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Jitish Kallat I Untitled (Eclipse) - 3 I Acrylic On Canvas I 108"x68" I 2007
CONTEMPORARY MARKETERS Rajesh Punj reflects on contemporary art market based on candid talks with Yamini Mehta of Christie's and Simon de Pury of Phillips de Pury An audience with Yamini Mehta, Director of Modern and Contemporary art at Christie’s spurs quite a conversation about the emerging markets and how they are faring in a climate of global uncertainty and international gloom. To be fair, when we speak there isn’t quite that melancholic air to our discussion that you might think. Instead Mehta is reassuringly poised and positively energized by the direction modern and contemporary Indian art is going in. You only have to see how often Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher are featured internationally or how many articles are written about the new Indian set to realise that contemporary Indian art is flourishing internationally like never before and as significant as it has become it is now in a position to join ranks with the international market. Like sharks in open water, dealers, collectors and gallerists, are not necessarily committed to one artist or an emerging nationality. For a collector the specifics of acquiring a new work are that it exists independently and also enhances an existing collection. So those notions of identity, of being Indian, have to be adaptable to a changing situation and it appears that contemporary Indian artists are already aware of what they are required to do in order to swim in international waters. Mehta is incredibly well informed of such nuances; she was the lead on facilitating the introduction of contemporary Indian works into existing modern sales in London and significantly, it appears that it was quite a slow process, of convincing an audience of the value of contemporary art at a time, in the early 00’s, when modern art was proving a positively better investment all round. Inviting a well
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seasoned band of wealthy men and women to look at contemporary art, for Mehta, could have been like offering titanium over gold, it was positively alien for a while. Indians are a funny breed, constantly needing reassurance that originality and contemporaneity isn’t such a dreadful mistake. I suggest you could proposition a whole table of posh ladies about the value of an M.F. Husain but if you were to discuss a new performance work by Nikhil Chopra or the splash paintings of British painter Damien Hirst, you would have more than likely lost their attention. Contemporary Indian art for Indians is quite a difficult thing to digest, it comes without instructions and it appears to exude many more negative, impulsive sensations that really don’t accommodate these works to idle corners of middle class homes. Such fundamental mindsets mean that art is much more exclusive and it is driven, promoted and fashioned by a particular set of individuals who have returned to India, have studied abroad or gone to one of the leading art institutions. Unpicking such circumstances with Mehta proves that contemporary Indian art took off in Europe and America before returning to India, where it motioned a sea change. Mehta and I met on the morning of the day that modernist M.F. Husain died, so I had an urgency to discuss his legacy and his influence on the markets, seeing as we are at Christie’s. For Mehta his death is significant but not about to alter the international art market overnight. ‘Obviously lesser works by Husain will change hands for a little more money but his major works will hold steady’. Any real change will come in the years that follow. As much as Husain’s death might prove a turning point for Indian art, Mehta suggests ‘such changes have fundamentally already come about’ and goes further when I seek to delve into his life, suggesting that Husain historically has as much significance for Indians as Pablo Picasso does for Europeans. Both appeared to motivate a progressive zeitgeist, producing vast quantities of works that saturated the developing market and lead to numerous reproductions and elaborate fakes. Husain’s strengths Mehta suggests ‘are in the seminal works that peppered his career and not those orchestrated events that were for audiences and sycophants alike’. Mehta mentions other lead protagonists from the Indian progressive group who originally disengaged from the Bengal School, Tyeb Mehta, S.H. Raza and Francis Newton Souza. All of whom appear regularly in the catalogue literature for any day or evening sale at Christies. In a wider context for what Mehta and I became embroiled in, I drew her attention to recent conversations with Bharti Kher, Nikhil Chopra and Reena Kallat, in which there was a fundamental sense that they claim to have outgrown these original set
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Tyeb Mehta I Untitled (Figure on Rickshaw) I Oil on Canvas I 58.75"x47" I 1984
of circumstances and, without airing any sense of arrogance, what they all require now of the existing cultural infrastructure in India is a much more sophisticated, robust discussion about the three ‘R’s’, art production, art criticism and art history. Such industrious changes may appear to have little or nothing to do with the markets but Mehta suggests otherwise. It makes good business sense for an auction house to exhibit the best of a country’s contemporary art scene and it makes greater cultural and economic sense for a country or a continent to put all of the necessary cogs into motion for a sustainable art scene. Significantly, and this is where a light bulb illuminates in the space between us, what emerges as fundamental from our exchanges is a sense that art is an integral thread of a flourishing
market as basic industries and advanced technologies are. The matrix that binds a country’s wealth and prosperity is a healthy exchange between art and economics that can propel everything forward further. Yet such idealism falls into the hands of artists, intellectuals and commentators, who intentionally play devil’s advocate with such hedonism by challenging the country’s blueprint with more intrinsic failures; poverty, corruption, caste discrimination and its perverse adoration of Bollywood. In a lesson in modern aesthetics, this is where literature, art, film and music thrive, at the pivot between what actually exists and what is suggested. Another leading light on the strength and elasticity of the emerging markets is Simon de Pury, chairman of Phillips de
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M F Husain I Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12 I Oil on Canvas I 74.4"x107" I 1971-72
