While it is absolutely true that the age of mass production has brought with it a decline in quality, there is another side to it as well. Mass produced items too help to develop the growing improvement of public sensibility and taste, as well as reflecting a higher level of technological skill and of the relevance of the content of what they reproduce. This something to be glad of.

This thought crossed my mind when I saw the calendar produced by the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) to mark the 125th birth anniversary of Munshi Prem Chand. For as little as Rs 100, one can acquire works produced by well-known artists like Arpana Caur, Ghulam Sheikh, Haku Shah, Gopi Gajwami and Nand Katyal, as well as younger ones like Ratanabali Kant, Veer Munshi, and Parthiv Shah, to name only a few.

The important thing about this calendar is not only that it celebrates perhaps India?s most uncompromising of our modern writers in his attempt to evolve a new literature for Hindustani, which he contributed to in both Urdu and Hindi, but also it is a refreshing change from our calendar art which is almost exclusively given to Kitsch evolved out of the colonial art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, concentrating on epic and religious themes.

This brings us to yet another perception: that Kitsch can be produced in an atmosphere of exclusivity, selling at a high price to the perverse. So we can have good objects of art and design that are mass produced and we can have mediocre or poor art that is produced in a climate of exclusivity. So collectors must beware of such exclusive labels fixed on what would otherwise not merit its presence in the art market. I am making a point of this as there is more than a fair share of Kitsch in the market and it is selling too.

How then do we sift the wheat from the chaff? The first thing to do is to ensure that a work of art is serious. The artist must reflect a modicum of skill, an original expression and a break from the standardised and the humdrum. Few artists had this quality ingrained in them like the late FN Souza. His capacity to cock the snook at the sacred cows of public posturing, couched in a powerful hold over line, brush stroke, colour and texture and a masterly control over composition not only involving the human figure, but also the landscape format, reflects an artist who treated his art with a seriousness as few did. And like Premchand, he was uncompromising not only with prudery but also with the blandishments of pretty things.

The steady rise in price of Souza?s irreverent work to the level of artists whose works have crossed the Rs 1 crore mark was not a surprise to those who know the path our contemporary art has evolved along and the possible trajectory it will map out for the future. So it would be a good exercise to see which of our younger artists hold the promise to carry forward that tradition into the future.

Those who saw Manu Parekh?s last exhibition at Vadhera art gallery in New Delhi some time back will find elements in his work that distinctly remind one of Souza?s treatment of his art. He shares the same eroticism, bold lines and swathes of colour, as also a fascination with Souza?s treatment of the urban pile-up of masonry and his interest in the subject of the interface of life and death. Not only that, it is interesting that a set of collectors and promoters of Souza are, in fact, collecting works of Manu Parekh now that Souza is no more. So, it is clear that the erotic, powerfully executed works of Manu Parekh, and especially his landscapes, ought now to reach the Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh mark.

The other artists I would expect to benefit from the rise in price of the work of Souza are Paritosh Sen and Sunil Das. Paritosh Sen, though much more measured, shares a common fascination for Picasso and a similar passion for powerful lines and swathes of colour. But where Souza?s humour is black, Paritosh is more urbane. And it has been this overt sophistication that has probably kept the gut-feeling collector from relating to his work as they can to Souza?s. But the link is very much there and it will reflect itself in the market one day.

Sunil Das, however, has that link. His facility with line and colour, as well as the capacity to deal with dark subjects and charge them with passion for horses and bulls is reminiscent of MF Husain. So one would expect his works also to rise in price in the coming period as the core of the contemporary art we call serious.

True, none of these three artists have as yet reached the heights of Tyeb Mehta, MF Husain, or Souza, but their work has all the potential to do so, especially as our popular culture too is drifting away from Kitsch and veering towards more profound and serious vision of life and art, both beyond decoration and titillation. The coming year will doubtlessly see far greater interest in these artists than before. u