Different Strokes !

It is really funny as to how similar things are, if you ever get the pleasure of meeting Mr. P.R.S. Oberoi, Chairman of The Oberoi Group of Hotels and ask him what is the one key thing for a person to be a good hotelier, his response is "passion". Now, even in the world of art, the best artists are the ones who are passionately committed to their art. The question could be "Are all artists not passionate about their art?" and the answer is "NO". In the earlier times, artists survived just on passion,they hardly had any money or commercial success so the work that you saw was produced with heart and soul in it and without the scores of studio assistants! I get to meet a lot of artists and honestly today people make works with more commercial focus on their minds than what their heart tells them to make. Galleries are also happy keeping the equation intact so that the sales don't suffer although creativity,individual brilliance and passion sometimes get lost in this haze of commercialisation.

I get a lot of mails on indianartreview@gmail.com and some calls on sometimes people getting upset about what I say about the artists they represent, my counter to that is that I never started this blog for winning a popularity contest for being the best art critic or the best blog on Indian contemporary art. I am not qualified to be an art critic but I have learnt quite a lot in my few years of being an art collector and I always say this that I maybe have the best access in this space to the best artists,top collectors and the best of the art galleries worldwide. That combined with my experience of being an art collector just gives me a really good perspective as to what is happening in our art space. As I am a rank outsider in the art world, I can afford to be frank and honest about my opinion which can be quite refreshing for some people, 629 emails on how people love this blog to be precise, that is reward enough for me. I am not a curator or a critic who has to be very nice to a gallery otherwise I will not get my next show from the gallery. I do this writing out of passion and have a busy day job running what many people, myself included(Biased opinion!) believe is one of the best hotels in the Asia-Pacific region, Trident,Gurgaon and writing this blog and doing all my art research is a night job!

This blog is for the collector and the aspiring collector, it is not for the speculator although there is nothing wrong in selling either in an auction or to a gallery, I am selling when I want and buying a work every month for the last 4 months. As a collector, you buy what you like as long as the value is right. It is actually very enjoyable to buy in a recession, galleries spend more time with you and are able to differentiate real collectors from the speculators.

So read on, about 2 artists I talked about recently in my last article in "The Telegraph", Mithu Sen is someone who reminds you of an era where art was only about passion and she scores the highest marks for being a very passionate and talented artist.

This is the 4th article that I wrote for the Sunday edition of "The Telegraph" newspaper in the Magazine section of "Graphiti". Reaching over 0.5 million readers, this is being posted on the blog for the reading pleasure of the international readers of the blog who do not get a copy of the Telegraph...........................

I’ve been reading a lot about the recently concluded Sothebys auction, which set a new record of about Rs 2.9 crore for a stunning work by Jogen Choudhary. Many writers have concluded that the Indian art scene is reviving.

Are we jumping the gun slightly? The auction figures were very good but I think it showed one thing above all — that good quality work will always sell, especially ones by the modern masters. That brings us back to a point which I’ve made earlier: always buy an artist’s best and most significant works. The Jogen Choudhary canvas was a 1979 masterpiece and one of his best works. Quality always pays sooner or later, boom or recession.

The contemporary art market for artists with works produced after the year 2000 is yet to recover though. This is a blessing in disguise as irrational exuberance is out and only good quality art will sell — and I reckon that prices will, in some cases, be 50 per cent lower than last year.

That then becomes a reasonable price to follow your passion and still end up making the right collecting and investment decisions. So let’s look at one artist who’s making waves internationally and another new artist who’s just waiting to be discovered.

Mithu Sen did her Masters at Santiniketan before she went to the Glasgow School of Art in UK on a Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship. Mithu is a multi-talented artist, a painter turned sculptor and installation artist who also does multi-media video photography as part of her works.

I’ve always been intrigued by her art — it’s as unique as it gets. These aren’t canvas-based works but she does thought provoking art which is sometimes controversial. She caused quite a stir in Korea and more recently in Japan with works which had a different take on sexuality in society.

Also, I wasn’t able to appreciate what she did for a long time because her best work is mostly outside India and out here I would just get to see pieces from her installation but not the whole body of work. Her art focuses a lot on the human body and bones and the skeleton. There’s also her series on Icarus.

I also admire Mithu because at the peak of the art boom in April 2007, she kicked off a project called the “Free Mithu” project. She invited select friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to send her a “letter with love” in exchange for a free artwork by her in a medium of their choice.

This was a brave move because at that time even her small works were valued at between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2 lakh. It was courageous of a young artist to say that the commercial aspect did not matter, and that she would gift a work with a personal authentication that you could even sell. Most of these were small but nice works.

I’d suggest that you take a look at Bose Pacia’s website out of New York and Suzie Q out of Zurich to get a better idea of Mithu’s art. There aren’t too many artists who’ve done solos in New York and Zurich, shown at a couple of museum shows in Tokyo and Korea and are now preparing for another one in Vienna — and all this in 18 months.

She’s a potential superstar who’s passionate and committed. But you have to be in love with her art to get one of her important works. I feel it’s best to only look at works which are a minimum of 30in by 40in and cost between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 5 lakh.

Her larger works at Bose Pacia, which are around 42in x 82in, sell for around Rs 8 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. A work from the same series went for Rs 40 lakh at last year’s Saffronart auction.

(Nothing lost in translation,an installation at The Musuem of Modern Art,Tokyo)

Yati Jaiswal is an artist, who’s still building his reputation. I was introduced to his work by the “KAVA 4”, an award given by Kochi’s Kashi Art Gallery. I’ve always looked carefully at the KAVA 4 winners because Kashi Art puts in huge amounts of research before giving out its awards. Yati Jaiswal was one of last year’s winners and I started checking him out the moment the winners were announced.

I discovered a young and talented artist. Yati is humble and passionate about his art and not very prolific. He sent me some images of his really lovely canvas works that appeal from an aesthetic and emotional perspective. The canvases are an eclectic mix of the ancient and modern with a focus on machines in a time warp.

Some pieces have a three-dimensional quality and the machines and characters seem to be coming out of the canvas. The values of between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh for significant works are also very reasonable for an award-winning artist of his potential.

