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It is a rude awakening. The tinny ring of my mobile phone shatters the ethereal calm of Landour, a slice of privileged paradise rising high above the clutter and bustle of Mussouri.

Mist enshrouds the painterly-green hillside: the Doon valley below has become invisible and the mist has all but swallowed the curving road ahead, and behind us. The occasional wisp of cloud drifts by, almost caressing our cheeks

So when the excited voice breaks through all this bliss (far away from the maddening cacophony of Delhi and the cranked-up art mart) with: “What do you think of the Souza going for nearly $2.6 million at Christie’s...It is the highest ever paid for an Indian painter!”, that lovely walking-in-the-clouds feeling just vanishes, pouf.

This journalist works for the BBC, and wants a quote on the significance of the hammer coming down on such an exalted amount.

Is it, in other words, time for Indians to bring out the champagne and go out in the streets and celebrate, blow their trumpets as it were? Has Indian modern and contemporary art made it to the High Table of international art? Is it really the New Best Thing?

My first reaction, too, is: Wow! But then the little grey cells go to work as soon as the mist in my mind clears a bit. Hold on, we are talking about Frances Newton Souza’s masterful work, Birth, painted in 1955, when he was at the zenith of his creativity.

It was the year he held his first solo exhibition in London’s Gallery One. The same year saw the publication of his brilliant essay Nirvana of a Maggot in Encounter magazine.

There was a buzz about him in the London of the 50s: his paintings like Reclining Nude and Crucifixion created a stir. The iconoclastic Goa-born artist’s works were exhibited with those of Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland. Decades later, in fact, a few years after Souza’s death in 2000, the Tate Britain in London created a room exclusively for his paintings.

I could go on and on about this creative genius and gifted writer who fathered the Progressive Artists Group in Bombay (MF Husain unfailingly acknowledges him as the intellectual driving force behind the short-lived movement). But the point I really want to make is that Souza deserved much more for this seminal work.

It includes his recurring subjects: cityscape, still life, nude, portrait (could be a self-portrait here) and religious connotations.

Souza was a near-contemporary of Bacon and Lucien Freud, whose paintings today fetch at least ten times what his masterpiece Birth did.

Art aficionados and dealers in India are rubbing their hands in glee over this record. They should wipe the smiles off their faces. The time to pop the champagne has not yet arrived: the truth of the matter is that this particular Souza deserved to go for a far greater amount.

Moreover, a work of this quality and significance should have gone to a major museum.

The other niggling question is: was the anonymous buyer an Indian? Whispers in the art circuit say that it is one of the Ambanis. Perhaps Tina A.

When will modern and contemporary Indian art be bought in significant numbers by those other than Indians or NRIs? Tyeb Mehta also broke his previous record at Christie’s: his 1984 painting of a figure on a rickshaw took £982,050 ($1920005). However, one should bear in mind the fact that the buyer was a desi-American.

Certainly, the young and restless Indian artists are making their presence felt in Europe. And, to an extent in the United States. Younger artists like Subodh Gupta, Chintan Upadhyay, TV Santosh and NS Harsha (to name just a few) have lately been making an impact — not just in the prices they command, but in the plaudits from the critics they harvest.

High tide, however, has yet to come in; these conquests are mere ripples. The Chinese and the goras are miles ahead.
Meanwhile, getting back to earth in good old Delhi...
Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com