<div><em>Rising prices herald the arrival of collectors insisting on provenance and quality, writes <strong>Kishore Singh</strong></em></div><div> </div><div> </div><div>These are interesting, if schizophrenic, times, when the unexpected has become the norm. I imagine Amrita SherGil chortling from some special place in heaven reserved for the exceptionally talented. When she died, heartbreakingly young at 28 and heart achingly poor, she had been getting by on her Hungarian mother’s handouts and doles, her American husband’s pithy, irregular salary, and relatively rare portrait commissions, having sold only a few of her paintings even though they marked an important cusp in Indian modernism. Mumbai’s Parsis hadn’t responded positively to her aesthetic at least at the time, the Nizam of Hyderbad had refused to court her, and for all her glamorous persona and style, she’d managed pithy sales and lived penuriously close to genteel poverty. Therefore, unsurprisingly, the artist occupied herself painting self-portraits — many, many of them — several of which she gifted to family and friends. Now, seven decades after her tragic death, they’re popping up in auctions as cover lots — one sold in New York at Sotheby’s in March for a whopping Rs 18 crore, acquired by a hedge-fund promoter; the next popped up in London at Christie’s the following month and notched an even higher value; a third at Sotheby’s in London fetched Rs 17.3 crore defying all odds about a similar work fetching such a keen price point. How ironic that collectors should want portraits of the artist who found them difficult to flog in her lifetime and had to give them away free.</div><div> </div><div>But then, this year has become about breaking and establishing records. F.N. Souza, whose provocative nudes once scandalised Mumbai’s high society and got him in trouble in London’s mannerly neighbourhoods, found himself in the news when Man and Woman Laughing had the ballroom gasping when it fetched a benchmark Rs 16.8 crore at the Saffronart auction in New Delhi, only to find itself outbid a week later when Birth, in New York, was sold at Christie’s for Rs 27 crore, making it the most expensive work of Indian modern art, beating previous besties V.S. Gaitonde and Tyeb Mehta. That crown is likely to be a short-lived one, however, as more and exciting works come up for sale, displacing previous notches. Nor are auction houses the only ones to raise the pitch; private galleries are becoming aggressive and substantially raising the values in private sales in a bid to best their rival auction houses.</div><div> </div><div>Several other auction records have been established this year, whether for Nandalal Bose or Akbar Padamsee, and after a seven-year hiatus, the hardening of prices in the art bazaar has become a talking point again. But for collectors, the concern is not just the prices as much as the quality of works coming back into the market. After several years, prized art works are making a cameo appearance before being snatched up, and newer, younger collectors have moved from nibbling at the fringes to occupying centre stage. In just the last few months, I have met or been made aware of buying interest from a new breed of collectors whose knowledge is formidable and their determination and focus commendable.</div><div> </div><div>In the immediate future, rarity of works will play an important part in commanding a premium in the market. Already, what collectors — old and new — are demanding is provenance (equivalent to a lineage) and quality. They’re no longer content with just any Husain but demand his best (or at least better) works. Experts put 10 per cent of any artist’s output as excellent, but the very finest would number no more than a handful for each. These works would, typically, have won a popular or national award, been an important commission, have been for whatever reason controversial, or enjoyed some historical association. For works of such provenance, the term ‘priceless’ means precisely that.</div><div> </div><div>If the market is strengthening for modern art, an interesting diversion is antiquities which, increasingly, are beginning to attract collector attention. The old business families were always collectors, but regulations governing their sale or ownership are bogged down by red tape and ambiguity. In a civilisation with a rich mother lode of arts and crafts, the distinction between a masterpiece and a reasonable copy, between an artisanal and a conformist work, has been difficult to tell for all but a clutch of experts who have preferred, for some obscure reason, to let matters lie. Now, with Saffronart getting into the business of antiques, these auctions will hopefully bring some clarity to the procedure. Others are likely to follow suit. When a miniature painting, or a medieval sculpture, finally commands a price deserv</div><div>ingly higher than an Amrita Sher-Gil or Souza, parity will have been well served in the art market.</div><div> </div><div>But it’s still a struggle for most contemporary artists, at least price wise. While they continue to create work that is recognised for its engagement with current politics and issues of social concern — gender, violence, class, migration — its edgy voice is becoming blurred for lack of popular support. Though this provides ideal opportunity for collectors, the investment bogey — unfortunately an inherent covenant of contemporary art — has restrained its popular appeal. There is also some trepidation that art that appears merely as reaction rather than its inherent aesthetic content may be a blooper in its long-term ability to survive: collectors, or just plain vanilla art buyers, wonder whether the pleasures of art are being sacrificed for a lesson in contemporary history, and whether these works will continue to have resonance a few decades from now. The success of any art lies not so much in the primary as in the secondary market. Amrita Sher-Gil & Co have seen their works survive long beyond their lifetimes. Whether today’s young generation of artists will share that experience remains untested — a question mark that’s casting a longer shadow than their, as yet, unproven longevity.</div><div> </div><div><em>The author is head, publications and exhibitions, Delhi Art Gallery</em></div><div> </div><div>(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 16-11-2015)</div>