(Into Hibernation and Self Preservation)

These two artists are at very different stages of their career —one has already made the jump into the international arena; the other has won an important award and may break into an entirely new orbit soon. Take your pick and enjoy your art!

Class acts

Here is the 3rd article in my series on Contemporary art that I am writing for " Graphiti" the Sunday magazine for The Telegraph newspaper every fortnight reaching over 0.5 million readers. This article was published last Sunday and is reproduced here for you on the blog in case you missed a copy!

As I’m focusing on the contemporary art space and more specifically on the artists who have produced a majority of their works following 2000, I’ll now detail some of the most interesting artists you should take a look at. I feel they’re the best in their class, all very unique in their own way.

Uniqueness is extremely important to an artist’s work. A lot of artists now copy styles or are significantly influenced by another artist. For instance, I was looking at a contemporary art auction catalogue from Philips de Pury for their London sale and some of the similarities between works by established international artists and some new upcoming Indian ones is quite striking.

In this article, we’re going to cover an artist who’s very good with canvas, an artist who specialises in prints on a very different medium like matchboxes and an installation artist who’s also a photographer. Each has exhibited at prominent shows internationally and their work is stunning in its own way. Now let’s get down to examining these three mediums and our exceptional artists.

T.V. Santosh: He’s an exceptional artist, very humble and down to earth. His canvas works come across with nice fluorescent hues and are stunning to look at. Santosh focused on terror, terrorism and also the religious divides that exist in the world today much before other artists even started looking at such themes and his canvases portray them really well.

Now it’s expensive to own a T.V. Santosh canvas. Even in this depressed market one of his large canvases will cost you around Rs 25 lakh. He shows in the US in October and had shown in March at Grosvenor Vadehra in London. His watercolours which are in the Rs 3 lakh range are more affordable and actually, I felt earlier the quality was not as good as it is today.

I have seen stunning watercolours now but I would still recommend that you go for a smaller canvas as those are a visual treat for the senses and our rule has always been to buy the best work or the most significant work.

Scars of an Ancient Error-I

Shilpa Gupta: Photography can be classified into two fields — one is documentary photography and there’s also what I call message-based photography. Documentary photography will cover the landscapes of Ladakh, an event or an image of the sunrise over the ocean or sunset in the mountains.

Shilpa Gupta does not do documentary photography. She does installations and she’s a video artist and her photographs are usually a part of her installations. Her message-based photography is maybe the best we have in this field. But, in fact, it’s her photographs which command high prices.

She conveys important messages through her art. Take a look at her visual which has a banner running through the sky that says there’s no border here, borders are on the ground between war-torn nations and others but you can’t divide the sky! This was originally used in her installation Here There is No Border.

She has done another interesting series called There is no explosive here in which she had people carry bags wrapped in white canvas saying that there were no explosives in the bags. This was a reference to the London Underground blasts after which everyone with a bag was viewed with suspicion.

If you go through her resume, you’ll find that there’s hardly any country or museum that she has not shown in. She’s an exceptional artist and can be quite prolific. Try and get the work shown here which is in an edition of 10. There is no explosive here with a red background on a metro station is the best work in the entire Explosive series. This is an edition of six.

In fact, when I had to buy her best work, I had to buy it a long way from home at the Gallery Volker Diehl in Berlin — now that’s a real international artist. Her editioned works are priced between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 4 lakh.

An untitled work by Shilpa Gupta

Prajjwal Choudhury: He’s a young emerging artist from Calcutta who studied in Baroda and he works with a very unique medium — matchboxes. Yes, your normal everyday matchboxes. He prints his own images and pastes them on the matchboxes so that they deliver a message.

He had a solo with the gallery Project 88 in Mumbai and is quite exceptional. He uses images of works by other artists and puts them on a matchbox. It’s a visual delight to watch his work and in this work, Who Will Be Next, he takes all the images that established artists have made internationally and takes a dig at them saying, it’s all the same stuff presented in a different form and that what you see today will again come in front of you just presented differently.

Prajjwal comments on this recycling of art and conveys a message that the art being shown today has already been shown earlier and will again be recycled to be shown again with some changes. His satirical approach to the recycling of art through his medium of handmade matchboxes joined tog-ether for a huge collage is unique and interesting.

Bhavna Kakar & Aparajita Jain from Latitude 28 Gallery and Seven Art in New Delhi showed him recently at a show in Delhi which got rave reviews. His work is available at between Rs 75,000 and Rs 2 lakh.

Everything has been done before but we like to go back and begin all over again

In our next article, I will discuss some more of our contemporary stars who are redefining our art landscape.

The Art of Buying !

Well, we are really getting active on this blog, with frequent posts and thank you all for your deluge of emails, my apologies in some cases where my response has been delayed. If you have had the good fortune of reading the article on contemporary Indian art in the "Time" magazine, it clearly outlines the fact that values for contemporary art are down to 25 % of what they were a year back, we have been commenting on this all along that the contemporary market that we cover is still a long way from recovery. Sothebys on 16th June in London in their Indian art sale set a new record by Jogen Choudhary but unfortunately a lot of contemporary artists failed to sell.

As you are aware that I write an article every fortnight in the 'Graphiti' magazine which comes with the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, here is the article which appeared on the 14th of June for all the international readers of this blog.

One of the biggest issues faced by collectors involves the valuation of art which is a minefield. As we’re talking in this column about contemporary art we’re just focusing on artists who were selling commercially post 1995 — not about the F.N. Souzas or M.F. Husains. If you already own a significant work of modern art like a Ganesh Pyne or an S.H. Raza, count yourself lucky as values have soared, especially between 2005 and 2008.

But when everything’s on the rise, even insignificant contemporary works shoot up as people jump on the bandwagon. Studio assistants for some of the biggest names churn out more works, art dealers and galleries join in and whoosh go the prices. Also artists start eyeing their contemporaries and mark up prices. Then there’s a crash and values become more realistic but still many art figures refuse to accept the market realities. So how do you know now if you’re getting a good work of art for the right price? Here are some pointers:

First rule is buy what you like! This is one of the oldest rules in the book but it’s worth repeating. Don’t race to buy a work because someone has told you its price will double in two years. Aesthetic appreciation is the key factor. Investment comes a distant second.

