Broader trends in global art market

The post-War & contemporary art markets sure are red hot. Contemporary art sales have grown to about $6 billion last year from $850 million a decade ago in total value. According to artnet, this noteworthy development needs to be juxtaposed with a gradual fall in modern, impressionist & old masters’ prices.

Another key trend is emergence of South-East Asian art and China’s uninterrupted rise as a global art powerhouse. Chinese buyers are more focused on their own artists. What this means is that they don’t create a huge effect on Western favorites like pop art and abstract impressionism.

In the last week of May, Evening Sale conducted by Christie's of Asian 20th Century & Contemporary Art in Hong Kong totaled $53,736,025, selling in excess of 90 percent by lot and 91 percent by value. It saw four new world auction records getting established: Singaporean artist Georgette Chen’s ‘Still Life with Tropical Fruits’ going for $656,565; ‘Nudes on Horseback’ Yun Gee (Zhu Yuanzhi) fetching $ 1,480,185, ‘PixCell-Coyote#3’ by Japan’s Kohei Nawa receiving $361,305 and ‘La marchande de riz’ (The Rice Seller) by Vietnam’s Nguyen Phan Chanh drawing $392,385.

Part of the several trillion US dollars released thanks to Federal Reserve chairman’s Ben S. Bernanke continuing stimulus packages apart from trillions more in other top currencies printed by central banks across the globe have trickled into the art market, to prop it up. Suzanne Gyorgy, the Citi Art Advisory (Citigroup’s private bank service) head, states, “For many people art is an interesting alternative investment. It’s seen as a hedge against inflation and a safe haven in the high end of the market.”

The trend is very much clear! Increasingly, the wealthy are pumping their capital into luxury investments seen more as alternatives. A recent Forbes new report reveals that Steve Cohen, a hedge fund hotshot, paid more than $150 million (a record price according to market observers) for a Pablo Picasso piece earlier owned by billionaire Steve Wynn.

An artist driven by history, culture and contemporary sensibilities

Celebrated artist Atul Dodiya has created a niche for himself not just in India but internationally. The history and culture of his home country plays a significant role in constructing the barrage of images that inform his oeuvre. Launching his career with a rather straightforward and cleverly deadpan realist approach, he switched to the fragmented and multi-layered approach from the literal one in the mid-90s.

Conscious of history, his rich oeuvre reflects his deep knowledge about immediate surroundings, current events and ancient religious traditions. He often quotes from the recesses of Indian as well as Western art traditions. Even his potent pictorial language can be attributed to his to adoption and usage of the vocabulary of Western contemporary art. Driven by intellect, intensity and ideas, he continues to experiment with many forms.

According to him, ‘I’ve always tried to retain that student phase in Sir J.J. School of Art when seeing a new form or new medium greatly excited us about its possibilities.’ Even as he strives to bring contemporary Indian art into a closer, deeper embrace with Western Post-Modernist art, Atul Dodiya also looks to the former closer to its fundamental roots, through re-adjustment, and reproaches to mythological and cultural figure. Some of his recent shutter paintings at Art Basel 2010 courtesy Chemould Prescott Road respond to iconic paintings from the 1970s by late Bhupen Khakhar, called ‘trade series’, depicting middle-class figures from a wide range of professions.

The talented and socially sensitive artist’s canvases allude to everything - from the eccentric everyday India to high art elements from all over. They embrace issues ranging from exuberant Indian economy to the garish kitsch and disturbing disquiet of daily life. Indian cataclysms have shaped his work and so the explicitly political concerns without, descending into social realism. The striking imagery has invariably been packed with a stirring swirl of motifs: Bollywood, film stars, political icons, Hindu mythology characters, and so on.

Hemali Bhuta evolves her core concerns in a new solo

Hemali Bhuta’s second solo at Mumbai-based Project88 finds its inspiration much closer to home. During her time away, her yearning for the simplicities of domestic life in India inspired a beguiling body of work, which exalts ordinary fringe details into something sublime and shines light upon ideas of non-duality.

