The collecting bug

Modern lifestyles are governed by choices each of us make. Can we afford to or do we even want to eat out for the fifth time in one week? Is that jacket/pair of shoes/bag/dress entirely necessary? Isn't there already enough wine in the cooler without ordering a couple more cases "just in case"? Is the car upgrade essential? Another holiday? Another luxury purchase?

By all reckoning, this has been an expensive week for this columnist, and that on account of a small windfall I was quick to share with the family. The spoils are an indication of our personalities - some put it into fixed deposit, others splurge on shopping. Me? I converted it into art.

At first came the prints I was quick to pick up from an "affordable" sale - inexpensive enough and hardly an indulgence. But that was only the start of the bug. I'd already signed up for an online auction, where, again, a few Kalighat paintings came in cheap and would not have been worth the mention if I hadn't already paid a visit to a master sculptor's studio to pick up a work in bronze that I'd been lusting after for some time. If this required considerable padding on the financial front, I was happy to justify it as a one-time indulgence. But that was ruined because on the way home I stopped at an exhibition of ceramics where - what can I say? - it seemed the correct thing to support the least visible among the community of artists. That's bunkum, of course - it was an adrenalin rush that needed gratification and wouldn't take a rational view into consideration.

Earlier the same week, I'd taken delivery of some large paintings, and it seemed a shame to consign them to storage when the sensible thing would be to bring those others that had been hoarded away and send them all off to the framer's. An ideal time, then, to check the roster of favourite artists still missing from one's walls…

This, in a way, is the Catch-22 most collectors experience. Even the most analytical among them are unable to resist the lure of frequent excursions into art-buying expeditions. Where newbies fuss about the investment value of art, passionate collectors cannot resist the siren call of newer or simply more works. And though theirs is a small community, they guard this turf zealously. They make friends with artists, are constantly alerted by galleries about new acquisitions, wooed by auction houses, and find themselves being chased with a paper trail of invitations an arm long not just because of their capacity to buy but because of their propensity to buy. Often, they find themselves forced to spend for reasons of peer or social pressure.

Which is why though they sometimes make mistakes, they remain unaffected by it. In that sense, you should count amateur collectors among your circle of friends because they are sometimes agreeable to getting rid of somewhat mediocre works at a value lower than the market price to keep the transaction under the radar for fear of attracting attention or embarrassment.

The collecting bug is a strange insect. In some, it forms a lifelong addiction without relief. Others become increasingly selective the more they collect, applying stricter parameters to their acquisitions. Still others stop buying completely, almost surgically - as has happened recently among some very visible presences of the Indian art "market". Given the minuscule collecting base, one can only hope this particular affliction doesn't effect too many. Meanwhile, I'm willing to contribute my humble bit even though it seems I've already extended myself on that front…

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