The Journey Of Modern Indian Art

Shah Jahan Looking at the Taj, watercolour

- Abdur Rahman Chughtai

Last week, an “art market intelligence” firm called Artery India announced on its website that India’s ‘Top 3 Artists’ over the last five years are V.S. Gaitonde, M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza. Husain and Raza, once colleagues in the Progressive Artists’ Group, are running neck and neck, with 494 and 454 works sold for Rs 331 crore and Rs 321 crore respectively. Gaitonde is the dark horse, having totted up Rs 392 crore with just 81 works.

The racecourse metaphor may seem undignified, but it’s also sadly accurate in a country where art is only discussed for its price tag. When Christie’s sells a Tyeb Mehta work for Rs 22.9 crore, or an “unseen” Souza is a Sotheby’s auction highlight (as will happen on March 18 in New York), modern Indian art can provide temporary grist to the national pride mill. Five artists—Raza, Husain, Gaitonde, F.N. Souza and Mehta—account for two-thirds of the top 500 lots sold at auctions. The market’s unrelenting appetite for big names can lead down murkier paths. In February, several works listed for auction by the Neville Tuli-run Osian’s-Connoisseurs of Art Pvt. Ltd—an untitled 1957 Souza, Shadow of Death by Bhupen Khakhar, a 1964 Jehangir Sabavala and a 1952 Akbar Padamsee—were charged with being fakes.

Kito de Boer and his partner Jane Gowers began collecting modern Indian art 25 years ago during a seven year sojourn in India. Their collection, now 1,000-odd images-strong, offers an example of how informed private collectors might depart from such a highly skewed art market. The de Boer collection is now the basis of a new book, Modern Indian Painting, edited by Giles Tillotson and Rob Dean.