A positive turn in sentiment for the modern Indian art market

The combined auction sales for Indian art raised a good $15.2 million (roughly Rs 69.3 crore) in March 2010, pointing to a rise in buyers’ confidence level. Sales of leading world auction house Sotheby’s well illustrate this: Its auction of Indian & Southeast Asian art in NY logged more than $8 million, whereas its auctions in March and September 2009 had realized just about $3.32 million and $3.75 million, respectively.

The all-important Indian Art Market Confidence Indicator (comprising both modern & contemporary art) monitored by ArtTactic shot up 26% to 62 now from 49 in October 2009.; This implies that there is far more positive than depressingly negative sentiment for the first time in last six months in the Indian art market. The 50 mark suggests that there are an equal number of negative and positive responses on the short term outlook for the art market.

A highlight of the report is the widening gap in confidence between the contemporary and modern Indian art market. The Modern Confidence Indicator for Indian art is almost 51% higher than the equivalent contemporary art confidence indicator. The analysis reasons that the reasonably established nature of the modern market has created a serene sense of ‘safe haven’ for a section of buyers, leading to its expansion.

At the onset of the art market downturn globally in late 2008, the modern art market of India saw a drop in confidence. But compared with most other emerging markets, the fall was rather modest. The new survey notes that more than 70% of the people surveyed believe that art prices have now stopped dropping in the modern art market of Indian.

This is a significant positive turn in public sentiment from the previous reading in October 2009. Then 61% of respondents felt the modern Indian art market would encounter further downward heat on prices. Anders Petterson, ArtTactic managing director made special mention of a ‘significant pick-up in subscribers during the last one year’.

Indian art auction market rebounds sharply

A clear rebound in the modern Indian art market seems to have brought back speculators into the fray. Valuations are rising and so the activity in the market, according to a report by ArtTactic

The London-based art market research and analysis company surveys several key players in the market. According to it, the perception of speculative element is on the rise again after a sharp drop in the first half of 2009, when the art market hit an all-time low. Their Speculation Barometer for Modern Indian Art denotes a significant 28% rise since October 2009. It’s now perched at 6.3, up from mere 4.9. This is probably the highest reading since the firm began its survey in 2007.

The speculation barometer measured on a scale of 1-10, indicates how market players view and perceive the speculation level in the market. In its measurement, 1 stands for the lowest level of speculation and 10 denotes very high level of speculation. Respondents are concerned that market might enter another bubble if it rebounds too quickly and too sharply, owing to speculative buying, the new report mentions. Anindita Ghose of The Mint quotes Arvind Vijaymohan of Japa Arts, Indian arts advisory, as saying:

”It would be fair to assume that in a young market such as India, where appreciation for art is not engrained at a formative level, speculation is bound to be a key driver. In my reading of the Indian context, most collectors who entered the market over the last five-seven years were keen speculators. In the current situation, there exists a section of speculators who consider this the perfect time to enter the market, and acquire works of modern Indian art at low values. Some prominent players are on standby to acquire.”

Importantly, liquidity in the art auction market has been greatly boosted after getting deflated and hitting bottom in 2009.

'Indian art collectors have become wiser.'

The CEO & co-founder of leading art auction house Saffronart, Dinesh Vazirani, is looking to chart new grounds and to break new territories. Marking a decade long stint of the top auction house is a significant tie-up with real estate service firm Cushman & Wakefield, there will be a proposed offering of premium residential as well as holiday properties in leading cities of India.

The Harvard management graduate spoke to Garima Pant of The Financial Express on the revival of the art market. He shared his views on the fast-changing profile of new-age collector. According to him, the art market in India has remarkably recovered. He believes it’s one notch ahead of where it happened to be prior to the financial crisis that hit the global markets.

He added: “The art market should reach its peak this year itself. It’s the old timers proving their mettle and collectors are going in for modernists such as Raza, for whom the market level has come up,” he observes. “There has been a marked incremental growth for top contemporary artists as well. Sharing his perspective for the market this year, he stated:

“The markets have matured and so have the buyers. The Indian market has gone up very sharply with a number of collectors coming in. They are looking for the best quality and have become wiser. And, with a wide range of information and knowledge available, buyers and collectors have become more informed. Indian economy is doing well and India has managed to survive the global crisis pretty well. "

There were people wanting to come in to buy before 2008, but the price rose too sharply then. So they want to come in now and see if they can get premium values on their choice of artworks. The focus and interest of the buyers and collectors is bent towards the masters. The older generation of artists has got critical acclaim, making them more popular among art lovers. The contemporary artists, with their global appeal, focus more on the global market.

Commenting on the changed profile of collectors, he said that with a much better access to knowledge about various works and genres of art, they are now better informed and equipped.

An exhibition of select works by Gieve Patel

A new exhibition of drawings, paintings and sculptures by Gieve Patel cover a span of about thirty years, from the nineteen seventies to the turn of the century. It spans an array of themes, though the content remains deeply human throughout.

A self-taught artist dedicated to multiple professions, Gieve Patel has imaged a sensitive and acute awareness of the human condition throughout a 40-year painting practice. Sourcing inspiration from the quietude of nature and the pulse of the city, his work articulates a mature, restrained balance between figuration rooted in realistic naturalism and the freedom of painterly abstraction.