That being said, realise your tastes will evolve. Also have people around you who can explain and guide you and try to approach pieces with an open mind. The first time I saw an Aditya Pande work, for instance, I didn’t like it because it wasn’t typical canvas art. But then as I looked at his work more I saw he used computer graphic lines to great effect, merging them with enamel paint and the finish of an inkjet on a paper to come up with distinctive and unusual pieces. The moral is: don’t be afraid to change your mind. The fact that Pande’s work is overpriced is a separate matter! But if you follow this rule, welcome to your journey as an art collector!

An untitled work by Aditya Pande

Study the artist’s biography in detail, which college they attended, which awards they’ve got, where they’ve had shows and which gallery is promoting them. I went to the India Habitat Centre for a Shiv Varma show last year. Why? He’s won the Kashi award and also the IHC-Art India award — two prizes I respect. I needed to see his works, although his forte is sculpture. I liked one canvas and bought it for Rs 2.5 lakh — a 6ft x 6ft work — and which from a value perspective suited me.

Also, I went through Shiv’s biography, met him, spoke to him and understood the philosophy behind his art. This all took less than an hour but such due diligence will help you as an art collector. And once you decide to buy purchase significant works. Try to buy the best work on show!

Pay attention to the promoting gallery. The top galleries will usually get the best artists and mentor them. Also they’ll be exhibited at the right spaces and shown at key international fairs — broadening the collector base. In the contemporary art space, it’s key for an artist to be represented by an influential gallery. India’s top artist Subodh Gupta is now represented by Hauser & Wirth, a powerful European gallery with an enviable set of collectors. They’ll ensure he gets placed in the right collections and the right museums internationally — all this adds value. So look for the key galleries. I’m always inclined to see those featured at Nature Morte and Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi, Sakshi and Chemould in Mumbai, Kashi in Cochin and Aakriti in Calcutta for the “Generation Next” series they have on display.

Get the pricing right for emerging talent. Let’s assume you walk into a show or a friend tells you to buy a particular art work. Do you take an instinctive decision or you look at some of the data before you buy? The problem is there’s no pricing logic to younger artists’ works. I attend shows of artists just out of college or having shown at an insignificant gallery and starting prices are Rs 3 lakh to Rs 4 lakh for a medium sized canvas (36in x 48in). That’s totally incorrect pricing according to me. I don’t understand the logic of that price. Where did it come from?

As far as I’m concerned, if the artist hasn’t been in an international auction and doesn’t have a pricing record history (even auctions can be rigged so sometimes you need at least a two-year price history), then the benchmark price can be calculated as Rs 3,000 to Rs 8,000 per sqft. Art purists may scoff but this rule of thumb will save a lot of new collectors from being conned into buying art not valued properly.

I’ve bought nearly all of the new contemporary artists whom I believe have a great future at this price point. Now, this isn’t a strict rule but it will pass the test most times. I bought an excellent 5ft by 5ft Vibha Galhotra canvas. She’s a very talented contemporary artist and last year was shown as the top emerging talent at the Shanghai Contemporary art fair. The cost was Rs 2 lakh or around Rs 8,000 per square foot for an artist who was showing internationally and also was one of the highlighted artists at a fair of significant importance. This was bound to move up and now it’s maybe close to Rs 4 lakh, so do try and identify artists with potential.

Introspection by Vibha Galhotra

I also place a premium on artists who try and keep in touch with their collectors. An example is New York-based Seher Shah, who always sends an update to her collectors when she is showing somewhere or giving a talk in a museum.

Projective-1 by Seher Shah

Also critical is looking at the number of artworks an artist produces. Younger artists and even the top contemporary league are quite prolific. The logic last year was to make hay while the sun shone. Today, the values of many artists have fallen to 20 per cent of where they were a year ago and this is among the really top league. They were talented but over-productive.

Atul Dodiya, excellent by any standard, showed 40 watercolours at the Bodhi show in Mumbai last year and had scores of prints in editions of 20 from a Singapore workshop too. The market doesn’t have enough collectors to absorb such large numbers and his market crashed. Buying at the right price is the key. The bottom line is: do your homework.

Kapil Chopra is a senior hospitality professional and writes a blog on collecting and investing in Indian contemporary art at www.indianartinvest.blogspot.com and a fortnightly column in the Sunday Telegraph magazine "Graphiti" reaching over half a million readers.

Indian Contemporary Art - Recovery still a long way off !

Well, its auction season and two of them are already over, Christies and Saffronart have finished with their sales, so what are the results ? Let me give you a brief synopsis of how I see the market behind the veil, the truth is coming out albeit slowly !

First things first, the Moderns, Husain, Souza and Raza with Gaitonde are still going very strong, the appetite from good quality works from the masters is still there and they are selling well, not as good as last year but recovering. We as a blog focus on the contemporary space and that is still going through a deep and long but much needed price correction and I am really happy for that.

So how do I make a statement like that? Very simple, Subodh sold well at 94 lacs (I say well because it was higher than 79 lacs in the last auction!) and Rasid Rana at 1.3 crores for the Red Carpet means that appetite for his important works from the series like Veil and Red Carpet (where the images are actually from an abattoir and the blood makes the red carpet ) is still strong. These two gentlemen are anyway in a different league so what happens to the other lot or the 2nd tier of contemporary artists who till last year were hailed as the next big thing to be hitting the Indian art scene, well for some of them due to their greed and also the galleries and honestly most of the galleries need to have lessons in pricing art are down in the dumps!

So, lets talk about the three superstars, Surendran Nair, set a record of over 2 crores just a year back in the Saffronart auction, a work from the same series and a very well known work also displayed at the Hong Kong Art fair this time could not even match a lower estimate of 14 lacs! can you believe it, there was no one who even quoted 14 lacs for an artist who set a new price record of 2 crores plus last year, the work is here for you to see, as I said I was a buyer at 10 lacs but no one would touch it at 14 plus buyer premium plus tax, that is 18 lacs !

******

Second, contemporary star, Justin Ponmany, also showing at Art Basel the world's top art fair, we had mentioned a value point of again 10 lacs in our earlier blog post,now we are talking about a 10.5 ft work by 6 ft work, a good 65 ft work which just failed to sell again.Another one bites the dust, we said 10 lacs, the lower estimate said 20 so no value for money and Justin also goes down with no bids at that level !

