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30-Dec-07
Art as spectacle
SADANAND MENON
Despite increasing interest, the autonomy and subversive potential of art seem threatened.
This ‘dumbing down’ is particularly lethal for the arts because the discourse about arts in the media is brought on par with the language of selling soap or toothpaste.
Half-a-century ago, radical poet Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, in one of his irreverent “Curd Seller” quatrains, had chanted: “The doctor’s fees are heavy,/The lawyer’s fees are high;/But the artist is just supposed/To entertain and die.” Harin-da would have sung a different tune had he been around now. It is possible today for an average middle class urban Indian, modestly inclined towards the arts, to spend virtually every evening of the year at art openings, book launches or poetry readings or be a fixture at the avalanche of music, theatre or dance festivals. Or, like those more severely afflicted, swing from city to city in pursuit of the transformative moment at the now ubiquitous film festival, enjoying as much of a dizzy high as the stock market. Why, even my native small town Thrissur, now boasts of a fairly robust ‘international’ film festival.
Makeover
The artist too has undergone an image makeover, shifting out of the slot reserved for the slightly eccentric, unsavoury and almost lunatic fringe and smoothly sliding into the world of designer clothes, cocktail parties, page-3 capers and even sharing canvas-space with the big boys of the corporate world. Unless, of course, you happen to be studying or teaching art at some place like M.S.University, Baroda. Then you need a helmet and an insurance policy to survive the onslaughts of ‘democratic’ mob interventions in the arts. But to get serious, ‘art’ and its practice and meanings have undergone tectonic shifts in the past half-a-century. We need to come to terms today with an entirely unprecedented context within which ‘art’ needs to find a new justification for itself. The organicity, autonomy and subversive potential of art, seems severely threatened in our times. On the one hand, there is a comprehensive ‘dumbing down’ of intellectual culture by media networks, as they become the “new missionaries of corporate capitalism”. This ‘dumbing down’ is particularly lethal for the arts because the discourse about arts in the media is brought on par with the language of selling soap or toothpaste. With the global merging of culture, entertainment and the economy and the pushing of all societies into the ‘mega store’ of cultural wares, two distinct consequences follow — one, the co-option of art within the larger ‘Spectacle Economy’ of ‘Visual Culture’; and second, the conversion of the discourse on art into a discourse on ‘design’. The tools of Structuralism had helped us realise that, like other forms of cognition, art too exists squarely within the ‘politics of cultural representation’. Inevitably now, art has become a crucial element within ‘visual culture’. Since, it is obvious that all ‘representation’ is grounded in social practice, ‘visual culture’ stands for our contemporary world of heightened spectacle pervaded by visual commodities, information, entertainment. This might have pushed ‘art’ towards the idea of the ‘image’, which obviously, is the primary form of ‘commodity’ in today’s ‘spectacle economy’ of global proportions. Radical French critic Guy Debord, in his seminal work The Society of the Spectacle, defined ‘spectacle’ as “capital accumulated to the point where it becomes an ‘image’”.
Reverse phenomenon
As critics have pointed out, now a reverse phenomenon can be acknowledged: “The ‘spectacle’ is an ‘image’ accumulated to the point where it becomes ‘capital’.” This means even ‘dissident’ positions might have the ‘sanction’ of the ‘spectacle economy’. The exploitation of the unconscious hardly remains a project of the artist alone. The markets too play there — through supply-side aesthetics. When the ‘aesthetic’ and the ‘utilitarian’ are subsumed in the ‘commercial’, everything — from industrial products to artisanal objects; dress codes to disposables; art works to posters — all become an expression of ‘design’. The system encourages this because there is no ‘resistance’ within contemporary design. Bauhaus and other design movements were accomplished according to the spectacular dictates of the ‘culture industry’ and not the progressive ambitions of the ‘avant-garde’. ‘Design’ inaugurates a routinisation of ‘transgressions’. To the extent that ‘art’ cohabits with ‘visual culture’ and ‘design’, it runs the risk of being consumed by its own representational nature and assuming the function of a ‘social discourse’. Because then, only certain kinds of tame, platitudinous, status quo-ist meanings emerge out of it. Of course, one does not need to remind the artist community that ‘representation’ stands for a specific ‘construction’ of meaning and the cultural policing of its boundaries. We are all aware of the effect this had on M.F. Husain, Surendran Nair, Arpita Singh or Bhupen Khakhar. Artistic discourse in civic space today is distorted by vested or manipulative intent and posturing. Which is why one can suggest the need for artists to move from mere ‘representation’ to ‘engagement’ — what philosopher Umberto Eco called “a semiological guerilla warfare at the borders of meanings”. Only then can art compel conviction.
