I have in front of me three recent catalogues. The catalogue for the Bowring?s sale of Modern and Contemporary Indian Paintings, slated for the end of March; The Gallery Art Motif?s annual diary of its exhibition of contemporary art for 2002; and the Gallery Art Alive?s catalogue of the ?Joy Of Life? exhibition, also of January 2002. All are, in a sense, commercial ventures, as the works are up for sale.
The first is an auction, the other two curated exhibitions. The first features 63 contemporary Indian artists, the second 50 contemporary Indian artists and the third no less than 84 contemporary Indian artists. Clearly, the Indian contemporary art scene is broad based enough for an objective analysis.
It is interesting, however, to see what all three catalogues, curated by very different people, have in common. The Bowring?s catalogue has the most well-known names, as was to be expected. But even there, there is a wide range. It is interesting that M F Husain, S H Raza, Prabhakar Barwe, Abanindranath Tagore, A R Chughtai, Anjolie Ela Menon, Jamini Roy and Gaitonde figure in the Bowring?s catalogue, while that of Art Motif has Akbar Padamsee and K G Subramananyam and Art Alive has Roop Krishna and Bhupen Khakhar who are not to be found in the other two catalogues. However, even among the names, Sunil Das, K K Hebbar, K Laxman Goud and F N Souza are each found to figure in two of the three publications.
Among the younger artists, Ved Nayar, Gogi Saroj Pal, Arpana Caur, Yusuf Arakkal, Suhas Nimbalkar, K Muralidharan and Shamshad Husain figure in two publications each, while Subroto Kundu, Sudip Roy and Manisha Gera Baswani figure among the really young artists with works in more than one publication. Interestingly, what one concludes is that there is a wide range of good Indian contemporary art available in the market. Out of a total of 197 artists from all over India, only 14 figure in two of the three catalogues. So the choice in the market is wide and that favours the buyer in two ways.
First, the prices are relatively lower in the face of competition. That is why, perhaps, a number of artists control their outlets to get better prices and there is a tendency for artists to get ?bonded? to galleries. But this is not the case with the majority. Indeed, when one sees the names of K K Hebbar, Sunil Das, F N Souza, K Laxma Goud, Ved Nayar, Arpana Caur, Yusuf Arakkal and Shamshad Husain in two of the three sales, one realises that there is sufficient good art by artists who are also ?names? that is available at a reasonable price. So Indian contemporary art is very much alive and well. Certainly, a considerable part of it is beyond monopoly control. And that is a good thing.
The range of these 14 artists is interestingly wide. If strong lines are the characteristic of Hebbar, Das, Souza, Goud, Nayar and Arakkal, colour characterises the work of Pal, Kundu, Nimbalkar and Gera Baswani and Arpana Caur, Shamshad Husain, and Sudip Roy are singled out by their imagery and the narrative element in it. It is clear then that what is good to invest in can be worked out fairly sensibly if one concentrates on an original use of line and colour, and something more difficult than that: an eye for an original image that has a radical message to convey.
Geographically too, this list of 14 artists is interesting. Four each are originally from Delhi and Mumbai; three from Kolkata; and one each from Chennai, Hyderabad and Kerala. The dispersion reflects the state of the art market today, with Delhi and Mumbai being in the lead, Kolkata a little behind, and with three emerging centres in the south. The broader message, of course, is that there is no part of India where there is no art market, even if those of the west and the north dominate. The eastern art market is a close contender and the south, too, has woken up from its taste for colonial calendar art or ritual images to appreciate modern art.
Our objective mapping shows us that a healthy groundwork of a sound market for contemporary Indian art exists. It is on this basis that a wide galaxy of good artists of all ages are able to pursue their creative lives with a fair degree of independence. And sufficient good works are available at affordable prices. More than that, the emergence of detailed catalogues shows that a proper infrastructure of sales and documen- tation exists to ensure confidence in the market. So Indian contemporary art is a better buy today than ever before.