Indian art lovers' globalized tastes and a thriving market

Just as the prolonged economic boom in China has contributed to globalized tastes and a major art scene in recent decades, India is now experiencing its own, relatively modest version of that phenomenon. For example, many newly moneyed visitors were clearly curious about their options at the AIS 2011. They were also buying, across a wide spectrum of prices. A recent news report in The New York Times mentioned dealers reporting brisk sales of contemporary Indian works for as much as $400,000…

The vogue for art buying was strong enough by this year’s Art Summit to attract galleries from 19 countries outside India, and the expanded fair also drew representatives from a handful of foreign museums like the Tate Modern, interested at the very least in the “spectacle and schmoozathon,” as one local dealer put it.

And in a scene reminiscent of “satellite” events held around more established art fairs, Feroze Gujral, a well-known socialite, invited four artists to put up an installation in a gutted villa that her family had acquired in the city’s most exclusive neighborhood. Then she staged a party. Still, the summit faced its share of typically Indian challenges. Thugs threatened the exhibition of India’s most famous painter, M.F. Husain; the Hindu right has for years railed against Mr. Husain for his representations of Hindu goddesses in the nude.

Among those who came to view Mr. Husain’s paintings was India’s most powerful politician, Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress Party, and her visit too proved a headache. Inconveniently for the art-viewing public, she came toward the end of the last day of the fair. The police closed the gates, effectively shutting down the fair earlier than scheduled, leaving dealers and would-be Art Summit visitors angry. And Mr. Husain himself did not attend. Out of fear, he lives in self-imposed exile in Dubai and London.