The evolution of the art market as investment has been a boon for creative expression in our country. More than that, it has forced Indian creativity in the modern context to be accepted globally. Museums of contemporary Indian art exist in the US and Japan. Britain, Holland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Hong Kong and even the Wifredo Lam Institute in Havana, have works of Indian contemporary art in their major collections. This is the positive side of the story.
The negative side, however, cannot be ignored. That is the considerable production of fakes. Virtually, a third of all works of contemporary Indian art circulating in the market are fakes today. In fact, the demand for well-known names has so outstripped supply that producers of fakes, dealers in them and galleries too are doing very well in purveying them.
They have been so successful that they are a menace to our well-known artists who have the unhappy prospect before them of having a large body of work that is ostensibly theirs in the market, fouling up their standards of execution, quality of expression and, of course, sales. As a result, artists have been forced to take extreme steps to stop producers of fakes, like putting thumb impressions behind their canvases, using special codes on them, issuing documents of authentication; and now, even putting producers and purveyers of fakes in the dock.
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?Kali in the form of a motorbike? in mixed media by Ramaiah Anand Kumar |
Recently, Delhi?s youngest gallery owner of its oldest gallery Uday Ravi Jain, told me of his attempt to cope with this trend. He is looking for new talent to promote, so collectors buying works of younger artists are not likely to have to cope with fakes. True, the risks with young artists are greater. They may stop painting or lose their originality. But the best gallery owners are those who can keep artists alive not only economically but also by helping their art evolve. So I feel this approach needs to be taken more seriously.
It is with a search like this in mind that I decided to look into the 316 artists chosen for the latest National Exhibition of Art that was held in Kerala, and draw the line at 1965-born artists. Among the awardees, there were GE Gurusidappa from Karnataka, Manish Sharma from Rajasthan, Monpara Gagji Bhagvanbhai from Gujarat, Naresh Kumar from Rajasthan, Ramaiah Anand Kumar from Delhi, Sanjay Janardhan Sawant from Maharashtra, Shrabani Roy from Santiniketan, Soumitra Sengupta from Kolkata and Surender Kumar Mishra from Delhi.
Of these, in my view Delhi-based Ramaiah Anand Kumar, with his ?Kali in the form of Motorbike,? shows considerable promise both in execution and imagery. Naresh Kumar of Jaipur in his ?MFA Times? shows a good hold on the installation form and popular culture in art. Soumitra Sengupta from Kolkata in his ?Prayer 2? handles computer graphics with a fine degree of balance between images and words and numerals that is above average, while the sculpture of Monpara Gagji Bhagvanbhai from Jamnagar in Gujarat shows promise in assembling three-dimensional forms.
Beyond the winners, Anjan Das of Kolkata, Audumbar Madhukar Rudrawar of Thane, Biswajeet Mukherjee of Kolkata, Ezhilarasan of Pondicherry, Fakeha Tarannum of Delhi, Gurdeep Singh of Delhi, Mohammad Rasi of Thiruvananthapuram, Rajendra Prasad Gond of Varanasi, Kanhaiya Shantaram Naik of Goa, Subramaniam Dinkar Sundar of Chennai, Uday Kumar Pandit of Patna, Tanmay Santra of Kolkata, V Sakthivel of Pondicherry, B Kirankumari of Tirupathi, Machavarapu Pawan Kumar of Visakhapatnam and V Brahmabhatt Hindol of Ahmedabad, are a few of the young artists whose work catches the eye.
Some are colour-based, some figurative, some abstract and non-figurative. Some are print-makers, some are painters, others sculptors. But all show a measure of skill, originality and the freshness of youth. Gallery owners and collectors would do well to go through their body of work and see if they feel confident enough to promote it.