Wide gap
But what can be called ‘art’ in the era of 24 x 7 television? There is already a wide gap between a totally self-involved, self-absorbed, introverted art world and an anaesthetised general culture of the nation immersed in a universe of sit-coms or dot-coms and an assortment of ‘item girls’ and cricket gladiators. Art seems to be trapped in a nation enacting the twin script of ‘carnival’ and ‘survival’ — a disjunction between ‘utopian desire’ and ‘dystopian reality’. However, there is a major change today in the ‘’art-object’ too, as much as in the mentality of the aesthete or consumer. Artistic conventions have become less familiar, let alone shared, consensual or contractual. There is also an explosion of art practices. New practices; new materials; new hybridity; new confrontations. It is the time of heterodox, ironical, funky modes with profound cultural cross-dressing and crossovers. As public buildings and cultural centres are being made safe for shopping, spectating and spacing out, that wonderful Princeton scholar Hal Foster has, in fact, suggested that the composite shopping mall is the most visible ‘art-object’ today and shopping itself the most aesthetic activity one can do. So what is happening? Are artists losing their nerve? Or is the unrestricted pastiche and cruising style of postmodernism turning them into unreliable ‘narrators’? Obviously art needs to look for new engagements, considering it still has a humanising function in a brutalising world. After all, there is a continuing need to establish, through a nexus of symbologies, human similarities over cultural differences. One needs to listen to Walter Benjamin: “In every era, the attempt must be made anew, to wrest the arts away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.”
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30-Dec-07
Pakistani Artist Found Murdered
The Pakistani artist Ismail Gulgee, his wife, and their maid were found murdered at their home in Karachi, Reuters reports. They had been strangled. No motive is known, and nothing was missing from the home, including Gulgee’s valuable paintings. The abstract painter, 81, whose son, Amin Gulgee, is also a well-known artist, was celebrated for his abstract paintings and works incorporating Islamic calligraphy and action painting. He has been hailed as Pakistan’s greatest living artist and his works are in private collections and museums around the world.
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29-Dec-07
School for Scandal
Geeta Doctor for NEWINDPRESS
His name alone is enough to generate heat of the burning kind. It is synonymous with controversy. Even those who do not have the slightest interest in art profess to be deeply disturbed by the images that the artist has painted as long as thirty years ago. “This is not art, this is perversion” the VHP leader Milind Parande has been quoted as saying. The offending image is from a 1984 lithograph from a series on the Ramayana. The Internet is full of visual instances lovingly culled from Husain’s oeuvre and taken completely out of context, that compare the naked and the clothed, the profane and the sacred as samples of the deep rooted conspiracy that it is the duty of all right thinking Hindus to oppose. Husain has put contemporary Indian art on the world map. He is certainly the most collected one. A Husain painting, drawing, or print still attracts the attention of bidders at the now popular auctions of Indian art worldwide. At the age of 92, he continues to do what he does best, paint with an unabated energy, while living in Dubai. That is perhaps his most arresting quality. He has never ceased to be creative. He is as fecund in his own way, as the images of the women, the goddesses, both live and legendary that he has celebrated on his canvas, in film, in lithographs and in verse.
In his own country, he has in the last 10 years been trapped between tradition and modernity by the self-appointed guardians of Hindu morality and forced to seek a safer place in which to work. He has been chosen for the Raja Ravi Varma Award this year by the Kerala Minister for Education and culture M.A. Baby and would have traveled to Thiruvananthapuram to receive it. However, the public outcry by the champions of Hindu values and good taste against the Husain effect, have made sure that he will not be welcome if he were to come there to get the prize. The irony of this particular award is that in his own lifetime Raja Ravi Varma borrowed the images of his womanly figures from the pantheon of the Indian epics and iconography by studying the scantily draped images of sentimental heroines of German nymphs disporting themselves in cheap prints imported from the West. These are now presented as the politically correct attire for a Goddess or a Sita prototype while floating on a lotus, or in the midst of being abducted by a Ravana.
