<b>Kishore Singh</b>: The lost 'old' treasures

Some time last year, CNBC did a news report on a cache of art amassed by Queen Farah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran’s wife, before the uprising that overthrew the dynasty in 1979. It lies bubble-wrapped in the basement of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. The works in the collection include Pablo Picasso, Renoir, Marc Chagall, Andy Warhol and other European modernists, and the handpicked masters are expected to number 1,500-1,600 works, of which only one painting has ever been sold, and the museum has only recently begun to show one work at a time — at the time of filing its report, an exquisite Rene Magritte was on display. A Jackson Pollock that forms part of the collection is estimated to value an extraordinary $400 million. The value of the collection? Experts will not say beyond the expected “priceless”.

Works by European modernists are rare in India. Even though the royal families had begun to collect Western art, they were more seduced by the realistic style of paintings in the Continent and their tastes did not extend to the experiments of modernism that had swept across Europe, thereby paying little heed to the impressionists, or expressionists, or cubists — all of whom influenced and formed a sizeable part of major collections in the West.

Most instances of such works collected without forethought and understanding disappeared in the aftermath of the withdrawal of the privy purses. The Marwari industrialists of the time collected examples of paintings of the Bengal School; the Bombay Presidency artists were the pick of the Parsis;and the post-Independence generation seemed to favour the Progressives. 

Are there any secret, or undiscovered, collections of the kind in Iran, in India? Frankly, punters would be hard pressed to find its equivalent in Indian art, even among well-known collectors, leaving aside, of course, the rare collections of miniature paintings that form part of museum ateliers in India. What they might find, should they have the perseverance to ransack family homes and sift the wheat from the chaff, are treasure troves of antiquities of various kinds — archaeological finds and sculptures, for sure, but also textiles and collectibles, sometimes jewellery, carpets, manuscripts and the like.

Visitors at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art where Farah Pahlavi’s collection is housed. Photo: Reuters

The trouble with most such collections is that they are moribund. In the absence of infrastructure where these can be celebrated, most have been disregarded at best, neglected at worst. Priceless heirlooms have probably been sold as raddi by disinterested or unschooled generations. In an atmosphere when the “new” acquired merit over the pride of owning scuffed “old” treasures, the loss of art is unimaginable. But what of sculptures — “statuary” — and their kind? Caches of these are still possible to find, though the tediousness of registering all old works has made owners less likely to be open about sharing these publicly, leaving recent generations happy to throw them into building foundations for lack of a better and easier way to care for them.

No better measure of our interest in art is required than a quick survey of promoters of new companies who have never shied from making their apathy towards it obvious. And yet, one has but to look towards China, currently the largest consumer of not just Chinese but also European art, as well as West Asia, where some of the most important collections as well as museums are taking shape, to see how economic confidence shows the way to patronage of the arts. India’s appetite for mere avarice has been fuelled. For that greed to turn into pride and play the role of patronage, its entrepreneurs will have to cross the wide chasm between consumption to promotion. Who’ll walk the talk? We’ll have to wait and watch. 

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated.