Posthumous pickings

HIGH ART

At the Gallerie Ganesha show at the Visual Arts Gallery in New Delhi this week, a surprising inclusion is Jangarh Singh Shyam, the "folk" artist from Madhya Pradesh who became celebrated after his suicide two years ago in Tokyo.

Shyam, then only 42, had a limited body of work in the market but had begun to make a name for himself among the chatterati.

However, in the two years since his death, gallerists who have his work are in a tizzy "" they don't know how much to price the paintings.

A posthumous celebrity, many of his works are in private collections; since a good deal of his work was sold at crafts centres, many of the collectors probably attribute the work to an anonymous tribal or folk artist.

Even so, prices for a Jangarh Singh Shyam, according to some, are going for the asking. It is no longer impossible to believe that a single work by the semi-literate artist could fetch more than the entire proceeds of a whole year's work in his lifetime.

In Shyam's case, his sudden death and ascending star might have created a situation of demand far in excess of supply, but sadly, an artist's death does have the capability of creating a price opportunity.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of Bhupen Khakhar and F N Souza, both of whose works turned over 20 per cent overnight, and have since continued to rise far in excess of their prices in their lifetimes.

It is ironic that many of the prices that artists' works fetch in the secondary market are far in excess of the value at which they sell. This would imply that it is a cheaper "" and safer in these days of fakes "" to buy directly from the artists.

But unless you know the painter, this is usually more difficult than one imagines. Artists like to sell through galleries with whom they have long associations.

This means that any price you may be offered at an exhibition is a cleverly marketed package, and you are already paying a premium on the value "" even given that there is usually room for some negotiation. But after an artist's death, secondary market sales can skyrocket with no room for bargaining.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of F N Souza, whose square inch rate jumped up to an astounding Rs 607 the year he died (from Rs 280 the previous year), and has since grown to Rs 1,107 in 2003 and Rs 1,506 in 2004.

With the recent Rs 83 lakh record for an auctioned painting, he has now notched the highest price on his work, and experts believe he will breach the Rs 1 crore mark sooner rather than later.

This is astounding, and given the prices that artists are now gaining (the recent Saffronart auction broke records for a large number of "young" artists), it is becoming clear that posthumous gains from investments in art (provided an artist's quality does not fall drastically "" for example, in recent years, Sanjay Bhattacharya is no longer viewed as an ideal investment). And while Bhupen Khakar's gains may not have been as solid as Souza's, they are nevertheless impressive.

Should one hold on to an artist's works, to sell after his/her death? Maudlin as it might sound, it makes very sound investment sense.