The art business is essentially unlike any other. It is complicated and has many facets.
Ever since I started writing about art nearly 35 years ago I have been hearing some truly remarkable stories of gallerists who served the cause of both art and artists by supporting artists through creative or sometimes non-creative phases when they needed financial and emotional sustenance. Old timers will recall the great role played by Ravi Jain of Dhoomimal, Kekoo Gandhy of Chemould, Dadiba Pundole of Pundole, Navroz Daruwalla of Crimson in being great supporters of the artists for they loved art and were willing to walk the extra miles. They would hold shows for relative newcomers, give advances to tide over temporary bad patches and generally be huge pillars of strength.
F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain being two cases in point who were supported by gallerists and one has heard of tales when Husain sold works to a gallerist for as low as '200 or Souza for a bottle of rum. There are quite a few more artists who were supported by such godfathers. In the 90s, Manjit Bawa had been given a suite in the Imperial hotel where he painted almost for a decade. Subodh Gupta found support in Satchi & Satchi.
Interestingly there was a paradigm shift from the support bases being almost exclusively an all-male dominated preserve, the mantle shifted to an all-women one with the next lot comprising Sara Arrakal of the Sara Arrakal Gallery, Geeta Mehra of Sakshi Art Gallery, Sharon Apparao of Apparao Galleries, Rakhi Sarkar of Cima becoming front runners in their respective cities extending a helping hand to a small number of artists.
What neither generation of gallerists were able to do was to do was correct positioning of the arts on the global platform. But here Indian art criticism as a whole has to also share the blame for the indifferent level of writing and the impatience of newspapers in not devoting enough space to art as a whole, led to this peculiar situation where Indian art was ready to be catapulted into the global arena, there was no support base and intellectual backing to take it to the next level.
Finding the space empty, stepped in “investors” who were exactly that — investors. It was not their mandate to support art but only invest, make a killing and exit. Here stepped in the neo-gallerists who fuelled this breed’s greed by tall claims and did the greatest damage by enticing more investors by tempting them into investing pretending that these were blue chip portfolios and could be liquidated as and when. The fact is that art is not a short-term investment. That it pays is a given, but it is a long-term investment.
These neo galleries were invariably being run by bored and rich housewives who had little understanding of the art business and its projection, let alone supporting artists, they created havoc by creating a caste system where a handful of artists became the “Brahmins and Kshatriyas” and all the others were the Dalits. Unapproachable and difficult, they played one against the other and in the end, all had become pariahs. Now many of these neo galleries have abandoned ship and to my mind are the real rats of the art world. So much so that even senior artists are opting to hold shows on their own and not bother with galleries. This year there have been hardly any shows of important artists by galleries. After all, why should they play subservient roles when they are paying for the catalogue, media relations, framing, paints and canvas they anyway have to and to top it all, pay a percentage from the earning
The art business is essentially unlike any other. It is complicated from many facets: to begin with, it comprises of three categories of clusters — buyers, investors and collectors. Largely it is reliant on the social network of people trying to sell the art. It is like trying to find that one person in a sea of humanity who will like that one particular work and can afford to pay for it and not mind if it doesn’t resell again — the bottom line of the entire art business is nothing but this. This means that unless you are part of the elite echelons don’t even try getting into it. No managers you will hire for selling can do it for you. That is the reason why most gallerists are perennially looking for people to sell the works.
Given the arbitrary pricing of art and willingness of artists and gallerists to undercut, makes the business even more unprofessional and difficult to run for honest people. While the creation of the art liberates you, the economic unviability of it is positively infuriating. The Internet has liberated the business a bit from the earlier stranglehold of a few but it has still far, far to go. Unlike the film and television “industry” which created its checks and balances and of course union groups etc to negotiate better wages and working conditions, the arts are so niche and individualistic that such a thing will not work. Where does it bring us back to — mostly square one
I hate the thought of artists suffering in trying to make ends meet and living off the arts across the board. Entire lives are dedicated to the creation of arts — both visual and performing and then not being able to make a living out of it is heartbreaking. The only way out is to put a public private partnership in place where the audiences are able to create from within themselves viable support systems to preserve and protect our heritage and the creators of it.
Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com
