If the Jaipur lit-fest was all about the Rushdie controversy, the India Art Fair was all about business. For all of this week, all anyone wanted to talk about was how Marc Chagall was nice but Sakti Burman was nicer, that Damien Hirst might be making millions of dollars putting butterflies behind frames, but wait till Maneka Gandhi found out and banned him. A general refrain of “too much art” seemed to echo amidst the air-kissing — everyone’s favourite form of greeting in spite of the put-off of body odour and pyorrhea.
Art might have been the point of the whole week but it was fuelled by flagons of wine that kept the caboodle going. At gallery openings, exhibition launches, the vernissage, previews and viewings, parties and after-parties, everyone came wrapped in an alcoholic haze. It wasn’t enough to get together over a coffee — the day that began with a breakfast meeting was followed by a brunch tête-à-tête, a croissant conversation at the lounge, a high-powered lunch over negotiations, a tattling tea party, fuelled all the while with free-flowing wine, a cocktail opening, a champagne quickie, a deal-breaking private dinner followed by a public snack, a club-over and the night’s after-party. If no one was sleeping, it was because they were busy wondering if the discount they’d got was bigger than their rivals, and fixed price acquired an elastic flexibility. The currency of choice was cash over credit card, causing the sleep-deprived, spirit-fuddled to count the bundles over and over again.
Artists found themselves surrounded by the paparazzi. They preened for pictures and dispensed sound-bytes that sounded like instant-philosophy-for-dummies. Auntyjis who wanted their favourite artists to see their children’s work hoping they’d spot the mark of genius, realised to their disappointment that artists don’t encourage competition.
Those who “loved” a work, found it “horrible” or “superficial” when the artist was no longer listening. Scathing, unrepentant views turned gushy in the company of the promoter. Everything was “fantastic” or “marvellous” to the face but an eavesdropping sculptor was crushed when someone called her work “mediocre”. Tools left scattered by mistake in a pavilion represented “the voice of the oppressed” for one collector — who was embarrassed when the gallery owner had the “installation” hastily removed from the premises, requiring the buyer to switch from wine to beer to clear his befuddled head.
Delhi “society” packed the aisles looking for bargains and emerging artists, gawking at video installations and performance art, dismissing the trendy for the familiar, reaching out for the known amidst the plenty of unknown. Middlemen – “art advisors” to the uninitiated – came recommending “one Husain definitely” but got sidelined when their clients opted to ask their mwahing friends whether they’d seen a “really big Vaikuntam” anywhere. Connoisseurship occasionally gave way to acknowledgements of failure about this “art-shaart” that required you to know something about its meaning instead of simply being gauche and speaking the price — which, if you paid full price instead of a markdown, would show you up to be an art-illiterate fool.
