Something we have been discussing in this column for sometime has been corroborated by an independent survey by UBS investment services. They have noted a sharp decline in the investment of Indian households in stocks and shares in the wake of the UTI scam and other related scams. The decline in such investment is of the order of 14 per cent, the figure coming down from Rs 2,746 crore to Rs 2,286 crore in 2003 alone. Today, the private investor contributes only 1.1 per cent to the total ownership of stocks and shares in the country. This means that the small investors have drifted away from investing in this sector because bigger players have been playing fast and loose with it.
So where are they drifting to? They are moving to the insurance sector, real estate and even art. This is why the contemporary Indian art market has not slowed down with the general stagnation of the economy. It is making steady progress, in fact, and is likely to do so in the future as well.
This is evident from the news that six Indian artists now figure in a list of 1,000 artists released by an international website http://www.artprice.com that covers artists like Reubens, Van Dyke, Breughel and David Dockney. Of these six, the top three ? Tyeb Mehta, MF Husain and VS Gaitonde ? are of the Mumbai group. Mehta ranks high on the scale, being number 175, Husain is number 373 and Gaitonde number 530.
This is not surprising as the Mumbai group artists are probably the most written-about in the art world. And indeed they make up a powerful battery of consistent modernist art. Husain, Mehta and Gaitonde may lead the flock but one cannot discount the likes of FN Souza and SH Raza as powerful contenders for a place in the sun. The only one who represents a patchy career among them in the investment market is KH Ara.
Tyeb Mehta scores well. His tryptich ?Celebration? sold for no less than Rs 1.5 crore at Christie?s a couple of years back and has since become the subject of an engrossing book by Dr Ramchandra Gandhi. Husain too has been regular newspaper material over the years. And Gaitonde has made non-figurative art a paying proposition over the years.
One thing, however, is common to all three of these artists. They have produced a number of relatively large works which can sell at 6 and 7 figure prices. These attract the larger investor with an eye to square footage rather than quality alone. Smaller works generally command prices for quality and originality.
Some of the best quality art that is produced is from Bengal, notably the three Tagores; Gaganendra Nath, Abanendra Nath and Rabindra Nath; by Jamini Roy, Binod Bihari Mukherjee and Ram Kinkar Baij. Then in the middle range, one has artists like Bikash Bhattacharya, Ganesh Pyne, Sunil Das, Ganesh Haloi, Shuhvaprasanna and Somnath Hore. Among the younger ones, there are artists like Sameer Aich, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Paresh Maiti, Somnath Maiti, Debabrata De, Chittrovanu Majumdar and Elena Banik. Bengal art gets less publicity but of late it is being noticed, exhibited and sold by galleries all over India.
Artists like Nikhil Biswas and Sailoz Mookerjea too have galleries that appear to have stocked their works to sell when the sails of their boats catch the wind. A number of Delhi artists like Anjolie Ela Menon, Arpana Caur, Manu Parekh, Rameshwar Broota, Ram Kumar, Vivan Sundaram, and Arpita Singh make for sound and stable investment. From the south, artists like T Vaikuntam, Laxma Goud, Vishvanadhan, Yousuf Arakkal and a number of others are likely candidates for the art market. Even central India contributes artists like Yousuf and his colleagues of the Bhopal group, while one of the more gifted artist, Beohar Ram Manohar Sinha who trained under the leading Chinese masters and was a professor at Shanti Niketan, lives and works quietly in Jabalpur. Gujarat has a whole host of good artists from Vadodara. Rajasthan too has a number of artists in the contemporary field, notably the Choyal family of Udaipur.
The imaginative investor therefore has no reason to feel that there is not enough good work to invest in. There is, and what is more, it can be accessed almost anywhere in India. More than that, a considerable range of good artists have been introduced by different gallery owners to the global market. So secondary sales ought not be a problem. Further, a number of art websites exist that list the price range and ups and downs in the prices of different artists works. So the buyer need not feel hesitant in purchasing works as they have an available track record which was not there before.
Still, the ultimate choice, and the risk it entails, is the investors. While a general price structure does help, individual art works also tend to have their own trajectory of price and importance which cannot be ignored. That is why writings on Leonardo Da Vinci?s Mona Lisa, Van Gogh?s Crows on a cornfield, Tyeb Mehta?s Celebration and Picasso?s Guernica have a validity.
It is here that the collector?s eye counts. The collector must study works not only from the angle of their authenticity but also from their importance in our contemporary art tradition, their originality and quality of execution. Without this independent input, really paying investments cannot materialise.