The fall-winter collection

There's more Indian art being shown/ sold/auctioned in the coming weeks than ever before. How will it affect prices?

On September 14, the Bose Pacia gallery in New York that promotes South Asian art, will open a show by Bangalore-based Sheela Gowda.

Five days later, on the same day that Bodhi Art Gallery debuts in New York with an Atul Dodiya's "Sarbari" show at its gallery on 24th Street, Sotheby's will auction Indian miniature paintings and modern art.

On September 20, Christie's will conduct an auction of contemporary Indian art, followed two days later by a second Sotheby's auction "" this time of younger contemporary artists.

Around the world "" in Hong Kong and Singapore and Dubai "" auction houses are bringing the gavel down on record prices for works of Indian art. Earlier, in June, Art Alive gallerist Sunaina Anand sold a large chunk of her show of contemporaries in London at her debut outing outside the country.

For the first time, India is being officially represented at the Venice Biennale, and there are Indian artists showing at the Basel art show. And in October, New Delhi's Vadehra Art Gallery will join hands with Grovesnor Art Gallery in London, to open Grovesnor Vadehra there, launching with a show of moderns, before moving into new generation artists like Jogen Chowdhury, and ending its first season with a show of younger contemporaries.

"Each show," says Arun Vadehra, "will have a catalogue designed like a book," intended to educate the audience on the aesthetics of Indian art.

"There are a lot of collectors for Indian art now," says Roddy Ropner, who heads business development in the Asian market for Christie's, "and they aren't all Indian," rattling off the names of the nationalities that are starting to nibble at the Indian pie "" "Hong Kong Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Europeans of course!"

Nor is the action all outside India. If Christie's had its first auction preview in New Delhi (and is opening an office in Mumbai's Colaba in October), Sharan Apparao was in the city to promote her auction of the Bengal school on September 3.

Already, Vadehra has kicked off the season with its eponymous show, Shadow Lines, featuring all the painters who are now beginning to become brands around the world "" at least in the rarefied world of collectors.

"A Western collector told me," says Lalit Nirula, who has just sold his chain of Nirula's restaurants to devote himself to education and art, "that Indian art is attractive because it hasn't moved to the same level of abstraction as in the West, so people can still understand it."

Next month will also feature auctions by Saffronart (September 7) and Osian's (September 9), the former online, the latter in Mumbai at the Taj. And this is only the start of the season.

If it brings with it a lot of hope and a lot of apprehensions, it is because those watching the scene closely are concerned that the glut of art in the market (estimated at Rs 200 crore) will lead to a case of supply outpacing demand. In the last couple of years, some auctions have been sellouts, and prices have been on the rise, leaving collectors and artists gaping at the easy fording of the crore benchmark.

If Christie's is excited about the way the Indian market is shaping up (though the Chinese, Japanese and Korean markets are way ahead), gallerists in India are pointing to its withdrawl from Australia after it had "milked the market dry".

Clearly, the jibes have been heard at Christie's office in New York, for Dr Hugo Weihe, who is a specialist in South-east Asian and Indian art, frowns delicately before venturing a politically correct response: "The Asian market offers us better returns for our resources."

Even though Christie's will now be present in India, and will do previews alternately in Mumbai and Delhi, it is fording criticism about staying away from conducting auctions in the Indian market.

"We're making Indian art international," protests Ropner, "not offering Indian art in India." Adds Weihe, "We can be one of the vehicles to create awareness of Indian contemporary art internationally."

Popular sentiment has the Bombay Progressives commanding the bulk of the international "" and, increasingly, Indian "" markets. There's every confidence that Tyeb Mehta's record Rs 6.9 crore at the Christie's auction last year will be breached "" perhaps at the Christie's fall auction next month, with expectations riding higher on F N Souza's works than on Mehta.

The Souzas at the sale have been put up for auction by Robin Howard, though Weihe concedes that among the Razas, Souzas and Gaitondes ("all very strong"), it is "Tyeb who is among the most international of India's artists".

Sotheby's "modern" will feature the Progressives alongside 18th and 19th century miniatures, but the second sale of contemporaries brings India's younger, more international face into the auction realm with the usual suspects "" Atul Dodiya (with his shutter series), Jitish Kallat, Subodh Gupta (and lots of utensils), Shibu Natesan, Bharti Kher and Ravinder Reddy with his iconic, polyester resin fibreglass "Head".

But before Sotheby's, Saffronart's online auction will have featured these artists too, its 135 lots providing an important pointer to the prices they will command. In addition, Saffronart will have its favourites too "" Rekha Rodwittiya, Chittrovanu Mazumdar, Arpana Caur, Bose Krishnamachari, Shibu Natesan, T V Santhosh, Manisha Gera Baswani, the Irannas, Manish Pushkale, and Surendran Nair whose cover work has been placed at a reserve price of Rs 45-55 lakh.

Back home, Apparao, at least, is breaking the mould with an auction of early and current Bengal art which, she says, serves up serious issues of authenticity. "It's got a great history but is hugely undervalued," she says.

"There's a large cache to be found all over the country," pointing out that "stock" is the reason it will boom. The physical-and-online auction (the previous one came in for a lot of criticism) has inbuilt better turnarounds, so only two lots are being offered at a time, and have a closing time of two minutes each.

As a result, those bidding physically (from four centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai) will be able to see the online action, and move from bid to bid "without getting bored", Apparao insists. By the time her next auction comes around, bidders should be able to videoconference across 10 Indian cities, to bid live as well as online.

Osian's Forty Masterpieces auction will stretch the range from Raja Ravi Varma to Husain, Raza and Souza, naturally, but also leveraging artists it has attempted to promote in its last auction, thereby offering a select sweep of Indian art.

"The effort," Neville Tuli, chairman, says, "is to bring to the forefront artists who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of creativity".

Will the overheated market lead to a fall in prices, as is widely believed, or will September create newer highs for Indian art? "It isn't easy to find significant masterpieces," argues Ropner, allaying apprehensions that prices could fall.

Apparao, though, insists that only good works will fetch high prices, and that buyers will begin to discern between good and bad works. Vadehra, though, is optimistic, and does some number crunching to prove it.

"Of the world's $30 billion art market, the Indian market is worth only $300 million, or 1 per cent." Okay. "But if our GDP is 4 per cent of the world's GDP, the art market should be four times its current size." Uh-huh. "But since we do better in all intellectual businesses, there's no reason the market for Indian art shouldn't be 6-7 times its current size."

In other words, the market isn't plateauing any time soon. But the sceptics are still keeping their fingers crossed.