How do you go about choosing just one artist in 2009 who continued doing what an artist does best: painting with consistency, experimenting, picking up commissions of a certain scale, and commanding top-of-the-bracket prices in that genre? And who would most likely take this forward in 2010 as the face of Indian art and as, probably, its safest blue-chip investment? Trends across 2009 were mostly erratic. Even top artists took a sabbatical, gallery movement before the India Art Summit was almost comatose, plummeting prices meant that most contemporary artists went out of circulation, and investor confidence in art was so low it impacted artists’ morale. It is indicative of contemporary art continuing to remain off-stage in 2010: these artists will show more than they sell, they will experiment more, and some like Jitish Kallat will have a huge impact as ambassadors as they present the intellectual face of Indian art internationally. But no contemporary Indian artist can singly take on the onus of being the face of 2010 — they are showing less, prices still have to rise, and what many of us are getting to see at shows in India or abroad are old works. Others have still to achieve a record of consistency — something that had been ignored in the euphoria that was largely responsible for the crash in prices — and which is why the likes of Sunil Gawde or N S Harsha will have to wait for their spot in the sun. Among the old guard, gallerists I spoke with put forward interesting suggestions ranging all the way from A Ramachandran to Krishen Khanna, whose works I admire but who have not had any path-breaking shows or created an especial stir to qualify for the role, to Satish Gujral, who it was pointed out has perhaps been India’s most consistent artist and one whose prices have not been impacted by the market. While that may be true, his largely “decorative” features and tag as a “society” artist continue to trip him up. Another friend’s suggestion that Paresh Maity be considered for his ability to re-invent himself held some merit, but Maity too has to fight off the “romantic” tag and travel some more distance to move from “investment-worthy” to “collector-worthy”. It was surprising that almost no one I spoke to took cognizance of S H Raza’s great influence on the market — there is a frenzy around collecting him, his prices have remained high, there is a buzz around him every time he returns to India (even if the reason is the artist being invited to inaugurate a show of fakes of his own works!), and at auctions or in galleries, he continues to sell well. But the artist is slowing down because of health-related issues, likely to shift to India, and may take some time settling down before he resumes painting again. That hardly qualifies him as the face of 2010, though his success through the year is at least assured. But by a huge margin, and quite clearly the face of 2009 that will remain the face of 2010, is M F Husain. There was a brief time a few years ago when Husain’s genius was eclipsed, when younger artists were being feted, when some of his peers commanded higher returns at auctions, when he was even dismissed as being too gimmicky or too market-driven. All those nay-sayers can now eat crow. Not only does he make news all the time, and despite staying away from India because of threats to his life (largely exaggerated, I believe, but adding to his aura as an artist-in-exile), Husain continues to thrive. Recent auctions have confirmed his price hierarchy among Indian artists (Tyeb Mehta, who died this year, has not been included in this survey of only living artists), and the scale of his commissions on the Arab civilisation will leave him richer by millions of dollars. Love him or not, you cannot ignore Husain, and if he remained in the news in 2009, he will continue to make headlines in 2010. While many in this informal survey voted for Husain, Saffronart’s Dinesh Vazirani summed it up beautifully: “[Husain] has been working consistently throughout the year, mounting some very large exhibitions internationally. The beginning of the year saw his work in the Serpentine show, followed by a large commission from the Sheikha of Qatar. Even with no exhibitions in India, he is still present in the minds of the art world. He travels the world as an ambassador of Indian art bringing in new collectors at every stage. In spite of the slow year for Indian art, his prices in auctions have been good. He has taken his exile from India in the best possible spirit and continues to work with the same passion that he has had over the last 50 years.” Nothing more need be said.

I hope that the locked doors of Bodhi Art Gallery serve as a warning to the Indian artists that big talk and grand gestures are best believed only when sustained. The clink of empty cocktail glasses make a hollow sound and show up their chips and cracks without the camouflage of our own desperation. It's high time to roll up the imaginary red carpet that you think is beneath your feet, and with it roll up your sleeves instead. There is no substitute for good old fashioned humility and hard work, and let's raise a toast to that!

