Kaun Bana crorepati?

Like Jain, at least 10 other Indian gallerists were witness to the drama. The middle-aged entrepreneur who lost out on Mehta8217;s work spent Rs 7 crore at the Christie8217;s and Sotheby8217;s auctions including Rs 2 crore for Maqbool Fida Husain8217;s Trial at Christie8217;s.

At the preview and post-auction champagne parties, book launches and exhibition openings that followed, everyone talked about how far they would go to pay for Indian works. France-based painter Syed Haider Raza was there to release a book on Mehta.

In another corner of the city on the same day, the Vaziranis, of online auction house saffronart.com, started their group show, which included artists Shibu Natesan and Jayashree Chakrabarty.

The art world is yet to recover from the two international auctions that raked sales worth Rs 38 crore in a single week. While NRIs, awash with entrepreneurial money, are driving up the market as much as India8217;s new rich emerging from a booming economy, a strange hysteria is gripping the Indian art world.

In anticipation of art prices moving up at a time when the prices of senior Indian artists are still grossly underpriced in the international market8212;even Chinese artists command higher prices8212;gallerists are not just promoting their circle of artists, but also snapping up their works. At least 10 galleries in India, spread across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, have the financial muscle to trade in the Progressive artists. Last week, around five per cent of the 280 works at Sotheby8217;s and Christie8217;s were bought by Indian galleries.

As the art market looks up, a number of wannabe art dealers and galleries are mushrooming in basements and barsatis across our cities. Owners of these galleries are booking orders for future shows and entering into a 8216;8216;mutual commitment8217;8217; with artists. Businessmen and publishers are organising art camps in exotic foreign locales to amass work in exchange for holidays. Exhibition openings are no longer wine-quaffing evenings. Art events are a serious business and come neatly packaged with slide shows and special previews for select clients.

At the opening of Robin Mondal8217;s retrospective show in Delhi recently, a screening on the artist8217;s work was held, complete with a sophisticated background sound system. 8216;8216;Today you have to ensure that your exhibition is top quality. If it8217;s good, people will come to you from all over the world,8221; says Sunaina Anand, who runs Art Alive, Delhi. Like their European and Chinese counterparts, NRIs are beginning to seek their ethnic roots through art.

A large number of the new breed of buyers are lawyers, IT professionals and people running education businesses. Another group of collectors driving this new quest is from the stock market.

Viewed as a 8216;8216;safe investment8217;8217;, a growing number of stock analysts and brokers are diversifying into art and looking at it as a separate asset class. It has prompted venture capitalist Pravin Gandhi and partners of Sakshi Gallery8212;Geeta Mehra and Sanjay Sharma8212;to float India8217;s first offshore fund called Yatra, which is managed by Mumbai-based Edelweiss Capital.

Gone are the days when artists had to lug their works around. Instead, gallerists are lining up at artists8217; doorsteps.

The buying mania has reached the stage where painter GR Iranna was recently forced to hide his work, The Retired King, from gallerists. In the past four years, he hadn8217;t been able to save a single work for his home. In fact, works are pre-sold even before they are complete. Ranbir Kaleka8217;s Boy Without Reflection was reserved by Mumbai-based auction house Osian8217;s for its future archive even before the artist completed the first draft. A Mumbai-based installation artist recently said, 8216;8216;Today, if an artist says he wants to go to London, his visit will be organised in a snap.8217;8217;

All this sends out one clear signal. While the number of individual buyers has grown in the past three years, galleries are largely driving the buying rush. According to a New Delhi-based gallerist, about 60 per cent of the art bought at exhibitions are by gallerists themselves, who are stocking up to cut better deals in the future. 8216;8216;The gallery business has almost become like the jewellery trade,8217;8217; says Sidhartha Tagore of Delhi8217;s Gallery Art 038; Deal.

As auction houses set new benchmarks for price, galleries are increasing their secondary sales. 8216;8216;If a buyer wants a particular work, we offer to source it from other galleries,8217;8217; says Biku Tandon of Anayas, who otherwise mainly promotes new artists. Adds Tagore, 8216;8216;Since not everyone can afford to pay such high prices, galleries are willing to take a one or two per cent cut to source artworks with high stakes. By the time the painting reaches the collector, it goes through at least five people and prices shoot up many times over.8217;8217;

These days it8217;s not unusual to attend an art show where most of the works have been sold before the formal opening. For instance, at the Jitish Kallat exhibition in New Delhi8217;s Bodhi Art Gallery this year, 80 per cent of the works were snapped up even before they could be fixed on the wall. Last month, at Jehangir Art Gallery, in Mumbai, 90 per cent of works by 69 unknown artists were sold out before the exhibition opened.

Until some time ago, artists had no way of knowing how much gallerists had sold their works for. As auction houses unlock the true value of art and bring in transparency, the line between galleries and auction houses has begun to blur.

Galleries, on the other hand, are playing an important role in branding artists and promoting their works. Transactions are normally done in cash as buyers prefer to pay cash, especially in the Rs 25,000 to Rs 75,000 category. Sitting on a cash pile, it is also easier for gallerists to buy art in bulk.

With competition and demand heating up, fresh works have started appearing at auction houses. For example, Atul Dodiya8217;s My School in Angkor, which fetched Rs 79 lakh at the Christie8217;s auction, was done during an art camp in Cambodia this year. Akbar Padamsee8217;s Mirror Image, which sold for Rs 1.8 crore, was done in 2004.

For some, however, the recent auctions have become an occasion for both jubilation and grief. Yogesh Jain, owner of Rahul 038; Art, who consigns works at auctions, says, 8216;8216;Steep prices at auctions will affect us adversely. It will become more difficult to buy top quality art from collectors or even sell them to collectors.8221;

Uma Jain of Delhi8217;s Dhoomimal Gallery says that artists have also started hiking their rates. 8216;8216;Earlier, we used to give them between 12 to 15 per cent commission, but today we have to shell out 40 per cent to some artists.8217;8217;

At the other end of the spectrum, Ranjana Stienrucke believes this is a healthy trend and that the new prices are not over the top. 8216;8216;If you consider the prices of artworks abroad, Indian art is still grossly underpriced. The rising prices are a good sign,8217;8217; she says, adding it will boost the market for prints and photography.

This also opens up an intriguing chapter for galleries. Until three years ago the rivalry between gallerists was strong enough to keep them from speaking to each other. But with skyrocketing prices, they now prefer to collaborate on shows and even share margins.

As the hype about Indian art continues to soar, artist Jehangir Sabavala soberly notes, 8216;8216;While artists are getting a lot of work, they will have to keep producing honest works because that is what will sustain the booming market.8217;8217;

So is the great gamble on Indian art going to be worth it? For now at least, as the good stocks move up, the bad ones will move up too.

With inputs from Srimoyee Mitra