The NGMA is an important buyer of art that one hopes will be preserved. But then it has been the centre of a controversy over the call to sell off its deadwood, by a leading artist. So it is interesting to see what works above the Rs 2 lakh were bought by the gallery in 2003-04 and 2004-2005.
The year 2003-2004 saw two major purchases: a work of Nalini Malini at Rs 6 lakh and SB Palsikar?s Three Graces at Rs 8 lakh. In the year that followed no purchase was made above Rs 3.45 lakh and that too of photographs of a young photographer.
In the three lakhs and above bracket we have Sudarshan Shetty at Rs 3.50 lakh, with another purchase of Rs 2.40 lakh listed the next year.
He is followed by Prabhakar Barwe?s Sonal?s Moon priced at Rs 3.34 lakh. An Atul Dodiya work was bought at Rs 3.13 lakh. In the Rs 2 lakh and above bracket we have Prabhakar Kolte bought at Rs 2.59 lakh, Mrinalini Mukherjee at Rs 2.56 lakh, D P Roy Choudhury at Rs 2.43 lakh, Subodh Gupta at Rs 2.40 lakh, Prabir Gupta at Rs 2.24 lakh, Jayashree Chakravarty at Rs 2.16 lakh, Jeram Patel at Rs 2.16 lakh, Anju Dodiya at Rs 2.10 lakh and K G Subramanyan at Rs 2 lakh.
One thing is obvious. The NGMA seems to be succumbing to gallery pressure to buy works of artists who are young and being promoted by them. That is why a number of young artists? works have been bought at gallery prices while older artists have had their works bought at much less. Secondly, from the lists one has of purchases it appears that those who have been buying for the NGMA have not really put their minds to building up a national collection. Rather, they seem to have been just helping with the season?s sales.
This has its plus and minus points. The plus point is that the gallery aesthetics, being those of the market, reflect our times better than those of bureaucrats and the buyers they nominate, so such works are more likely to be representative of the times. This is a good thing.
The negative feature is that the quality of the works is likely to be poorer, as galleries will sell to the market first and then what is left over from those sales will find its way to the NGMA. This is more so in the case of artists whose works are sold at relatively lower prices. These have in all probability failed to sell elsewhere and are being dumped at the NGMA.
So, while the NGMA appears to have benefited from buying works of artists like Rajendra Dhawan, K G Subramanyan, Nikhil Biswas, Somnath Hore, Himmat Shah and Chittaprasad on the cheap, its other buys, like those of Dayanita Singh ( at Rs 3.40 lakh) and a number of younger artists at market and even above market prices, reflects that crony methods are at work. The net result is that what the gallery ought to have profited from has been squandered away. And if one looks at the lists carefully, not a little of this is wasted on deadwood.
One hopes that the regime change that has followed the NDA government will enquire into such purchases and the names of those from whom the works were bought (galleries or dealers) and come to a conclusion after a thorough enquiry. This will help our art world considerably.
