Over 80 works of contemporary Indian art had come up for sale at Sotheby?s and Christie?s in New York on March 24 and 25 this year. The effort was a tentative one as the season for sales of contemporary Indian art normally starts in September. So one can conclude that today, Indian contemporary art is as important a draw as the temple and ancient monument looters? hoards. This is not only an Indian trend, but also a global one. And it shows that the world continues to become more radicalised with the passage of time despite the museum-plunderers being unleashed against humanity by elements like the infamous alliance now occupying Iraq.

The star of the show was, of course, Francis Newton Souza, the son of a Mumbai seamstress of Goan origin, who was expelled from the JJ School of Art and joined the national movement and was one of the founders of the Progressive Artists Group. Souza is well-known as the most irrelevant of the group and is famous for this evil looking, rotten and decrepit-seeming portraits of those who wheel and deal in the corridors of power, horny women who throw the image of Ravi Varma?s Victorian prudes to the winds, spiky city-scapes, horrifying crucifies and sombre still-life studies featuring skulls and the like.

But against the sombre and disgusting character of his themes, we find them presented in bright and arresting colours, with a command over brush-work and texture second to none in our contemporary art.

FN Souza: Untitled, gouache on paper

Today, his ?Mystic Repast? has fetched no less than $1,53,600 at the Sotheby?s auction. The next day, at Christie?s the highest prices Souza works fetched were $41,825, $41,825, $35,850 and $28,680, for three different works. Today, a good Souza canvas can be expected to fetch between Rs 13 lakh and Rs 70 lakh. This now places him in the same league as artists like MF Husain, VS Gaitonde and Ganesh Pyne.

Husain?s ?Mother Theresa? dyptich sold at over Rs 35 lakh from Sotheby?s, while at Christie?s his canvases sold as high as Rs 40.33 lakh, Rs 32.26 lakh and Rs 29.6 lakh each. So we can conclude that at least in this auction while the Mumbai group did well, Souza definitely came up on top.

The question is why? If one is to believe we live in an age of neo-conservatism as some imagine, this should not have happened at all. For Souza was an unshamed radical all his life. He even went as far as saying: ??If I could, I would always choose evil and perversity, hell and brimstone, fornication and corruption. Perhaps God loves me but I don?t know it.?? So if Souza sells like hot cakes in New York, neo-conservatism definitely does not.

It is evident that these sales reflect a new perspective emerging in the US. The hypocritical born-again Christian view of George Bush is being rejected by thinking people there too. They are beginning to prefer the self-confessed sinner in Souza. This is evident also from the sale of Ganesh Pyne?s ?The White Hand? from the Glenbarra Museum collection of Japan. It has gone for $20,400, approximately Rs 9.18 lakh. Another work of Pyne has sold for nearly Rs 10 lakh, while the leftist sculptor Somnath Hore has sold for Rs 3.5 lakh. Yes, radical and irreverent art is in. Perhaps the latter even more than the former. To put it simply, people are tired of the hypocrisy of values in conservative discourse when their actions reflect a signal lack of these.

At times like these, even the wealthy challenge the taste of the establishment which they find suffocating and dishonest. In fact, Souza noted this in 1989, when the Indian ruling classes had thoroughly exposed themselves, saying: ??When we were in the PAG, we arranged an exhibition in the dense labour areas like Parel. We did it for the fun of it. Finally the response was from those with money.?? But this was not in the late 1940s. It was in the 1980s. The rich took their time over it.

They do so even today. Since the 1980s they have steadily drifted from their taste in blousy. Victorian females with their wet clothes sticking to their bodies or Rajasthani women with exaggerated midriffs, to seeing vulgarity, decay and decrepitude for what it is, but in an aesthetic language that is impeccable.

That is what makes Souza?s art worth looking at and investing in. The Spring auctions serve to remind us, in Bob Dylan?s words: ??The times they are a-changing.??