The recent successful sales of contemporary Indian art in New York (Christie?s on March 31 and Sotheby?s on April 1) should assure us that our efforts at globalising our contemporary art in the world today have a strong objective basis. The two sales clearly reflect the reality that Indian contemporary art is far better investment than antiquities. If the Sotheby?s auction reflected this not so strongly, with 29% of the lots fetching 30.3% of the proceeds, Christie?s made a better showing with 28.8% of the lots amounting to no less than 62.5% of the proceeds.
It is evident that creative investment is better than grave and temple plunder. One would have thought that this would be obvious to anyone. After all, plunder merely destroys an existing context without putting anything in its place, as a revolutionary or regenerative process ought to do. On the other hand, investment in the creative process expands its base by investing in it. It strengthens the positive features of ongoing social developments as opposed to those collapsing because they have become outdated. That is why we call it good investment and that is why it lasts.
Moreover, states that resort to such practices, as has recently happened in Iraq, ought to face punishment for the destruction of the productive capacity their actions have led to. In fact, those whose productive assets have been destroyed by such plundering states ought to be compensated by punitive levies the plunderers should be constrained to pay. That may not happen so soon, but one thing is clear: investors are no longer prepared to repose blind confidence in the theory that ?might is right.? And the run on the dollar is part of this process.
People are losing confidence in the capacity of the US to keep a productive process going under its leadership. The Euro is still only a mechanical unity. But Europe, at least half of which had lived for half a century beyond the reach of plundering empires, has hopes of taking over from the dollar if it strengthens this inheritance rather than that of the plundering states that constitute its other half. Otherwise, one can expect the currencies of Asia and Latin America resorting to a new deal multipolar world again. But one thing is obvious. Despite the effort being put in to prop up plunder as a basis for a accumulation, its chances of survival are getting less each day.
Our art world is a good indicator of it. Not only did 10 of the works of contemporary art sell above the Rs 50 lakh mark (eight at Christie?s and two at Sotheby?s), but a number of artists shared that bracket. Predictably, MF Husain figured at the top of the list, with six works selling above the Rs 50 lakh mark ($1,14,129), SH Raza followed with two, while FN Souza and Akbar Padamsee figured with one each. Clearly, the Mumbai Group artists are today at the top, blending both modernity and a progressive perspective they share with artists like Picasso. At the same time, they were not imitators of the West or the East, but drew sustenance from both.
The same message has gone across to our galleries. If one looks at the works of young artists sponsored at the Arad biennale in Romania this year by the Art Alive Gallery, one is impressed by the originality of a number of them like Achuthan Kudallur, Apurva Desai, Dharmendra Rathore, Hanuman Kambli, Shamshad Husain, Harshvardhan, Iranna Rukumpur, TM Aziz, Muhammed KK, RM Palaniappan, Shivaprasad KT, and Ravi Kumar Kashi, to name only a few. They are very different in style and are at different levels of development, but they reflect the independent and robust nature of our art today.
It is fortunate our art dealers and gallery owners are also actively bringing out books on different artists and exhibiting those whose art never got the coverage it has today. We have just seen the release of a book on A Ramachandran jointly by Vadheras and the NGMA. Others on whom books have recently been released are Sohan Quadri by the Sundaram Gallery, New York, Krishen Khanna and Adimoolam.
One hopes many more are in the offing. Among those who deserve it most are the works of KS Kulkarni, born in Belgaum and trained at Mumbai, who became a leading light of Delhi?s Triveni Kala Sangam. His works are showing at the Art Konsult gallery in Hauz Khas village and at the Kumar Gallery in Sundar Nagar in Delhi. A work of his, an oil on canvas, Flute Player (lot 267), came up for sale at Christie?s and sold for Rs 4,20,576 ($9,600) well above the highest price of $7000 or Rs 3,06,600 it was expected to fetch. So, both these exhibitions could be visited by collectors to cull out works worth investing in. The range is broad and the time is right. But the choice must be carefully made.
