Abhay Sardesai: ART India's last issue on the Market was in 2003. Since then, a lot of water has flown under the bridge. How much of the 'art boom' is a rumour and how much is a fact?

 

 

 

Mallika Advani: I think it is a bit of both. You can see very tangible signs both in India and abroad that reveal just how much the market has grown over the last six years - the increase in the number of Indian and non-Indian collectors, for example.

In 2003, you saw new price records being set and auctions gaining visibility. The minute price points hit six figures you get an increase in interest, regardless of the artist or the work. In the past five years, the number of auction houses, galleries and art fairs has grown, as has the number of Indian artists participating in international events. Some things, though, have not taken off - like infrastructure and the quality of journalism. Also, there is no real presence of art in public spaces and institutions.

 

Abhay Sardesai: Geetha, do you think the number of gallerists not quite transparent in their dealings has also increased?

 

Geetha Mehra: The art market is not as huge as people make it out to be and that's why you don't have accurate facts and figures. It is not that people are hiding figures; it is just that they are not to be found easily in the public domain - mainly because of the limited number of transactions.

 

 

Abhay Maskara: I think the market has sky-rocketed. Galleries and artists are playing 'catch up'. Right now, we have fifteen people from MoMA visting us; recently, we had 18 curators from Europe. Suddenly, India is the flavour of the year, maybe of the decade! It is the next big thing after China.

 

 

Abhay Sardesai: Surely, the tom-tomming is getting fainter and the excitement is petering out a little?

Abhay Maskara: Not completely. But what is perturbing is the phenomenon of proxy buying. Who has the time to do research? Collectors and curators fly in for two days to meet a few gallerists and the few artists they have seen in biennales or in auction catalogues. Auction catalogues read like a roster of select names. These acts lead to lazy proxy buying. The whole issue of fakes comes up because of proxy buying. Some people are after signatures - they do not have a trained eye, they see works printed in catalogues and believe that they are authentic. Unfortunately, the regulations in India are such that anyone can set up an auction house and be part of a legitimizing process - anybody can take a work, put it in an auction and create artificial benchmarks.

Zehra Jumabhoy: Can we talk about how the market is manipulated? What are the loopholes?

 

 

 

 

Geetha Mehra: The onus is on the public. If you are willing to get manipulated, you will be manipulated. That is how advertising works. Why do we need to separate art from any other commodity? If you are willing to be conned, well, I am going to con you.

(General Laughter)

Mallika Advani: Yes, why should anyone buy blindly? If you go to a gallery you should do the research.

Geetha Mehra: Everyone is following brands. Why don't buyers have the confidence to make their own decisions? Look at what is happening to works by Riyas Komu - he has been around for ages, so why is everyone suddenly scrambling for his works?

Vishwas Kulkarni: It's only a money game.

 

 

 

 

Geetha Mehra: It's not a money game. It's lack of confidence. A true collector will go out there and make his own judgments and won't care if someone else owns the same artist.

Vishwas Kulkarni: But, aren't you assuming that only the collector who knows his art is a true collector? Today, with the market booming, there are collectors who think that art is a good investment and that a gallery is the right place to go to buy it. What game which gallery is playing, nobody knows.

Jai Danani: This goes back to Abhay's question about the boom. Many people feel that there is this huge cultural Zeitgeist happening in the country right now - this is far from the truth. We are passing off a lot of mediocre stuff as high quality art because more people have resources to invest in art. We think that since artists have so many travelling shows, they must have the capacity to create good art. The international art world feels that India has this huge group of intellectual artists working together and making cutting-edge art. I don't think this is the case at all.

Mallika Advani: Unfortunately, we find that our artists are considered good once the West has given them a stamp of approval. Most new buyers find it difficult to make independent decisions, unlike some of our early collectors of Contemporary art, who bought artists like Subodh Gupta before they were selling for huge sums. You need to buy the artists that you believe in not because they are showing at Art Basel or the Frieze Art Fair. After all, Western audiences come with their own baggage and preconceptions of what Indian art is all about.

Jai Danani: Well, actually, the rise in Indian art prices took place in India before the West got involved. Or, at least, Indian buyers caused it, though many of them were NRIs.

Mallika Advani: A story has to be 'built' locally before it can be taken abroad. My point is that some of the story is real, and some of it isn't.

Abhay Sardesai: Don't you feel that the pressure the market exerts on the artist - locally and internationally - has led to new patterns of overproduction? One has seen severe compromises - galleries have put up execrable stuff and the shows have been sell-outs. With investment for the sake of investment gaining the upper hand, do you find that the profile of the collector has changed?

Abhay Maskara: Yes, absolutely!

Ashok Sukumaran: As an artist who has usually worked outside the market, but is now more involved with it, I would like to know if the boom has changed the profile of the institutions which are interested in art.

 

 

Jai Danani: I think people who may not have walked into a gallery before are doing so now. People are willing to be exposed to art. Being an artist is an economically viable option. But we need time before institutions develop.

Abhay Sardesai: But look at the lacunae - there are few good pedagogical institutions and art historians around. There is no forum for honest criticism apart from ART India and a few other magazines, and many critics are happy writing catalogues for ill-conceived and badly mounted shows.

Vishwas Kulkarni: The 'revolution' is economic not ideological. So, it's not going to lead to great colleges.

Geetha Mehra: But it might! After all, Jai, why did you think of setting up a storage space? It performs a function that makes economic sense. But - in a way - so does a college. If there are people who want to study medicine, for example, it is viable to teach it. The same goes for art.

