The most important thing about investment is that it must have relevance for the future. Something that does not have this relevance cannot be a good investment. So in art we must constantly be on the lookout for new names and new faces. Today?s bluechip artists cannot sustain the needs of the future adequately. Some of them will remain, others will become obsolete. So it is our task to see who among the young artists of the present have a chance of a place in tomorrow?s world.

A couple of weeks back we noted how certain cult figures and artists with a broad-based market together built up what we call art as investment. The cult figures have a fragile base which they must broaden, while the broad based artists must seek flights into the uncharted to bring originality into their works. Few artists can do this effortlessly. MF Husain is one of them. His success should inspire others to try.

Fish Seller: A sculpture in wood, paint and iron by Chander Parkash

Indeed, a number of our young and not-so-young artists are obviously inspired by him enough to take a leaf out of his book. One of them is Jatin Das, a very accomplished artist who has broken out of the limitation of his female studies to do a mural in Parliament. Then there is Atul Sinha, who has for the last 20 years or more been working consistently on sculpture for use; It is to his credit that he has taken the concept beyond the mass produced, which reduced this seminal quest of the Bauhaus artists to a banality. Sinha retains the quality of originality in his sculptures and works them by hand. So while they are objects for use, they are also sculptures with their own aesthetic qualities and originality. The sculptor has worked in ceramics, glass, papier-mache and wood, reflecting his considerable expertise, which has got one of his works to the NGMA and a number of others in prestigious collections abroad.

Among painters, one of the more talented is Apoorva Desai, who has consistently applied himself to the industrial landscape, which is likely to come more and more to the fore in the future. His series on the dying industry in Ahmedabad, Madhya Pradesh coal-miners, the city of Calcutta, the ship breaking yards of Gujarat, and Chemical factories are already collectors items that are prized. He, with Nataraj Sharma, makes a powerful stand for presenting the industrial reality of India as a valid subject for our aesthetic appreciation.

Among the really young painters, I feel the powerful anti-war imagery of Yati Jaiswal stands out very clearly among the work of artists in their late twenties and thirties. His works mapping out areas of US atrocities, scenes like the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and the superficiality and criminalisation of the life style being sold to the youth by multinationals and those purveying a hedonistic consumerism are an outstandingly stark reminder of the world we live in. His work holds good promise as investment as it looks at life without the blinkers imposed on our eyes by the sellers of lifestyles.

Another young artist, Avishek Sen from Santiniketan, who showed recently at Sharon Apparao?s gallery at Triveni in Delhi, gives us promise of an ironic mix of man and beast images. True, the theme has been done to death by many, but the freshness with which he brings his images alive in water colours on paper promises of better things to come.

However, one of the most promising is a young sculptor of Jammu, Chander Prakash, whose use of surface texture, colour, and assemblage of objects in a manner reminiscent of early Picasso is striking. He is the student of an accomplished sculptor from Jammu and Kashmir, RK Tikku and obviously does his teacher credit, showing at the Art Heritage gallery in Delhi, which also brought Tikku?s work to all India notice. The strength of Prakash?s work lies in his treading the path between modernism and post-modernism very carefully so that the narrative element does not overpower the formal qualities of his work. If he carries on with this initial momentum as a guideline, he is all set to be one of India?s best sculptors.

Another young artist whose work is likely to survive into the future is Chintan Upadhyay from Rajasthan, now working in Mumbai. Upadhyay?s main attack is on the reverential attitude to painting images going back to the votive art of the medieval period. Sometimes his works carry the affront to the borders of the lurid and obscene. But a close look at his work shows you he is out to confront the viewer and not shock or titillate. His journey through expression is valid and his work too, which is meticulously executed, is definitely a good investment.

Finally, for sheer mastery over matter and a presentation of its narrative quality over time or in sequence, few can equal the non-representational art of A Balasubramanian from Tamil Nadu. His holograms, works using light and shadow over white surfaces and constructions that resemble reliefs, bring to mind the works of the Latin American sculptor, Sergio de Camargo, and those of his fellow Latin American artist Soto. These works remind us that we follow similar lines of development in more than one sphere of life. And this trend has made a space for itself in the future as well.

Of course, in a country like India there are thousands of young artists whose talent will survive into the future with aplomb. But the few I have concentrated on reflect major trends that will survive, for they are among the best representatives of these. So they are likely to be worth investing in as well.