After the grotesque drama of the past few years, there's more talk of art (as opposed to prices) these days

Over the past couple of years, the volatility of prices of contemporary Indian art made even the most exotic commodities look tame. I realised this when I saw that a 2006 Subodh Gupta painting, part of his Untitled series of paintings of kitchen utensils, sold on Saffron Art last week for $209,000; significantly, there were only two bidders for the work, suggesting also that may not have been a market clearing price. What is amazing is that a similar work — from the same 2006 series, almost identical content, identical in size — had sold for over $1.4 million at Saffron’s June 2008 auction. Its price has fallen by more than 85 per cent from just over a year ago!

For comparison, the Dow fell by 46 per cent from June 2008, and, incidentally, has already recovered more than half of its decline; the BSE fell by 53 per cent, and has recovered all and more of its losses.

Granted that paintings are not commodities or stocks, although the art “market” certainly resembled a financial market over the last few years. But it is clear — and widely acknowledged — that the prices of Subodh’s work (and of several others) had, by 2008, been pumped up by spectacular speculation, lubricated by the lugubrious prose (sorry, couldn’t resist that) of a handful of “critics”, who, like the credit rating agencies in the financial crisis, were the handmaidens, politely speaking, of the small group of players — art dealers, businessmen, traders and even some art galleries — that burst on the scene about five or six years ago and drove the bubble to such grotesque heights.

Long before the madness — say, around 1999-2000 — contemporary Indian art had come into its own and was evolving a unique balance where even mid-range artists could make a good living selling their work at prices that were affordable to a growing band of middle-income buyers. There were, maybe, a few thousand people involved — artists, gallery owners, a sprinkling of academics, old-time collectors and new buyers.

However, by around 2003, the steadily rising prices — 15 to 30 per cent a year — began to attract hordes of cash-rich culture-poor people, many of them recently enriched by the globalisation of our economy, and, particularly, our financial markets. By 2005, things had gotten crazy. There were artists and art dealers and art buyers under every rock. Nobody talked about art any more — the only thing that mattered was price.

To be fair, the parties did get a lot better, but it was increasingly unreal and you could feel the end coming. Prices accelerated further and by the time the music stopped — thank you, Chuck Prince — there must have been a couple of hundred thousand people involved in the contemporary Indian art market.

Most of these are gone. Probably half were just there for the money. They didn’t know (or even care) about the artist or the work. Tell me what will go up fastest. Shockingly, I got a mail yesterday from someone still asking that question.

Another 25 or 30 per cent were probably attracted by the hype — the parties, the tamasha, and the coolness of buying art. Most of these are also gone, although some were hooked and remain.

Which means that at the end of the day — or, better yet, the start of the new day — the art community is probably a bit more than twice as large as it was ten years ago. About the size it would have been without the hoopla, and without the terrible consequences for many artists, art dealers, and, perhaps worst of all, art students, who bought the hype and lost their souls.

Of course, there are dozens — hundreds — of artists who continue to produce work for themselves, rather than for the market. Some of them participated in and enjoyed the tamasha; some were more circumspect socially. But their art continues to mature and the prices of their work, too, remain on the steady 15-30 per cent a year growth path, which had prevailed before the insanity.

To be sure, many of the market darlings have also evolved — Subodh certainly has — and appear to have ridden the grotesque drama of the past few years to good effect. All drama takes us to a better place, provided we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

The drama isn’t fully over — I’m sure there are a few more shoes to drop. But the good news is that there’s more talk of art (as opposed to prices) these days, and the parties are starting up again.

The Purple Wall curated by Gayatri Sinha was a fantatic project showcasing the best of Indian Contemporary Art.

The participating artists were:

Subodh Gupta,Nataraj Sharma, Mithu Sen, Ranbir Kaleka, T.V. Santosh, Riyas Komu, Bharat Sikka, Ravi Aggarwal, Richard Bartholomeo, Asma Mudrawala, Manjunath Kamat, Neha Choksi, Subba Ghosh.

 

The presence of top foreign galleries at the India Art Summit is areminder of the worldwide interest in Indian art.

The western wind blowing at the ongoing India Art Summit at Hall No. 7 of Pragati Maidan has brought along happy tidings. There are as many as 16 galleries from abroad at the summit, who have come scouting for young talent in India. In fact, most of them have already pocketed some of the choicest contemporary names from India with great success, representing them in reputed A- list art shows globally.

