The democratic spread of our contemporary art continues apace. So it is evident that the auction houses projecting ?stars? have not harmed the general buoyancy of our contemporary art market. This is obvious from the number of mega-shows consisting of anything from the works of 60 artists to a 100 or more that are the order of the day in Delhi at least.
The latest of these is the exhibition curated by the founder of Shilpi Chakra, PN Mago, to mark the 61 birthday of Delhi College of Art Professor Jai Zharotia. Of the participating artists, a number have exhibited works listed as not for sale. They are, of course, already on the auction circuit or on the fringes of its cocktail circuit. They include Neeraj Goswami, Dharmendra Rathore, Hem Raj, Vijendra Sharma Mohan Singh and Shukla Sawant. Other works in the exhibition are on sale.
Among the works on sale that are Rs 12,000 and below, we have the drawings of Kaushal Sonkariya at Rs 3,000 each and of Dhaneshwar Shah (Rs 7,000), that are real bargains.
Among the major works of young women artists, we have those of Meena Sansanwal (Rs 65,000), Mekhla Harisson (Rs 45,000), Vijeta Bhambri (Rs 50,000), Radha Gidwani (Rs 20,000), Medha (Rs 36,000), Ruchika W Singh (Rs 25000) and Aparna (Rs 45,000). Of the men artists, we have an engrossing drawing of a head by Jagdish Chander at Rs 28,825, a semi-abstract by Yati Jauswal (Rs 10,000), an extremely mobile canvas by Ankur Rana (Rs 33,000) a very powerful acrylic on canvas by Manoj Nayak (Rs 50,000), Om Pal Sansanwal (Rs 70,000), Raghuveer Akhela at Rs 75,000, Rattan Kumar at Rs 36,000, Rajesh Rana at Rs 42,000, Dinesh Kumar Ram at Rs 55,000 and Nand Kishor with a very well-executed futurist work for Rs 1.80 lakh.
These works reflect the wide range of contemporary art available in the market today. What is more important is that one did not have to scour the studio to pull these works out for the exhibition. A broad range of our artists is constantly creating new works. Today, our art market is recognising this truth and coming to terms with it.
This message has gone abroad too. In fact, the HSBC Bank held an auction of Indian and British contemporary art on April 26 in London.
It featured works of Krishan Ahuja, Sushant Guha, Anwar, Dattatraya Apte, Vijay Bagodi, Anandamoy Banerji, Uttam Kumar Basak, Jyoti Bhatt, Kanchan Chander, Amitav Das, Avijit Roy, Jatin Das, Rini Dhumal, Jayant Gajera, Rajan Fulari, Subba Ghosh, Mona Rai, Shamshad Husain, Kishore Shinde and Annu Gupta, to name only a few. None of them is what I would call auction star material yet. But what is important is that a global bank has chosen to pick up and auction their work, reflecting a truth I have been harping on for some time now. A considerable body of our contemporary art has global relevance today.
Our investors must recognise it, project it and, of course, profit from it. I hope our gallery owners open up to this reality. Some of them, like Arushi Arts, Art Alive, Dhoomimal Art Gallery and the Delhi Art Gallery have already been holding mega-shows for some years now. But, by and large, a narrow concept of the ?group show? still dominates our gallery owners? vision. Of course, group shows help to create stars out of those artists not already there. It is by giving them some exposure that they help to give a boost to their prices as well.
But the raw material for the group show must be tested in a mega-show to give one an idea as to which artists are the best to project as stars and up and coming stars. This logic is now filtering through to international art promoters as well. It is a great boon for our art today.
So our galleries, promoters and dealers must use this open market to the full. They can only benefit from it if they learn to go away from the beaten path and to spread their risk sufficiently over a wide range of practicing artists. This is the best way to invest wisely.
Our art market reflects plenty of activity that favours such a development in our contemporary art world as a whole today. Our different metropolitan centres of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore can boast of their own groups of artists with distinct styles.
At the same time, our colleges of art in Santiniketan, Vadodara, Thiruvanantha-puram, Jaipur, Delhi, Patna, Jammu, Lucknow, and Bhopal constitute a powerful network that blends all these regional styles into an Indian art that goes back to its roots in the struggle to liberate our country from colonial rule and to keep the momentum of the democratic movement that ensured its success alive.
Today, a healthy all-India art market also buttresses this common standard and has got even the global market to accept its standards as theirs. This is why Indian contemporary art is good to invest in today and will be for some time to come.
