The auction season is in. Apparao Galleries, Saffronart, Osian?s, Sotheby?s or Christie?s?you name the art house and it?s having auction this month. Some smaller auction houses are biding their time till October. Yes, Indian contemporary art is in. Its value and investment-worthiness are not in doubt.
Our contemporary art sells. The reason is simple. Over the last few years we have managed to hammer out a perspective that has caught the eye of the investor. Our contemporary art is as varied as the Indian people. Secondly, varied though these expressions are, they are not haphazard and directionless. They are not merely eclectic. They were clearly motivated by the anti-colonial struggle of our people.
This motivation took many forms. If Abanindranath Tagore chose to revive the style of Mughal miniature art, Jamini Roy abandoned French impressionism and expressionism to evolve a complex textured art based on cylindrical drawing but stylistically on the art of the traditional Bengal scroll-painters. Rabindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore turned East to Japanese and Chinese scroll-painting and to the Orientalist Bauhaus artists of Germany.
It, however, goes beyond mere opposition to colonial and occidental tastes and attempts to pose a visual challenge to the West by integrating the artistic proclivities of artists seeking to break away from imperial norms and forms while at the same time drawing inspiration from the oppressed, whether by ?going native? like Gauguin or drawing inspiration from African sculpture or Battala prints, like Picasso, who did not allow influences to overwhelm him. He was not only a communist but also one who used his powerful visual challenge politically against fascism and imperialism. Artists of Bengal, like Ram Kinkar Baij, Paritosh Sen and Somenath Hore, shared a common outlook with him and were also inspired by the stylistic break he had made from imperial art.
They were not the only ones. The Progressive Artists Group of Mumbai, with artists who were no less individualistic than Picasso, and yet committed to a break from the past, be it colonial or feudal, like FN Souza, MF Husain, SH Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Krishen Khanna, Akbar Padamsee, KH Ara, VS Gaitonde and Ram Kumar, emerged at the firmament of the new contemporary artists. Some of them have softened over the years, but both Souza and Mehta have preserved their fervour, the first in lampooning and reviling the rich and the second in extolling the victim, be it a butchered animal, Mahishasura, a rickshaw-puller or a falling human being.
Their works will be those to look out for at Sotheby?s and Christie?s. As for our younger artists, who are at the moment meandering in the limbo of post-modernism or what is called journo-realism, the less said the better. But I do see a ray of light in the works of Apoorva Desai, Pramod Ganapatye, Roy Thomas, Atul Sinha, Navjot Altaf, Gargi Raina, Vijita Bhambhri, Veer Munshi, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram, to name some. Luckily, there are enough of these for bidders to buy without bothering themselves over much about authentication.