New Delhi: Maher Dadha never imagined it would happen.
A few weeks ago, at a Christie’s auction of Indian art in London, many paintings of M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza remained unsold as there were no bids for them at their minimum sale prices although F.N. Souza’s Birth did fetch a record Rs10.6 crore.
“Even last year, every one of those paintings would have sold out,” says Dadha, chairman of the Bangalore-based auctioneers Bid and Hammer.
The Indian art market has exploded from $2 million (Rs8.4 crore) to $400 million in the past seven years, a growth only surpassed by the Chinese market. But the heat has tended to mask recent internal dynamics — a shift in buyer tastes, less frenzied buying and suspicions of price manipulation at auctions.
The Christie’s auction was a clear signpost of changing preferences: dipping interest in the works of modern masters such as Husain and Raza and a move towards contemporaries such as Subodh Gupta, Justin Ponmany and Atul Dodiya.
The broad labels of modern and contemporary refer to artists from specific time periods. The modern art movement in India began before independence and stretches through into the post-colonial period, to include progressives such as Husain and Raza. The contemporaries, of more recent vintage, include artists who began working in the 1980s and 1990s.
The shift from modern to contemporary reappeared at a Saffronart online auction on 19 June, where Gupta’s untitled installation of steel vessels sold for $1.43 million, beating Raza’s Germination, which sold for $1.05 million. Three out of 12 Husain paintings remained unsold, and the highest bid for a Husain was around $379,000.
“Earlier, people wanted a Husain, no matter which Husain it was,” says Arun Vadehra, managing director of Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi. “Quality was totally overlooked. There was no knowledge, and the price difference between a mediocre and an extraordinary painting was not high.”
At that fevered peak, Vadehra says, one buyer came into his office asking for a Raza, not even recognizing that it was on display right in front of him. But today, Vadehra says, the prices of the mediocre paintings of the moderns have dropped drastically.
A lot of the declining interest has been shown by art funds, which have refused to buy overpriced modern-period works simply because they have been executed by the biggest names. Although he refuses to name figures, V. Sanjay Kumar, trustee of Yatra Art Fund, says there has been a “shift in focus” in fresh investments from moderns to contemporaries. “Overseas interest in Indian art is also being concentrated more in the contemporary side of the market.”
Does this imply a bubble has burst? Alka Pande, curator of Visual Arts Gallery in New Delhi, thinks it does. “The big burst has happened,” she says. “Since last year, an inbuilt correction has set in. You could have bought a low-income house with some of the money that was being spent. It was a bubble.”