Newbie artists need gallery support if they have to become investment-worthy in a competitive market.
The healthy results that the Saffronart auction delivered last week — the masters sold at best value (the love affair with M F Husain seems to have started all over again, F N Souza delivered expectedly well at just shy of Rs 1 crore, though S H Raza’s top-billed work failed to find a buyer), the seniors did remarkably well too (Manjit Bawa was the star of the show with an Untitled work commanding Rs 1.66 crore, and many senior artists exceeded estimates), while the contemporaries held up the rear with fortitude (Subodh Gupta’s better-than-expected value at Rs 1.16 crore is a pointer to why he’s considered a star) — has brought art back into mainstream focus, and conversation is already building up around art as investment again.
Curiously, having had their fingers singed, most people want to know how to spot an investment opportunity at the lowest or entry levels of talent. “We don’t want to spend too much money,” seems to be a constant refrain, “can you tell us whom to invest in without spending too much?”
Alas, there is no touchstone to identifying talent, or finding a young artist likely to survive the tough race to returning investments in the future. All art will likely go up in value, but by how much? And how much is enough, anyway?
Young artists teem with ideas, yet in their haste to enter the market with blockbuster shows, they rarely think their work through, often opting to “copy” a better-selling artist’s style, or politics of subject, or engagement with issues. Any artist who does not break new ground is to be treated with contempt. (That said, it must be remembered that Tyeb Mehta got into his groove well past his middle age; his earlier works just do not compare with what he painted in the last two decades, and even now they fail to get anything close to the record prices his latter work commands in the market.)
Nor, it must be said, do all “ideas” work. Too few artists sustain something in the long run. Atul Dodiya, despite seeing a collapse in his prices because they had been artificially sustained, is one of the most creative artists in the country with seminal work that will last out well when the history of Indian art is rewritten. Jitish Kallat has managed his ideas with a presence at seminars and symposia, which gives him the right leverage in intellectual circles.
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For all that, it’s important to see whether artists have a strong Indian focus or not. Rootedness in a culture is important. Bharti Kher reflects this with her bindis, which are a draw at all international outings. Subodh Gupta shows it in his use of steel utensils, which are quintessentially Indian. The artists Thukral & Tagra manifest it in a Punjabi kitsch aesthetic. Even Vilas Shinde’s hundreds of watches, turned into sculpture, bear out an Indian mindset with his milkmen with pails, bicycles and so on. This identity is likely to play out in the long term. See the masters — their work all has an Indian ethos, whether Husain, Raza, Mehta, or Krishen Khanna, Manjit Bawa and so on. Even Souza’s canvases are represented not by a primarily Western idiom, as some feel, but through Christian icons represented by his growing years in Bombay and Goa.
When looking at young artists and their work, while the most obvious thing might appear to be the ability to spot talent and rationalise its value (starting prices around Rs 1 lakh for a raw artist, for instance, are likely to rise to Rs 3 lakh by the second solo and Rs 5-7 lakh by the third show – this is over a period of, say, five years). But what is, to my mind, the single-most important criterion in an artist’s portfolio, is gaining gallery support.
Today, an artist isn’t likely to make much headway without a gallery behind him, taking on the marketing structure to deliver the artist to the media as well as to collectors, investing in him by way of publications, and staying the course with his works. Whether built on hype or genuine talent, this much is sure: it is a gallery that makes, or breaks, an artist. Artists now realise this, but so must collectors and investors. When a collector, therefore, pitches to buy directly from an artist, he is eroding the base on which the investment portfolio of an artist is built. Seeking a discount, therefore, might turn out to be your most expensive mistake.
