Tuesday, December 23, 2008

My views on the current Indian art market !

Well, its been a long time since I updated my blog, all financial markets have gone down further and so the over heated art market finally is coming down. Sales have stopped as everyone now takes a view as to who all would survive this recession. My view on this subject is quite simple, artists who have the humility to accept the new market realities would survive, also some of them just kept painting or doing the same concept to death, they would fall on the side.

To give you an example of the new market realities, just look at the TV Santosh work in the saffronart auction, it was an above average work ( not excellent though) and it went for 27 lacs for a 54 by 70 inch work,just 6 months back you would have been lucky to get it for even 80 lacs, so that is the kind of drop in prices we are talking about, Subodh Gupta, undoubtedly India's top contemporary artist has seen prices come down from 4-5 Crores to 1 crore and in private deals even at 80 lacs. This is the reality of the art market, a lot of blogs and gallery owners, art fund managers, so called curators would go on about how we should buy what we like and art is not about the value per square feet and all that.

I was surprised to see Hema Upadhayay works sold at Bodhi Singapore and in auctions immediately, most of them could not even manage a premium over what they were sold at. She is currently doing a show at Nature Morte, but over production never helped anyone.She is hardly moving and who is going to buy her work at 16 lacs when at Christie's she could only manage 13 !

I also feel its a great time to start collecting and your budget could be anything, I will detail out my favourite picks in my next blog but not before I dissect some shows and auction results for you !

Till then keep on reading !