******

Third, Contemporary star, Ashim Purkayastha, saw a lovely work of his at one of the exhibitions at my hotel, last year and the work was priced at 70 lacs! Again a huge canvas with a lower estimate of 14 lacs, failed to sell! What a fall!

******

Fourth, Contemporary star, Jagannath Panda, had a nice triptych which was again 10 ft by 6 ft so a 60 ft work which finally sold at 13 lacs plus buyer premium! Thank heavens for that. It will be interesting to watch his pricing at his upcoming solo at Nature Morte in August, will he like all the other artists mark his primary pricing over the auction price or will the best gallery in the country be more sedate with the pricing and follow public opinion !

******

So what is the moral of the story, for collectors like us it is important to be not carried away by the sweet talk that galleries are putting out and some of our contemporary artists are way beyond logical pricing levels. Also, galleries are still being completely illogical and high handed about prices, they claim to be in this for the aesthetic love of art but are very happy taking home illogical values home. I see young artists all the time with ridiculous pricing and my mantra on buying is very simple, young artists showing with a major gallery in a solo show for the first time and there are only 5-6 top galleries in the country should be priced around 1 lac for a medium sized canvas of 3 by 4 ft and 2 lacs for a 5 by 5 ft canvas, this is after you have had your solo with the real top boys. The problem is and I can give you countless examples of the first price only being 4-5 lacs, now that is setting up for disaster for a new collector.We do not even have 10 top contemporary artists who can guarantee a sale in an international auction and with such big boys failing to sell, be conservative with your buying for now.

Its time to have galleries price with a logic of building artists and collections, greed needs to be out otherwise we will be writing the obituary of contemporary Indian art. There are many collectors who own works from the wonderful artists mentioned above but are all stuck as they see their investment depreciating faster than any other asset class, love your art but be very careful, primary values have to be lower than auction values always ! That is my advise to all collectors otherwise just walk away, also remember that in odd cases auction values can be manipulated easily so always err on the side of caution.

I see more fly by the night operators in selling art than I see as a percentage in the stock market!

Buy what you love and that is the key, also at the price you want not what the gallery or the art dealer or consultant dictates !

Also, our predictions for the auction in an earlier post were bang on target as we said that the pricing was way too high for collectors to buy, please read our comments and I am pleased to see that people are not getting carried away for a change !

Cheers

Kapil

Kapil Chopra is a senior hospitality professional and writes a blog on collecting and investing in Indian contemporary art at www.indianartinvest.blogspot.com and a fortnightly column in the Sunday Telegraph magazine "Graphiti" reaching over half a million readers.

Clouded Canvas !

Dear All,

Thank to your overwelming support over the last couple of months when I opened this blog for public viewing, I will now be writing a column on Collecting & Investing in Indian Contemporary Art in the "Graphiti" Sunday Magazine of The Telegraph newspaper. The Telegraph Sunday edition has a circulation of over 5 lac( 0.5 million) readers and hence our views on being careful and collecting the right artists will reach more people. I would also like to thank the Deputy Editor of The Telegraph newspaper Mr. Paran Balakrishnan for actually going through this blog and giving me this opportunity to share my learnings with more people. He has also taken the time and effort to edit and improve on what I am trying to convey. Thank you Paran, without your support and encouragement, my journalistic venture would not have ben possible !

Here is the article which appeared last Sunday on the 31st of May in "Graphiti" produced here for the international readers of this blog and also for those who missed it,the article was called "Clouded Canvas" ! My next article in Telegraph newspaper comes next sunday in "The Graphiti " magazine, which is the 14th of June.

Enjoy the article and as always, comments are more than welcome, we now average 50 new unique vistors to this blog everyday !

The Article starts from here.....................

The Indian art market is a bit gloomy now but there is a silver lining, says Kapil Chopra

Phantoms X1 by Thukral & Tagra

Indian contemporary art has experienced a roller-coaster ride over the last three years. The boom began towards the end of 2005 and values started getting more astronomical by the day, hitting their peak in 2008. Now, with a major correction going on in the art market overheated values are slowly coming down.

Artists who made it big overnight are being more realistic and the quality of work being turned out is improving. In the boom, quality came under pressure with often similar works being churned out.

In value terms, let’s look at some examples of how severe the correction has been in the prices of top contemporary artists. Subodh Gupta went for a record Rs 5.1 crore for a canvas in the Saffronart auction last year. This year the value for a canvas that was nearly the same size had plummeted to Rs 79 lakh.

The same phenomenon has been seen internationally with top contemporary artists like Damien Hirst failing to make any major sales after September 2008 — when the global financial crisis really started biting. The current Christie’s sale in New York had scarcely any Hirst works in fact!

During the boom some artists turned into overnight stars. It seemed that suddenly Indian artists had become the flavour of the decade. The rush to buy of course was fuelled by higher disposable income coupled with the greed of galleries and collectors. All this sent prices soaring.
In December, T.V. Santosh, who’s a visually appealing artist with his fluorescent hues, went for Rs 27 lakh for a 6ft by 4ft canvas in the Saffronart auction. However just three months earlier, the same piece was going for over Rs 80 lakh.

Suddenly, works of prominent contemporary artists like Atul & Anju Dodiya are just not visible on the auction calendars and collectors who had bought them at over Rs 50 lakh a canvas have been stuck with no exit routes.

The galleries which make anything from 33 per cent to 50 per cent as commission on pieces were happy to prop up prices. So were the artists who were able to mark up their prices every couple of months. Then the bubble burst, the liquidity that had pushed the market evaporated and prices crashed.

When Your Target Cries For Mercy by T.V. Santosh

The Art Tactic Indian Contemporary Art Confidence Index, which tracks the top contemporary art collectors, is now down 63 per cent from October 2008, highlighting the severity of the fall. And with art being what is called an “illiquid asset” — this means with such a strong fall, there are virtually no buyers even for some of the best works. So is it all gloom, boom and doom in the art market or is there a silver lining to this cloud? I’d say that if you’ve just started collecting contemporary art, then it just does not get better than this.

