New Delhi, Jan 29 (IANS) Art collection in India has seen some exponential change in the last 15 years. The fledgling culture of private archives to free art from the clutches of government institutions has led to diversity in buying with a generations of artists and their mediums finding a market.
Moreover, the focus is shifting back to quality rather than branding in the years post-meltdown.
‘When I started working for Indian art in the early 1990s, India had a small community of established collectors, mostly non-resident Indians. Collecting was about artists and buying from them. There was no awareness about the art market,’ art consultant Amrita Jhaveri said.
In the mid-1990s, the arrival of auctions and art fairs led to the birth of a tribe of western collectors ‘dedicated to Indian art and a few Indian collectors’, said Jhaveri, who works out of Mumbai and London.
‘Between 1995 to 2000, the market saw a slight shift from the non-resident Indian buying to local buyers. Now there are all kinds of collectors and the space is becoming more integrated,’ Jhaveri said at a forum, ‘Decoding the Indian art market: A look at the factors behind collecting in India’.
Names like Charles Satchi, Lekha Poddar and Kiran Nadar exist alongside young buyers like Sonal Sood and Parmesh Sahani who collect new art with their modest means.
Th increase in the number of art collectors is not enough, says art archivist and promoter Kiran Nadar of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Modern art.
‘Most Indians do not view art as an asset class. They still look upon property as an asset but not art. It is very important for the collectors’ base to increase and more people should get involved in the process of collecting art,’ Nadar said.
Describing her own journey, Nadar said: ‘I had no intention of setting up a museum. I had started collecting at home but soon wanted a bigger collection. Then a void arrived and I wanted to set up a museum.’
‘Now collecting has become more disciplined,’ the museum owner said.
The collectors’ space in India is also witnessing an interesting trans-continental mix, says Prateek Shah, who manages the Experimenter Art Gallery in Kolkata.
‘Several private institutions from India are supporting museums in Europe to build their collections. The economic conditions are not conducive enough for them to collect on their own,’ Shah said.
Jan Dally, the arts editor of the Financial Times in Britain, says she has not seen one strong collecting trend in India in the last two years. ‘But there is certainly greater confidence among buyers brought about by a wider connective base. People are really asking questions to make up their mind.’
She said in the absence of a government structure to encourage collecting, ‘artists in India will have to make their own weather like in the west’ and create dedicated collectors’ bases through direct transactions.
‘One of the ways to begin a collection on a tight budget is to visit graduate shows in art schools and look for potential new artists…,’ Dally told IANS, recommending spring boards for new Indian collectors.
‘You don’t have to be a millionaire to collect art. My aim is to document that art is not for a privileged few,’ said Maithili Parekh, the director of Sotheby’s in India.
Parekh screened a documentary about New York-based collectors of minimalist art, Dorothy and Herbert Vogel at the India Art Fair to show that ‘one could become a collector if one had the will’.
Herbert, a post-office clerk and wife Dorothy, who lived in a one-bedroom rent controlled New York flat, built one of the biggest collection of 1960s minimalist art with their frugal income.
Collector Sonal Sood, who has been buying art through the Khoj International Association since 1998, says she loves interacting with artists before buying art.
‘The investment aspect of art is sundry,’ she said. Sood had bought her first Khoj portfolio in 1998 for Rs.15,000.
For young collector Parmesh Sahani, ‘buying art is extreme sacrifice’. ‘I live on a budget and choose not to have a car or driver so that I can save Rs.30,000-40,000 every month to buy art,’ Sahani said.
(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)
