I am often asked about why art is only for the rich. In fact, contemporary art is quite the opposite. It is an item of consumption that covers every class from the super-rich and their corporates, to landed families, the middle classes and even the poor.

All this art is worth investing in. Even the cinema posters of today becomes the collector?s item of tomorrow. An average poster which may have cost some Rs 0.50 to produce 20 years back can sell from anywhere between Rs 10,000 and Rs 30,000 today, depending on its theme, execution and rarity. Nor is the market only an Indian one. A recent exhibition of posters put up by the Alliance Francaise in Delhi gave one an insight into the French collector?s eye. In Cuba, the art of poster-making is a well-developed one and Cuban posters are among the best in the world.

Indian posters, especially film posters, have a global market and investors with an eye to it ought to study the demand for various types of posters in different parts of the world. For example, my guess would be that the extremely well-designed posters of Satyajit Ray?s Pather Panchali and other films now available at the Art Konsult gallery ought to be looked at.

Apart from posters, drawings are also proving a good investment for the small investors. Ganesh Pyne drawings that once sold at Rs 4,000 each around 1990 are today selling at between Rs 1,25,000 and Rs Rs 1,50,000. So, I was not at all surprised to see that the three pen and ink drawings in Tunti Chauhan?s (Gallery Threshold) exhibition at Sridharani Gallery were not for sale. It was obvious that they are being treated as long-term investments. They are easy to carry and are repositories of high value. Also, their prices, if chosen well, do not rise and fall like shares. So, in uncertain time, art provides the best dynamic investment. And in art, both drawings and canvases have a certain primacy, largely as they are convenient and relatively stable repositories of value.

The question is, whose drawings and canvases? The answer is clear: Of those artists whose works mark a significant turning point in the evolution of our art.

Krishan Khanna?s coloured pastel

From the exhibition of the Gallery Threshold, one can see that the works of Ganesh Pyne, Bhupen Khakhar, and one of Arpita Singh were not for sale. They were obviously seen as long-term investments.

Among those for sale were highlights like drawings and water-colours of KG Subramanyan (Rs 75,000-Rs 1,25,000); Jogen Choudhury (Rs 45,000-Rs 1,50,000); Krishen Khanna (Rs 60,000-Rs 75,000); Akbar Padamsee (Rs 65,000); Anjolie Ela Menon (Rs 18,000-Rs 50,000); Arpita Singh, Paritosh Sen, Paramjeet Singh, V Ramesh, Vasundhara Tiwari, T Vaikuntam, A Ramachandran and Laxman Goud (each between Rs 15,000 and Rs 50,000), and Jatin Das (Rs 50,000-Rs 65,000).

It is evident that not all the artists are priced on the same basis. In this exhibition, I feel that both Laxman Goud and Anjolie Ela Menon were priced relatively low, so they are the best investments.

Beyond investment, one sees the trend of anti-war art has caught on in Kerala right now.

There was a major installation exhibition at the Durbar Hall in Kochi, organised by the Centre for Studies in Culture and Heritage, involving the work of four artists–Mohan Das, Alex Chandy, Raghunath and Sadanandan. Similar exhibitions have been reported from a large number of centres all over the country.

This is sufficient for the canny collector to shop around for the really good works and put together a representative collection. Such a collection should stress original handling of the theme, good execution and a break from the ordinary in expressing these.

I have already seen a number of such works and have bought a couple of them myself. Collectors are now coming forward to buy more before they become prohibitively expensive. Buying in time is the essence of good investment, in art and other things.