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| Chemical attraction |
| Kishore Singh / New Delhi Apr 14, 2010, 00:20 IST |
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It is time Souza was widely identified for his excellence in creating a new language of art — chemical alterations
Though the breadth, vitality and provocation of F N Souza’s oeuvre has been explored at length, considerably less effort has gone into studying his chemical alterations, a medium that he made uniquely his own. When he shifted from London to New York in 1967, Souza experimented with a chemical solution to blur print, using the background of magazine pages as his canvas. Perhaps because a number of them were shockingly pornographic, or because critics short-sightedly termed them lazy, it created the impression that Souza’s best works were behind him, and the chemically altered works never got their due.
Now that collectors have begun to realise their uniqueness, the prices of these chemicals have started to inch upwards — Rs 50,000 at the start of this century, under Rs 2 lakh till a couple of years ago. A few fetched attractive valuations at auctions: a record Rs 18 lakh at Freemason’s, Philadelphia; Rs 13 lakh at Bonham’s in 2008; Rs 7.8 lakh at Saffronart last year.
Souza’s chemical works are currently, generally, in the region of Rs 3-8 lakh in galleries. Because the chemicals are confined to the size of single or double-spread magazine pages, they’re good to invest in when you want to keep the outlay small. Of course, that’s only for a short time — before they become, quite inevitably, the Next Big Thing of Indian art. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which the writer is associated.
kishoresingh_22@hotmail.com
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