While the artworks in her latest exhibition, as a write-up by Diana Campbell reveals, relate to minimalism and line drawing and aesthetically connect to high art practices, they also pay homage to forms that are often ignored or overlooked—the most mundane parts of daily life and ritual surrounding middle-class life in India.

“Through her sensitive renderings of the forms that separate structures, such as columns which separate floor from ceiling, skirting which separates wall from floor, cornices which separate ceiling from wall, and even faux-flooring which separates the floor surface from the ground, she transforms the gallery into a shrine, a meditative space to contemplate the meaning of these small interventions toward beauty in daily life,” the release further states. She points that a ‘shift of a line’ through folding or displacing it ‘doesn’t delete the line but on the contrary adds another.’

The artist essentially draws on her own experiences, memories and understanding of various elements to create her works; they articulate issues of belonging, security, individuality and change. She aims to investigate the transitory spaces of restlessness between these issues and also to find a way to overcome them.

Hemali Bhuta has participated in several group shows including ‘Tracing Reality’, Gallery Kashya Hildebrand, Zurich,2010; ‘Ballard Estate’, Religare arts initiative, Delhi, 2010; ‘Revisioning Materiality Part II’, Gallery Espace, Delhi, 2009; ‘Moment as Monument’, at Tranvancore Gallery; ‘Video Wednesdays’ at Gallery Espace, Delhi (2008-09).

She has been selected for an exchange program (2009- 2010) at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. In 2009, she also received the FICA Emerging Artist Award, Delhi and a residency at the Montalvo arts centre, California. She is also a finalist for the Rolex Mentor Protégé Program under Anish Kapoor.

Life and art of a celebrated artist of her era

One of the most critically acclaimed and prolific artists of her generation, B.Prabha worked mainly in oil, her each canvas usually executed in a single dominant color. Her early works were modern, freely rendered paintings. Gradually, she started experimenting and soon developed what was to be recognized as her signature style. Her subject matter encompassed a wide array of concerns that she harbored, while observing the life and people around.

In the graceful forms of her female figures, the artist intensely examined their inner world, sufferings and courage. Her work was not merely a portrayal of the female forms; it brought their suppressed sentiments to the fore. It was not just coincidental that her inspiration as an artist was Amrita Shergil.

‘B. Prabha - From the Album’, a selection of works by the late artist, was on display at The Viewing Room, Mumbai, earlier this year. Charting out her career, an accompanying note mentioned: "On her canvases, she immortalized the fisherwomen of Mumbai.B. Prabha’s graceful elongated figures of pensive rural women, with each canvas in a single dominant color still continue to mesmerize art lovers.

Other selected posthumous exhibits in acknowledgement of her greatness as an artist are 'Celebrations 2011', Kumar Gallery, New Delhi (2011); ‘Winter Moderns’, Aicon Gallery, New York (2008); ‘Pot Pourri’, Gallery Beyond, Mumbai (2008). She won many noteworthy honors and awards, such as the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS) Award, New Delhi and First Prize at the Bombay State Art Exhibition (1958), among others. Her work is with several major collections.

About her motivation and concerns as an artist, she once had stated: “The core theme of my paintings was always women and their sufferings. I have seen them and observed them closely. I did not just thought of the urban woman but also those in rural areas, who were as creative. They exude so many emotions to portray...”

Four reasons that make Indian art a value buy for long-term

Here are the five reasons that will support long-term growth of the Indian art market, still in an early growth phase, offering immense scope for investment:

• Reason 1: Merrill Lynch and Capgemini’s world wealth survey in 2012 pointed out that alternative asset have become an integral part of high net worth individuals (HNIs) portfolios, up from six percent to nine percent. Their sustained buying has pushed up the bar and the upward journey of the price graph has just started.
  
• Reason 2: Art remains a popular investment option for wealthy in the UK during tough economic times marked by a period of low interest rates and economic worries, a BBC News study last year mentioned, quoting from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) survey.
  
