This week: in India on Monday, the prime minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a vast temple to the Hindu god Ram in the city of Ayodhya. The temple replaces a 16th-century mosque that was destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992, an event that provoked riots in which nearly 2,000 people died, most of them Muslim. Our deputy art market editor and regular correspondent in India, Kabir Jhala, is in Mumbai, and joins us to discuss this pivotal issue in modern Indian history, what it means ahead of India’s general election in the spring, and whether it is affecting the Indian art market.
Diego Velázquez's Isabel de Borbón, Queen of Spain (1632) was withdrawn from a sale at Sotheby’s in New York due to “ongoing discussions” on the part of the sellers
Courtesy of Sotheby's
Elsewhere, it's masters week in New York—can the market for historic works be revived? Scott Reyburn, a market reporter for The Art Newspaper, has for some time been exploring the decline in the trade for Old Master paintings. He looks ahead to the auctions in Masters Week in New York, which begin this weekend.
Honoré Daumier, Madame déménage! (Madame zieht um!) (1867)
© Private Collection
And this episode’s Work of the Week is Madame déménage (1867), a political cartoon by the French artist Honoré Daumier that was deemed so provocative in its time that it was not published. The lithograph is part of an exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt that features 120 Daumier works from the Hellwig Collection. Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, the who is donating the collection to the Städel, joins us to discuss this incendiary image.
- Honoré Daumier: The Hellwig Collection, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, until 12 May