Going Beyond The Present

The collector of contemporary art, as opposed to the collector of antiquities or decorative artifacts, has a particular vision of history–of change and originality. This allows him or her to understand which works reflect these qualities best and the art most likely to be a good investment for the future. A good investment can only be recognised in the context of history, the development of techniques and new modes of communication, and the capacity of an artist to imbibe them and express himself or herself through these with originality.

An Actor Out of The Wings by Tanmay Tyagi. Sold for Rs 10,000

This history is similar among a large number of countries. Contemporary art emerged on the world scene as part and parcel of the collapse of the world empires and their vision of their culture as global culture. Indeed, the imperial vision was challenged almost everywhere. In France, it was Picasso, in Germany the Bauhaus artists, in India the Tagores, in Japan, Kakuzo Okakura. But challenging imperialism was not enough.

Almost everywhere the challenge to imperialism took two contrary forms: Revivalism and Modernism. The former proved to be no real challenge at all. That is why it collapsed, like the Bengal School, or for that matter, Okakura’s nihonga (Swadeshi) art. In fact, much of the so-called post-modern art of the West today will share the same fate. So it is that much less likely to be worth investing in.

It is modernism that had the courage to present an alternative to challenge imperial hegemony that survived. And that is why artists such as Picasso, Bracque, Klee, Kandinsky, Rabindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore, Ichiro Fukazawa, Kathe Kollwitz and Wilfredo Lam looked to the newly emerged Soviet Union with sympathy and treated the fascist attempts to turn the clock back on social advance with contempt. While both trends have buyers, it is the modernist and forward-looking radical trend that commands better prices. This is because it opened the doors to a kind of art that sought to create what had never been created before, while revivalist art got hamstrung by its self-consciousness and nostalgia for the past.

In India too, the best investment in contemporary art is that which turned its back on the western academic tradition and remade its link with our folk and tribal art. That is why the agenda of Indian contemporary art was not as confrontational as that of the Europe. The European artist had to overthrow an indigenous, home-grown tradition for which the impressionists, expressionists, the Bauhaus Groups and Picasso, all turned to the suppressed colonial art traditions to confront their own. Indian artists of the same sort had merely to free themselves from an externally imposed colonial art tradition and go back to their roots. So the element of assimilation is visually more important in their works. Also their borrowing from tradition is much more an organic process than an intellectual exercise. That is why, in my view, Indian contemporary art is a better investment than its European or the US counterpart which is also much more expensive without being qualitatively that much better.

The artists who represent the best in this tradition are Rabindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore, MF Husain, FN Souza, Ganesh Pyne, Jamini Roy, Amrita Shergil, Anjolie Ela Menon, Sunil Das, KG Subramanyan, Jogen Choudhury, Arpita Singh, Arpana Caur, Paresh Maity and Somenath Hore. That is why their works sell even in summer, which used to be considered ‘‘off-season’’ in the old days.

Now, however, a number of younger artists have joined their ranks. Among them we have Debabrata De, just back from a very successful show in London. As a figurative artist who can present the India of today in all its complexity, with forces pulling it back and forward at the same time, he may well be the most important artist to emerge from Bengal in recent times. His large drawings have risen in price from Rs 15,000 to Rs 45,000 in the last two years, which is phenomenal. Of course, I do not expect this sharp rise to continue unless this artist really creates work well past the reality he lives in. But it has certainly brought him into the reckoning. Other artists, like Jitish Kallat, Krishnamachari Bose, Atul Sinha, Neeraj Bakshi, Dharmendra Rathore, Sidharth, TM Azis, Somenath Maity, Apoorva Desai, Gowri Vemula and Natraj Sharma have the same promise. Their works can be accessed in the bracket of Rs 15,000 to Rs 1 lakh each, depending on the size and medium.

There are, however, other artists of promise that galleries and collectors can access. Among abstract artists, Bhagwan Chavan, Mohan Ram, Vineet Kumar and Chittrovanu Mazumdar stand out, apart from the already established Gaitonde, Raza, Santosh, Nimbalkar, Sreshta and Kolte. But among the really young, the work of Akash Choyal, Tanmay Tyagi, Mahendra Baoni, B Padma Reddy, Chintan Upadhyay, Shweta Raina and Mrinmoy Barua bear watching. The only thing to guard against is artists who leave radicalism a marketable commodity. Both are bad investments as their art is spurious. For sincerity is as important as originality in a work of art. The serious investor cannot afford to ignore this fact.