Neither recession, nor swine flu has prevented gallery owners, art critics and collectors from abroad to pitch a tent at the second edition of India's biggest art fair. India, after all, has been next only to China when it comes to making news in the international art world, for quite some time now. In fact, it's the contemporaries (younger lot of painters) from the country who- ' ve for long been hailed as the next big things.

Sadly, however, they are all waiting in the wings right now, for the global economic recession to end and make it easier for connoisseurs to dig into their deep pockets to buy their art.

Till the economic downturn knocked sense out of our heads, the story from the world of Indian art had read thus - the masters had finally been acknowledged, they'd earned their crores and a place in history, and now, it was the turn of the contemporaries. Some among them like Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat and T. V. Santhosh had even begun scaling heights, but then, the juggernaut of recession hit us all.

Thomas Erben of the reputed Thomas Erben Gallery of New York that represents emerging names like Chitra Ganesh and Yamini Nayar, among others, says, " Recession has ensured that only collectors, who buy only very good work, remain in the market. Some Indian contemporary names like Subodh Gupta and Nalini Malini are above market forces as their works sell irrespective of the state of the economy. We were the first to hold a mainstream show of contemporary Indian artists in 2004 and we have faith in the new talent from India." Young artists consistently producing quality works, Erben says, hold great potential post- recession.

Like Erben, Rob Dean from London, of Rob Dean Art Ltd., affirms the views of his New York counterpart. Dean, who was Christie's representative in India in 1998-2000, says, "In 2003, I had done a show with these artists which included Jitish Kallat and Atul Dodiya, and only one painting had been sold. Now most of them have made the move from domestic to international circuit." Dean calls it a drip-down effect and adds, "With many young collectors now, contemporary artists are going to be in demand." While London and New York are the first stops for any Indian artist travelling abroad, it's the representation from countries such as Germany, Latvia, Netherlands, Japan and China at the summit that makes the foreign interest in Indian art worth noting. Katja W. Ott, representing Beck & Eggeling gallery from Dusseldorf, Germany, (along with the managing partner Stefan Wimmer), says, "India is a very popular destination for German tourists. They are enamoured of the whole cultural package, and that includes art. Some Indian artists, such as M.F. Husain, F.N. Souza and S.H. Raza among masters and contemporaries such as Subodh Gupta are known very well to connoisseurs

In Germany. That's why we are here." The gallery promotes five contemporary names from India - Viveek Sharma, Desmond Lazaro, Sonia Mehra Chawla, George Martin and Hema Upadhyaya.

OTT adds that Beck & Eggeling has been following the response to Indian art abroad, such as the Hong Kong art fair which drew a great response. She adds that it is the element of exotica that excites the gallery's clients in Germany. Peter Louis, director of RL Fine Arts, a New York-based gallery, echoes the sentiments of all the other foreign participants at the summit. Though his gallery is not participating at the fair, he is in India to check out the vibrations in the art world in the country. We caught up with him at the party hosted by Bhavna Kakkar at the launch of her magazine, Take on

Art, a day before the beginning of the summit, at Agni at The Park, where he had come in the company of Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher. Talking about his interest in Indian art, he said, "There is a lot of interest in the US. Subodh Gupta is a name that is already very well known and we are consistently showing young, emerging artists from India in our show." Birendra Pani is one such name. Other international names, like the Arario, with galleries in Beijing and New York, and the HB Galerie of Hans Bakker from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, are also participating, though they are not showing any Indian artist. But, their presence affirms their growing interest in Indian art, and presumably, contemporary is the way to go. Now, only if recession would get over quickly.

EAST HAMPTON, NY.- The Vered Gallery in East Hampton has temporarily removed an Andy Warhol portrait of Michael Jackson from the auction block.

The Associated Press reported that gallery co-owner Janet Lehr said in a statement she wanted to offer the 1984 work to "the greatest number of prospective purchasers."

Pre-sale estimates ranged from one to 10 million US dollars. The painting shows Michael Jackson wearing a red jacket from his Thriller era.

Lehr told the new York Daily news last week that "the painting, which originally came from the Warhol estate, was consigned to the gallery by a New York private collector."

