‘Raw deal’ time

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Untitled work by MF Husain

The current economic recession is hitting all investments, but especially white collar luxuries such as art. In the long term this may lead to a realignment in the aesthetic sensibilities and redefine what will be considered art, design or conceptual statement, the present concern of artists and galleries is survival.

A number of galleries in the metropolitan centers are either shutting shop or have at least reduced operations during the lean summer months, with shutters down and the staff on long unpaid leave. Several very well known galleries are finding it hard to pay not only the salaries but also the rent on their premises.
The situation is grim for these establishments because the stocks of art are simply not moving. Some galleries have not sold a single painting for the last three months, and others are doing very lean trade. Last year, around the same time, they had sold stock of up to Rs 2 crores while this year they would be happy with Rs 10 lakhs in actual sales, but even this seems to be a dream.
However much the recessionary pressure may be squeezing the galleries, the real tragic consequences are felt by the artists who have to not only pay for their art supplies, but run their households, pay for their children’s school fees from the sale of their works. Galleries and art dealers are buying their art at rock bottom prices and making reasonable profits on these but the artist is getting less than fair price for his/her creativity.
The trouble with a recessionary art market is that there has been a fall in the prices of the masters, such as Husain and investors now find that they are able to afford the masters that were out of their reach. Thus, they are eschewing the works of younger artists, especially whose prices had sky rocketed due to speculative policies of galleries and auction houses. Other less established artists get compared with the erstwhile successful ones, and the entire market gets pulled down.