Lithographs are art too

A new love affair with forms of art that are affordable, to say the least, could be in the offing.

Thanks to Maneka Gandhi, oleographs are now so popular that they've been uprooted from their earlier display spaces on staircases, in the spare bedroom and in corridors and carted into living rooms.

And if she has her way, this year lithographs will emerge from their chosen habitat in formal studies to more exalted spaces across homes. "I love developing art forms," says the soft-spoken, freckle-faced politician who only ever gets strident when she sees people mistreating animals, "I hope to set trends."

At the least, her annual fundraising for her pet project, People For Animals, does that. Gandhi has, in the past, held exhibitions ranging from pottery to photography and, last year, her Raja Ravi Varma and associated oleographs were all the rage, partly at least because of her insistence on keeping prices low.

But Gandhi's fundraising enjoys high circus value as well for the media and puts together so much by way of volumes that it automatically creates a market buzz. Don't have an oleo from the Raja Ravi Varma factory? Then you're history in collecting circles.

As art continues to get more expensive (despite the current slump), collectors are looking for affordable art that also has investment value. And Gandhi has cleverly stoked that interest at her annual jamborees.

This year, her show of lithographs at Intercontinental, The Grand in New Delhi (August 10-12) puts together 3,000-plus works that start at Rs 1,000, but low prices are not just a matter of lip service, so at the time of writing she has been sitting with her assistants to put attractive prices (Rs 1,200 or Rs 1,500, Rs 1,800, Rs 5,000 and so on, though there are, admittedly, a few works that are Rs 50,000 or worth a few lakhs, and one even priced at Rs 10 lakh) to these limited edition works by William Hodges, the Daniell brothers, F B Solvyns, J B Fraser (whose relative, Olivia Fraser, married to writer William Dalrymple, is coincidentally a painter based in India), Capt R M Grindlays (yes, of the bank fame) and others.

Traditionally, lithos "" ink prints taken off a drawing on limestone, and hence limited to very few numbers, sometimes hand-tinted for "original" effect "" were created both for purposes of printing as well as for artists to preserve and pass on "copies" of their works to collectors or to create records.

No wonder these tended to specialise in "travel" works "" sights, groups of people, social interfaces, uniforms and, Maneka points out, "disasters, storms, famines and so on" "" but for all the years the British spent in India and the large number of artists who came to find work here, "there are only a little over 5,000 drawings in all on India", says Gandhi.

The largest collectors of lithographs in India (and etchings, engravings, mezzotints and aquatints) have tended to be institutions , and works have often come up for sale in antique shops in hill stations, or in former kingdoms where they once enjoyed patronage (Hyderabad, for instance), but for Gandhi, who is meticulous to a fault when it comes to conducting research on her subject of interest of the moment, they are important for their archival value.

She's happy, therefore, to toss off facts. "Did you know that the word "coolie" comes from the Kuli tribe in Gujarat, now long vanished?" she asks. "Or that Salsette refers to the island of Bombay in old lithographs?" She even has a lithograph showing the "divine village of Mazagaon", a huge change from the nasty-looking port of today.

While the bulk of Gandhi's collection will go on sale in August (though you can walk into her house and buy works even now), indicative interest in lithographs probably became known last night at Osian's annual Masterpieces and ABC Series auction, also in the capital. Works there included photographs, engravings, illustrated books, printed works, chromolithographs, oleographs and cinema posters (amusingly, from Pakistan).

The trend is hardly new for Osian's which, in a sense, first gave printed works respect on par with Nandlal Bose or Asit Kumar Haldar, Jamini Roy, Chugtai, the Tagores and even Raja Ravi Varma (oil on canvas and not an oleograph print). This paralleling of art forms that range from the popular (hence kitsch, often printed) to originals in oil or watercolour is now becoming the norm, especially for exhibitions that aim at a comprehensive look.

A fine instance of this is Bengall, an exhibition of works on artists from Bengal, put together by Alakananda Saha and Kalyani Chawla of Montage Arts that runs this weekend at The Oberoi before shifting for a week to Galerie Romain Rolland.

For, alongside the Tagores and Jamini Roy, Sunil Das and Binod Behari Mukherjee (and, among more contemporary voices, Sanjay Bhattacharya or Sudip Roy and Atul Bose) are Kalighat pats, old Bengal mythological paintings meant for the puja-ghar, and oleographs printed in Germany.

Chawla's reasoning for the exhibition is to showcase Bengali art which, she insists, "has not been promoted because of a lack of understanding" leading to a stagnancy in prices. Therefore, again, hers is a show where prices could be below the stratospheric. "It isn't a business for us," she says.

Her mother, Saha, has done the sourcing for the exhibition, and those works which are not on consignment have come from "old Bengali homes which have such beautiful things". When families went into decline, often the first thing to be sold was the furniture; the last is art.

At a time when Indian art is establishing a global presence, access to old, authenticated works is an asset, especially given the number of fakes in the market "" and particularly from the Bengal school.

Chawla, though, insists that commercialisation cannot be a motive for wanting to sell such works, so along with the established masters and the oleos are younger artists whose work she is hoping will catch the eye of serious collectors.

"See," she explains, "there's the whole romanticism in buying art, it's something like a marriage that is for keeps, something you'll see at home every day."

In other words, ditch those younger contemporaries whose prices too are skyrocketing? "It's almost unethical the way their prices are going up," she muses, "all works are so expensive, even lithographs aren't available for less than Rs 70,000-80,000." But then, that's before Gandhi's Vintage India exhibition opens where price, at least, should be the least of her concerns.