Indians with the Art Bug
August 26th, 2008
The New York Times gives the Indian art scene the once over. Somini Sengupta zeros in on the birth of public/private institutions that will form the backbone of an Indian Contemporary art establishment:
India is bursting with commercial art galleries, but Devi is poised to be what the Poddars’ home has been for many years: a noncommercial, nonprofit exhibition space for contemporary art from India and the subcontinent. Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary Indian art at Christie’s auction house in London, described it as “a truly groundbreaking first for India.”
In a way, Devi (online at www.deviartfoundation.org) is the natural next step for a country awash in new wealth, soaring art prices and a prolific crop of artists and collectors. Think of it as India’s turn to do what the United States did in the early 20th century, when wealthy patrons came together to give birth to some of the most important American cultural institutions. India is not there yet, cautions Vishakha N. Desai, the India-born president of Asia Society in New York, but perhaps heading in that direction.
“I would very much hope that like-minded people will come together to build larger civic institutions that go beyond any individual collector or founder,” Ms. Desai said in an e-mail message.
A modern art museum is also under way in the eastern city of Calcutta. Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architecture firm that built the Tate Modern in London, is designing it. Construction is to start next year, and the museum is to open in late 2013, said Rakhi Sarkar, a collector there and one of the driving forces behind the museum.
Where Tradition Has Ruled, A Home for Contemporary Art (The New York Times)
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I think it’s great that the rest of the world is feeling the contemporary art collecting bug. But the downside to us in the economically-challenged US is that our speculative money will be going almost exclusively to Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Russian, Singaporean and Sri Lankan art over the next few years. My guess is that the vast majority of early and mid-career NY, LA and regional American contemporary artists will be left out and overlooked while everyone goes for the next big thing, kind of like what happened with the Leipzig artists a few years ago, but on a much, much bigger scale. It’s clearly started already. It would be interesting to poll the Rubell’s, Magulies’s, Hort’s, Ovitz’s, etc. I would love to take a snapshot of the artist rosters at the top 20 or so contemporary galleries in NY & LA and watch as the names become more and more exotic over the next couple of years.
Just read the ArtInfo article on the poor results from the Melbourne auction, and I do think it will be part of a much bigger wave of future auction failures for artists not in the current Asian/Russian wave. Hirst, Koons and some others should Western artists will continue to do well, but thanks to the ongoing onslaught of art and mainstream media-induced “Asia is HOT!” articles (Holland Cotter, et al), speculative and discretionary income purchases will be focused on only those artists for at least the next year or two. I’m already insanely bored by the Chinese artists and definitely think the Indian artists will be the next huge thing. I’d hate to be an artist named Jim Johnson from Texas right now. Better off going to court and changing your name to Wu Ping Chang or Raqib Gupta or something.