The recovery of Edward Munch?s famous painting ?Scream? that was stolen from Oslo was a happy moment for the world of art. It reminds one that relevant works of art cannot be kept under wraps for long. They have to be shown and be seen to continue to be relevant. And even the most secretive buyer of a stolen work of art that has relevance is tempted to show it to others. And in doing so, the recovery of such works is always possible.

This also highlights how safe relevant art is as an investment. But what about works that are never recovered? Of course, they could be hidden away and the thief may get killed (as often happens with war booty) but generally if a work disappears without a trace then one can conclude it may be a work expressing deep personal feelings but of little social relevance. As such, it has value but is not worth investing in.

Works of art that are good investments are those that represent clean breaks from those that have been made before them–like Gagnendranath Tagore?s works that visually build volume on the basis of images that are refracted prismatically. Other artists, like Jamini Roy, blend the flat spaces of colour of the traditional scroll painter?s art with French cylindrical drawing, or Rabindranath Tagore?s landscapes that teeter at dangerous angles, challenging accepted norms both of perspective and composition. All three of these artists were firmly committed to resisting both slavish imitation of colonial pictorial representation with its bazaar version of cheap illustrations of epics in fanciful period garb or revised versions of our imperial miniature paintings. Their works are the best investment as they represent the beginning of our modern artistic expression.

A work by MF Husain

They were followed closely by innovative young artists from Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi and Srinagar. These artists, especially those of Mumbai, Kolkata and Srinagar celebrated the emergence of a secular India, committed to modern development. They concentrated on the rural masses, whose role in India?s independence movement inspired a large number of artists to paint rural landscapes and peasants. At the same time, with the peasantry came its folk art and popular versions of our epics and history. MF Husain is perhaps the best known of these artists. It is not surprising that his painting was recently stolen from the venue of the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad. I expect it to be recovered too like Edward Munch?s work. Good art cannot remain buried for long.

It is, however, unfortunate, that the recent exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai has followed the same unimaginative roll of honour of all government institutions and made a hash of colonial art, bazaar art and Indian contemporary art. This is most damaging for the development of a genuinely contemporary vision to strengthen global investment in Indian art. Of course, all these things sell, but so does packaged cowdung, scented with camphor or sandalwood – at Rs 40 per kg.

Ravi Varma?s works have historical but not artistic relevance in the context of investing in contemporary art. Nor did his work influence our great contemporary artists like Rabindranath Tagore (who paid him a back-handed compliment at best), Gagnendranath Tagore, Ram Kinkar Baij, Amrita Shergil or Jamini Roy, who thought nothing of him or ignored him altogether, and rightly so.

A far better ploy would have been to include Kalighat painting, Bengal Pat, Gujarat and Maharshtra folk art and South Indian and Rajasthani Yantras, and maybe, Pahari and Mughal miniatures that do have an influence on our contemporary art at least. Apart from these, even reproductions of Goya, Picasso, Klee, Matisse, Henry Moore and Cezanne might have helped to place our Indian contemporary art in a proper perspective.

The inclusion of the works of MF Husain, Amrita Shergil, KCS Panicker, Jamini Roy, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, Majumdar, Bhpen Khakhar, SH Raza, Krishen Khanna, Jehangir Sabavala, Gogi Sarojpal, Jitish Kalat and Ganesh Pyne will, no doubt, hold the fort along with other modern artists; but to lump them together with the dud shares of Indian art is unfair.

The investor must begin to guard against linking our modern art with borrowed colonial expression that, first of all, did not impress or influence our modern artists; and secondly, was even consciously opposed by them. But we need not worry too much. Government patronage notwithstanding, it is the galleries of Delhi and Mumbai that set the tone in art today and there is enough modern art around to ensure that the vision evolved by our stalwarts contemporary artists over the last 70 years or so is not shackled with the slavery of the last 150 years of colonial art and the kitsch it spawned artificially.