While new art from Japan, Africa and Latin America was being declared officially sexy and hoovered up by museums and collectors worldwide, India seemed mired in a state of stasis where aesthetics had advanced little since the post-independence years of the 50s and 60s.
All this is now changing as soaring saleroom prices and a new crop of adventurous young artists are setting the noses of savvy observers twitching. A few noted collectors, including Christie’s ex-CEO Chris Davidge, Hollywood director Roland Emmerich and a Japanese fish-canning mogul, are actively engaged in the market. Prices of the older, more established post-war generation of Modern artists, such as M.F. Husain, VS Gaitonde, F.N. Souza, Ganesh Pyne and Tyeb Mehta have been rocketing and auction records are being broken with dizzying regularity, while a younger generation of more avant-garde artists such as Atul Dhodiya, Subodh Gupta, Bari Kumar, Shilpa Gupta, Jitesh Kallat and Nalini Malini are receiving critical acclaim in America and Europe.
Interest from museums in the West is doing much to establish market profiles for artists not yet in the salerooms, and those looking for value in the overpriced world of contemporary art are paying attention. A team from New York’s Museum of Modern Art has recently visited India looking at the work of young artists, following well received group shows in Berlin, Madrid, Manchester, Oslo and Perth.
Over the last decade, the market has been boosted by the dispersal of the huge collection of Indian contemporary art assembled since 1961 by Americans Chester and Davida Herwitz, with over 8,000 works, including up to 400 by M.F. Husain.
The mantle has been taken up by Japanese tinned-fish magnate Masanori Fukuoka, a major player not only for his purchasing power but also for the works he regularly puts back on the market. His collection of over 5,000 canvases is housed at the Glenbarra Art Museum, founded three years ago at his food-processing plant in Himeji, near Osaka.
Mr Fukuoka has reputedly been the successful bidder for a number of lots that have broken auction records, including the 1995 triptych “Celebration” by Tyeb Mehta, sold at Christie’s, New York, in September 2002 for $317,500 over an estimate of $180/200,000. Along with Husain, Mehta is the hottest name in the market and the works of both these artists are making at least four times what they were in 2000.
Unlike the reclusive Mehta, Husain is very prolific and extremely savvy at privately marketing his art. Only last month he is reported to have sold a group of paintings for over $1 million. Other artists fetching high prices include S.H. Raza, Ram Kumar, Anjolie Ela Menon, Akbar Padamsee and Bhupen Kakhar, who died late last year.
Despite these apparently glittering prospects, the effects of backward conditions in the Indian art world will be slow to change. With art of the last 50 years as poorly represented in museums as it is in literature, there are few guides to help define taste. and among the wealthy elite buying in the domestic market, there is still little understanding of art historical discourse.
The situation is acknowledged by Neville Tuli, Chairman of Osian’s, one of only two Mumbai-based auction houses holding regular sales in India. Mr Tuli has adopted a didactic approach to the market and has infused Osian’s curated auctions with his own taste and vision. Mr Tuli told the Art Newspaper that the market is divided between domestic buyers and NRIs (Non-Resident Indians), mainly US-based professionals, with the proportion of international customers increasing from around 5% two years ago, to nearly 30% at present. Despite the booming market Osian’s most recent sale in November 2003 saw disappointing results. Of 243 lots offered, only 44% were sold by lot and 30% by value. While Mr Tuli is prepared to keep to his game plan, others ascribe this bad performance to excessive lots, variable quality, high estimates and obscure classifications.
In contrast, in December, Saffronart, the other Mumbai auction house, had its most successful sale ever, offering a smaller selection of 110 works which achieved 70% sold by lot and 80% by value. Top lot was one of 12 works by MF Husain, which fetched Rs 17.08 lakhs ($37,650). Realising the vital importance of the internet as a global portal, the company has made great efforts to expand its trade through web-based auctions structured to allow international customers to bid over four days. At the same time it functions as a permanent online market place where vendors can sell in US dollars or Indian rupees.
There have been some interesting shifts in the general demographics of the market in recent years. In the 1990s London was the main marketplace where a lot of the original footwork was done, but now there are no galleries specialising in this field. Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s have moved their operations to New York, where the wealthy US NRI community is a major driving force. Christie’s, which has traditionally led the field, has also held successful smaller sales in Singapore and more recently in Hong Kong. Unlike Sotheby’s it still maintains an office in Mumbai, established in the mid-1990s by Amrita Jhaveri. Now an art market commentator for Art News of India and actively collecting in the field with her husband, ex-Christie’s ceo Christopher Davidge, Ms Jhaveri told the Art Newspaper that the established auction houses had taken a long time to work out how to handle Indian contemporary art, and particularly the Indian domestic market. With the current high prices generated by a very specific and relatively small group of buyers, it is not yet clear if, and how, the market will expand.
In an attempt to regain lost momentum in the market, Sotheby’s has recently appointed Robin Dean to head its New York-based operation. He was once Ms Jhaveri’s assistant at Christie’s, and more recently has been one of the few London dealers specialising in emerging Indian artists. A new arrival in London will be Simon Gillespie’s SG Gallery, opening in April.
In India there are a handful of commercial galleries, with blue-chip artists offered by the likes of Delhi’s Vadhera and Mumbai’s Pundole and newer work on show at Mumbai’s Sakshi and Chemould as well as Nature Morte in Delhi. The latter is run by Peter Nagy, an American collaborating with New York gallery Bose Pacia. Nature Morte has recently been showing the work of Subodh Gupta, who deals with iconic images of an India eroded by globalisation (see front page), and will be on show at London’s Showroom in March.
Such work is still far too avant-garde for the majority of the highly conservative Indian market. Mr Nagy told the Art Newspaper that there is still a real sense of an underground movement in India, pointing out that in a country of a billion people there are still only five serious collectors of this kind of work. Excitement about new developments in Indian art is far greater in New York, where buyers are increasingly non-Indian. Bose Pacia Gallery has made the running for the past decade, having just run its 4th Biennial Bose Pacia Prize for emerging Indian artists. Its first winner was Subosh Gupta and in 2003 it was won by Sunoj D. Its latest show is of Bari Kumar (see page 35), a Hyderabadi artist now living in LA and being collected by, amongst others, Roland Emmerich, director of “Independence day” and “The Patriot.” A more recent arrival in New York is the Deepak Talwar Gallery. Mr Talwar told the Art Newspaper that he was trying to escape the need for Indian art to express its “Indian-ness”. Most recently he has shown the minimalist 70s photographs of Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-90). As Mr Talwar points out, compared to the half a million dollars commanded by a single Gursky, a set of 24 works by Mohamedi recently sold for $175,000. Such a buzzing market is still offering value and interest to those prepared to explore it.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'All the Raj'