Michael Jackson's career as a recording star began at the age of eleven, with the popularity of the first single released by the Jackson 5, a rhythm-and-blues act composed of him and four of his brothers. In 1979 Jackson released his first solo album, and by 1984 he was being touted as the biggest star since the Beatles or Elvis Presley and as "the most popular black singer ever." In that year, he won an unprecedented eight Grammy Awards for his internationally acclaimed album Thriller.

Andy Warhol's name is synonymous with the Pop Art movement in America. Like other Pop artists, he often chose to use objects appropriated from popular culture as imagery for fine art. These were often photographs, which were then reproduced onto a canvas through a silkscreen process by assistants. Warhol then retouched them. As he put it, "I sort of half paint them just to give it a style."

In his words “When you are young, you try to understand the world. As you grow old, you try to understand yourself. Your work then becomes the essence of these efforts.” His drive is amply reflected in his statement, “In art you have to go on for a long time before you can say I have done something.”

Mahishasura

 

Sitting Woman

June is expected to sizzle not just because of the heat in India, but because the focus once again will turn to Indian art as it attempts to claw back from a value bloodbath that has all but crippled its bull run in auctions around the world. And no one is wooing collectors the way Christie’s is, even though its hugely-shrunk catalogue has fewer treasures than in past auctions. But that has not tempered Hugo Weihe, Christie’s international specialist for Indian and South-east Asian art, from pitching broadly for the upcoming London sale, even though he admitted that “in times of recession it’s harder for us to get quality works”.

Weihe’s view, however, is that it opens up the market “for new collectors with more modest budgets”. This much is evident at its forthcoming auction where, despite the presence of the usual suspects, neither works nor prices have anyone in a tizzy. Unless, to take a leaf out of Weihe’s book, you’re looking for a bargain. In which case whether it’s F N Souza, Ram Kumar, M F Husain or S H Raza, there are works with an estimated value between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 40 lakh, with Manjit Bawa placed a little higher, paintings by Akbar Padamsee and a Subodh Gupta installation hovering at a modest Rs 70 lakh (upper estimate) and even a Tyeb Mehta in the sub-Rs 1 crore region. Only one work by Raza breaches the crore benchmark with an estimated value of Rs 1.2 crore. And the big draw is a work by Husain, painted in 1960, part of his Ragamala series, with an estimated value between Rs 2.8 crore and Rs 4.1 crore. Bets are on whether it will find a buyer or not.

Almost a week later, also in London, Sotheby’s will auction 86 subcontinental works, including miniatures, and though the star of the show might well be Nandalal Bose with a rare auction appearance of four ink and wash drawings, the price for each has an estimated high value close to Rs 12 lakh — making them the most affordable among collectibles, since it’s almost impossible to find Boses going on sale. There’s a good quality Manjit Bawa too, better than the ones on offer at Christie’s, with the spotlight on Jogen Chowdhury’s ink and pastel Day Dreaming that just might fetch the artist Rs 1 crore, a benchmark he has been finding difficult to re-establish in recent times.

Back home, Saffronart’s online auction, also of modern and contemporary works, cleverly juxtaposes affordable works by established artists — a mixed media on paper Raza for Rs 2-3 lakh, Sunil Patwardhan’s oil on canvas for Rs 2.5-3.5 lakh, A Ramachandran for 1-1.5 lakh, Shilpa Gupta, Shibu Natesan and N S Harsha each for Rs 3-4 lakh, Ganesh Haloi for Rs 1.5-2.5 lakh, Badri Narayan’s Girl with Cat and Sudhanshu Sutar’s Untitled each for only Rs 70,000-90,000, and Phaneendra Nath Chaturvedi’s pen and ink on paper The Day After Today for a mere Rs 30,000-40,0000 — with more sellable names and works, though but for V S Gaitonde’s Untitled (Rs 1.25-1.75 crore), Subodh Gupta’s Name (Rs 70-94 lakh), Husain’s Untitled (Rs 70-80 lakh), Ram Kumar’s Untitled (Rs 50-60 lakh), and Akbar Padamsee’s Untitled (Rs 50-70 lakh), most other works by Husain, Raza, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, Arpita Singh and Jogen Chowdury are in the sub-Rs 50 lakh category.

