Over the past couple of years, the volatility of prices of
contemporary Indian art made even the most exotic commodities look tame. I realised this when I saw that a 2006 Subodh Gupta painting, part of his Untitled series of paintings of kitchen utensils, sold on Saffron Art last week for $209,000; significantly, there were only two bidders for the work, suggesting also that may not have been a market clearing price. What is amazing is that a similar work from the same 2006 series, almost identical content, identical in size had sold for over $1.4 million at Saffrons June 2008 auction. Its price has fallen by more than 85 per cent from just over a year ago!
For comparison, the Dow fell by 46 per cent from June 2008, and, incidentally, has already recovered more than half of its decline; the BSE fell by 53 per cent, and has recovered all and more of its losses.
Granted that paintings are not commodities or stocks, although the
Indian art market certainly resembled a financial market over the last few years.
Long before the madness say, around 1999-2000
contemporary Indian art had come into its own and was evolving a unique balance where even mid-range artists could make a good living selling their work at prices that were affordable to a growing band of middle-income buyers.
To be fair, the parties did get a lot better, but it was increasingly unreal and you could feel the end coming. Prices accelerated further and by the time the music stopped thank you, Chuck Prince there must have been a couple of hundred thousand people involved in the
contemporary Indian artmarket.
Another 25 or 30 per cent were probably attracted by the hype the parties, the tamasha, and the coolness of buying art. Most of these are also gone, although some were hooked and remain.
Which means that at the end of the day or, better yet, the start of the new day the
Indian art community is probably a bit more than twice as large as it was ten years ago. About the size it would have been without the hoopla, and without the terrible consequences for many artists, art dealers, and, perhaps worst of all, art students, who bought the hype and lost their souls.
To be sure, many of the market darlings have also evolved Subodh certainly has and appear to have ridden the grotesque drama of the past few years to good effect. All drama takes us to a better place, provided we dont take ourselves too seriously.
The drama isnt fully over Im sure there are a few more shoes to drop. But the good news is that theres more talk of
contemporary Indian art these days, and the parties are starting up again.
