebo. Eli Lilly said users lost three times more fat weight than lean tissue.

Rayna Kingston, 30, from Denver, said her injections of Zepbound left her feeling so tired the following day that she struggled to complete anything other than basic tasks. She said she shifted her dose to a Sunday because Mondays were her least busy day. Her partner would bring her meals in bed because she felt so weak.

She stopped exercising, and said her doctor didn’t give her any guidance on strength training or muscle maintenance. “I was relying on Reddit forums to understand what was happening to my body,” she said. She got so frustrated with the fatigue she came off the medication just under two months later.

Experts say that losing muscle at such a rate can be especially dangerous for those over 50 or with osteoporosis or limited mobility as it could lead to an increased risk of injury. “Loss of muscle mass is detrimental to moving around and quality of life, but it is also not safe,” said Katsu Funai, associate professor at the University of Utah.

Elderly Americans are set to be able to get GLP-1s from Medicare from July.

There is also pushback from doctors and regulators against using weight-loss drugs as a “quick fix” to lose a bit of weight.

People who take GLP-1s regain weight four times faster than those who lose weight through lifestyle interventions, and weight regained is often mostly fat, according to a recent analysis published in the British Medical Journal. There currently are few, if any, guidelines or studies on de-prescribing the drugs, researchers say.

The nurse practitioner who prescribed Robinson the medication didn’t warn her that resistance training is essential to maintaining muscle mass, Robinson said. She said she regrets not exercising and now does Pilates once a week.

In the haste to disrupt the obesity epidemic, weight loss has been treated as the singular, undisputed metric of success, which experts say is problematic.

“People worship body weight as an outcome measure because it’s simple, quick and inexpensive,” said Green. “But what matters is fat and muscle mass, which is more expensive to measure as it requires an MRI.”

Grace Parkin, 34, a property manager from Sheffield, England, has lost 125 pounds after she started taking Mounjaro in 2024. “I don’t care about my muscle mass as long as I’m a healthy weight,” she said.

The doctor who prescribed the drug didn’t tell her to exercise, though the pharmacy that sold the medication gave her information on exercise and protein intake, she said.

She didn’t exercise and said she soon felt side effects: a “deathly cold, from the inside” likely because of the drug. Still, she vowed to keep going, saying the weight loss was worth it.

In response to some of the side effects, drug companies are hoping to develop weight-loss treatments aimed at preserving or even building lean muscle mass.

German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim recently said it had promising results from one such drug. Eli Lilly last September halted a trial of a similar drug.

While weight-loss medications are designed as lifelong treatments for chronic diseases, namely obesity and Type 2 diabetes, they are increasingly marketed as lifestyle fixes.

Tennis superstar Serena Williams, who used GLP-1s to slim down after having children, was featured in this year’s Super Bowl commercial promoting telehealth company Ro’s weight-loss medication.

Serena Williams holding a GLP-1 weight-loss medicine injector.

Serena Williams poses for an ad campaign for a weight-loss drug. Ro/Handout/Reuters

Women may be particularly vulnerable to the drugs’s side effects, which can also include nausea, diarrhea, migraines and rarer cases of pancreatitis.

A study last year from a university hospital in Turin, Italy, showed that women are more prone to adverse reactions to weight-loss drugs than men, including muscle loss.

Green, the researcher, said the issue is of particular concern to those taking GLP-1s recreationally and who don’t have much muscle mass to begin with. Others say a lack of oversight is compounding the issue.

“Patients are self-reporting, and telehealth companies don’t have the patient in front of them to conduct a proper medical assessment,” said Rupal Mathur, an internist in Houston whose practice specializes in weight loss.

She said medical spas are prescribing off-label drugs that don’t meet the criteria set out by the FDA that justify a prescription.

The number of people taking weight-loss drugs who are not living with obesity or Type 2 diabetes is difficult to track since it is unregulated.

However, an analysis by the FDA from 2023 found that more than half of new Ozempic and Mounjaro users didn’t have Type 2 diabetes.

Scientists are calling for more clinical trials to pin down the full effects of weight-loss drugs on muscle loss in different demographics.

“The only studies that have been done have looked at people living with obesity or Type 2 diabetes,” said Green. “That makes it all the more concerning for those using weight-loss drugs in an ad hoc or unregistered way.”

CHRISTIE’S RESTRUCTURES CLASSICAL ASIAN SALES TO FOCUS ON THE ARTS OF INDIA

As millions flock to GLP-1s, doctors warn the drugs can cause rapid and significant muscle loss.