Husain remains unfazed by the storm that he generates whenever his name is invoked amongst his detractors. “Nothing has happened,” he is reported to have said. “I don’t feel sad. Because this is modern art. It takes time. When the Impressionists came after the Renaissance the whole society revolted against them. I’m just taking it as a work of art. That’s all. People could interpret it in any way. They’re all free. After all, it’s a democracy in India.” When Husain paints a Goddess without her clothes, he is using what for him is the most natural means of expressing himself. It is when the image is taken out of its ‘frame’ as it were and held up for the expression of what is in most cases a sincere reaction of distaste, if not horror, that there is a bound to be a reaction. In the case of the “perverted” scene that Parande talks about for instance, Sita is shown clinging to the prehensile tale of Hanuman. In an older tradition, art was never seen as outside of a particular religious context. It was meant to enhance the whole experience of a group of people, who would see the same image reflected in the architecture, dance, story-telling, mural painting and religious precepts of the society to which they belonged. Who will decide what we choose to become, the artists, the writers, the poets and singers who are sing in many voices so that all may hear, or the roar of the mob that destroys the individual spirit?
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16-Nov-07
Figurative art moves up on price chart
[November 16, 2007] ASHOKE NAG for The Economic Times
KOLKATA: Contemporary artists doing figurative paintings are showing a steady upward trend on the price front. This phenomenon is visible not only in major art hubs of the country like Mumbai and Delhi, but in developing markets such as Kolkata also. On an average, prices of figurative works in the contemporary category are multiplying by 50-100% every year. “Prices of figurative paintings by the contemporary generation of artists are rising both in auction and gallery circuits. The younger lot in this bracket are commanding tags between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 25 lakh. There are some artists in the front rung who are selling upwards of Rs 25 lakh and, in some instances, have also crossed a crore,” an art market source told ET. Amongst artists from major centres in the country who are swinging significantly tall prices in the auctions, are Sudhir Patwardhan, Nataraj Sharma, Sudarshan Shetty, Bose Krishnamachari, Gopi Krishna, TV Santosh, GR Iranna, Jagannath Panda, Riaz Komu, Justin Ponmany and Farhad Hussain. In the higher price points are names like Atul and Anju Dodiya, Subodh Gupta, Chintan Upadhyay and Chitrovanu Mazumdar.Kolkata has produced talented artists, too, who are working in this area of art. Some of the names who are sought after by buyers include Chandra Bhattacharjee, Prasenjit Sengupta, Sekhar Roy and Chhatrapati Datta. Barun Chowdhury and Sandip Daptari are also creating their own demand.
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12-Nov-07
30 yrs on, it’s a rags to riches story
[November 12, 2007] Upneet Pansare for The ExpressIndia.com
Sitting on an armchair, his eyes meet yours firmly. At first glance, you would pass it off as a life-sized photograph of the erstwhile business tycoon Aditya Birla, but a close look reveals that the intricate detailing on the face, hands, clothes and the moist eyes are all crafted with brush strokes. Known to be among India’s top portrait painters, 47-year-old artist Sudhir Katkar is flipping slowly through an album of every portrait he has done and reminisces about how Rajshri Birla herself came to his humble studio in Parel to take a look when this one was a work in progress. “I am proud of all my paintings. However the portrait of Aditya Birla is of special value to me. Even today, it adorns a wall of the Birla residence at Malabar Hill,” he says. Sudhir Katkar’s is a perfect rags to riches story. Born and brought up in Parel, he’d often sit in his tiny home under a peepal tree and dream of making it big. Since early childhood, Katkar was fascinated by cinema posters. To earn a living, he started to paint them as a young boy, then following that love for art with formal training in one of India’s most esteemed art schools, the JJ School of Arts.
Now, in a career spanning over 30 years, Katkar has painted almost 2,000 portraits. He has had an impressive clientele, including Rajiv Gandhi, Pranlal Bhogilal, Parmanand Patel, and Sultan Quboos Bin Said, the Sultan of Oman, among many others. “Most of my clients tell me that I bring life to all my paintings. Keen observation and years of experience have made me capable of doing so,” he says. Over the past few years, he has also taken up contemporary art with religious places, mother and child, nature and village life counting among his favourite themes. Travelling through Maharashtra, he derives inspiration from the local people and from local cultural forms. “As a child, I was deprived of motherly love. By nature I am quite lonely. These aspects are reflected in all my paintings,” he says.
While he considers contemporary artists MF Husain, Tyeb Mehta and Gopal Deuskar among many others as his sources of inspiration, he attributes his success to yoga too. “By regularly practising yogasanas, I am able to relieve my mind of all pressures and then paint,” he professes. An exhibition of his contemporary art paintings will be held at the Jehangir Art Gallery from November 12 to 18. He explains: “I believe a portrait is the most difficult form of painting. When you are accomplished in portraits you can paint almost anything in the world. Through my paintings at this exhibition, I will try to depict what life means to me.”
