RS 6 LAKHS AT MORN 9 LAKHS AT NOON: ANATOMY OF PRICE RISE

Uma Nair

The artist´s name is not the only determinant of a painting´s price. As well as the artist´s reputation, there is the work´s rarity. The technique used and the state of preservation of the painting are key to the sale price. Right if it is Western art. Wrong if it is Indian art.

A collector of Indian art told me last week.`I wanted to buy a work of Vaikuntham, a coloured work, and the gallery told me it was Rs 6 lakhs, at 11 in the morning, by 3 in the afternoon when I called again I was told `now it is Rs 9 lakhs. Last month I wanted to buy a Raza, the same gallery person told me `the price is Rs 40 lakhs, In less than five days she called me and said: Its sold for 45 lakhs. Is this the art market? The so called best galleries that are written about in the leading newspapers taking shows to London are actually looting people. This is not professional, This is robbery in broad daylight.'

What is sadly true is that the art boom has given birth to all sorts of malpractices and when money changes hands. Currency other than cheques is something that goes unaccounted for. Gallery person Purnima Dhawan who recently opened Gallery 302 was surprised when her buyers told her she was getting too skittish about taking only payment in cheques. `I have only known honesty and I have known no other language,' said she to the surprised buyers.'

Sophisticated heists of contemporary art are on the rise as professional rigging and an insatiable greed is taking over art practices in a lot of galleries in India. Art as investment is a novel idea that has hit the mainstream like a fever of absolute frenzy. A new crop of art-only investment funds are now trying to raise money from investors looking to cash in on the art market's current boom and cash for canvas is the signature tune that's the buzz word for now.

`This is madness,' says Aman Nath who bought art years ago at prices that could make you laugh. Prices for contemporary art are reaching dizzy heights, fuelled by bonus-happy hedge fund partners and a strong interest in art as an asset class. In India a number of gallery persons are hard hitting push full throttle housewives who will wheel and deal with artists, Wine and dine them, hang over their shoulders at art dos to get themselves clicked by shutterbugs, so that the great name gives them a few works that they can sell for a lark.

Strangely Bodhi Art that a number of people have blamed for price rigging seems to be the most honest now in the trade because collectors are stating that Bodhi Art prices are lower than secondary sale prices. `At least I know that Bodhi Art wont sell me a fake, I know that even if I have to wait in line for a work the transaction is straightforward, honest and clear,' says Mona Dawar a collector who has watched the scene for more than a decade.

As Indian art becomes hugely popular worldwide and prices shoot up to ever more dizzying heights, the question haunting art dealers and collectors is whether there will ever be a saturation point.

Art investment funds represent something of a revolution in the relationship between art and commerce. Art collecting has traditionally been the domain of wealthy individuals in search of rewards beyond the purely financial. But in the past 5 years in India at least that is changing and art is being looked at only as investment. `So the artist is the golden goose,' says Aman Nath. And the women who run galleries know how to molly coddle and cosset the goose so that it lays the golden egg just at the right moment. But the price of art in India is rising meteorically.

In theory, one could imagine that, barring temporary market crises, the combination of dwindling supplies and rising world demand would push prices up mechanically.

"This is likely. There is a limit to how many old works there can be, and how many of them are available in the art market," said the artist Ram Kumar, to me last year. But listening to the tale of the price of a work of art changing from morn to noon shows aptly that the Indian art scene is growing unwieldy and in drastic proportions. There is no market structure and the art galleries are enjoying a utopian ambience in which any price will do, the higher the better. And gullible noveau riche buyers become modern day stooges. Will the bubble burst? Time will tell.

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