Why this optimism?

The prices are more realistic and works are much more available now as compared to six months ago. At that time, if you wanted to buy a Thukral & Tagra or a Shilpa Gupta work you wouldn’t have been able to get one. Now you’ll find the galleries much more accessible and realistic with their prices. So you can now not only buy quality but also get it at the right price.

The valuations for younger emerging talent are becoming quite appealing in some cases. I bought a nice triptych by Prajjwal Choudhary a couple of weeks ago. For a work which was high on quality and content, the price for a 9ft by 4ft work was Rs 1.75 lakh which was a real bargain.

But still beware. Some galleries and artists haven’t realised the good times are over. I went to an emerging young artist show in New Delhi and saw a 8ft by 6ft canvas priced at Rs 12 lakh. This artist had never been featured in any auction for me to be able to form a proper estimate of the work’s worth. He had only one solo show in Munich to his credit. So guess what happened? Predictably enough, he hardly sold anything. He was finally forced to drop his prices by 40 percent but still had no takers.

This kind of unrealistic pricing is happening with reputed established galleries. Shows are still being launched at unrealistic prices and then being revised downwards. Galleries should wake up and smell the coffee. And if they don’t, market trends will force them to take corrective action which is good news for buyers.

As galleries and artist come to grips with the new realities of the art market, another positive is that we’re seeing the better works being turned out with more detail. There’s a real effort to make each piece different. This is thanks to the fact that artists are under the threat of not selling. The pressure to churn out more works of the same series is definitely out and new ideas and craftsmanship is back and that can only be healthy for the art market.

The dividing line between quality and mediocrity is more evident than ever before. Log onto Astaguru.com for the results of their latest auction and you’ll see that nearly half the auction works were not sold as collectors didn’t make any bids even at the lower estimates mainly due to the mediocrity of works and lack of confidence in the market.

So do make that visit to the art show that you wanted to go to and also send your gallery a list of artists you enjoy and would like to buy. I will in the coming articles take you on a journey of how to value that piece of contemporary art that you always wanted to buy. Enjoy your art — but definitely not without investment and price rationale!

Kapil Chopra is a senior hospitality professional and an art collector. He writes a blog on investing in Indian contemporary art on www.indianartinvest.blogspot.com

Astaguru Gone & Saffronart Coming ! - An Auction Analysis

Let us talk about the art market right now, Astaguru the auction house set up just a year back concluded its second sale recently in May, now that is a really brave thing to be doing an art auction in May, the end result was worse than they would have expected with close to 50 % of the lots failing to sell. Now, it was not a sale of exceptional works but it was fine if you were looking to buy well priced art and some of it was not bad, I was a buyer of Rashid Rana's famous veil series which has a "Burqa" or a Veil made up with tiny photographs of hardcore pornography and looking like a veil, that is the first time such a controversial work was sold in an Indian auction catalogue, although Sothebys did sell a larger version last year and also the Schandra Singh ( she has never shown in India and represented by the Rare Art gallery in New York and Galerie Bertrand & Gruner in Switzerland), both the works went close to the higher estimates and I stayed away.

The problem with the auction houses as I see it as that it is important to do a sell and quality honestly has not gone up, look at the TV Santosh in Astaguru, very bad work and Saffronart comes up with a watercolor ! now when you can't even manage a decent canvas then why do a contemporary auction ? Look at both the catalogues, no good TV Santosh Canvas, no Thukral & Tagra Canvas, no Bharti Kher work, No substantial NS Harsha work in the established category.Both the auctions did not really show some of the real good emerging talent but stuck to the artists they promote, they deny it but look at Rahul Choudhary and Jagannath Mohapatra for Astaguru and Sudhanshu Sutar ( they have flogged him to death !) and Phaneendra Nath Chaturvedi for Saffronart, no one buys them outside this forum. Phaneendra had a work in Astaguru which was a 5 by 5 feet work only for 1 lac and it failed to sell !

Saffronart is fortunate that the stock market has moved up, confidence is back and art markets which generally lag the stock markets may finally pick up, that is when the real test comes, I sincerely hope this time around people will be logical and more careful in their selection. So what would I be looking at in the upcoming Saffronart auction and the price points that I would look at making a buying decision, how much more transparent can I get ? !

Lot 12 A Ramachandran for 1 lac would be a steal ( not from an investment perspective, I love the work !),

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Lot 20 Surendran Nair 35.5 by 27.5 inches at 10 lacs is a fantastic deal, I like the work and its good investment

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( The quality of TV Santosh and Shilpa Gupta works is not good enough to be in an auction, Jogen - Lot 49 Value at 35 to 45 lacs is ridiculous according to me )

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Lot 59 -N S Harsha ( please view this work in high resolution and read the line, I just love this guy, he is really the best, I am buying him even right now !) Although not one of his best works but still I love the line on a bleeding artisan with blood coming from the clown's nose, I would go till 2.25 lacs for these 2 works.

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Lot 64 - Justin Ponmany is a nice work but the estimates of 20-25 lacs are way too high, I will only half this price for a Justin ( he has now failed to sell in a number of auctions )

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I must admit that some of the modern works in this auction are really nice but that is something beyond the scope of this blog, just one comment,do buy the lovely V S Gaitonde ( Lot 38) at 1 crore if you have the bucks !

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Happy reading and lets see if some of the good cheer has worked its magic on the art world as well ! My advise is that you should definately start buying some of the established conteporaries and the younger emerging lot otherwise you may have miss a good buying opportunity, just be prudent and follow the rules as underlined in this blog earlier. Do visit both the websites at http://www.saffronart.com/ and http://www.astaguru.com/ to download the upcoming auction catalogue from Saffronart and the auction results from Astaguru and then go through this blog note, it will help you in the analysis.

Thank you all for your support and my apologies for the delay in responding to some of your comments on indianartreview@gmail.com, keep them coming !

Cheers

Kapil Chopra

Do visit all the earlier posts, comments and recommendations for investing on my blog at www.indianartinvest.blogspot.com

Sydney Art Review & What I am buying now!

