Monday, November 10, 2008

Why Invest in Indian Contemporary art ? Part 2

In this post we are going to talk about, how to start investing in art. Don't get me wrong,I am not against art aesthetics or buying art just for enjoying it but then this blog is just not about that only. So read on,only if you not only like to enjoy your art but approach it like any other asset class. The advantage with art is that you can enjoy the work while it appreciates in value unless you are saddled with a work that you enjoy but it has no investment value, like 90% of the art that you would buy in galleries or buy without research.

So how should you start.....


  • The first key is to start reading, the best magazine that you get on the Indian art space is Arts India which is a quarterly and always comes late ! The magazine is well laid out and has interesting articles, form the advertisements you come to know what is really happening in the art world with solo shows and exhibitions.


  • The second magazine is Art & Deal to start with, its getting better by the day but lacks critique so its more like a round up of whats happening instead of really interesting articles, that's an area where they can improve on. So head to the news stand and start reading.


  • Become a member of http://www.indianartnews.com/ as its the best social networking website on Indian art today, read some of the discussions there.


  • Here is a short cut so that you at least have some basics to start with as an exercise, log on to http://www.saffronart.com/ and go the previous auctions section, now make a list of all artists which have been repeated in the contemporary auctions not the modern ones, this will give you a list of 20 odd names and these are the ones to start tracking, so no buying till now but just track these artists across various auctions in Saffronart to see how their price has moved over the years.



I think this is a quite a lot before you move on to the next post, Happy Reading !



Do leave your comments or suggestions, If I can help with anything !