It is evident from the general figures of art sales that over the last two years, with the emergence of consortia and big buyer cabals, our contemporary art prices have received a shot in the arm. It is rather like the bull run in the market, but the difference this time is that where in the past our art market boomed when the share market slumped, and slumped when the share market boomed, now it has gained a momentum of its own.
To understand why this has happened we must realise that our art market is not only reflecting the ups and downs of speculative investment, but it also reflects the growing perception that this art is, in fact, worth much more than the price it sells for presently.
This growing understanding, primarily among Indians and NRIs, of the intrinsic worth of our art has resulted in the rise in price of our contemporary art in auctions and exhibitions around the world.
The sharp rise in the price of canvases is repeating itself in the rising prices of sculpture, watercolours, drawings, prints and even photographs. The contemporary Indian artists? expertise, vision and aesthetics determine the continuing rise in price of the work. This is the basis of it becoming something to invest in as well.
By now investors are familiar with artists like MF Husain, FN Souza, Tyeb Mehta, SH Raza and Akbar Padamsee, to name only a few of the Mumbai Group artists who make up the bluest of blue chip investment, there are others in the Rs 5- 10 lakh range who ought to be in the reckoning as well.
It would be worth looking at who they are, from prices they sold for as late as the Saffronart online auction of mid-May 2006.
This segment is worth looking at to determine some of the up and coming new names of tomorrow. I am not including the results of sales of artists like Krishen Khanna, Ganesh Pyne, Meera Mukherjee, Anjolie Ela Menon, Satish Gujral, Shakti Burman, KK Hebbar and Laxman Sreshta who are in the blue chip range and above the 10-lakh mark.
Among those on the borderline there?s Laxma Goud (lot 121) with a sale price of Rs 9.96 lakh, Badri Narayan(lot 139) at Rs 9.48 lakh, Rajendra Dhawan (lot 141) at Rs 9.55 lakh, Paramjit Singh (lot 21) at Rs 9.59 lakh, Shyamal Dutta Ray (lot 94) at Rs 8.56 lakh, KH Ara (lot 101) at Rs 7.19 lakh, B Vithal (lot 115) at Rs 7.33 lakh, Prabhakar Barwe (lot 44) at Rs 7.89 lakh, Manu Parekh (lot 73) at Rs 7.44 lakh, Lalu Prasad Shaw (lot 144) at Rs 8.98 lakh, KM Adimoolam (lot 71) at Rs 7.33 lakh and Dharma Narayan Das Gupta (lot 147) at Rs 5.32 lakh. This range includes the figurative and non-figurative artists. The former category comprises artists who are folk-derivative and those who are academic; landscape paint-ers, and sculptor B Vithal, and even an old member of the Mumbai group, KH Ara.
Being underpriced, our contemporary art is seeing its value being recognised and we have a general rise in price of such works over a wide range and of many artists all over the world.