  According to its spokesperson, the art & antiques market remains a strong performer for buyers looking to invest in more tangible assets to guard against the uncertain economic picture. The trend of investing in ‘emotional assets’ is getting stronger with investors, having suffered from the global crisis, returning to objects ‘closer to their hearts’, with a decent ROI and liquidity.
  
• Reason 3: The art market has certainly become more mature and transparent. Not so long ago, buyers and collectors could compare prices only by attending auctions and rummaging through heavy catalogs. The scenario has changed considerably. The process of acquiring art has become more ‘democratic’, so to say. Also, the base of buyers and sellers is fast expanding! The growth of services and expertise backed by market infrastructure and mechanism within the art world is now more pronounced.
  
• Reason 4: Collectors are fervently participating in a series of Indian art auctions, making them hugely successful, to establish its global potential. They are treating the sales as an opportunity to acquire some of the very best contemporary and classic works on offer, set to appreciate in the future. The leading market players are focusing on quality works in order to target the discerning buyers’ category.

A quick glance at Sanat Kar’s career graph and work

This is an artist whose works, to put it in his own words, play around the deep, darker recesses of complex human mind. We are referring to Sanat Kar. We take a quick look at his career graph and work courtesy Galerie88.

• Sanat Kar was born in Kolkata in 1935. He received his diploma in painting from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta in 1955 and played a major role in the formation of the Society of Contemporary Artists in 1960. He joined Graphics department, Kala Bhavan, Viswa Bharati in 1978 and later become the principal of that institute.
• Sanat Kar began experimenting with intaglio printmaking method in the early '60s. It was a self-taught process. His experimentation and innovation in printmaking has been widely recognized. He is also credited with the innovation of cardboard intaglio. As Zinc was becoming too costly a material he began working first with wood blocks, then moved on to plywood and finally Sun‐mica and engraving on cardboard.
• The artist successfully transposed the characteristics of works on metal plates to his wood blocks while retaining the specific characteristics of the wood surface. Besides intaglio, Kar has created a series of tempera paintings and bronze sculptures.
• He received AIFACS award, New Delhi in 1973 and West Bengal State Academy Award in 1993, among others. His work has featured in the Festival of India in USA, Japan, Soviet Union, British International Print Biennale, Fourth International Print Show in Poland and Berlin Intergrafik. Sanat Kar lives and works in Santiniketan.
• His thought-provoking works are primarily surrealistic having a curious dream‐like appearance. His figures exude innocence and the charm of poetry. Birth and death, the beginning and the end of the cycle of life hold endless fascination for Kar, as does the grotesque and the macabre. Grainy textural surfaces, doodled lines create their own visual magic in his work.

'Creating works that will stand the test of time...'

Riyas Komu’s oeuvre refers to the paradoxes of the urban situation that he paints with cynicism and compassion; with dejection albeit tinged with hope and sympathy.

Born in Kerala in 1971, the artist completed his BFA and MFA from Sir J. J. School of art, Mumbai. Though he has graduated with painting as his specialization, his wide range of art practice now extends itself to photography, video installations and sculpture. The artist paints images based on photographic references culled from the visual barrage of mass media, transporting them into his pictorial space of painting. When he does portraits, he actually sculpts certain ideas, as he states.

He adds, “Especially, in my sculptures, I tackle burning issues like religious fundamentalism, simmering unrest, manmade calamities like war that haunt the modern society. What though, unnerves him is the short-lived nature of public memory. The impact of any major event or act tends to evaporate. We as society tend to forget things too soon, too easily, he laments!

The common people’s concerns, worries and agonies are not drastically different. It’s just the context and they way they perceive and face them add a twist to them. It’s an art of survival, he mentions of the stoic, endless struggle to lead an unconditional life despite innumerable hurdles. His work is a tribute to the spirit of those ordinary folks with an extraordinary spirit to survive against all odds.

He is keen on creating work that will withstand the test of time; the work that will encapsulate universal, omnipresent concerns. He adds: “However, we claim to have advanced – individually and collectively, certain things will never change - the woes of the working class, famines, floods, suffering farmers and laborers – they would always be there. The poignant portraits that reflect grim realities of life seep into my consciousness and in my work.”