InFocus | India
Cashing in on art
Contemporary Indian art has become a symbol of prestige and affluence globally.
- By Rajendar Menen, Gulf News Report
- Published: 00:00 August 14, 2006
- Image Credit:
Prices of Indian art are going through the roof. In one evening of auctioneering recently at Christie's in London, Pratham UK, the London-based arm of an Indian education charity dedicated to eradicating illiteracy, raised more than $261,057. Earlier, in April, Indian art worth $30 million was gobbled up at auctions in New York in just one week.
Christie's has valued the contemporary Indian art market at $250 million, with experts predicting a rise to $500 million in the next 18 months.
Global market
"Indian art has arrived on the international mainstream market and it has become one of the best alternative investments today," says Meena Hingorani, collector, consultant and curator of contemporary Indian art for over 25 years.
Neville Tuli, chairman of Osian's art auction house, is looking for $33.5 million to invest in art, arguably India's hottest market. Soaring prices for contemporary Indian works prompted him to start the nation's second art investment fund. It doesn't stop here. Days after the Mumbai stock exchange had its biggest weekly drop since 2001, a painting by Indian-born Francis Newton Souza sold at auction for a record $1.2 million.
Prices of works by Indian artists such as Souza, Vasudeo Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta and Maqbool Fida Husain are being driven by a global surge in art investment.
India's economic acceleration has also added fuel to conspicuous consumption in the swollen ranks of the nation's wealthy, and the acquisition of art is the new badge of prestige.
"The affluent are coming in," says Pradipta Mohapatra, a Chennai-based collector and chief executive for technology at RPG Enterprises, an Indian group with interests from software to supermarkets. "Young executives at banks and in information technology are the new breed, buying art for the love of it."
Underscoring the appreciation in Indian art, Mohapatra, who has been buying paintings for three decades, pointed out that an oil painting by Yusuf Arakkal that he bought eight years ago for Rs45,000, or $982, is now worth about Rs1 million.
At a recent Sotheby's Holdings auction in London, the late Souza's ‘Amsterdam Landscape' sold for almost eight times its top estimate. The sale raised $7.8 million, beating its target by more than a third. Earlier this year, Christie's sold $15.6 million of modern and contemporary Indian art in New York, setting records for paintings by Husain and Gaitonde. Amazingly, just five years ago, its India painting sales totalled only about $650,000.
"The contemporary Indian market is one of the fastest growing," says Edward Gibbs, a Sotheby's specialist. "It's driven by the growth of the Indian economy and a raised awareness of Indian artists."
Yamini Mehta, specialist head of modern and contemporary India art at Christie's, says, "The sky seems to be the limit for this collecting category."
Since 2004, several funds globally have tried to lure investors as the price of art has soared. Among the earliest was the Fine Art Fund of London set up in 2000 and managed by Philip Hoffman. The fund requires a minimum investment of $250,000. Others include China Fund run by Julian Thompson, a former chairman of Sotheby's International and a specialist in Chinese porcelain, which focuses on Chinese art, and New York's Fernwood Art Investments, founded by Bruce Taub, formerly senior director of the international private client group at Merrill Lynch.
Last year, Yatra Art Fund of Mumbai was set up with Rs107.5 million.
Original work
"Yatra, which has a lock-in period of five years, attracted about 40 investors," says Geetha Mehra, chief operating officer of the fund. "The general creation of wealth among Indians has fuelled the market. The artists are also very good. There is strong original work being done here."
But does this boom make art the next big asset class in India? According to Tuli, "Over the next few years, we will see a large interest in art coming from not only the elite class but also the middle class."
Lord Meghnad Desai, Director, Osian's, and Member of House of Lords, UK, however, has a note of caution, "Knowledge is very important while investing in art. If you are buying art directly, go with enough knowledge. Go with artists who have given anywhere between 25 to 50 years to the business of art."
The good times began rolling about five years ago when Japanese collector Masanori Fukuoka bought a large triptych by Tyeb Mehta — quite appropriately titled Celebration — for $317,000 at a Christie's auction. Less than a year ago, the same artist made history when New York fund manager Rajiv Chaudhri bid by phone at the NY Christie's, and took home his Mahishasura for $1.58 million making Mehta the first contemporary Indian artist to cross the million-dollar threshold.
Art prices are also zooming in Mumbai. A village scene by Amrita Sher-Gil came under the hammer for a whopping sum of Rs69 million, and became the highest price paid for any Indian painting sold in the country. Art galleries have multiplied in major cities and with prices scaling new highs, contemporary art has become a symbol of prestige and affluence.
Works by artists such as M F Husain, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil, F N Souza, S H Raza, K Akbar Padamsee, Jehangir Sabavala, Sunil Das, Anjolie Ela Menon and others have scaled new heights.
New generation
A new generation of Indian artists has also broken the million-rupee barrier. Surendran Nair, Ravindra Reddy, Rekha Rodwittiya, Nataraj Sharma, Paresh Maity, Shibu Natesan, Jitish Kallat, Subodh Gupta and Anju Dodiya are being talked of in multi-million rupee terms. As a result, Christie's is keen to re-start its Indian operations soon.
So where is the Indian art mart headed? According to estimates, the current year itself will see the size of art market expand to Rs20 billion.
Is money rewriting art, or is art rewriting money?
