The latest auction of Saffronart.com has brought a new feature to our notice. Expectedly, the prices of most artists have risen. This is in keeping with our view that most Indian contemporary art sells at half the price it is worth, so a coming together of worth and price over time with the opening up of the global market and increasing exposure is only natural. This is a good thing. Indeed, not everything about globalisation is bad.
Another aspect that appears to be good is that both young and older artists get better prices today. If an artist of the mid ?70s like Arpana Caur sells between Rs 11 and 14 lakh (lots 4, 5 and 6), we find that a much younger Chittrovanu Mazumdar sells at around Rs 17 lakh (lot 16) and G R Iranna at Rs 33 lakh (lot 113), Rs 21 lakh (lot 112) and Rs 15 lakh (lot 114). This shows a certain democratisation and opening up of the market. This too is a good thing.
There is another trend, however, that needs to be noted. There are a number of young artists like Subodh Gupta, whose prices appear a little inflated at over Rs 49 lakh (lot 68), Rs 33 lakh (lot 69) and Rs 64 lakh (lot 70). Subodh is one of our talented artists and one would not expect him to desire that his prices be ?jacked up?. An artist with a future like his neither needs it nor is likely to benefit from it. So I don?t blame the artist for this development.
Then how do things come to such a pass? It happens when promoters use the techniques of monopoly capitalism to corner the works of particular artists and then let them out to the public at very high rates. There is no harm in raising prices a little in this way, but when the promoter overdoes this, it damages the healthy rise in price that is inevitable in the case of a good artist on the one hand, and on the other it creates an in-house circulation of works at high prices among monopolists of art. The result is obvious. A hot-house climate is created for a quick rise in price, but it clearly has not got the capacity to sustain itself as well as the broad-based art market that has emerged for works ranging between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1 crore and above. The maximum growth is between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh. And it not only shores up the brackets above it, but pulls up those below it, as well.
Now, if a whole slice gets cut off at the top and enters a rate of exchange that is artificial, then it curtails the size of the market and the possibilities of development inherent in it. Given the monopolistic trends inherent in capitalist development, one may disapprove of them, but it is difficult to avoid them. But one thing is clear ? the art market as a whole must try to keep such activity within limits if the goose that lays golden eggs is not to be killed. So, one should be glad about the rise in price of art works, but wary of spurts that could reflect other tendencies that may result in ups and downs, as in the share market. This, the art market can, and ought to, avoid.
?The writer is an art critic.