Art appreciation

Francis Newton Souza’s Birth has sold for $2.48 million at Christie’s, the highest ever price for an Indian artist’s work.

Francis Newton Souza’s Birth has sold for $2.48 million at Christie’s, the highest ever price for an Indian artist’s work. That’s a big deal, but does Birth point to a wider renaissance in Indian art, and is the enthusiasm lasting? Either way, for everyone who had written off Indian art’s upswing as a moment of irrational exuberance, this record sale should prompt a rethink.

As an investment, art endures the shake, rattle and roll of stock markets — and art prices soar especially when stocks are volatile. New York University’s Michael Moses and Jiangping Mei devised an index to track long-term performance of art investments. According to them, over the past 50 years, stocks returned 10.9 per cent annually, while the art index returned 10.5 per cent and between 2001 and 2005, art gave stocks a run for their money. What’s more, currently Indian art is “hotter than curry” as Anjolie Ela Menon put it. There are several high-profile art funds in India wherein curators buy and sell artworks rather than stocks; auction records are soaring, pink papers have published art indexes, aggregating prices for works by top artists.

But the multi-million dollar bids for a Souza or a Husain don’t necessarily indicate the ruddy good health of the Indian art market. These are blue chip artists, coveted and durable. The real question is whether contemporary Indian artworks are merely the flavour of a brief season in a jaded art world, or whether their stock will continue to rise. After all, for all the ecstatic press, Indian art constitutes barely over 1 per cent of the global art market share. The major connoisseurs and collectors are still Indian expats and the odd dedicated foreigner. Building a solid art market in India requires an entire functioning edifice of artists, galleries, investors, auction houses, insurers, framers, restorers and critics. Given the Indian state’s uninspired handling of culture, our artists had practically no public institutional support, no presence at the world’s biennales and museums, no sugardaddies to advance the Indian cause in global art circuits. So it’s entirely to its credit that the Indian art market, with nothing going for it besides raw talent and entrepreneurship, has managed to haul itself up by its own bootstraps. It deserves some appreciation.