The Saffornart online auction reflects the buoyancy of our market for contemporary art. Of the 145 lots up for sale, no less than 101 lots sold for more than the expected price.

Of these, no less than 24 sold at almost double the price expected of them, or even more. What is interesting is that such buying was seen at every level, reflecting a general interest in our contemporary art and not just bluechip artists. This, therefore, is a good period for investing in our contemporary art in general.

If we look at how many of these works sold above $50,000 or roughly Rs 23 lakh, we get a tally of 19. Six were works of MF Husain ? the highest price being paid for lot 13 ($86000 or Rs 38.7 lakh), predictably a blue horse.

FN Souza followed with four works selling above $50,000, with the most expensive (lot 4) being sold for $83125, that is Rs 82.72 lakh. Raza and Ram Kumar follow with two works each. The highest price for a work of Raza is for a geometrie abstract lot 26, that sold for $142,139 or Rs 63.96 lakh. Ram Kumar?s highest price was $70,950 or Rs 31.92 lakh for lot 36, so he is yet to enter the big league. Others who sold single works above the $50,000-mark were Jehangir Sabavala, Akbar Padamsee, Krishen Khanna, J Swaminathan and Sakti Burman. But I, generally, do not put much store by particular single works reaching a certain price as many outside factors can intrude with single sales.

So our analysis brings three artists to the fore: MF Husain, FN Souza and SH Raza, more or less in that order. Not only did all of Husain?s works sell, but also they sold above the expected price and three of them sold at above twice the amount expected. With regard to Souza, one work failed to sell (lot 49), but another (a landscape) sold at three times the expected price. Ten works in, all sold, above the expected price. Seven of Raza?s works sold above the expected price, one of them going at twice the price expected. From this, we can see that Husain is virtually currency in the art market and both FN Souza and SH Raza are catching up with him.

Among the second rank of artists, Ram Kumar comes up strongly, with five of his six works going above the expected price and two of them selling at above the $50,000 mark. Krishen Khanna too, sold all his three works up for sale at higher than the expected price, with one work (lot 59), ?Draupadi?s Last Laugh? selling at nearly twice the price expected of it. It sold for $66173 or Rs 29.77 lakh which is very good price for the artist indeed. Akbar Padamsee too, sold all four of his works up for sale at nearly double the price expected.

Among the younger artists whose works were up for sale, Chittrovanu Mazumdar did extremely well, with both his works selling at well over twice the price expected of them. Lot 120, with a lexicon and pop images of the consumerist society, sold at $15695 (Rs 7.1 lakh approximately), while lot 121 that was expected to fetch Rs 2.25 lakh at most sold for no less than $13617 or Rs 6.12 lakh.

The sales of Chittrovanu Mazumdar reflect an important shift from Mumbai to Kolkata and also a more all-embracing approach to art than the purisms that Euro-American art has been plagued with for decades. Indian contemporary art has successfully challenged many of the tenets of accepted western art and is beginning to make its presence felt.

Among the very young, GR Iranna from Karnataka, who had two works for sale, sold one (lot 142) at over twice the expected price at Rs 3.87 lakh ($8600) while his second work also sold above the highest price expected at Rs 2.78 lakh or $6181. Similarly, TV Santhosh sold a work at double the expected price at Rs 97,019 ($2156). Baiju Parthan has done as well, with one of his works up for sale selling at over twice the price expected at Rs 6.43 lakh ($14298), while a second work sold at Rs 4.85 lakh ($10,780), again at almost double the price expected.

And while I do not set much store by single sales, Atul Dodiya?s work (lot 129) sold at over three times the price expected of it, at Rs 15.82 lakh ($35,176).

This makes it obvious that there are people buying contemporary Indian art with strong Euro-American influences from our trendy young artists. I am not entirely clear who the buyers are and why they are buying these works at this price? But they may be foreign buyers who see these works as being a good deal, cheaper than similar ones of the western artists.

They could be trendy post-modernist buyers, one does not know. But this flash of a globalised taste cannot as yet be taken for a genuine deep-rooted trend. It will require a good deal of cooking still to reach definitive price levels like those of Husain, Souza and Raza. That, in art, is not as easy as it looks.

So the Saffronart on line sale has an equal share of sold sign posts and of red herrings this time. But then, this makes the task of analysing both that much more interesting.