Tracing the growth trajectory of Indian art

When the HBS analyst Mukti Khaire first wrote a case study on an Indian start-up for online auctions of modern Indian art, she realized an interesting story of market creation was at play. Elaborating on the concept, she states in an interview to the HBS Working Knowledge:

“The case was particularly relevant to the study of market creation owing to three reasons. First, the art itself (the ‘product’ so to speak) was produced since the late 1940s in India although it had not been systematically traded in a sustained manner in international art markets until the early 1990s, which indicated that a market for the art had had to be actively created. Supply alone did not generate demand.

“Second, this was a case in which actors other than the producers (i.e., the artists) interpreted the product to explain and construct its value to consumers, allowing us to examine the entire ecosystem of players important in creating expectations about a new market category. Third, the processes of reinterpretation and value construction are particularly explicit and overt in the art world, where critics and reviewers etc engage in public discourse that compares works and discusses the attributes underlying their relative value.”

She along with Daniel Wadhwani tries to follow the growth trajectory of Indian art. Until the early 1990s, it was largely characterized as ‘decorative’ in international art circles. Since it was identified with that category, its value remained low. It was after 1995 that Indian art was classified as modernist and therefore ‘fine art’. It was then accepted as having more aesthetic and economic value than ascribed earlier.

Several prominent auction houses translated the changing academic discourse into fathomable constructs, enabling a larger group of participants and lay consumers to follow finer points of modern Indian art. As the understanding of modern Indian art spread, its value automatically increased.

This resulted in a greater media coverage, which naturally expanded the circle of interested stakeholders that converged on the better understanding of modern Indian art.
Despite the recent correction, the positive upswing is expected to continue. The momentum clearly suggests a sustainable rally.