Looking at the two catalogues of the Art For Concern charity auctions in support of the Concern India Foundation (the first took place in Bangalore on August 10 at the Taj West End and the second on August 18 at the ITC Maurya Sheraton in New Delhi), one is surprised to see the terms and conditions imposed on the sale by the auctioneers, Christie?s and the Concern India Foundation. It?s clearly mentioned that they bear no ?risk, liability or responsibility for the authenticity of the authorship of any property?.
Of course, one understands that the sale is for charity, so what one pays for a work may not be its market price but a ?support price?. But surely, the responsibility of authentic authorship cannot be wished away.
Also, when the auctioneers reserve the right to withdraw a property from the sale if the opening bid offered ?is not commensurate with the value of the property? in the eyes of the auctioneer, one wonders what determines that value. Given such a cavaliar attitude to authenticity or proper evolution of a price and value equation, I will not discuss the pricing but restrict myself to evaluating only the worth of works of living artists whose fakes cannot be auctioned off with absolute impunity.
This, of course, does not mean one should not bid for the works of artists who have died. But the buyer must be convinced of their authenticity to bid for them.
The Delhi auction is certainly pegged to a more discerning buyer. While the Banglore auction boasted of only two really blue-chip works, a couple of pencil drawings of Akbar Padamsee (priced at Rs 3 lakh and Rs 4 lakh), the Delhi auction had a major oil on masonite work by Anjolie Ela Menon, which was expected to fetch between Rs 75 lakh and Rs 1 crore (lot 21); two paper works of Ram Kumar, priced between Rs 18 lakh and Rs 20 lakh (lot 19), and Rs 25 lakh and Rs 30 lakh (lot 20) respectively; and a small oil on card of S H Raza, which was expected to fetch anything between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 18 lakh (lot 24).
Among the close to blue-chip artists, we had the works of Krishen Khanna, Shakti Burman, Ganesh Haloi, Nagji Patel, Shuvaprasanna, Sudhir Patwardhan, Shipra Bhttacharya, Arpana Caur, Veer Munshi, Paritosh Sen, Lalu Prasad Shaw, T Vaikuntam, Satish Gujral, Samir Aich, Prokash Karmakar, Achuttan Kuddalur, Suhas Roy and Laxman Goud. It is from these artists that the future blue-chip artists will emerge.
And finally, among the young, the works of Sunil Padwal, Chintan Upadhyay, Abhay Gaekwad, Debraj Goswami, Farhad Husain, Sanjiv Sinimpare and Vanita Gupta stood out.
But be that as it may, I cannot help but feel that those indulging in slipshod selling have in fact damaged the confidence of sellers almost as much as that of the buyers. And that is not a good thing.