On a Monday morning a few years ago, a famous painting was sold at an exorbitantly steep price. By that Friday, it had changed hands thrice and had also tripled in its value. All of a sudden, art and art prices became the talk of the town. Art funds became the norm and artworks went from auctions to storage to the next seller, and in the bargain, they were never exposed to walls or wherever they were meant to be displayed.

While some disagree, most art veterans believe this trend to be unique to India. Shireen Gandhy of Chemould Prescott Road says, “Paintings bought purely for trade is a phenomenon that has caught up in the last four to five years and is unknown to more old fashioned methods of trading where the artwork was bought from the last few pennies by passionate collectors or corporate collectors with a penchant for collecting art, or a young buyer paying in installments.”

Names like M F Husain, S H Raza, F N Souza, Anju and Atul Dodiya, Bose Krishnamachari, Jitish Kallat, Subodh Gupta and the likes are often considered hot saleable artists whose works are traded quickly, sometimes even up to four times within one week. “Art trade is sheer tragedy. Art shouldn’t be about the money, it should be created for aesthetics and not for doing business. Similarly, it should be bought for its aesthetics and not financial value. You should sell art only if you think it was a mistake or after you have had it long enough on your walls and would like to replace it,” says Pravina Mecklai of Jamaat Art Gallery.

While auction trades are mostly done with some amount of secrecy, you never know where the artwork has actually gone and the next thing you see it has come up for a bid in an auction. An example of a work that got traded without seeing the wall for a long time was Tyeb Mehta’s work. A collector, who bought the work in the 1980s, enjoyed it on his walls for many years and then sold it. Since then, it was traded three times before it was once again sold to an authentic buyer.

Artist Anjolie Ela Menon believes that for an artist, the process of creating an artwork should be most important. “Everything else is peripheral,” she says. However, the trouble is that subconsciously, the aspect of salability often seeps into an artist’s mind. Artist Anjum Singh says, “Although it exists, the commercialism of art doesn’t interest me. It makes an artist conscious of what he makes and whether it will sell. An artist shouldn’t be focusing on that.”

On the other hand, younger artists are pleased that the recession (even if it was pseudo in India) has caused the price rise bubble to burst. This brings us back to the times where artists work on what they covet. But Gandhy thinks otherwise. “We try to make sure that the works reach collectors as opposed to investors by checking the credentials of the collectors. With the market stabilising, the collectors are now more than the investors. But with the new hype (once again with prices being touted instead of work itself), the investor breed might be creeping back into the market.”

Subscribe to Verve Magazine or buy the Verve issue on stands now!