Well, Delhi is getting hot by the day ! and I am back from a lovely week in Sydney where the Australian winter is just setting in ! I was in beautiful Sydney on business and I always take out time for my favourite passion which is art, so the free time I can squeeze in goes in educating myself on the art scenario in the country.

We were fortunate as in an event at Intercontinental Sydney, Fred Matti, the GM did a wonderful job of organising an event banquet where the sights of Sydney and the food of Sydney was brought into the hotel, it became my first interaction with Australian art where I met Brenda Colahan who is an Australian art advisor and she gave me a great run down on Australian art and here it is for you, the two most important living artists in Australia are John Olsen and Tim Storrier. John Olsen is the top artist and his large canvas is priced at around 80 lacs and a good large Tim Storrier at around 60-65 lacs, the size being 6 ft by 8 ft works or close to that.

On Sunday, I had the privilege of meeting my good friend Bradley Cocks with Collette Dinnigan, Australia's top fashion designer and having boutiques in London and Paris. I had an opportunity to share a Rose wine with her at their lovely residence covered by Vogue and then took me to meet Tim Olsen son of the legendary John Olsen, Australia's top artist. Tim runs two wonderful galleries in the posh Paddington area of Sydney. The galleries were simple but exquisite in their appearance with natural light coming in and lighting up the whole space. There was a show by a young artist called Paul Davies and honestly coming from the overheated Indian market, the prices were really unbelievably low which made me remark instantly as to how reasonable the prices were. To put it in perspective, Guy Maestri recently won the Archibald 2009 award for a portrait of the singer Yunupingu as shown below, it is Australia's top award and carries a prize money of ASD 50,000 (approximately 18 lacs now compare this with some of our awards instituted most of the time by galleries who make tons of money and give a prize money of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000).Tim who represents him had a canvas of 8 ft by 6.5 ft for close to 6 lacs that is close to 12,000 a sq ft and this artist won the top prize, I can tell you scores of artists in India who haven't even won a significant award and are quoting at double these valuations.

(Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu)

An interesting thing I noticed was the focus on aboriginal art in Australia and the attention that is drawing, that could be a pre cursor to our own tribal art really taking off, so be on the lookout for that ! The other thing I noticed when I went to the Museum of Contemporary art in Sydney was the number of children who had come in to have a look at the art with their parents, now this convinces me on the future growth of this market as children grow up appreciating art. I also saw one of the most inspiring installation shows by the famous lady Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, it was mind blowing and her installation for someone born in 1929 was more contemporary than the younger lot !

Well, back in Delhi, I was quite impressed with Bhavna Kakkar and Aparajita Jain's new show at Travancore space in Delhi called Re-claim/Re-cite/Re-Cycle. I went on the last day of the show as the invite was very inspiring and I was curious to have a look. Bhavna curated an exceptional show and one of the best shows that I have been to this year. I walked in not really being ready to buy anything and was just blown away by a work by Prajjwal Choudhary who had a very interesting piece on recycling of art, I bought this piece shown below which is actually matchboxes with prints of Damien Hirst's Skull,Jogen Choudhary's works, Ravinder Reddy and many more, the matchboxes are arranged to say " Who Will b next " in a triptych,its a huge work and has a lot of profound thoughts on the matchboxes and merged with the art. So this is what I have bought in the last 10 days. It was a pleasure to have met Prajjwal at the show also, I was very impressed with his detail and idea with which he approached the whole subject of recycling and how the same art was being created in a different forms by other artists and the question was " Who will be next to be cloned ?". I felt his take on the whole subject was great. So I applied my buying principles which are I liked the work, it was a significant work, the artist was backed by an excellent gallery Project 88 and that his value for a huge triptych which was 2 by 12 feet at around 1.75 lacs was reasonable for this work. I made a buying decision and actually love the work, this is not a promotion for you to buy Prajjwal but I think he is interesting and you can look at his last solo in the past exhibitions section of Project 88 and do some research on him before you make your own buying decision.

Till then enjoy the summer sun, take a break and track the Astaguru auction at http://www.astaguru.com/ for further trends on the art market.

Cheers

Kapil Chopra

Disclaimer - As usual, please assume I have a vested interest in all I say ! Please do your own research and apply your own buying principles before you buy a work of art and only buy if you enjoy the work !

Young Artists and Valuations !

Well, I think the last few days have been really satisfying for me, I would first like to thank, Nivedita, Anangsen and Fine arts for 3 lovely comments on my last post, it is really fantastic for you all to take out the time and post such detailed comments, encourages me more to keep on with this blog. We have now crossed over 1,000 unique visitors and with only word of mouth referrals and I see 30 new visitors on an average. If you have the time please click on the comments section on my last blog and go through the comments, they are better than this blog !

Also, there is an interesting discussion on Indian Art News on blogs and we have been featured there and most people have appreciated what we are doing except one who was not happy with our leanings towards contemporary art. The key thing here is that if you read through my first post, it very clearly mentions that we are a contemporary art blog, we are not tracking moderns as we choose to do that, we are clearly focused in our approach and our area of interest. Also we are advising people to put in money and the maximum is 30 lacs and you don't get a nice Hussain or a Souza canvas for 30 lacs, so its beyond our investment purview, also personally and this is a pure personal opinion, I know enough people who had their parents buy the Moderns at 1 lac to 5 lac range and I don't feel like investing ( don't forget we are an investment advisory blog not just an art critique or review blog ) with such an unfair disadvantage where I pick it up at 60 lacs ! So please if you follow the moderns or in the specific case of the discussion on Indian art news where a dealer took exception to this, please do not follow the blog as we have nothing to contribute to the modern space and neither will I advocate putting in money into the moderns as I cannot comment outside the scope of this blog.