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08-Nov-07
The market now dictates the art
[November 8, 2007] Madhu Jain for DNA INDIA
A serpent has slithered into paradise, into the blossoming nouveau-world of artists. No, it’s not just that green-eyed monster — envy — and other deadly sins like greed. This well-camouflaged little creepy-crawly seems to have planted the seed of suspicion and paranoia in many artists. Just the other day one asked a painter — a close friend — if he could bring over a visiting European curator who may be interested in his work. Normally, artists don’t share ‘contacts’. Our generous friend got a shock when the painter told him that he should send the curator over, but not accompany him. He did not want the artist to see his new work. It hasn’t even been a year since the two friends drank endless cups of tea together, showed their work to each other, often talking late into whisky-fuelled nights about ideas and work.
Today, it seems, the drawbridges are drawn up. An increasing number of artists make their studios ‘no entry’ zones. The casual, just-dropping-in culture has evaporated, replaced by an increasingly secretive world that resembles the for-your-eyes-only habitat of spies. Perhaps it is the frenzy that is now making the world of contemporary Indian art spin like a carrousel on Speed. I am not talking about the prices that go up and down like a nervy stock market, but the insatiable demand for canvases from Indian artists. Each day sees a new art fair in some corner of the world.
Auction houses — for charity or otherwise — are in fourth gear; at this rate, poverty in our country should soon be shown the door. Galleries are popping up in the country like mobile phone kiosks; many of our desi gallerywallahs are opening shop in New York, London, Dubai and elsewhere, and NRI gallery owners are setting up stalls in New Delhi and Mumbai. International galleries have begun to fish in Indian waters for the Next Big Thing. So with the invasion of all these art dealers, gallerists, curators and art writers on the prowl like treasure-hunters, the heat is now on the artists to churn out works as if there were no tomorrow.
The hunt is now on beyond the usual suspects: ‘emergent artists’ is the key word. Who will discover the next Subodh Gupta who can break through the international barriers? No wonder the spirit of camaraderie, adda, and friendly competition has metamorphosed into one of deadly competition and suspicion. Many artists’ studios emulate assembly line productions — they could just as well be making cars or toys. Some big names hire younger artists and students to either complete their canvases (like fill in the blanks) or make variations of a painting they have done — like orchestra conductors wielding their brush-baton. Take a closer at some of the recent art exhibitions: most of the works have been done in the year 2007, at times all in a matter of a few months. Of course, this could be genius at work, or an exceptional period of creativity. But it is more likely, considering the quality of the work, the pressure to produce a large body or work that is unloading uninspiring and uninspired canvases on us.
The dictates of the market, or of the gallerists, have also led some of the artists to paint huge canvases, much larger than their usual trademark works. Seldom do these blown-out-of-proportion paintings live up to the promise of the earlier work of the artist concerned; more is often less.
When, I wonder, do artists get time to incubate their ideas? I suspect when an artist thinks he is on to a good idea, borrowed or original, he shrouds it in a veil of secrecy: in such times you can’t even trust your mother. So, alas, we have also come to the death of the adda. Where artists come and go, talking about, of course, Michelangelo, and where they got those tubes of Japanese red paint, or a particular handmade paper from Nepal, or even how to make a good fish curry. Today, conversations are more about the latest car bought, the merits of Basel-Basel over Basel Miami or their fave fashion designer.
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01-Nov-07
A 1994 photo of sculptor Somnath Hore. His pieces are characterized by stylized faces and the flattened planes for the body, instead of voluminous.
[November 1, 2007] Mehul Srivastava for The Wall Street Journal
The lack of formal cataloguing and standardized protocols for tracking the sales of artworks makes it difficult to ascertain if pieces sold today are truly masterpieces
New Delhi/Kolkata/Santiniketan: A current exhibition of 20 bronze sculptures at New Delhi’s Gallery Espace is believed to be the largest assembly of previously unseen work by Bengali artist Somnath Hore, and was heralded as unprecedented by many in the art world. Except, that is, by Hore’s family. A week after the opening of the show titled “Agony and Ecstasy”, the wife and daughter of Hore, who died last year at the age of 82, say that many, if not all, of the pieces are fakes. The original of at least one, said his daughter, is actually in her possession in Santiniketan, the university town and artistic centre of West Bengal.
