Art for all Times

Bennett, Coleman & Co. gears up to expand collection

When Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd (BCCL) was commissioning art work for its corporate collection in the early 1990s, late Jagdish Swaminathan was among several painters taken around the company's Delhi office on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg for a glimpse of the future home for his works.

The wheel has come a full circle. The company will soon take his son and abstract painter Harsha Vardhan on a similar tour around the company's new Times Internet office in Gurgaon.

In what could be the media group's second big collection drive, BCCL, the publisher of The Times of India and The Economic Times, is in the process of gathering 200 works by "less-established" artists for its six-floor office space in iworld towers in Gurgaon.

"The mood is to procure right now. We are looking at 200 canvases and in the next three months we hope to commission about 50 works," says Ashok Sen, general manager, Response, the group's marketing division, and curator for the Times Group's art collection.

Art will form an integral part of the Times Internet building, which will be fully functional by May this year.

According to architect Sonali Bhagwati, who designed the office, about 100 floating frames and transparent walls have been created to accomodate specific paintings sizes: slim vertical spaces for the circular meeting room and 12x12 spaces for the executive glass cabins.

Empty spaces have also been left to fill in the reception area, corridors, work stations, a rest lounge for celebrities, and even the wash rooms. "Instead of having paintings for the walls, the walls have been designed for paintings," says Bhagwati of Spazzio Design & Architecture.

Apart from Harsha Vardhan who will make 20 paintings over a year under a contractual agreement, two other artists "" Thota Vaikuntam and Gopi Gajwani "" have been approached. Delhi-based artist Anjum Singh, however, said she turned down Times' request "for personal reasons."

Among the bigger corporate collectors, the Times group has 360 to 400 works in its Delhi office alone, with the rest being displayed at its offices and properties across the country.

Among its collection are large works of Tyeb Mehta (5), Ghulam Shaikh (7), J Swaminathan (12), Bhupen Khakhar, N S Bendre and Nilima Shaikh.

The company also possesses three Jamini Roys and roughly 20 works of K G Subramanyam. There is also a mixed bag of Sanskrit shlokas on paper, Tanjore paintings, lithographs, miniatures, many of them collected over the past four decades.

In the last four years, however, the company has offloaded works by NS Bendre (2), Arpita Singh (3), J Swamintahan (3) and Bhupen Khakhar (1) that have fetched record prices at the Christie's auction. In 2002, Tyeb Mehta's 'Celebration' was sold to a Japanese collector through Christie's for a whopping Rs 1.5 crore.

Another painting from the Times collection, a Ram Kumar, will be auctioned at Christie's in New York this month. Sen says this is the artist's last painting in the Times' collection.

In 2000, it sold an M F Husain (The Couple) at Christie's Hong Kong auction for $150,000 and a Bhupen Khakar at the 2003 Christie's auction for $55,000.

Despite Ghulam Shaikh's request not to break his seven-part series 'Between Memory and Music', the group sold a 41x84 inch work of the artist at the Christie's auction last year for $25,000, a record for the artist in a public auction.

In defence, Sen says it's easier to get a good price for a single work than for a series. "Our main objective is to raise the prices of Indian art and I feel, we (the group), could be the catalyst in raising the price bar on an international platform," he says.

Undoubtedly, the group built its collection at a time when the art market was not so hot. According to art expert and former Christie's consultant, Mallika Sagar Advani: "the group has a large and a good collection of works".

However, its entry into the auction market has drawn a mixed response. "Does the group need to whittle away its corporate collection for money?" asks a critic. Within the organisation, perhaps, the model of buying-cheap-selling-dear is working even as it's set to replenish its stock.

On the company's future strategy Sen remarks: "We don't have a structured strategy for purchase as that's not the way you buy art. Our benchmark is to buy large works as they offer more brand equity."

Frame work

• Times Group launches second drive to commission art
• The company to commission 200 paintings to "less-established" artists
• Abstract artist Harsha Vardhan to deliver 20 paintings in over a year
• The new Times Internet office in Gurgaon is designed to display art