Along with three books of verse and three plays, he has written extensively about contemporary Indian art and, until recently was also a practicing physician. In an accompanying note to his latest exhibition at Mumbai's Gallery Chemould, critic Kamala Kapoor notes:

“Gieve Patel has long drawn and painted the ordinary, in terms of the everyday, and also the extraordinary, in terms of deprivation and dispossession in a way that draws these features out, in a way that might never have been particularly noticed before they came to be on the artist's paper and canvas.

"That the 'action' inevitably side-steps despair, is among the many strengths of the artist's works where, instead and exploitation of emotional consequence, the protagonists with their calculated awkwardness of figures, often go on to acquire a strange dignity along with a retrieval of lost humanitarian significance and a sense of social and spiritual identity."

If one responds fully to the work, one can recognize the artist's commitment free of trend or compromise. Here the work has no middle ground that can lean this way or that, and where his art has been for him a means of probing reality, nature and human experience, much of it refracted through a belief, a conviction, a world view.

‘The Game’ by Ravi Kashi

The protagonists of his recent works on view at Sumukha (Bangalore; Chennai) and Pundole are the Buddha, the body and the chest of drawers – all assembled to form ‘The Game’. Each of them serves him as a screen for the self’s disquietudes: a figure of contestation between carnality and transcendence, between archived sensations and unsettling revelations.

‘The Game’ originates in the artist’s delight in arranging objects to provoke spontaneous auguries. Interestingly, he started photographing the different arrangements, which ultimately became a serious art project. He reveals, “I’ve been collecting objects that seemed interesting, but without any design. Suddenly unexpected meanings started emerging from the juxtaposition.

"This naturally led to a process of exploration and expansion of the association of meanings. It’s not to say there was no pattern to the whole thing: the arrangements were planned to some extent but as the shooting proceeded, fresh ideas emerged, new associations popped up.”

This whole process can also probably be termed ‘Photo-performance’ in the sense that it presents itself as a photo documentation of continuously changing installations that happen in the studio space. Apart from his two suites of photographs, ‘Engaging Buddha’ and ‘Meeting in Darkness’, Ravi Kashi presents a timed video sequence, ‘Chest of Secrets’ that gradually discloses the pattern of secret obsessions lying beneath the surface routines of normality.

A curatorial note by Ranjit Hoskote explains how through the objects arranged in ‘Engaging Buddha’ in variable tableaux around a Buddha head, the artist extracts and performs the tensions between time and eternity, the ladder to heaven and the feast of sensuous pleasure, the self as animal nature and the self blindfolded against the world’s blandishments.

‘Safe to Light’ by Riyas Komu

‘Safe to Light’ by Riyas Komu underlines the importance of the ordinary to restore the organic stability of the countries constantly facing the looming threat of terror.

As suggested in its title, the installation questions the notion of exchange – and also as what has made it safe and why it’s safe for it to light now, something quite pertinent in terms of the way drinking water itself has become a politicized topic and also in terms of territorial control, particularly in the Middle-East region.

His ‘Blood Brothers’, casted in aluminum, is a large work that has 196 pieces in it. Straddling both sculpture and a drawing, it refers to internal conflicts, among the most complex issues to fathom and resolve in this region. His painting ‘Haleema’ is a strong argument for the precious freedom of speech.

In fact, the artist has been greatly influenced by the subject of freedom. ‘The Petro Angel’, as mentioned above, is inspired by Jaffer Panahi’s film ‘Circle’ that amplifies the plight of hapless women in Tehran. The filmmaker’s ‘Panahi’ has also influenced and inspired a work, titled ‘Offside’. It deals with the popular game of football, revolving around five young girls, whereas ‘Fragrance of a Funeral’ touches upon the ceremonial rituals that follow death. A curatorial note explains:

“Based on the impression of a table surface, it holds a similar potential for its reading as a setting for discussions, of a place to hover around. It relies on the dip of the table remains without a set of its front legs, thus bowing like a camel sipping from a pond. The work, a cross between a table and a funeral pyre or even a forensic table, has multiple meanings.”

Curator Shaheen Merali underlines the fact that ‘Safe to Light’ is a set of reminiscences of fear and omission, the work is a weapon, an ode to weapons and castration, in reproducing the existing orders in fascinating twists.

Inspiration from Iran for art

Artist Riyas Komu has been using current political scenarios that center around Iran as a source of inspiration for his recent series.

Elaborating on his artistic inspiration, he reveals in an interview: “I happen to watch a lot of Iranian cinema. A film about the suppression faced by females there deeply impacted me. But the same chauvinistic tendencies can be witnessed and similar agony can be experienced in any part of the globe. Terror, war, chaos, chauvinism, and exploitation cut across regions and races. When I depict them in my work, I am sharing these things at a universal level.”

His new set of works, after having been unveiled to art lovers in Tehran, will be showcased in Mumbai later this year. It comprises sculptures that are truly monumental in scale. Also noteworthy for the usage of carved wood, they tend to stray between a curiously mystical place of gothic pedagogy where signs and power cause a heady mix, apparently suggestive of knowledge in a fixed monumental strait, and certain plays with the effects of a raging realm in the 20th and 21st century.

Uma Nair mentions in a review essay how ferment of war and its catharsis provides the artist with his subjects. The renowned critic notes: “The artist in him is always questioning. He plays the observer as well as the participant often mulling on the elegiac, the elusive and the emblematic to make sure that his aesthetic scheme delivers.

”What then ensues is a resonant requiem, as one tries to explore the incisive thought, which goes into the creation of each artwork. Installations in his psyche have been invariably molded more in the legion of the epitaph.” It fulfills two motives. Grievous faults and events are elucidated artistically, and so also one’s contemporary experience of them.”