How Much Should One Trust A Gallery

It has now been widely accepted that the slump in art market had much less to do with the general economic recession than the art market’s internal machinations. The economic recession might have been a triggering factor to set in the art market slump, but it was to happen one day or the other even if there had been no recession.

The slump in the art market was caused by a set of galleries which peddled substandard art to unassuming buyers by promising them huge returns on such investments. These galleries hired artists with whom they could negotiate with ease. The quality of an artist’s works never mattered to these galleries but what mattered was how malleable the artist was.

A look at the web-sites of the galleries will reveal that most of these galleries peddled the art of only their own artists and none else. They did expensive shows for these artists and propagated the view that their own artists were the best in the world. They also promised an annual growth in returns on investments made on the artists of their galleries to unsuspecting buyers.

Such false promises were never supported by any discourse on the artists works. The buyers who were anyway not looking for any discourse but for a good avenues for investment blindly followed the galleries and when the recession set in, they suddenly saw huge sums of money suddenly getting trapped in rubbish, which was earlier called art.

Art is to be understood and appreciated before money is put in them. Good art gets connected to you in the first instance. In the west, the best of art collectors do not buy unless they like a piece of art. But in India, art collecteors never showed patience in understanding art and put their money into whatever their trusted galleries wanted them to. Galleries behaved like share market brokers and art collecteors like them that way. 

To make things look more credible, the galleries also tied up with many curators, art magazines and thus magazine coteries were formed in which only certain artists were promoted, irrespective of the artists’ qualitites.

In the post recession phase, on should not forget this dark chapter of art market in India, when best artists were ignored, and the cheats and fraudstars were promoted by galleries and art magazines. In 2010, market indications show a slight revival in the art market. But art collectors are now negotiating with the artists directly. This is an welcome trend. In a recent show organised by a gallery in Mumbai of famous artist Satish Gujral, buyers refused to buy anything simply because the artist himself was not present.

So how far to trust galleries these days? The answer is in the air: trust art and artist. Do not trust galleries.  And do not trust magazines also. Indian art magazines are nothing better than propaganda pamhlets.