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.

LIKE MARVEL VILLAINS, most fashion writers have origin stories. Mine began with a navy nylon Prada purse, salvaged from a Boston thrift store when I was a teen in the 1990s. Scuffed with black streaks and sagging, it was terribly beat-up. But I saw it as a golden ticket to a future, chicer self. No longer a screechy suburban theatre kid, I would revamp myself as sophisticated, arch, even aloof. The bag, I reasoned, would lead the way.

That fall, I slung it against my shoulder like a shotgun and marched into school, where a girl far more interesting than I was called out, “Hey, cool bag.” After feigning apathy —“I don’t know, you could use a Sharpie on a lunch bag and it would look the same”—we became friends. She introduced me to a former classmate who worked at a magazine. That woman helped me get an internship, which led to a job.

Twenty years later, I still wonder how big of a role that Prada purse played in my future—and whether designer bags can function as a silent partner in our success. Branded luxury bags took off in 1957, when Grace Kelly posed with an Hermès bag in Life magazine. (Hermès renamed that bag “the Kelly” in 1973.) The term “status bag” was popularised in 1990 by Gaile Robinson in the Los Angeles Times, describing any purse that projects social or economic power. Not surprisingly, these accessories are costly. Kelly bags cost over $10,000; ditto Chanel’s 11.22 handbag. Some bags by Louis Vuitton and Dior command similar price points. The cost isn’t repelling customers—both brands reported revenue surges in 2023. But isn’t there something dusty about the idea that a branded bag carries meaning along with your phone and wallet? How much status can a status bag deliver in 2024?

Quite a lot, said Daniel Langer, a business professor at Pepperdine University and the CEO of Équité, a Swiss luxury consulting firm. Beginning in 2007, Langer showed a series of photo portraits to hundreds of people across Europe, Asia and the U.S., then asked them 60 questions. Those pictured carrying a luxury handbag were seen as “more attractive, more intelligent, more interesting,” he said. The conclusion was “so ridiculous” to Langer that he repeated the studies several times over the next decade and a half. The results were always the same: “Purchasing a ‘status bag’ will prepare you to be more successful in your social actions. That is the data.”

Intrigued, I gathered various Very Important Purses—I borrowed some from friends, and others from brands—to see if they could elevate my station with the same unspoken oomph as a “Pride and Prejudice” suitor.

First, I took Alaïa’s Le Teckel bag—a narrow purse resembling an elegant flute case and carried by actress Margot Robbie—to New York’s Carlyle Hotel on a Saturday night. The line for the famous Bemelmans Bar stretched to the fire exit. “Can I get a table right away?” I asked the host, holding out my bag like a passport before an international flight. “It’s very busy,” he said in hushed tones. “But come sit. A table should open soon.” I sank into one of the Carlyle’s lush red sofas and sipped a martini while waiting—a much nicer way to kill 30 minutes than slumped against a lobby wall.

Wondering if this was a one-time thing, I called up Desta, the mononymous “culture director” (read: gatekeeper) who has worked for Manhattan celebrity hide-outs like Chapel Bar and Boom, the Standard Hotel bar that hosts the Met Gala’s official after party. “Sure, we pay attention to bags,” he said. “Not too long ago at Veronika,” the Park Avenue restaurant where Desta also steered the social ship, “we had one table left. A woman had a Saint Laurent bag from the Hedi Era,” he said, referencing Hedi Slimane , the brand’s revered designer from 2012 to 2016. “I said, ‘Give her the table. She appreciates style. She’ll appreciate this place.’”

Some say a status bag can open professional doors, too. Cleo Capital founder Sarah Kunst, who lives between San Francisco and London, notes that in private-equity circles, these accessories can act as a quick head-nod in introductory situations. Kunst says that especially as a Black woman, she found a designer bag to be “almost like armour” at the beginning of her career. “You put it on, and if you’re walking into a work event or a happy hour where you need to network, it can help you fit in immediately.” She cites Chanel flap bags made from the brand’s signature quilted leather and stamped with a double-C logo as an industry favourite. “People love to talk about them. They’ll say, ‘Ohhh, I love your bag,’ in a low voice.” They talk to you, said Kunst, “like you’re a tiger.”