There’s a clear case that values are good — even if the art isn’t, but then barely 10 per cent of an artist’s work, on average, can lay claim to that — but the sales will provide a pointer to the direction in which prices are headed. Expectations are muted, with a lot of hope riding on recovery by the time the winter auctions come around. But for now the art fraternity is holding its breath, hoping that, like the Sensex, the recovery might come sooner: June would be a bonus.

It isn’t just India’s politicians but its artists as well who refuse to let age come in the way of their constituency. At different points, different artists have been important not just from the point of view of art aesthetics, or value, but because of the pivotal role they have played in providing the stepping stones with which to monitor the key turns in Indian art. These must necessarily include Raja Ravi Varma less for his kitschy calendar pop-art and more for the fusion of Indian and European idioms that continues to dictate popular taste; the Tagore family for opening up the way art was viewed in India; Nandalal Bose, India’s first truly renaissance artist; and Amrita Sher-Gil for the passion she brought to the form in her very short life.

India’s tryst with modern art traces its origins to roughly the turn of the last century up to India’s independence, and it is the “moderns” — as both the artists and their art is referred to — who define the popular perception of how we view art in this country. Among these, the most radical by far was F N Souza whose provocative drawings and paintings earned him a fair share of ire and more brickbats than bouquets, though it might be said in the same breath that his sensibility lent more towards European extremism than any obvious Indian sensibility.

Souza was a victim of his own excesses, but among those who once shared the platform with him are three painters who without doubt can be regarded as the greatest living artists of this country. Of them, S H Raza, has been referred to also as the greatest living artist of France, and while that might be arguable — his work is collected mostly by Indians — Raza, 87 years, has said that by the end of this year he would like to wind up his atelier in Paris and return to the country of his birth, to probably New Delhi, where he is in the process, with friend Ashok Vajpeyi, of searching for land to create an institution for the arts.

Raza’s record at a Saffronart auction is Rs 4.2 crore, which must seem formidable given that critics have savaged him for repeatedly painting variations of the Bindu and the Mandala, forms that set him apart from his peers, creating a visual language that is both abstract as well as rooted in the tradition of tantra. Raza’s prices have skittered and gained since 2000, and have consolidated after 2003, casting him as a blue-chip, even though critics — and collectors — say Raza’s paintings don’t compel you to want all of his important works since they seem to replicate each other.

India’s most maverick, most loved and equally hated artist is M F Husain, 94 years this August, who single-handedly broke the cordons of exclusivity and took his art mainstream to the masses. From travelling around the world in bare feet to creating a show of crumpled newspapers, he has mocked critics, courted moneyed buyers yet reached out to people, a bond he built as a hoarding artist painting posters for Bollywood marquees. Some of the most iconic images in Indian art have been created from his palette — Mother Teresa, Indira Gandhi, the Lady with the Lamp, vignettes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and of course, his horses. In recent times it seems to be trendy to dismiss Husain’s prodigious talent, but make no mistake: Husain is India’s tour de force of art. Currently at home in Dubai, where he is creating a series on the Arabic civilisation, and in London, where he has a home, Husain has shied away from returning to India fearing for his life from Hindu fundamentalists who have objected to some of his paintings. His prices, always the bellwether index of the art world, have fallen recently, though he has struck the biggest deals for the largest sums of money that any Indian artist has commanded: a gimmicky Rs 100 crore for one such series in India, and an undisclosed sum for his work on the Arab civilisation, making him without a doubt India’s richest living artist.

One reason for the fall in Husain’s price is his proclivity to paint too much, too fast, the exact opposite of Mumbai-based Tyeb Mehta, 84 years, who refuses to let his debilitating health keep him from his canvas. If it appears that Mehta has painted very little, it is because of his tendency to ruthlessly destroy those works that don’t measure up to his critical gaze. In many ways, Mehta could be called minimalist: Since the seventies, his subjects have been mythological. He seems to enjoy scale, but what is most compelling is the energy on his canvases that is at once awesome and fearful. His price point has held steady for many years now, and even though Souza exceeded his auction high of Rs 8.2 crore in a surprise upset last year, there can be no doubt that Tyeb Mehta is not only India’s greatest living artist, his works are most likely to continue to escalate in value over the years.