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Just when everyone is talking about the economy slowing down, the crash in the stockmarkets, the zooming price of oil and the need for belt-tightening, a work by FN Souza is sold in an overseas auction at the stunning price of over Rs 10 crore. And this at a time when the art business has been muttering about falling sales and drifting prices, after three or four years of general madness.

There is already speculation about who the anonymous buyer of this work is. The buzz is that it is the glamorous wife of an Indian industrialist and the painting is heading back to our very own Mumbai. True or not, there are not many people who will so casually shell out over a million pounds to pick up art. Whatever the case may be, two things are clear: the buyer is super rich and has fine taste.

The bigger story is how and why the Indian art market has suddenly gone on steroids, when it was supposed to be comatose, or at least in a somnolent state? Galleries were virtually unanimous in stating, barely six months ago, that with the stock markets heading southwards, there were not many people with loose cash of a few lakhs or crores in their pockets and selling paintings was becoming difficult. Add to that the new tax regulations on sales and purchase of paintings, which was seen as a disincentive. So what happened?

Quite a few things, actually. To begin with, it’s important to know that during the so-called boom of the last few years, all kinds of artists saw their prices go up, somewhat like in the stock market, where even poorly run companies saw a jump in share prices during the bullish phase. Newcomers, barely out of art college, were quoting (or were made to quote) absurd prices. Such was the rush to buy art, any art, that indifferent works by untried and untested (and mostly mediocre) artists were hyped up and sold at hyped up values. In the absence of a proper art appreciation culture — critics, curators and the like — a small but powerful clique of opportunists and operators emerged. The business is full of stories about artists whose prices were built up only to crash by the next exhibition, leaving both the painter and the buyer high and dry. There are also rumours, unconfirmed, of art works being sold from gallery to auction to gallery to boost up prices.

Obviously this could not go on and once the buyers dried up, the market simply packed up its bag and moved abroad. Indian art has been making (modest so far) waves in international markets, but even though the prices are nowhere near what Chinese painters command, a dollar or a pound still goes a long way. Some Indian painters have completely bypassed the domestic market and directly hit the international trail and done rather well for themselves. Images of Indian exotica — not the old, bullock cart-Buddha-poverty kind though — are always a hit and the works are flying off the shelves.

This is not to suggest that the art scene is one big con job — far from it. Genuine Indian talent is emerging and slowly making inroads in a tough market. The point is that this shift means that the Indian artist and his dealer are no longer subject to the vagaries of the domestic scene; the canvas has got much bigger than earlier. It also suggests that often the best works will be found abroad, because the bigger auction houses and dealers will have first pick of whatever is available; no Indian bidder would have been able to or have wanted to bid Rs 10 crore in an auction here.

In his time, F N Souza was the enfant terrible of the Indian art scene. By a strangeirony, his work has played a role in the real coming of age for the Indian market. But this jump from frenzied adolescence to mature adulthood must be accompanied by some rules and regulations. The government cannot look at the market only in terms of picking up capital gains tax; new regulatory systems, which ensure that prices are not manipulated and auctions are clean and untainted affairs,must be put in place. A buyer must not suspect that the entire business is opaque and therefore somehow shady; it is not. Yet, the art business in India has some more distance to go before it becomes truly on par with international norms; our fine artistic talent is simply not enough.

Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net