Against the odds?

ART: Swarup Srivastava feels it's time to test the market value of his Rs 100-crore deal with MF Husain.

Could it be a four-letter word that draws business to art: risk? In business as in art, the finer the risk estimations, the closer-held they're kept.

Iron-ore exporter and art investor Swarup Srivastava makes an interesting comparison. Shipping iron ore to China is a bigger risk, he says, evoking a flash of Rembrandt's Storm, than buying MF Husain in bulk.

Srivastava might have a point. If small utterances are heard among policymakers against the export of iron ore, prices of which have shot into the $68-70-per-tonne range, big rumbles are heard of multibillion dollar steelmakers keen on Indian iron ore reserves as a captive resource.

What it means is this: Srivastava, a bit player barely doing 1 million of the 45 million tonnes India exports annually, finds his core business' destiny controlled by forces far beyond his influence.

For all that, it's the micro scenario that the IITian in Srivastava uses to make his comparison. Running a dozen ships with Rs 18 crore of ore per shipment is a riskier wager, in his view, than a hundred Husains worth Rs 1 crore per canvas.

Inked in September 2004, the Srivastava-Husain "future delivery" deal is famous as the world's first contract of its kind in art. As Srivastava tells it, he swiped the deal from right under the noses of Citigroup and HSBC.

Under its terms, on an advance of Rs 1 crore, the artist was to deliver 100 paintings on a common theme for a crore each (upon delivery), with a clause to share 50:50 any profits from commercial usage (calendar reprints et al).

The theme? The influence of the Kamasutra was Husain's first suggestion, but anatomical ambition was abandoned in favour of a mutually agreed Our Planet Called Earth (OPCE).

One-fourth of the series has already been delivered (and Rs 25 crore paid), and may be put on display anytime now. Done in Husain's geometric style, the paintings offer a paintbrush sweep of the 20th century through his eyes.

What market value would the paintings command? There's no indication yet. Husain himself is keen to have OPCE seen as works of art no less than his other stuff: OPCE, he says, underlies much of what empowers India as "a kingpin of the world", though the art itself looks rather despondent "" as if shaking a slow head at the imbalances wrought by the"isolation of knowledge", to use a phrase from the series' guidebook.

Ah, the guidebook: this 32-pager is quite something in itself. It cleverly uses the leap in art from Rembrandt to Picasso as an analogy for the leap from starved art to capital-rich art (as represented by this deal): the financially free artist needs pander to nobody's vanity.

"We should consider this revolution of freedom as the freedom of expression in the art format," says Husain, though refusing to be drawn into any discussion on whether his depiction of galloping eco-friendly leadership risks distracting people from the cause. "It does succeed in getting full attention," he insists.

That, incidentally, is the very first canvas that Srivastava hopes to auction "" as a test. "I'm looking to sell now," he says, hoping for at least $1 million for it (overseas perhaps).

But is this really a good time, with Husain's image still tossed about in the tempest set off nationally (and dust raised) by his graphic portrayal of Bharat Mata (a non-OPCE work)? There's nothing hard and fast to abide by here, shrugs Srivastava. If at all, it's the other way round. "Any controversy in art helps... investors want something others are talking about."

That's the irony of it.