On Acquiring Art

Recently I was strolling down the Hauz Khas Village in Delhi, window shopping with a friend when we came across a little antique shoppe selling old maps, Bollywood posters, advertisements printed on tin and other knick knacks. The young owner of the shop also had a pen and ink drawing on paper that remarkably looked like an original Jamini Roy. My fingers itched to take out my wallet and buy the work which was so reasonably priced, but luckily good sense prevailed. As tempting as it may sound, do not buy the affordable paperwork from a dealer who says he has an original Jamini Roy but no provenance or papers. This is if you’re looking for resale value and also want to ensure that your gut instinct matches with hard evidence that it is an original. If you still want to go with your gut, then make sure that you do not spend a fortune on something that cannot be vetted by peers as an original work of art.

Usually the best place to buy Indian art, even affordable art, is at a renowned gallery, it could be an online gallery like www.breathearts.com or one that is physically present or at an online or actual auction house. Online art website Breathe Arts in a leading platform in the Indian art industry, an online platform that revolutionizes the way Indian art was bought. An Indian art platform that adds a layer of transparency to the Indian art market, Breathe Arts is also the safest art trading platform in the industry with unique escrow facilities for high value transactions that lend clients the highest level of security. Breathe Arts offers a wide selection of 600 works from painting and sculpture, to photography and installations. Showcasing works of Indian artists in the emerging, developing, established, and blue chip range, Breathe Arts welcomes connoisseur and critic, to this exclusive global community. Investment or eye-candy, for the fledgling and seasoned collector, Breathe Arts offers respected opinions, attractive pricing and efficient online transactions.

When buying from a renowned, auction house or online art gallery one can rest assured that all the paper work will be in place.

Curator Rajesh Punj, who curated the Empire Strikes Back at Saatchi and Saatchi Gallery, has curated The Protagonists, an exhibition especially for the breathe arts online platform that is a progressive survey of contemporary Indian works by artists who are regarded by the leading purveyors of the art world as the aggravators, the agitators even of contemporary Indian art. It has a mix of established and up-coming names. A good exhibition to checkout online is a show of paper works and drawings titled Drawing with the Mind curated by Sita Spada that will be on till September. It features artists F N Souza, Jogen Chowdhury, RM Palaniappan, Jatin Das and Aneesh KR.

Acquiring canvas works by well know
Indian Modern masters is always a better investment than getting works by relatively unknown artists. This is simply because of the laws of economics. The two basic laws that govern all economics, is of demand and supply. This makes the supply limited to existing works. The demand as we know for the Moderns have been on a steady escalation over the years and they have proven time and again, after the India art market corrections in 2007 and 2008, that a work with history and rarity on its side will always survive a market crash better than one which is contemporary. Of course there are exceptions to the rule and some Indian Contemporary Artists like Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher and Jitish Kallat continue to fetch high prices at the auctions, despite market corrections.

The canvas works by F N Souza or by M F Husain are rare and limited because the artists are no longer alive and hence new work by them will not enter the market.

Usually the larger canvases are snapped up by bigger art collectors like Kiran Nadar, Ashish Anand or Anupam Poddar in Delhi and the late Jehangir Nicholson, Harsh Goenka and Tina Ambani in Mumbai. These leave younger collectors with a number of options. One could either buy the, up and coming artists like Atmanand Chauhan and Siddhartha Kararwal who will take about three to four years to appreciate in the Indian and International art market. The advantage here is that their works are more affordable and available in larger sizes and varied mediums like sculpture and photography that are also more affordable than oil on canvas. Alte
atively one could acquire some quality works by the Moderns that are more affordable, so get online www.breathearts.com and start looking.