“We are sure that the sculptures are not real,” said Chandana Hore, 41, an artist herself. She has not seen the exhibit but was sent a catalogue by a friend. “At least one of the pieces is definitely fake, because we have the original… Of the rest, three look familiar, but the rest are complete fabrications.” But the gallery said it is convinced of both the lineage and authenticity of the works, which it says are mostly from a private collection, were made in the 1980s and explore themes such as poverty, motherhood and survival. “We would not be showing them, documenting them in such a catalogue and putting them on view if we didn’t think they were,” said Arjun Sawhney, a spokesman for Renu Modi, owner of Espace (pronouned es-spas). “We are absolutely confident that (the works) are real. Mint asked two unrelated art experts for their opinion on the works at Espace—Neville Tulli, the chairman of Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art Pvt. Ltd, who has sold Hore’s work through his auction house, and Naveen Kishore, the Kolkata-based publisher of Seagull Books Pvt. Ltd, who was a friend of Hore’s and arranged a major exhibition in 1994 of 54 of Hore’s works—and both raised questions of authenticity after looking at pictures. They said they felt that at least some of the sculptures were fake—likely recast from the original wax models by someone familiar with Hore’s work. The conflict and uncertainty—it may be months before the question of authenticity is settled, if at all—underscores a critical problem in India’s booming art industry. His pieces are characterized by stylized faces and the flattened planes for the body, instead of voluminous After years of growth and skyrocketing prices, the lack of formal cataloguing, authentication and standardized protocols for tracking the sales of artworks makes it difficult—if not impossible—to ascertain if pieces sold today are truly masterpieces, or fakes.
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15-Feb-07
Size matters
February 15, 2007] Georgina Maddox for Mumbai Newsline
Vintage artists prove that old trees have strong roots
While their art works are almost always present at every auction, it is rare to see Tyeb Mehta, S H Raza and Laxman Shreshtha in the news in the span of a week. One can’t help but marvel at the fortitude of these veterans who can easily afford to rest on their laurels given that they have already achieved so much in life. We saw the reclusive Mehta step up to the dais on February 5 to receive the Roopdhar Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed by The Bombay Art Society at Jehangir Art Gallery. The 81-year-old Mehta is not a frequenter of art openings and parties since his ill health and reclusive nature tend to keep him at his Andheri studio-flat. However the veteran spends most of his time being read to by loving wife Sakina, and despite his failing sight, he continues to paint slow and steady on a few select canvases of Kali and Falling Figures. Shireen Gandhy, who has had a long association with Mehta first as a youngster when her father Kekoo befriended the artist and later as an adult, is a great admirer of the maestro. “Tyeb, with all his encumbrances, has actually changed his style to accommodate his weakening eyesight. He has scaled up his work and it takes tremendous courage to continue like that,” she says. For his part, the artist offers a modest, “I am very happy to receive this award,” refraining from grand speeches.
Similarly, Raza was lost for words when confronted with a retrospective of 30 years of his work at the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art. The 85-year-old painter looked around in awe and then speared his hands with a beatific smile. “It is not me who has painted these canvases but the one above, the great master who works through me. I am just his tool,” says the Paris-based painter who flew in for his own opening as well as the openings of younger painters. Surrounded by a bevy of women of different age groups, one of his lady companions turned out to an important and influential person, Sabrina Guiglionda, the president of the Autour du Chateau de Gorbio, Raza’s village in southern France. Plans are afoot to lay the foundation for an Indo-French cultural centre in memory of Raza’s late wife Mongillat and Guiglionda is Raza’s right arm in this venture. Even at 85, Raza is a busy man. Besides his solo and works that feature in the upcoming Christie’s auction, Raza has plans for a three-month-long exhibition this July in France. Laxman Shreshtha belongs to a younger generation but turning 70 did have his doctor saying, “You need to slow down”. Nevertheless he made his come back with an 8x17 feet commissioned triptych canvas unveiled by Ratan Tata at The Grand Hyatt. This was followed by a tie-up with jewellery maker Poonam Soni. Now look out for his solo show slotted to open at Pundole Art Gallery this March. “I have been working on the Black & White series for almost two years now. The idea was to do works on paper watercolours, charcoal and mixed media. Then I went to Bali about seven weeks ago and was inspired to measure out 8x11 canvas at Pundole. I worked secretly for five days,” says Shreshtha. “On the sixth day I dragged Sunita to my studio to show her my work. She was speechless. I was inspired to do two more canvases.”
Article Courtesy: Mumbai Newsline.
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04-Jan-07
Guess what’s the colour of 2007?