For high-stakes jobs that rely on commissions—sports agents or sales reps, for instance—a fancy handbag can help establish credibility. “It says, ‘I’m succeeding at my job,’” said Mary Bonnet, vice president of the Oppenheim Group, the California real-estate firm at the centre of Netflix reality show “Selling Sunset.” As a new real-estate agent in her 20s, Bonnet brought a fake designer bag to a meeting. To her horror, a potential buyer had the real thing. “I work in an industry where trust is important, and there I was being inauthentic. That was a real lesson.” Now Bonnet rotates several (real) Saint Laurent and Chanel bags, but notes that a super-expensive purse could alienate some clients. “I don’t think I’d walk into [some client homes] with a giant Hermès bag.”

Hermès bags are supposedly the apex predator of purses. But I didn’t feel invincible when I strapped a Kelly bag around my chest like a pebbled-leather ammo belt. The dun-brown purse cost $11,800, a sum that prompted my boyfriend to ask if I needed a bodyguard. Shaking with “is this insured?” anxiety, I walked into a showing for an $8.5 million apartment steps from Central Park. I made it through the door but was soon stopped by a gruff real-estate agent asking if I had an appointment. No, but I had an Hermès bag? Alas, it wasn’t enough. The gleaming black door closed in my face.

“What went wrong?” I asked Dafna Goor, a London Business School professor who studies the psychology behind luxury purchases. “You felt nervous,” she replied. “That always makes others uncomfortable, especially in a high stakes situation,” like an open house with jittery agents. Goor said recognisable bags from Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior are also often faked, which can lead to suspicion if not paired with “other signals of wealth.”

“You can’t just treat a bag as a backstage pass,” said Jess Graves, who runs the shopping Substack the Love List. Graves says bags are more of a secret code shared between potential connections. “I’ve been in line for coffee and a woman will see my Margaux [from the Row] and go, ‘Oh, I know that bag.’ Then we’ll chat.” Graves moved from Atlanta to Manhattan in 2023, and says she’s made some new, local friends thanks to these “bag chats.”

I had my own bag chat that night, when I brought Khaite’s Olivia—a slim crescent of shiny maroon leather—to a house party thrown by a rock star I’d never met. In fact I knew hardly any guests, but as I stood in the kitchen, a woman in vintage Chanel pointed to my bag and asked, “How did you get that colour? It’s sold out!” Before I could tell her my name, she told me the make and model of my purse. Then she laughed about her ex-boss, a tech billionaire, and encouraged me to buy some cryptocurrency. The token I picked surged nearly 30% in about a week. Now I was onto something—a status bag that might bring not just status, but an actual market return.

Thanks to their prominence on social media, certain bags have gained favour among Gen Zers. “TikTok and Instagram make some luxury items even more visible and more desirable to young people,” said Goor. I experienced this firsthand on a stormy Saturday morning, when a girl in a college hoodie pointed at my Miu Miu Wander bag as I puddle-hopped through downtown New York. The piglet-pink purse is a TikTok favourite seen on young stars like Sydney Sweeney and Hailey Bieber. “Your bag is everything!” yelled the girl from the crosswalk. “Thanks, can I have your umbrella?” I shouted back. She laughed and left. My Wander had made a splash—but it couldn’t keep me dry. I ran to the subway, soaked. The bag looked even better wet.

Changing the Status Bag Quo

Everyone loves an ingénue—fashion insiders included. Perhaps that’s why at Paris Fashion Week in September, newer handbags from Bottega Veneta and Loewe jostled for space and street-style flashbulbs.

“These bags, especially ones by independent labels like Khaite, are quieter signals of cultural access,” explained Goor. “Everyone knows what an Hermès Kelly bag is. So now there need to be new signals” beyond traditional status bags to convey power.

Sasha Bikoff Cooper, a Manhattan interior designer, says there’s a less cynical explanation for why these bags have captured celebrity fans—and more important, paying customers. “They’re fresh and also beautiful,” she said. “Hermès is always classic. It’s like a first love. But you want newness, too.”

The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.

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

Some designer handbags like the Hermès Kelly have implied power. But can a purse alone really get you a restaurant table—or even a job?

Changing the Status Bag Quo