|
Magazine
The aura around Indian art
MEENAKSHI THIRUKODE
|
While contemporary Indian art has a dominant place in the global arena today, it has not been an easy journey. A look at how it reached its current high.
|
Photos: The Hindu Photo Library and courtesy Ashvita Art Gallery
An emerging market: Works of more recent artists like Bhupen Kakar
Since the embodiment of a nation's culture is implicit in its art, the stage was set for Indian art to make a grand entrance into the global arena. With government policies restricting the flexibility of dealing with antiques, it was inevitable that all the buying and selling would focus on contemporary art.
Tyeb Mehta's "Mahishasura" sold for $1.5 million at a Christie's auction in New York three years ago to a relatively unknown Indian private collector at that point, the hedge fund manager Rajiv Chaudhri. This singular event is significant on two levels.
One is that it brought to light the fact that Western patrons have been collecting contemporary Indian art since the 1950s. Important families such as the Herwitz and personalities such as Harold Leventhal supported majority of the artists who sell for record prices at auctions today. There have also been a number of exhibitions and promotional activities in the United States that would have definitely created an awareness of the modern art movement in the subcontinent.
Secondly, the sale of the Tyeb Mehta to an affluent Indian set the pace for a number of important changes. Some of these include the ushering in of a new breed of Indian buyers, the shifting of ownership from private collections in the West and the role of institutions, in particular, galleries and the auction house.
Emerging market
Before dealing with the art market, it is essential to look at the development of the Indian economy over the last decade. In the case of emerging markets, the country to which the art belongs and their fate in the global arena is directly influenced by the peculiarities of the nation's economy.
During the early 1990s the Indian economy was marked by economic globalisation owing to government policies of liberalisation and privatisation providing the momentum for economic growth. With a sudden rise in economic power, Indian culture seemed to have gained a new respectability. Since the embodiment of a nation's culture is implicit in its art, the stage was set for Indian art to make a grand entrance into the global arena. With government policies restricting the flexibility of dealing with antiques, it was inevitable that all the buying and selling would focus on contemporary art.
However, art was not seen as the answer to a guaranteed source of financial security until the idea started to build up after 2005. With "Mahishasura" setting a record by crossing the million dollar mark at an international auction house of repute that year, contemporary Indian art not only gained "credibility" but also a sudden confidence among many buyers. The reality of a booming liberal economy coupled with new found financial buoyancy resulted in Indian contemporary art being the top choice for investors. In fact pecuniary return overpowers other factors such as nationalism and aesthetic appreciation at this point in time, even if they are claimed to be the significant driving forces for the market. Most buyers do not possess the expertise to distinguish a high quality work from a mediocre one. The lack of connoisseurship in the field does not help either.
Douglas are much in demand in the West.
Therefore in an emerging market comprising a new breed of buyers, the price of the work is more significant than the work itself. This opened up a new financial opportunity to take advantage of in an economy that continues to be globally competitive.
Early years
An early vibrant domestic market for contemporary Indian works existed since the 1980s. While there were virtually no lots at international auctions during the late 1980s and early 1990s the number of lots increased for most artists in 1996 and 2001.
However, virtually none of the works were sold. The growth of the market since 2000 has been attributed to increasing media attention and publicity within and outside India. In her book, 101 Contemporary Indian Artists, Amrita Jhaveri argues that this has led to an `elevated awareness across borders, widening the buyer and collector base'. However the dialogue between India and the West in terms of scouting and collecting contemporary art goes back into the late 1940s and early 1950s.
It is also interesting to note the presence of European avant-garde movements such as Bauhaus, by way of exhibitions in India during the early 1920s. Thomas Keehn travelled to India in 1953 as a representative of a non-profit organisation established by Nelson. A. Rockefeller. The Rockefellers seemed confident that something was developing in the contemporary art scene in the country post-independence.
With the assistance of experts connected to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Keehn spotted a number of young artists who were still developing a style. These included M.F. Hussain, Ram Kumar, Gaitonde, Krishen Khanna, Bendre, Raza, Sankho Choudry, Padamsee and others. Most of these artists belonged to the Progressive Artists group that was established around the same time.
Keehn resided in India for eight years and organised one of the first group shows in New Delhi in 1956 titled "Eight Painters" that included most of the artists who command the highest prices in the market today.
Another leading personality who supported artists such as Jamini Roy, Hussein and Gujral was Harold Leventhal, who founded "American Friends of India" in the 1950s. He was a major proponent of contemporary Indian art and coordinated a number of ground breaking exhibitions in the United States. In 1960 The Guggenheim Museum exhibited two works of F. N. Souza, who was one of the founding members of the Progressives.
A big break
The next big exhibition of 20th century Indian art was held in Washington DC by the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum in 1982. Fifty works were loaned from the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, for this purpose. What is interesting about this particular exhibition, which was to coincide with the Indian Prime Minister's visit to the country, was that Western critics considered it a complete failure. The critics found the works to be derivative and mediocre.
