The year-end Christie’s Hong Kong fall auction left art buyers and collectors agog. Ten works in the Indian section by top Indian artists like Jitish Kallat, Subodh Gupta, Aprita Singh and T V Santosh, all of whom have reported stellar sales in previous auctions (Gupta touching 1.2 million USD at Christie’s summer auction) remained unsold.

But another shocking revelation: Pablo Picasso at the same auction did not sell either, though much was riding on Picasso’s portrait of his wartime lover Dora Maar, titled “Tête de femme”. However the work priced at $7 million didn’t move beyond $6.4 million in the bidding. When the stars of art do not sell at a prominent auction, its time to stop and think.

Was the pricing not in keeping with the recovering art market? Or as Yamini Mehta, Head of Modern and Contemporary Indian Art, Christie’s London, puts it, was the chemistry all wrong?