The year 2003 could not be said to be the best of years. It has brought war, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. And with it, a push back into the 19th century and imperial wars to capture resources. On the side, we saw the plunder of Baghdad?s museum, the destruction of ancient sites, with the world?s newest urban civilisation giving a new meaning to the phrase ?concrete jungle? when North American hordes and the British, Spanish and Portuguese did their pirate ancestors proud by looting the wealth of Iraq.

This had an effect of halting the art trade for a while. The peak reached by Tyeb Mehta with the sale of his painting ?Celebration? for no less than Rs 106 crore could not be outdone. True, Husain did it in a one-time sale. But one-time sales cannot be compared with auctions that are much more transparent.

Still, even as auctions go, the Mumbai Group of MF Husain, FN Souza, Tyeb Mehta, VS Gaintonde and SH Raza had bounced back to the fore in art sales by September.

At the New York auction of September 17, 2003, Tyeb Mehta topped the list of Indian moderns, with a tryptich selling at no less than Rs 54.97 lakh. A work of MF Husain sold at Rs 49.47 lakh and Gaitonde at Rs 46.72 lakh. All three were above the $100,000 mark. In the second rank, above $50,000, we find a Bhupen Khakhar selling at Rs 30.23 lakh, Akbar Padamsee at Rs 27.48 lakh and FN Souza at Rs 24.73 lakh. Ganesh Pyne?s tempera for which $20,000 was expected, sold at $23,900 (Rs 10.99 lakh). SH Raza sold at Rs 10.99 lakh. So it was obvious that Indian contemporary art was very much a survivor of the Iraq war.

Untitled oil on canvas by Tyeb Mehta

And not just survivors, they prove to be a very good investment indeed. The increase of Souza?s price per square centimetre over the year 2000 was no less than 418 per cent. SH Raza followed with an increase of 376 per cent, Ram Kumar showed an increase of 74 per cent, Anjolie Ela Menon 251.52 per cent and Akbar Padamsee 223.32 per cent. So, we find that modernist art, despite the abuse heaped on it by post-modernists, is still a very good investment.

The reason for this is evident. It is the art that challenged imperialism. This is what we see in the New York sales. The Bombay Group was the most firmly modernist of all Indian art groupings. And it is not surprising to find it firm in its market even after the Iraqi quagmire. It is strange, but also obvious that the mood today is against cooption.

This is evident from the sales of younger artists too. Atul Dodiya?s far from decorative works are going above the Rs 2-lakh mark. In the same way, the industrialist art of Apoorva Desai sold far beyond. It was a change from the past when his works were bought by a select group of collectors with an eye for what would flower in the future. This time he sold to a wide global market among whom industrialists were significant. A similar success has been noted for Kolkata-based Debabrata De?s modernist works of the life of that city of the people.

It is evident that the contemporary art of India, especially that which confronts the attempt of Western art to dictate canons of aesthetics to it, while at the same time rejecting the past concern with devotional art. Even those following the canons of so-called ?Tantric art? state they are painting abstracts and not formulae for effecting desired changes in life. It is evident from the year that was that tacking on slokas to one?s work does not help to sell them, as we found out following the sales of SH Raza.

The lesson: Works of art that are not independent communications in themselves are mere illustrations and not art works. If they are not art works, they are not worth investing. The year 2004 will continue to see a growing interest in artists like FN Souza, Bhupen Khakhar, Tyeb Mehta, with the interest spreading to Jamini Roy, Somenath Hore, KG Subramanyan, Jogen Choudhury and Zainul Abedin at least.