Aftereffects of financial crisis gradually receding

After a recent roller-coaster ride, India’s turbulent art market now seems to be on stable ground, a recent elaborate write-up in The Wall Street Journal by by Margherita Stancati and Shefali Anand points out.

Based on a series of interviews, field visits at the recent Indian Art Fair and research, the writer duo has made several observations about the current art market scenario as far Indian art marketplace - Modern Art, Contemporary Art, and Photography is concerned.

Here’s a quick look at how different categories of art are performing as explained by the two:

• Prices of contemporary and modern Indian art started soaring around a decade ago, setting the industry wheels in motion in 2007-08. Later, the financial downturn hit art markets world-wide and India’s wasn’t spared. In that period, prices of Indian art fell by more than half.
  
  
• This took a toll on several art funds that had been set up a few years earlier. When Osian’s, a Mumbai-based auction house, launched its art fund in 2006, it attracted the interest of many investors. But by the summer of 2009, when the fund was due to pay its 656 investors their returns, it didn’t have the money to pay them back fully.
  
  
• While recent sales patterns at auctions, art fairs and galleries suggest the market is showing some signs of recovery, few expect it to go back to pre-2008 levels.
  
  
• Widely seen as a status symbol, the works of this older generation of painters – associated with the Modern Art category - have often broken the $1-million barrier, something that happens less frequently with works by contemporary Indian artists.
  
  
• The financial crisis left this market relatively unscathed. Kishore Singh of the Delhi Art Gallery has been quoted as saying: “Because we work with modern masters our market not only is not being impacted but we are doing very soundly.”