Ashok Sukumaran: What I would like to ask is: are there any concrete examples where the art market has helped set up a viable institution?

Abhay Maskara: Well, artists do have bigger studios now and do more ambitious projects. More people can now earn their livelihood as art writers and gallery operators.

Zehra Jumabhoy: Isn't a part of the problem the fact that we have no clear boundaries between collectors, dealers and gallerists? Where does this leave the notion of transparency?

Dinesh Vazirani: In the last few years, there has been a slowdown in the market for the Modern masters. This is a big change. When you had a boom, like in 2005, you had speculators buying works on a short-term basis. But now, the profile of the buyer has changed. I see very few people who want to buy Modern paintings as investments and lots more who want to buy them to add to their collections. I think the market is changing dramatically for the better. There are two people in Delhi who are setting up private institutions and some more in Bombay.

Geetha Mehra: I feel people don't have the patience to fund experimental stuff by Contemporary artists. There used to be a lot more edgy art - now everything is geared for consumption.

Dinesh Vazirani: Is that because Contemporary artists can see what has happened to the Moderns and feel that there is only a brief period of time in which they can do the things they want to do?

Mallika Advani: We can only hope that the correction that has happened with the market for the Moderns will happen with the one for the Contemporaries. There will then be some semblance of normalcy and logic. Contemporary Indian artists, though, attract more non-Indian buyers than the Moderns ever did.

Abhay Maskara: With a contemporary work, it is impossible to tell where the artist is from, whereas the Modern masters were more contextual and inward-looking. The concerns of the Contemporary artists are more international.

Vishwas Kulkarni: That's not true! It's just that Contemporary artists are travelling more and imitating other people's styles.

Abhay Sardesai: I do not entirely agree. I think one reason why some artists become international superstars and some others do not scale the same heights in spite of being equally talented is the interesting circuitry between three axial positions - the 'authentic' local, the exotic Indian and the international contemporary - that these artists explore and project through their spectacular work with ingeniousness. Look at someone like Subodh Gupta, for instance. And this is not to take away from the brilliance of his work.

Zehra Jumabhoy: Yes, I think it is very telling that one of the first major international shows that Gupta was included in was Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourist's Eye at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2005. Of course, this wasn't the point of the show, but I do think that Contemporary art exhibitions operate like high-end tourist venues.

Dinesh Vazirani: Well, whatever the reason, we all agree that the judgments about Contemporary Indian art today are being made outside India. They are based on what non-Indian collectors are collecting.

Geetha Mehra: Yes, I guess these are guys who have so much of everything that they need to take risks. They aren't going to get into their Ferraris and drive off a cliff, so buying Asian art keeps them amused.

Until a few years ago, we were not comfortable in our own skins. And then the economic boom happened and, suddenly, we all thought, "Well, I'm Indian and I'm proud to be Indian and to do things that are Indian." So, it is no longer an issue if Subodh Gupta doesn't speak Convent English. Everyone is quite happy that he doesn't. We are therefore no longer West-centric. I think this has even liberated someone like Atul Dodiya to go back to working within a context he is most comfortable with.

Ashok Sukumaran: I find it really interesting that everyone in this room is talking as if all these changes are just happening to us. But, for me, the people in this room are the ones who are shaping the art market. So, I want to ask: what do you want to do with it?

Zehra Jumabhoy: Actually, Ashok, are you a non-commercial artist? You've talked about how your art is available to the public and about the fact that a lot more documentation of contemporary video work by Indian artists should be available for free online. But aren't you having a commercial show at Thomas Erben Gallery in New York soon?

Ashok Sukumaran: Yes. But, I don't see the relationship between commercial and non-commercial art as a binary, unlike some people - as if I can be called a 'non-commercial artist', while others are 'commercial artists'. Every bone in their body need not be a commercial one. This is a fake binary. At the gallery, I am showing the documentation of a public art project which would otherwise have disappeared. So, they are remnants, which, in some sense, are only valuable to collectors. Because of the Internet - this might be a bit difficult for you to understand - a version of the video is also available online in a slightly different format so anyone can access the work. But for some people who might want a fetish object, the official version of these works can be bought as a limited edition DVD. And I see no contradiction in the agenda of making this work publicly accessible while having certain versions available to the art market in order to fund other non-commercial work. It's all pretty clear. I think there is going to be a shift as far as interest in artists who work outside the commercial gallery space is concerned - they too will start becoming exciting to collectors.

Dinesh Vazirani: Yes, I think collectors' mindsets have changed dramatically. They want to experiment and see new things. When we talk about non-Indian collectors wanting to buy innovative art, we have to remember that Indian collectors have been supporting the market for decades. Of course, it is difficult for Indian collectors because there are space constraints in the cities we live in, and until we have institutional outlets, it is tough for them. But, things are changing. In five years, there should be about ten such institutions in India. People are talking seriously about building them, so I know that things will be different soon.

Geetha Mehra: I think, in this country, all initiatives rely on private funding. We expect nothing from the government.

Abhay Sardesai: But do you feel that the movement of the market affects the imagination of the artist? Does it make him/her dream big?

Mallika Advani: Yes, I think we have seen that. And sometimes this has positive results and sometimes it doesn't. Some people thrive in a bigger space and some don't. Jagannath Panda is doing some great work today. But that doesn't mean that everything he has ever done has been fantastic. So, ultimately, you can't buy a work because of the signature. That's where education comes in and that's where the role of the gallerist comes in. You can't just wake up one day from being a housewife and say you want to own a gallery.

Abhay Sardesai: But isn't that happening?