[January 04, 2007] Rituparna Som for DNA INDIA
Artist Sunil Padwal on how Mumbai can morph into a giant canvas for art
Wassup 2007
Sure contemporary Indian art became immensely popular in 2006, both in terms of investment and aesthetic value, but the primary preoccupation of art remains lack of space. And in a city like ours, it isn’t practical to think of art space when we don’t have space to live or breathe. However, because the interest is still growing, at least in a few classes of society, I would like the city to look at alternate viewing spaces for art within its infrastructure.
Look up
The city is choked with art if we just looked around and up. Victorian architecture flanked by skyscrapers and colourful chawls. If some effort was made at preservation, we’d have readymade canvasses. How about just whitewashing a couple of the old structures? However, this kind of aesthetic civic sense is the last thing on the mind of a third-world country.
Multi-task while travelling
Considering the average Mumbaiker spends a horribly large part of his life commuting, stations, hoardings and even train and bus tickets are perfect vehicles to expose people to art. It’s like cinema - the more you watch, the more discerning you get. Hoardings often lie blank - why not use it to promote an artist’s work along with social messages? Print a bit on the bus ticket. I remember on a train ride somewhere in eastern Europe - I noticed while passing through a tunnel that they had rigged up a motion sensitive video — it played out as you rushed past — it was sort of like watching a film on the go. It’s too early to implement it here, but perhaps instead of watching early morning ablutions of the city by the train tracks, a happy print might suffice.
Open space beware
The city has developed largely because of its visuals. Why not capitalise on it? I’m dreaming about performance based art at the open space of the gymkhanas on Marine Drive. Dare we imagine the bureaucracy allowing that?
Download overload
Mumbaikers love to flash their phone so why not reach them through that? Screen savers of prints of canvasses - send art as downloads. The avenues are wide and open for contemporary Indian art to be an integral part of the city. All she has to do is embrace them.
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02-Jan-07
To market, to market
[January 02, 2007] Geogina Maddox for EXPRESSINDIA.COM
Yes, there was a buzz about the money, now we’ll see a price correction.When the art market is doing well it shows.
This year saw the seven auction houses operating in India hitting new highs. Atul Dodiya, Jogen Chowdhury and Surendran Nair touched the Rs 1 crore mark, while Tyeb Mehta, F N Souza and S H Raza crossed it with Rs 5.5 crore, Rs 5 crore and Rs 4 crore, respectively. Eight new galleries opened in Mumbai, while three new art investment funds announced their support.The spurt in market growth is a welcome one; everyone from Ranjit Hoskote to Vikram Sethi believes 2007 will be the great leveller. Bottom line: prices will get corrected and settle at a reasonable level. In the meantime artists are laughing all the way to the bank, basking in the kind of glory that comes with it: swanky studios, bigger cars, assistants, a frequent-flyer status and of course regular appearances on Page Three. While everyone—from the Dodiyas to the Kallats and the Upadhyays to the Padwals is quite pleased about “Indian art finally getting its international due”, both artists and dealers know it’s dangerous for the market to grow in such spurts.
Yes, there is a buzz surrounding art. “Indian art is fetching international prices,” says critic Ranjit Hoskote. “It indicates to the world that India has enough capital in the art market and that is not a bad thing in the short run.” However, he cautions that obsession with prices is drawing attention away from art that needs to sustain “an art world rather than just an art market.”Some sceptics, like gallery owner Ranjana Steinruecke, believe “artists are too busy zipping around the world” and the quiet time they need in their studio has been abandoned all too soon. Consequently, their work is no longer enhanced “with experimentation and thought”.“Senior painters like myself are getting their due. But it is the younger generation who will have to fight for their place in the sun,” warns Akbar Padamsee. “These days, art is more about packaging. Mediocre artists get more attention because they are media savvy, they know the party circuit and have expensive catalogues. But this doesn’t always translate into good art.”
Consultant Mallika Sagar-Advani and artist Jitish Kallat, however, believe that buyers are becoming more discerning. “With seven auctions happening simultaneously in September, collectors have had a wide choice to pick from. Besides, it’s basic law of economics, competition leads to a leveling of prices,” adds Sagar-Advani. Steinruecke believes the buying frenzy was a result of the way in which the market developed in 2006. “The enjoyment of art is being ignored,” she says. For, art needs growth in knowledge and infrastructure. “Galleries aren’t enough, we need more grants, art foundations, printmaking studios and educational support that moves beyond the existing academic art schools,” she adds.
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