Now Indian Art Index, a head-heart confluence, to help price artworks

Mumbai: To bring transparency to the “opaque” art market in India that has hobbled due to a lack of data or pricing models, Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIMA) along with Mumbai-based Aura Art Development, that provides art infrastructure solutions, launched a first-of-itskind ‘Indian Art Index’ on Thursday to help art collectors, new buyers and artists better understand the economic value of an artwork based on data instead of “a gut feeling”.

Rishiraj Sethi, director of Aura Art, defined the ‘art index’ as a great example of a “head-heart confluence”. By the same token, a data driven methodology — that analysed India’s top 25 artists in terms of number of most successful art sales at auctions globally over the past 20 years — and attributes of the artwork (age of the artist, popularity, primary medium, subject and style that have influenced price variations) helped arrive at this yardstick to understand trends and the kind of money involved in a hobby of amassing or producing artworks.