Our New Year?s analysis of Indian contemporary art reflects a number of important elements that have gone into making it something worth investing in. First and foremost, India is well-endowed with skills in painting and sculpture without which one would be reduced to producing assemblages of various kinds at best and gimmicks at worst.
Skill alone, however, does not make an artist, and certainly not a contemporary one. But the exposure to high levels of a variety of skills and a wide range of traditions of craft production that were not entirely wiped out by mass production have allowed us to develop a large enough body of young artists trained at different parts of the country who are able to imbibe different sorts of influences that allow them a wider range of original expression than those restricted to various forms of monoculture or are too used to mechanical and other instruments to be able to use their hands effectively.
This natural advantage, however, cannot be of any use unless we have contemporary conditions and relations that are able to develop it in a contemporary framework. This was provided by the mass orientation of our national movement and its stress on secularism, grass-roots democracy like the panchayat system, the anti-elitist republican character of one-man-one-vote, of the movement against untouchability and doing away with titles and principalities. This was carried forward by zamindari abolition, state education, and the system of reservations. This engendered the radicalism in our contemporary art that is equal to any in the world and gave our artists appreciation.
This inclusive character of the political system allowed not only modern ideas to percolate to the ground-level but also created skilled personnel who were siphoned up to the top and today form the bulk of our NRIs and are major buyers of our modern art. Artists who understood these processes and empathised with them, like those of the Progressive Artists Group of Bombay, which included some of the most important blue-chip artists of today, like F N Souza, M F Husain, Tyeb Mehta, S H Raza, V S Gaitonde and Akbar Padamsee, became the most sought out artists to invest in as well. Others, like Jamini Roy, who once sold his drawings of at one rupee each at factory gates to workers, have reached seven figure prices today. Roy and his circle have evolved a whole way of looking of figuration which has since been developed in great variety by artists like Paritosh Sen, Bijon Choudhury, Shuvaprasanna, Shipra Bhattacharya and Subrata Saha. That four generations of artists have followed this trend in contemporary art reflects its resilience.
Our contemporary art is one of the most resilient in the world. It is interesting how both the Bauhaus in Germany and Shantiniketan started out in 1919. But Germany could only sustain the Bauhaus till 1934. We in India have not only kept Santiniketan going till today, but have developed it well beyond the original. The art institute that began with the Tagores, Nandalal Bose and Ram Kinkar Baij today artists like Veohar Ram Manohar Sinha and Jogen Choudhury among its alumni. Its influence in our contemporary art can be found all over the country. This capacity reflects the soundness of contemporary art as an investment: And its staying power has an awe inspiring infrastructure of art schools, galleries and dealers today who are networking across the world to ensure its success. The buyers then need not be too anxious when buying. Most investments in the art market are secure today, though some are bound to be better than others.