What to buy from which artist

There are artists, famous artists, selling artists and huge artists. But is everything they make is investible? No artist can always come up with successful art works all the time. Yet as an artist becomes big, all his/her works are brought to the market and somehow dealers get people to buy these. All this works well when things are hunky dory. But in times of liquidity crunch, one may find it extremely difficult to trade of  these art works.

So whose works and which works?

Jogen Choudhury, Vaikuntham, Jeram Patel, A Ramachandran, Atul Dodiya are all good artists but they are known mostly for their old full-bodied works. Jogen Choudhury’s coloured works on canvas are however very rare and one can buy them only from select galleries. This is true for Vaikunthan also. But the demand of the market has made these artists sell many raw sketches. Most Indian galleries have these sketches which are of dubious merits. Vaikunthan has for long stopped making good full bodied works and is making only charcoal sketches on canvas for the past six years. These works have not much aethetic value but galleries often sell then at huge prices. A Ramachandra, Ganesh Paine, Atul Dodiya and now even Yusuf Arakkal and Dattatreya Apte are selling rough easy sketches to unsuspecting buyers. The most dubious of these works are by Jeram Patel. He spreads black ink on paper without any shape and then sells these works through some Gujrat based art galleries of dubious distinctions.

Another set of artists of late have started making digital works worked on by assistants in large numbers. These works look like full bodied coloured works but are actually imitations of old works of the artist. If these works are sold by people who are not associated with the artist, these will come under the category of digital fakes. But having come from the artists’ studios, they are often priced highly. Artists who are doing this kind of works include Chaintan Upadhyay, Amit Ambalal, Hema Upadhyay, Bharti Kher to start with. The galleries that are selling these works are not the ones that the artists initially worked with. Why? One should try to think.

Abstarct works are the third kind of works that often come from established artists. Abstarct works are easy to make and when the demand for a certain artist’s works increase some artists shift to quick-make abstracts. Paresh Maity started with beautiful watercolours for which he became famous. Soon Maity shifted to easy semi-abstract canvas paintings. But of late Maity has started making pen sketches on readymade photographs, hoping that these substandard works will also sell at the same kind of high prices. Other artists who have earlier got into abstarct mode include Harshavardhan, Manish Pushkale, Sudhir Talmane, etc. None of the abstarct works are today selling at even 30% of their boom-time prices.

The moral of the story is that good artists are good but not all their works are good. Artists make many sketches in notebooks, do many experimentations with colours but these are not final products and as such do not always have merits. Such works also come to the market but are definitely not investible. Abstract works, digital prints, etc coming from important artists may not be important in actuality.

A wise investor is one who invests in the good works of good artists and wait for the prices to rise.  Here is quick guide to buy what from whom

• A Ramachandran  :  old Yayati centric works,  self protraits, etc. Medium : Oil on Canvas
• Balraj Panesar :  Collages and new acrylic on canvas works
• Chittrobhanu Majumdar : Old semi abstract oil on canvas works
• Devajyoti Ray : Pseudorealist works. Medium : Acrylic on Canvas
• Farhad Husain : Oil on Canvas works.
• Ganesh Paine : Old Gouache works, Oil on canvas and even water colours. Avoid rough sketches on notebook sheets

 An exhaustive list is not possible to create, but and the list given here can only be used as a guide. The catchline is : Buy good stuff and avoid bad stuff even if it come from big names.