So here we go, let me discuss 3 artists on this blog who I think are young, smart and exceptional in their own ways. They have very good galleries backing and have a great future hopefully but I have a few points to mention on how far I see them going, in my opinion all of them have had huge pricing issues and are grossly overpriced. Now my comparison is going to be with some auction prices and that sometimes do not represent the true picture, like a 6 by 6 T&T canvas in Saffronart went for 14 lacs in the last auction ( really not a nice work, it was part of a series and the seller just put one part in an auction so there was no appeal and the price crashed ) and in Sothebys in late september in the financial meltdown when only 19 out of 31 works were sold, they went for over 1 crore in the best of Asia catalogue. So now, when I can choose a good work, I know I can pay 25-30 lacs for it. At the end of the day you will make your own rules and I can guide you through it, the quality of work is also very critical but look for it when it is similar and then compare prices.Also, artists evolve over time and some series will always attract a premium, so you will be dead if you compare Dislocation from Rashid Rana to the "Veil" series, I will happily pay a 100 % premium for "Veil" and not buy Dislocation ever ! It went for 6 lacs for a 33.5 by 45 inch work and a work from the series "Veil" would be at least 40 lacs for this size or more ! Here I go with my take on 3 artists I love and a comment and discussion on their values, we will look at many more cases like these in the coming days.....

Gurusiddappa G.E -Represented by the Sakshi art gallery, what a lovely solo show he had, please go into the past exhibitions section of http://www.sakshigallery.com/ to view his show. Excellent hand,content and really nice works but expensive for a young emerging artist. He featured in the last autumn Saffronart catalogue at an estimate of 8 lacs to 9 lacs for a 5 feet by 6 feet work, so that is 30 ft and at Rs 30,000 per square feet it is quite steep, give me his work any day at half this price for 4,50,000 to 5,00,000 and I am a buyer for an artist who I believe is exceptional in his handling. Arvind Vijaymohan of Japa art advisory was the first person who mentioned to me have a look at his work more than a year back and I was impressed. Guess what happened at the Saffronart sale ? the work did not sell ! although a lot of people liked him. Now pricing is very relative thing and it always pays to be conservative.

Aditya Pande - Exceptional artist and works very differently from the rest, he uses the computer to full use with graphic lines, merges them with enamel paint and the finish of an inkjet to really come up with stunning pieces. Backed by solos with Alexia Goethe in London, Nature Morte( part of a 3 artist show) by Peter Nagy and then Chaterjee & Lal in Mumbai. He has the best galleries representing his exceptional talent and that has made his prices rocket to as high as 10 lacs for a work.Again, the prices for someone who has just come on to the scene were getting carried away, I know a very good friend of mine had bought his work at 1.5 lacs and now it was at 10 lacs and over so he exited the work as all this happened in 18 months, too fast a time for someone who is producing works quite regularly and still has many more years ahead of him. So, what did we have in the recent Saffronart auction, we had a 6 ft by 3.5 ft so a 21 ft work for an estimate of 7-9 lacs so an average of 40,000 per sq ft for a young artist in a market which has crashed, well guess the result, the work got sold at 4.84 lacs plus buyer premium, so close to 40 % lower than the median estimate of 8 lacs. Again, the market was too heated and the valuation bizarre to be getting in for anyone ! His last solo show in Mumbai was marked at 7.5 lacs to 8 lacs, I think.

George Martin PJ - He had a waiting list of maybe 3-4 months to even get his work in a resale, very nice looking works and his appeal was huge, his solo show at Palette was sold out even before it opened with people just waiting to get a canvas. He is again an artist who is magical with colours and to have and view a George Martin canvas is a pleasure ( I own a lovely George Martin canvas). He generally works in a 5 by 5 ft format and started a couple of years back at 2 lacs for a canvas, last year the rates were as high as 12 lacs and they were moving a lac every month in the frenzy ! so you had a big line but no one could buy as works were limited. His rise always puzzled me as he never had a top league gallery backing him,when I say that it does not mean that Palette is not a top league gallery,but I always saw his works in all these group shows very couple of months, generally gallery contracts are very strict for you to give works to other galleries. So he was a good marketing guy who sold his works well through all these group shows and still made it big in a world where a singular gallery backs you to the hilt and you get higher visibility. I do think he got carried away with all that and his artist prices also kept on getting revised every month, till it came down faster than the rest of the pack as some speculators exited. He is now available at around 6 lacs and that is close to the right price for him so a good 50 % correction from his price 6 months back.

So here is my take on these talented artists and my disclaimer is,please assume that I have a vested interest in all I say as that will make it easier for you if you disagree with me !

Do keep on posting all those great comments !

Cheers

Kapil Chopra

Young, Emerging and Established Artists - A Perspective

Well, here is the post that I promised, been to Berlin and then to lovely Moscow in the last few days, finishing the week with two art shows that I attended this week. Berlin is a lovely city with a lot of history and with Nature Morte, Bodhi ( now closed) and Volker Diehl ( they are a fantastic gallery both in Berlin and Moscow) there is enough on Indian art happening there. In Moscow, Russian art has been going through the roof, I stayed at the lovely Ritz Carlton hotel facing the Kremlin and guess what they have a gallery below the lobby level, open only by invitation. The gallery houses European masters and some of the works are over a 100 years old and valuations could be upto 10 million USD.It is managed by a private art fund called Aurora and I met one of the partners who was really passionate about what they did.

Now, why this post ? the main reason is that like all other asset classes even Indian art like Russian art has gone through the roof. So when everything in a market moves, insignificant works by contemporary artists also go through the roof as no one wants to miss out, studio assistants for some of the real big names start churning out more works, art dealers and galleries join in and start marking up the prices. More than the galleries, artists start thinking that they are really worth much more. Then there is a market crash and values sometimes become realistic but most of the people especially the one who have just arrived on the scene and also some of the older ones who never really made it refuse to accept market realities. So here are some of the key pointers to buying Indian contemporary art from artists who have never been in an international auction or do not have a price record history....

• Pricing record - Let us assume you walk into an art show at one of the galleries or a friend reaches out to you and tells you that you should really buy this art work, do you take an instinctive decision or you look at some of the data before you buy ? The problem is that there is no pricing logic in the works of younger artists, I went to a show recently and saw this nice work which was 8 feet by 8 feet and the artist expected 12 lacs for the work, no pricing history, huge work but who do you sell it to later ? That is the problem, according to me the artist should have priced it at 3-4 lacs but here his price was 300 % above that and all he has to his credit is one international art show with a gallery that does not matter.

