Is Saffronart on its way out?

Recall 2007.

Saffronart, one of Indai’s best known auction houses had held as many as seven exhibition-cum-auctions of Indian Contemporary art in the year 2007.  In 2009, the number of such auctions reduced to only two. This year Saffronart till date has not held any such show.

In 2008-09, Saffrontart made scanty sales and now the organisation is not even putting up artworks for sale. Upto 2007, Saffronart had been including newer artists every year. In 2009, they alsmost packed up their appraisal wing. All these are clear indications of a rapid clearing house effort on the part of Saffronart.

The last nail of the coffin however arrives now as Saffronart ventures into real estate abandoning art completely. Saffronart this year announced its alliance with Cushman & Wakefield, a privately held real estate services firm of Bangalore.

What is surprising is not the deal however, as Saffronart has always involved in multifarious business activities. But this is the first time Dinesh Vazirany , CEO of Saafronart has allowed the Saffronart premise for the launching and promoting of its real-estate business, that too when the business venture is not fully owned by Saffronart.

Is then this a deathnail for art auctions?

The happy news is that it is not.

The curious story of saffronart’s packing up should be read in continuation with the stories of fall of other great art houses like Delhi Art Gallery, Bodhi Art, Threshold Gallery, etc. All these galleries were once the toasts of art business in India but in 2009, all these galleries were found to be indulging dubious business games, most were found to flouting norms and many predicted their fall by the end of 2010. The early closure of the arthouse should be read in this context.

Saffronart had internal links with other galleries like the ones mentioned above and together they promoted only a set of artists, many of whose reputations were questionable. A look at the artists promoted by Bodhi, Saffronart, Sakshi, and Delhi Art Gallery shows a curious repetations of names, even though these galleries on the front claimed to be independent of each other. Most of these artists were made stars by the conglomerate of these dubious players in the field of art business. Artists like Shilpa Gupta, Anindita Chudhuri, Chitra Ganesh and Sudarshan Shetty rose up by the grace of such dubious business strategies. They enjoyed an artificial pushing up of prices by the galleries interselling among themselves.

Today when the truth has come out, most of these artists have pilled up stocks of artworks and nothing is selling. 

What does all this indicate about future? One, that the packing up of these dubious institutions is not entirely a bad thing. It gives space for more genuine art houses and artists who were long being ignored by the market. Important curators like Jyotindra Jain who had always worked outside the influence of these art houses now get more media space. Similarly artists like S Ravi Shankar, Anish kapoor, Sach Jafri, who were always known abroad but remained largely ignored by galleries like Bodhi and auction houses like Saffronart will now get pride of prominence.

Many international art houses like Borubudur, Sidhartha Auctineers, Sotheby’s etc are still into buying Indian art, but their target is now emerging names with solid credentials. New Galleries like Nature Morte, Cinnamon Art House, Novelty Colours, etc are the ones to look for good investible and reasonable art.

Indian art is still selling more than artworks from other South Asian countries but it is perhaps the best art to put money in in the internatioanl market. But business is no longer possible in the way theses dubious galleries did. Its is time now to invest in newer artists and understand newer concepts in art like Superflat, Pseudorealism, Fluxus, Magic realism and Post Cynicism, which are now shaping the art world’s thinking. At the height of art boom, nobody tried to understand the trends, theories and emerging languages of art world.

Now it is time to understand them and then go for calculated risks in buying the artworks of these artists.