The new decade may well belong to ‘modern art’

The modern art seems to be in focus, luring both investors and speculators to it. The trend should be checked from a broader perspective, as proclaimed by art expert Kishore Singh in a recent article. As he states, it can be safely stated that the art market was over-heated not because of the higher prices paid to a rare quality works but because the vast contemporary market.

This is largely because ‘modern art’ has had a short history in the country. So there are not many of Raja Ravi Varma's co-painters, or Amrita Sher-Gil's contemporaries that we can think of? Because ‘studios’ then hired artists to paint in the style that was in fashion an demand at that time. Works by several talented artists were clustered in an ambiguous ‘Anonymous’ category. Almost no detailed research has been done to identify who they were.

We’ve seen more artworks by more artists since the forties. However, the numbers have still been low as compared to Western countries since there were fewer patrons. Perhaps the ‘modern school’ didn’t appeal to those fed on a tradition seeped in more sentimental aesthetics. As a result, they hardly received any recognition. The art expert elaborates:

“A number of artists who worked through the fifties, sixties and seventies would have remained for all purposes unknown, had not the heady pursuit of scarce artworks and a booming art market in the last decade led to their resurrection from a state of near-anonymity.”

In the context of today’s art market scenario, the fact remains that the Indian art market is grossly undervalued. When it fell from Rs 15 billion mark in 2008 to just about Rs 8-9 billion, the signals it gave were not only about the ‘low’ value tag of Indian artists but also about the lack of good art in the market. The art expert reasons that this is in part owing to what we term ‘modern art’. It is works of such ‘rare’ quality that will do for prices in the coming decade something that investors concerned with short-term swings should not overlook.