Indian art's date with London

BUSINESS CLASS

London has woken up to Indian contemporary art again. A lot has changed in the city since Christie's held its Vision Of India sale where Indian collectors endlessly contemplated over the proposed purchase of a Daniel's print.

It seems not long ago when you could buy the odd Souza canvas from Bonhams for what one pays for an average drawing today. Or when Anwar and Kiki Saddiqui held shows of M F Husain and Ram Kumar that went unsold "" forcing them to shut shop.

Things have changed quite substantially in London. If you are an Indian art buff who happened to be there in early July, chances are that it would have been a rather busy time for you, running as you were, from show to show. No, I'm not talking about "Frieda Kahlo" at the Tate Modern or "The Triumph of Painting" at the Saatchi Gallery.

I'm talking about the plethora of Indian exhibitions in the west end. And if you happened to be in Bond Street at the Sotheby's Asian art sale on the 14th of July, you would have probably met every Indian art dealer, no matter how minor.

While the focus and energy of the auction houses and galleries in the past has been to attract the NRIs from the US, London seems to be the new logical extension.

Husain was in the limelight yet again, with his exhibition of 21 paintings at a conservatory at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I wasn't sure if it was the warm weather or the price tag of US $1 million for each of the new paintings that made people sweat so much.

No sales were reported. Not far away from the venue, opposite Chor Bizarre restaurant on Albemale Street, Conor Macklin was showing small canvases of Shibu Natesan at the Grosvenor Gallery. Macklin's gallery has been showing an increasing number of Indian artists since it started dealing in Souza after stumbling upon a body of works by the artist which sat in its stores for decades. It has been amassing Souzas of late for a big exhibition planned later in the year.

The big event was, of course, the Sotheby's sale. Like Christie's, which has Vadehra as its consultant, Sotheby's has now teamed up with Pundole to source works for them. Even though the sale had mainly small works by leading artists, the results were quite spectacular.

A 3x2 foot Ram Kumar made approximately 20 lakh. A big auspicious Husain with dancing Ganeshas caught the fancy of an NRI who paid about Rs 1 crore for the work and the best painting of the sale, a 1969 Raza entitled "Les Quatre Horizons" made about Rs 70 lakh.

The real "jack in the box" though was the Anju Dodiya, which made a staggering 40 lakh. Just to give you a perspective "" Anju's similar sized works, were available at her exhibition in Delhi for about one tenth that price just a few months ago! But all was not lost. The unsuccessful bidders could drown their sorrows by drinking some Sula and comfort themselves by getting a bargain at Manu Parekh's exhibition at Barkley Square Gallery that opened a few hours later.

Fed up with the Indian art scene gossip, I decided to go to other mainstream galleries and finally landed at one of the most beautiful exhibitions I have seen in a long time "" Daynita Singh's photographs at the Frith Street Gallery.

A series of beautiful small format prints of chairs which was recently shown at the Isabella Gardner Museum made its way to this gorgeous wood panelled multiple room gallery.

I was thrilled to see Indian art at a gallery that shows major heavyweights like Callum Innes, Marline Dumas and Thomas Shutte. It was refreshing to be shown around by the passionate gallery staff who understood so many aspects of the work and the artist. There was a real sense of leisure and enjoyment. And no one spoke about purchases and prices.