Something for everyone

Yet again this morning, a message from a friend: “How much should I be paying for a small watercolour on paper by (insert name of artist here)?” The previous evening had seen a similar barrage from acquaintances, wanting to know if a quoted price was correct; did I vouch for a certain artist’s work; did the work have investment potential? Clearly, there are enough buyers out there who like art enough to want to own it, but are scared off by the jaw-dropping record prices reported in the media. The good news is that these reflect only the top end of the artists’ market, and these and other artists can be affordable provided you are willing to scale down your expectations from a large oil on canvas to a smaller (but representative) work on paper. Two caveats here are necessary: 

(1) Only buy from a good source, or gallery, to ensure authenticity as well as someone who can guide your taste; (2) Don’t buy works on the conditionality of “beauty”, which is not a necessary attribute for high-quality art, and which is where amateur art buyers tend to make mistakes. 

For the purpose of this column, let us take a price range between Rs 1 and 10 lakh as a budget for a work of art, and you’ll be surprised how much you can find even at the lower end of that scale, both in galleries as well as in auctions. Unexpectedly, you’ll discover that masters offer better value than many young artists who tend to price themselves high so larger discounts can be negotiated. Here, again, it is best to be guided by galleries rather than dealers willing to offer discounts — often at your cost. I found some great values on emerging artists at the Delhi Contemporary Art Week, reaffirming, once again, why it’s better, and safer, to be guided by reputed galleries.

Art work by Jamini Roy, a National Treasure artist. Roy’s works are plentiful and always in demand, and his style is easily recognisable

Within the price range mentioned, an art lover can easily take home a tempera on board or cloth painting by Jamini Roy, a National Treasure artist. Roy’s works are plentiful and always in demand, and his style is easily recognisable. Small drawings can be acquired sub- Rs 1 lakh, and you might want to consider putting together a group of these for greater impact. Quite lovely.

F N Souza was equally prolific and you can easily find drawings by him from Rs 1.5 lakh onwards. M F Husain’s watercolours start around Rs 5 lakh. Ram Kumar’s value has shot up, but paper works command about the same price. Small works in acrylic by Anjolie Ela Menon and Krishen Khanna sold for a couple of lakhs a few years ago, but have more than doubled in value since, so it’s a good bet they will continue to rise. There are any number of artists whose works are on offer in this price range, and they are all quite well-known, and they include the posthumous whose works I greatly admire (Nandalal Bose’s “postcards”, A A Raiba, Indra Dugar, Avinash Chandra, G R Santosh, J Sultan Ali, Sunil Das, Rabin Mondal, Sohan Qadri) to those still practising (Sakti Burman, Manu and Madhvi Parekh, Gogi Saroj Pal, Amitava, Jogen Chowdhury, Jyoti Bhatt, Rekha Rodwittiya), the popular (Thota Vaikuntam, Jayasri Burman, Seema Kohli, Arpana Caur, Paresh Maity, Ravinder Reddy), to contemporaries (Mithu Sen, G R Iranna, Jagannath Panda, Thukral & Tagra, the Dodiyas and Kallats) — something for everyone no matter their taste. 

Finally, there’s the limited edition print or signed serigraph to fall back on — a little bit of the artist forever captured on print when you can ill-afford an expensive original. 

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated