Looking at the art scene in China, you would be surprised to know how young it is. Till the start of the noughties, there were hardly any galleries – the backbone of the art market – in Beijing Poly Auction, which started in 2005 and is now the third-biggest auction house in the world and the largest in China. (The two biggest auction houses in the world are Sotheby’s and Christie’s.) In auction terms, China is now the world’s biggest art market, and the Chinese collector the most coveted in salerooms and art fairs globally. When, in 2012, ARTnews published the list of the world’s top 200 collectors, three were Chinese. Two other collectors, though not from China, are big collectors of Chinese art; one has opened a not-for-profit art centre in Beijing and the other has donated his collection to a museum in Hong Kong. It is estimated by experts in China that there are at least 100 serious collectors there. Meanwhile, just across the border, India is a dismal laggard.
The Indian art market paints a depressing picture. Not even one Indian collector made it to ARTnews’ brave 200. There is no indigenous auction house that can take on the mighty duopoly of Christie’s and Sotheby’s. As for the galleries, though they have been around in India since the mid to late 1980s, there are few that can match the size and scale of the best in China. Compared to China’s 100 serious collectors – many of whom have built, or are building, private museums housed in signature buildings designed by the best and the brightest architects from around the world – India would probably have just about 20 to 25 collectors of note. And when it comes to building museums, there are maybe five collectors who have the vision and understanding to do so in India. Basically, China had the Cultural Revolution and India Nehruvian socialism — and yet when both countries turned to capitalism, one embraced its own culture with great gusto and the other threw it out like yesterday’s rubbish.
On a recent trip to China, it seemed to me that the Chinese are determined to make up for lost time. Beijing, which is by no means Paris, nevertheless has two robust art centres with galleries, artist studios and not-for-profit spaces — 798 Art District, which is in the city, and Caochangdi on its outskirts. In a city that boasts of Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City and the Great Wall, 798 has become a tourist hub. Neither Delhi nor Mumbai has anything even close to what has developed in Beijing and, to a lesser extent, in Shanghai: Lado Sarai in Delhi is no 798 or even Caochangdi.
What explains India’s dismal performance in putting its money where its cultural mouth is? What has the Chinese collector understood that the Indian buyer of art is unable to comprehend? Many Chinese collectors are first-time entrepreneurs with no previous exposure to art, but that hasn’t slowed them down one bit when it has come to buying it. The Chinese art market, like the Indian one, isn’t as properly self-regulating as art markets are in the West — many activities go on simultaneously, which could be considered conflicts of interest. There have been murmurs that superstar artists have benefited from price inflation, as has happened in India. And yet, despite suffering similar problems, China is the big daddy on the world art stage and India is still playing tiddlywinks in an embarrassingly infantile way. You can’t hope to be taken seriously as an economic super-achiever when your only cultural export is Bollywood — whose very name is derivative.
The Chinese, as a senior auctioneer was quoted as saying in The New York Times, are interested in “reclaiming their culture and their history”. Further to that, by patronising the arts, the Chinese are creating a cultural heritage for the future. Patronising the arts has always been the preserve of the government (either elected representatives or monarchs and royalty) and the very wealthy (as the Medicis did in early modern-era Florence), and this patronage requires courage and faith in one’s own ability as a taste-maker. Post-liberalisation Indians no longer seem to have that confidence, preferring to hide behind factory-produced luxury goods that gives them tasteful anonymity. Nobody remembers the buyers of a Fendi bag or Jimmy Choo shoes — but the Medici family is still spoken about many centuries after its decline. Solomon Guggenheim is a name that hasn’t been forgotten decades after his death. If great artists are assured posterity, so are great collectors. Above all, a nation will be grateful for bequeathing them its culture.
The writer works at Espace
