While it is heartening to see the excellent bidding for new artists at the Saffronart online auction, the Sotheby?s and Christie?s sales of New York on March 29-30 restored some confidence in auctions again after the recent Osian auction gaffe, but the buyer must realise that nothing can be worse than to take it forgranted that all works put up at an auction are genuine. So, before bidding, the buyer must be convinced of a work?s authenticity beyond doubt. Without doing that, one may end up buying a fake.
This is not because both auction houses and artists are not concerned with fakes. They are more concerned with selling works. They often tend to be slipshod as well. A recent case in point is Christie?s auction catalogue that lists a particular work of V S Gaitonde as having been painted in 1949 (lot 42) when it is in fact a work of 1957. The curators have misread the date in Hindi. But the style ought to have brought the mistake to light earlier. For those who want to see how different his work was in the late forties, we have excellent examples of water-colour, mixed media and drawings in pencil dating 1948 at Arushi Arts in New Delhi. Gaitonde aficionados would do well to buy a catalogue which reproduces 24 of them. The auction houses ought to access this material and feed it into their PCs.
Recent events have awakened artists too. Apart from Sanjay Bhattacharya?s bold protest while the bidding was going on in New Delhi, top Kolkata artists, including Ganesh Pyne, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Jogen Choudhury, Wasim Kapur, Ashok Mallik, Samir Aich, Paritosh Sen, Ganesh Haloi, Suhas Roy and others have put forward suggestions our government should take up with regard to art auctions being held in India. They have called for ?auction houses involved in such racketeering be identified and put out of business.? Anjolie Ela Menon has proceeded against a copyist.
However, one must remember copyists are artists too, and the temptation to employ ?assistants? may open an artist to having his works copied. There are artists who deny the authenticity of works they sold cheaply in the past or gifted to friends. Others are willing to authenticate works that are good fakes for a fat fee. These practices do not build confidence in our art market.
Finally, the buyer must be confident of a work?s authenticity before bidding. This is done by studying the work with the help of an expert familiar with restoring. And finally, the buyer must be aware that bargains are not found in our contemporary art market and works that come to one ?dirt cheap? are in all probability dirt.
The buyer should be prepared to study each work bid with the help of a specialist. Once its authenticity is established, the quality of the work must be studied. Indian contemporary art is still selling at prices that are half its worth, so one is not likely to be out of pocket even if one bids a little beyond the limit. It is getting good works that is important.
