Comment

Strange and unthinkable things have been happening this sultry August in Delhi. I limit myself here to the world of art, the art mart actually. Take Damien Hirst: who would have thought that the paintings of this middle-ageing enfant terrible of the art world would find their way to the Indian capital in search of, well, desi capital.

The British artist — yes, him of the shark-in-formaldehyde fame — is, after all, arguably the most expensive living contemporary artist.

Come September and Sotheby’s will auction over two hundred of Hirst’s works in a new set of works titled Beautiful Inside My Head in London, estimated over pounds 65 million. However, uncharacteristically the auction house organised a preview of 14 of the artist’s works in Delhi on Wednesday.

It was a signal that, for Sotheby’s, the Indian buyer with deep pockets and an eye for contemporary European art (even of the brat pack) had arrived or rather was en route: Indian collectors were beginning to look beyond the pool of works by Indian, or even India-born artists.

After all, if India’s tycoons were now on a buying spree for companies overseas could works of the biggies of international art be far behind? Moreover, if you can be afford to be wrapped up from top-to-toe in Gucci and Prada and Jimmy Choo, you could also put a Damien Hirst on your walls or floor.

The beautiful people of Delhi and a sprinkling of the arterati from Bombay had assembled in the Oberoi’s Ballroom to hear Oliver Barker, a senior Sotheby’s expert on contemporary art, talk about the shock-artist’s work. Barker waxed more eloquently about the ever-spiralling prices of Hirst’s work, emerging art markets and the expanding provenance of buyers than he did about the work of the artist. You know charts and pies and lots of numbers.

So, it wasn’t surprising to hear one of the chattering classes mumble “It’s all about money… all those zeroes really” between sips of champagne and delicate bites of the nibbles doing the rounds. What was interesting was the fact that Hirst had gone straight to an auction house like Sotheby’s, bypassing the galleries and dealers. All this must have given the gallerists and dealers present that evening some unappetizing food for thought.

Barker made a thought-provoking point that sent a shiver down a few spines: auctions were more democratic than galleries. While galleries tend to be choosy about their buyers, auction houses simply sell to the highest bidder. Is Democracy the new buzzword in the world of art? Hirst has even said that auctions are a “very democratic way to sell art”. It is quite another matter that the artist has emulated Andy Warhol in his factory-like production of art work.

Democracy of another kind was at work at the rather presumptuously titled India Art
Summit that just concluded in Delhi. Certainly, the huge pavilion at the International
Trade Fair grounds was something of a level playing field with the big art galleries cheek by jowl with the little galleries, even online galleries. But calling it a ‘summit’ was, pardon the pun, the height of pretentiousness on the part of the organisers, a PR company and a quixotic assortment of advisors. This was no G8 summit, nor were they climbing the Everest. Why not just call it what it was — an art fair?

And then there was the sad matter of excluding MF Husain from this show. Why couldn’t the participating gallerists have been more forthcoming in their criticism of the decision to remove the

Husain works and condemn the vandals who had attacked the parallel “art summit” of the prints of Husain’s works that was organised by Sahmat?

The silver lining in all this was a clever “protest” sneaked into the fair by Peter Nagy of Nature Morte: Ram Rahman’s photograph of Husain painting a white horse outside the erstwhile Art Today gallery. There he was, Banquo-like, pricking the consciences of those who had one.
Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com