The season in the capital is slated for a number of ?not-for-sale? or ?pre-sold? exhibitions. This is not surprising as monopolies have taken over the works of a number of our leading artists. This is true for the excellent show at the Palette Art Gallery in Golf Links, which one must see to realise the high level of work our best contemporary artists have produced. Other such collections exist like that of the Pundole Gallery in Delhi, of Ashish Anand of the Delhi Gallery and the Osian Archives. True, not all collections are of the same quality, but together they create a strong infrastructure for contemporary art as a whole. This is what one had hoped for.
Does the collector simply have to go to well known galleries to buy big names and sit back to watch the prices going up? This may appeal to us but it can never satisfy the collector who is like a spring that feeds rivers which then go on to feed oceans. Nothing less than that ought to satisfy one.
For many collectors the works of the monopolised art of M F Husain, F N Souza, S H Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Ram Kumar, Ganesh Pyne and Akbar Padamsee, all of whom are selling at prices close to or above Rs 1 crore, rates for major works, are out of reach. But this does not mean that all good art is out of their pockets. There are excellent works of Gulbarga?s BV Andani, Jabalpur?s Beohar Ram Manohar Sinha, Somenath Hore, Krishen Khanna, Arpita Singh, Arpana Caur, Bijon Choudhury, Ganesh Haloi, Laxma Goud, and T Vaikuntam, to name a few, that can be accessed.
A number of younger artists have achieved considerable stature. Among these we have Krishnamachari Bose, who has brought a show of 69 Kerala artists, Double Enders, from the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai to Vadheras? gallery in Delhi. The works of senior artists like A Ramachandran, Balan Nambiar and Muthu Koya, who I consider the masters, blend beautifully with younger artists like Krishnamachari Bose, Baiju Parthan, Babu Xavier, TM Aziz and Riyas Komu, to name a few, reminding us that artists whose works can be bought at anywhere from Rs 10,000-10 lakh are there for the collector to savour.
BV Andani?s student, GR Iranna?s canvases have reached the seven-figure mark and deservedly. Others among the young in the same price bracket whose works can be culled out include Chittrovanu Mazumdar and Subodh Gupta.
Similarly, Swapan Bhandari, now showing at Anushi Arts New Gallery at G K II, is an artist whose works collectors ought to check out. His works are priced between Rs 20,000-75,000 and are worth at least double the price they fetch today. So, buyers at all levels can go out and find art worth buying that will both be good to live with as well as profitable to resell.