That art market is not autonomous. So those who wish to develop it for their own benefit must do so with a proper knowledge of what they are doing. Inadequate understanding and playing to the gallery with what is at hand will not do. This is even more important today when elements are emerging who clearly have an attitude that is damaging to the art market, the job market, production and even civil society as we know it today.
These elements are not new. Hitler condemned the Bauhaus artists as ?degenerate? and closed down the Bauhaus in 1934. Franco called Picasso?s art ?degenerate,? while Fukazawa Ichiro, one of Japan?s foremost artists, was imprisoned in 1941 and forced to recant in 1943. But despite this persecution, the Bauhaus artists, like Kandinsky and Kokoschka are considered among the best in the world.
Picasso has got the art world waiting with bated breath to see if his ?Garcon a La Pipe? (Boy with Pipe) being put up for sale at Sotheby?s on May 9 will fetch the $70 million dollar price expected of it. This is just $5 million short of the highest price ever for an artwork that was paid for Van Gogh?s ?Portrait of Dr Gachet? in 1990, reflecting a radical change under way in our taste of art which is very different from the political conservatism that is in power in many countries of the world today.
Obviously, conservatism, for all its throwing its weight around is not likely to survive if the changes we are observing in people?s tastes in art are anything to go by. The market no longer responds to the Euro-American fads and fashions. In 2000, 33 per cent of the works put up for sale did not make the grade. In 2003 the figure was 41 per cent.
In 2003, the bought-in lots ranged from over 41 per cent for works below 1,000 euros (Rs 50,600), with 17 per cent to 20 per cent of the works selling within the estimate range, and 15.8 per cent to 16.5 per cent selling the estimated price.
This means that if a work succeeds in coming under the hammer, there is a good one-in-six chance that the price will exceed the estimate.
For works below 100,000 euros (Rs 50,60,000) and above 1,000 euros (Rs 50,600), we find that while the percentage of works bought in goes down to as much as 35.9 per cent, the works above the highest price estimated are between 18.6 per cent and 19.7 per cent, doing marginally better than those in the range below Rs 50,000.
And when we come to the range of above 1,000,000 euros, (Rs 50.6 million) while the works bought in number 32.2 per cent, those that go over the top are only 16.5 per cent. So it, is obvious that the largest percentage of sales successes are in the range of works between roughly Rs 50,000 and Rs 50 lakh, there is a fair one-in-five chance of scoring over the top. In fact, the Indian contemporary art market seems very similar. Artists who fall into the Rs 50,000 to Rs 50 lakh block here are the best investments.
In other words, serious art and not pretty art sells. Exorbitant art makes headlines but its sales are about the same percentage as affordable art.
So the buyer is advised to enter the bargain basement armed with enough knowledge. And if one wants to fly through the ceiling it is only for the mileage it offers and not for the profit. The best deals are in the middle range.
This consists of artists who are tested and tried over time. In India, they would include the leading artists of the Shantiniketan group, Gagenendranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, Sailoz Mookerjea, Amrita Shergill, the Mumbai group artists and Anjolie Ela Menon; then there are middle range artists like Ram Kumar, Rameshwar Broota, Sohan Qadri, Shobha Broota, Vivan Sundram, Arpana Caur, Arpita Singh, Manjit Bawa, Rajiv Lochan, Shail Choyal, Vishwanadhan and Chittrovanu Majumdar to name only a few. And among the promising younger ones, we have Paresh Maity, Apoorva Desai, Nataraj Sharma, Chintan Upadhay, Subodh Gupta, Dharmendra Rathore, Probir Gupta, Valsan Kolleri, Jitesh Kallat and Atul Dodiya to name only a few.
Their expression is rooted in the spirit of Indian independence, a rural and radical orientation and scant respect for the conservative holy cows of the past. This is within the framework of a taste in art that has developed globally.
That is why it pays as well. But increasingly, this is being attacked by the purveyors of conventionalism and mediocrity. Art collectors, critics and gallery owners must come together and protect the future of this art without which the present market will collapse.
As investors, they have no other option but to do that, because these attacks on creativity will one day affect production as a whole and then it will be too late to save for ourselves.