In fact this sentiment is expressed even today among many in the Western art world when discussing that period of time in contemporary Indian art history. This inference among Western critics of a lack of top quality work from Indian artists in the 1980s is rather ironical considering that most of the artists showcased in the exhibition were the ones who went on to break record prices at auctions from early 2000 onwards, bringing Indian art tremendous attention among many players within the global art industry.
These included the Progressives such as Hussein, Bendre, Krishen Khanna and Gaitonde apart from the next generation of contemporaries including Bhupen Khakar, Manjit Bawa, Rameshwar Broota and Jogen Chowdary. The show also had one artist whose name went on to be etched into the pages of art history - Tyeb Mehta.
After what was considered by the West to be a watershed exhibition, several smaller exhibitions with a narrower focus were held around the country by various galleries up until 2002. "India: Contemporary Art from North Eastern Private Collections" was held at the Zimmerli Art Museum that year.
The exhibition showcased works from the collections of prominent American and Non-resident Indian families in the United States. It was an eye opener and brought to light the fact that a large number of contemporary works have been a part of Western collections even before the market for the same developed.
One noted collector from this exhibition, whose collection played a central role in reshaping the Indian art market, was Chester Herwitz. He was a wealthy American businessman who visited India in 1961 along with his wife Davida and began collecting Hussain's work by 1966. Hussain urged the Herwitzs to collect other artists, which led to the amassing of about 3000 works of 20th century Indian art over a span of 30 years.
In 1995 the family auctioned 218 works through Sotheby's, New York, in order to raise money to organise a permanent display of the rest of the collection at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The sale was a big success with majority of the works being sold for prices above the estimates, especially those of Hussain's. These initial auctions presented American collectors the opportunity to acquire works at a relatively low price. This slowly started to change when Tyeb Mehta tasted initial success at the Sotheby's sale in December 2000. A work from his "Diagonal Series" sold for $ 75,625 - the highest price ever for a post-independence work at auction.
Renewed interest
Indian contemporary art was also promoted from the back pages of the Indian and Southeast Asian antiquities auction catalogue to one that was entirely dedicated to works of Modern art. A renewed interest in the Indian art market fuelled by the country's growing economy and nationalistic fervour driving buyers of Indian origin to the doorsteps of auction houses, created the circumstances for an Indian artist to set a world record.
Of course, the issues of nationalism as mentioned earlier have been overshadowed by the possibility of financial security that art investments and art funds offer most Indian buyers. Auctions houses play a dominant role in the case of the Indian art market, literally moulding the reputation of a number of artists, in particular the current generation. Such concentrated efforts have even resulted in works with very limited provenance or none at all selling for extremely high prices.
For instance, Baiju Parthan's "Archeology: House of Spice" was up for sale in the same year that he completed the painting. This is partly because most of the contemporary artists that sell in the market today are alive, with the exception of Souza. Therefore sizeable numbers of works come directly from the artist or the gallery that represents him. This particular aspect, a disturbing one at that, is unique to this market where the artist's reputation precedes the work of art itself.
This is cause for concern given that history has shown us time and again that artist's whose careers are established by a strong art historical context are the ones who sustain their presence in the global art market. Even from the standpoint of an artist's career, there is a learning curve.
It is rare to find that one artistic genius but a few do attain a certain level of creative expression that has a revolutionary context within art history. And this takes time. Therefore selling Indian art as if it were products being mass produced for immediate consumption is tenuous and will most likely have adverse effects on an artist's career.
In an article titled "Indian Contemporary Art" published in the winter issue of Art and Auction, Dadiba Pundole, a Mumbai-based gallery owner is quoted as saying, "As a gallery owner, I'm more involved with primary sales, but in today's scenario, primary sales become secondary sales two or three months down the line, which I think is absurd. There's too much turmoil right now."
It becomes important to look at the other end of the spectrum in this debate. Going back to Amrita Jhaveri's statement about the publicity and promotion of Indian art, brings to light how this aura around Asian art suddenly sprang up.
Growing impetus
Economics and weighty panegyric headlines in a number of publications, that were of no consequence from an art historical stand point, during the 1990s seemed to have provided an impetus for the growth of the Indian market according to noted critic Thomas McEvilley. In his essay "Eurocentrism and Contemporary Indian Art", published in Yashodara Dalmia's Contemporary Indian Art, Other Realities, he states, "Led by a hungry gallery system, the market sought and lionised even younger artists, seeking to control the manufacture of a new canon, which would be expected to control art market money for at least the next few years. So it was inevitable.to incorporate some Asian artists..it would be framed as a search for unknown young geniuses. The art market is simultaneously creating the reputation of an artist through record sales and using just that as a parameter to sell works with no provenance, reinforcing the fact that as long as it's a well known artist, it should sell. This will have dire consequences in the long run. Therefore the intentions of various institutions and individuals have to be attuned to encouraging a better understanding of the art historic value and quality of the works. It is imperative that this remains their focus in order to promote the cause of Indian contemporary art and maintain the success it experiences in the market today."
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
|