Pury. A president among men, de Pury is credited with having introduced the BRIC event to London, which essentially profiles contemporary works from the leading new economies, Brazil, Russia, India and China, and in an audience with Simon de Pury we discuss the virtues of the BRIC auction and the emerging markets per se. ‘Where Mehta and I converse over the specifics of the Indian market, de Pury positively thrives on attempting to surmise the critical position of each of the BRIC countries down to a turn of phrase.’ ‘Brazil he confirms has an incredibly buoyant market which is reflected in the 2011 BRIC sales’, ‘Russian art is being collected by the growing Russian elite who have resettled in London’, ‘India’ he suggests ‘is positively thriving, economically and artistically’ and ‘China is being reclaimed by the Chinese, lock, stock and barrel’. ‘BRIC’ de Pury positively confirms ‘was an acronym originally coined by investment economist Jim O’Neill back in 2001’ when the international markets were
in rude health and when good economics influenced good art. In 2010 de Pury saw an opportunity in the integral relationship between industries and art for a survey show of leading contemporary works from these landmark economic centres. Like Russian Dolls everything emerges from within everything else. In its inaugural exhibition BRIC profiled the aesthetic strengths of art, photography and design from the BRIC countries, not only as confirmation of what was already happening, but also as affirmation of his commitment to it. Envisaging a future for BRIC, when pressed, de Pury sees anything as possible, if, as is happening in China, ‘that contemporary art is being bought back by Chinese business men; then it could well be beneficial for Phillips to set up shop in central Beijing or Guangzhou’. Such inventiveness might suggest that, as dominant as Phillips appears, it is still at the service of its audience. I probe him into a summation for BRIC 2012, and ask whether its geography will fast become irrelevant?
Simon de Pury confirms, ‘that Phillips are always accessing the situation, standing on a shifting plane determining what is required and what is necessary as the purveyors and facilitators of international contemporary art’. Such a remark, as was suggested earlier with the Chinese market, proves that de Pury is convinced that flux is fashionable, that the idea of a stationary institution is old hat and that Phillips has to become an international brand that pops–up wherever it is appropriate and not be defined by a glass fronted building; however plush the building appears to be. Where de Pury appears to model his interests on the market, Mehta discusses everything in terms of the welfare of all aesthetics and she appears convinced by the majority of what is taking place for contemporary art in Asia. Mentioning Chinese artist ‘Ai Weiwei’ and ‘Japanese artist’s Takashi Murakami and Hiroshi Sugimoto’, for their ‘international recognition’ as she does ‘Anish Kapoor’, whom we both ponder as an intellectual maverick. They are artists, Mehta
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argues, who have all adapted favourably to Brackenbury, Director of Islamic and Indian their international reckoning; suggesting Art at Sotheby’s and Conor Macklin, Director, that Gupta, Kher and their contemporaries Grosvenor Gallery, London), positively are part of a long standing tradition of artists regale over the relationship between art and moving from one club to another; replacing economics, as they are both, for better or the shallow waters for the deep sea. worse, driven by a need to turn art into sales. What I originally considered a negative, Tellingly there is a sense that auction houses Mehta persuades me of as a positive. By and commercial galleries have to re-define becoming more globally recognised, artists their interests beyond purely financial ones encourage their peers to greater things that as de Pury endeavours to mention ‘education’, address sustainability for institutions like ‘sustainable interests’, ‘emerging talent’ as if auction houses and commercial galleries. they are slogans for his re-election. There is, to Mehta convinces me that ‘given the right context artists become cultural F N Souza I Nyasa Negress with Flowers of Thorns I Oil on Canvas I 51.5"x38" I 1959 ambassadors for their countries as they reinvent themselves for each new context.’ Suggesting an artwork can never truly belong to one audience and nor should it, just as an artist cannot belong entirely to one country; if they seek international recognition. All of this makes for a discursive conversation on the mechanics of the markets with two leading exponents of the contemporary Indian art scene. Yamini Mehta is a specialist in her field, championing modern and contemporary art for many years now. Simon de Pury is the chairman of an institution challenging old ideas about auction houses and art works, intentionally making modern and contemporary aesthetics sexy whilst trying to introduce art, design and photography to a much wider audience. Becoming more fashionable, it will be interesting to see what contribution such trends make to the contemporary market. Anish Kapoor, The Indian Highway exhibition at Serpentine Gallery in 2009 and photographer Andreas Gursky lead us to discuss the Pompidou’s current take on international relations with contemporary works from India and France shown together as a collaborative exercise in Paris. Even before Mehta speaks, I convince her of the shows’ fundamental failings, of its unconvincing remit and its curatorial straight jacket. Mehta agrees, suggesting such exhibitions can act positively for auction houses in terms of artists’ exposure and encourage their market prices but prove utterly negative in terms of ill considered arguments for what is being offered. The routine of such contrived cultural approaches is what I feel incensed about I endeavour to admit it. Essentially Yamini Mehta and Simon de Pury, (and in lesser conversations with Holly
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all of this, a positive sensibility that Simon de Pury at Phillips and Yamini Mehta at Christies both allude to, about their institutions acting responsibly, in not only benefiting from the sales of contemporary art but actively encouraging sustainable infrastructures and interests that are based on more abstract initiatives and notions that will prove much more lasting. Likened to loggers taking out great chunks of forest, they are actually returning to plant saplings where once there were trees. &
(Image credits : CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2011)