• Artist Biography- Do go through in great detail on the artist biography, which college, which awards,which shows and which gallery is promoting the artist ? I went to India Habitat Centre for a Shiv Varma show, why did I go ? He has won the Kashi award and also the IHC-Art India award, so two major awards, his forte is sculpture but I loved a huge canvas which was 6 ft by 6ft and I was told that the price is 2.5 lacs which may look reasonable considering the size but his forte has always been sculpture. I liked the work but the value threshold was being crossed and so I offered a price of 2 lacs, the logic being if an artist has just come on the scene and even won some awards, the price for a new contemporary artist according to me should be in the range of 3,000 to 6,000 per square feet depending on the artist biography. Art purists may scoff at my financial transaction approach but it helps people not getting fleeced when buying art. I see artists with no background charging 15,000 to 25,000 sq ft for a painting and like many people I know, you would have a nice work of art but no investment value. Also, the younger lot is really getting carried away, they are not looking at who is collecting them and are just interested in the financial transaction at ridiculous values.

• Initiative - Every couple of months, I get an email from Thukral & Tagra and Seher Shah, as to what is their next show and where are they showing next whether in India or abroad, gallery, Art fairs or museums. This gives me comfort as an art collector and also assures me that maybe I have taken the right decision, I only buy when I like the work, this just re assures me more. It is also a lovely touch by the artists to keep in touch with people who are collecting their art, even in these tough times its quite tough to get a T&T canvas but they still continue with this information.The buying process does not get over with the sale closure but you become part of a collector circle. All artists like these will weather this downturn better than our other friends who have not bothered to update their existing collectors of what is happening next.

• Number of Artworks - This is another critical point, younger artists and even the top contemporary league are quite prolific, the logic last year was to make hay while the sun shines, today, values have fallen to 20 % of what the values were a year back and this is the real top league, talented but over producing. Atul Dodiya, an excellent artist by any standard showed 40 watercolours at the Bodhi show in Mumbai last year and had scores of prints in edition of 20 from STPI in Singapore also. The market just does not have enough collectors to absorb such numbers and his market crashed. Everyone who had a Subodh Gupta canvas just started putting all the works in auctions and the price crashed from 5 crores to 80 lacs and there is still enough works in the market which has more to do with art dealers ( on a personal level, Subodh is the most talented and the most humble numero uno artist you will ever meet ). Thukral & Tagra and TV Santosh have been better in this regard as they did not produce that much and are slow in getting works out of the studio, so they are safe but if you got carried away in the boom and bought a TV Santosh at 80 lacs and T&T at 60-65 lacs then you have still lost 50 % but again buying at the right price is the key. Give me a good TV Santosh canvas on terror at 20-25 lacs and I am a buyer !

Well, these are some of the points you should look at, both exhibitions that I attended last week were overpriced and I don't think would have sold more than 2-3 out of the 20 odd works.That will be art you love but please don't spend your money on something that gives you joy but no appreciation because of illogical pricing !

Cheers and till my next post !

Kapil Chopra

Artists to buy in these times - Part 2

Well, its been quite some time since I updated my blog, just tied up and hence the delay in coming with a new post. Here is my second list of recommendation after the first post where I recommended that you put your money in acquiring Thukral & Tagra, Seher Shah and Shreyas Karle across various investment limits. Well here is my list on where I would put my money next and why......

1. T.V Santosh -30-40 lacs category- Exceptional artist,humble and down to earth. During the height of the bull run in the art market went for over 2 crores for a diptych. Currently showing at Grosvenor Vadehra in London and the prices are around 42 lacs for a 5 by 7ft paintiing, this work would have been close to 80 lacs six months back, his values are close to hitting a bottom and he enjoys universal appeal with both Indian and international collectors. I don't own a work but would love to buy one close to 30 lacs, the price he went for in the last Saffronart auction. Don't buy his watercolors and just go for nice works on canvas like the one shown below. His series on the terror theme that he has been doing for sometime is definitely worth buying into. So if you have the money, go for a TV Santosh canvas !
   
   
   
   
   
   
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2. Shilpa Gupta-3-5 lacs Category - Exceptional photographer and actually its nit scenic photography but photography which conveys a message. She did this lovely series on " There is no border here " where she displayed a message tape in white colour with this sentence against the backdrop of the sky, it was a nice satire on how could there be a border in the sky and also on conflicts in the real world on borders. She did a lot of pieces but the backdrop of the sky was really the best and it went for around 10 lacs in the Saffronart auction, the rest of the works in the series were quite mediocre and a lot of them are still available. Her other interesting series was post the London metro blasts in which everyone with a bag was viewed with suspicion especially with an Asian lineage, so she had people on a metro station with white bags saying"There is no explosive in this " and getting out of a car or on the street with a white bag holding this message. Considering the focus on terrorism in the real world, I believe it is a very important body of work in today's context and will find its way into important collections and museums around the world. The most stunning piece to be bought is either go for the sky background in the border series or the red work shown here in the "There is no Explosive in this". The price range for this would be around 5-6 lacs for these 2 works and others are available at around 3 lacs but again buy only the very best and avoid the rest. The current Saffronart auction has some of the works but not these two so no point bidding !
   
   
   
   
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3. Mehreen Murtaza -60,000-80,000 category - The new breed of Pakistani artists pushing the envelope in terms of creative work in the art space is currently growing by the day. Mehreen is an exceptionally talented artist and she does these lovely prints priced at around 60-80,000 the last time I checked for a size of around 12 by 24 inches and edition of 10. Mehreen is an artist who has immense potential in the long term although I believe she should look at restricting edition sizes to less than 6 and do larger prints. Look at her work at http://www.greynoise.org/ a great art gallery run by Umer Butt in Lahore, Mehreen showed in India with Farah Siddiqui in Mumbai also but her latest body of works is available at Greynoise.org, the only problem being buying out of Pakistan, so easier to buy out of Dubai and a star on the horizon. Look at the images of the series she has done here to get an idea of her potential and at these values you really cant go wrong !

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Well, next time lets look at the Saffronart auction results (some great works especially NS Harsha but overall a really mediocre auction line up, at least 7 artists have works which are poor enough to be not even selling in a show forget being part of an auction catalogue) and let me talk to you about how some artists have positioned themselves well and how some got carried away in the bull run, failed to build relationships and need to learn to be playing for the long term !

Till then, enjoy reading, keep the comments coming and have a great day !