Hollow Times

Indian art galleries to acquire artists for life

Our Special Correspondent

Kolkata, 8th June: The conglomeration of Indian Art Dealers and the Society of Gallery Owners (SGO) have planned to follow what the Indian Premier League (IPL) has already done successfully.

The recent trend of trying to revert to gladiatorial times seems to be catching up. In a recent conference of art dealers and gallery owners, it was unanimously decided that the Indian Art League (IAL) should be immediately formed.

A spokesperson for the IAL, on conditions of anonymity, said that the practice of buying artists is not new. Many art galleries both here and abroad have - in the guise of promoting artists - been doing for some time what the IPL and now the Indian Art League plan to do officially. The times are changing and social values are seeing a paradigm shift. Therefore, the need for covert operations is redundant. This, the spokesman argued, augurs well for the art industry.

Going by what various other players, including artists feel, the probable scenario that might emerge is that the chief beneficiaries in these gladiatorial games would be the betting syndicates (read investors). The hapless artist gets involved, as survival of their respective art practices largely hinges on the whims and fancies of buying and selling trends. It would be more about bulls and bears rather than good or bad art.

Needless to say, art would be the biggest loser, as it is believed that the boom in the art market had in many ways been counter-productive in terms of creativity. The spokesperson from IAL felt otherwise. He went on to explain that this form of ownership has been practised in football for a long time the world over and has promoted excellence. “So was slavery!” countered an art enthusiast. Whatever are the precedents and whatever the logic and reasoning offered by those for - as well as against - arguments and counter arguments would not end in a hurry. Indications are that this would be a prolonged battle and that the IAL would come out victorious, given that their muscle and money power is more than evident.

Senior artists, who have not yet made their mark in terms of sales, feel that the IAL would spell doom for them. After all, in this game of large investments, buyers would in all probability put their money on younger artists who have the potential of a longer “shelf life”, as opposed to senior artists who may not outlive their investment term and would be considered potentially high-risk investments. There is, after all, a difference between art and cricket, as players considered too old for ODIs and T20s, are playing in the IPL. Artists who lose out too much may be eligible for stable transfers before their contracts end.

The other parallel that the IAL has with the IPL is that art galleries would be fielding their respective “stables”, as the “teams” would be called. It is not clear whether or not the Shah Rukh Khans and the Preity Zintas would feature in the auctioning and ownership process, or if they would merely be celebrities chosen to grace inaugurations.

Mr Arty Planwallah, the brain behind IAL, emphasised that this would revolutionise the way the art market has been perceived for so long - as a cloak and dagger affair - which only a chosen few in the cabal were privy to. “This will bring about a much needed transparency in art dealings hitherto sadly absent,” Mr Planwallah signed  off.

A minor member of SGO cautioned that like in many other enterprises, here too, there is the lurking fear of bit players being marginalised. “Do we need this brand of globalisation in the art market as well?” he thundered.

Game show for Artists

Keeping with the growing interest in art and artists, Megamedia Serials, a production company who had earlier run very successful game shows  are planning to launch a game show involving artists. In a tentative format for the game show, the company plans to invite all artists whose work fetch more than one lakh rupees each with a view to assure themselves of viewer ship and ratings.

The artists will have to compete in groups of fours and create in-situ. They will be judged by an expert panel, while voting by SMS and phone calls will decide their fate. Depending on the availability of some of the well-known artists, the first round will feature about 80 artists.

In the first few primary rounds, the artists will be asked to show off their skills. As the rounds progress, the tasks will become more complex until finally it will boil down to cerebral activity. Asked why it could not be done the other way around, one of the producers said that it would be imprudent, as the number of rounds will greatly diminish and this could affect the Art-Mart Index adversely.