An artist, curator and gallerist who led Bodhi Art at the peak of the art market boom between 2006 and 2008, Sharmistha Ray, in an exclusive piece, talks candidly while relating personal anecdotes to complete the picture.
Broad Strokes: Starting with a Blank Canvas
Before joining Bodhi Art in October 2006, I was an idealistic painter who lived in a fantastic world in which Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vermeer and Picasso breathed life. My only purpose in life was to find a quiet studio, far away from the madding crowd, to set up an easel and immerse myself in a world of colours, forms and painterly gestures. I spent 10 months in Kolkata upon my arrival to Indian shores from the United States (where my family still lives), before picking up and making the journey to Mumbai. In Kolkata, I set up an artist studio and filled it with colorful abstractions. I grappled hard with being in the eponymous City of Joy, also the place of my birth. So many emotions and sentiments were thrown up with each new experience that it was hard to make sense of any of it. My work transitioned almost overnight from the conceptual and forbidding subjects I had explored as a graduate art student at Pratt Institute to intense explorations of abstraction and colour. Looking back, that period of quiet introspection prepared me for what was to come next: my role as director of Bodhi Art.
When I moved to Mumbai to join the gallery, the contemporary art scene in India still trailed well behind the market for the Modern artists. The Progressive Artists Group members like Maqbool Fida Husain, Syed Haider Raza, Francis Newton Souza and Tyeb Mehta led the bandwagon. Since 1995, demand for the Moderns had risen slowly but surely until in the early 2000s, both Indians and NRIs went on a voracious shopping spree for their works. That would last a few years. At that time, there was no indication that the year ahead – 2007 – would see an unprecedented and historic rise in the worldwide demand for Indian contemporary art with Americans, Europeans and Asians buying established as well as emerging talent from India.
Over a two year period, I travelled constantly between New York, Chicago, Miami, London, Paris, Berlin, Basel, Milan, Venice, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing and many other cities. The art world is known for its keen choice of exotic locations, and I was privy to some of the most stellar exhibitions happening all over the world, as well as industry leaders who were forming out the language of international contemporary art. It was a unique point in history: the world was colliding on an international platform with China, India, Russia and Latin America jostling for first position among the world’s emerging economies – the art scene followed this trend. It’s no surprise that Indian art was No. 2 on the shopping list for worldwide collectors as the most desirable acquisition after Chinese art. Superstar collectors like Frenchmen Francois Pinault and Bernard Arnault and Englishmen Charles Saatchi and Frank Cohen whet their appetites for hot artists from the subcontinent like Subodh Gupta, Rashid Rana, Bharti Kher, TV Santhosh, Thukral and Tagra and Jitish Kallat.
Had a fortune-teller peered into a crystal ball and foretold that the buoyant yet laid-back art world I was entering in 2006 would spiral upwards in a brief time to such dizzying heights, I probably would have asked for my money back. Bodhi Art was not alone in this unique journey; the whole Indian art world – with the galleries, artists, art critics and curators – grew along with it. The euphoria would not simmer down until about mid-2008 when the ripples of the oncoming economic crisis started to be felt. Despite the current reprieve, the advances made in a few short years are trophies that won’t collect dust too soon. Galleries have upgraded to professional white-cube spaces common in London or New York, high-quality publications are bridging the gap for documentation, and dealing with galleries doesn’t feel like being kicked around a football field. India finally has a professional gallery system in place. Unlike in Western countries, art galleries, not museums or institutions, pave the way for art and culture in India. It’s an important step forward – and one that shouldn’t be forsaken easily.
Mini-strokes: Inside the White Cube
March 2007. It was the eve of the opening reception of Subodh Gupta’s solo exhibition, titled START.STOP. In the three years that had lapsed since Gupta’s last one-man show in Mumbai, the artist had catapulted into international superstardom. Gupta had become a curator’s darling. International museums and major private collectors were acquiring his work globally. He was also one of the first Indian contemporary artists (along with Atul Dodiya) whose art works eclipsed the US$100,000 mark and the first Indian to be showcased in the prestigious halls of Art Basel in Switzerland. Not surprisingly, the solo exhibition was highly anticipated.
I stood on the upper floor of the now iconic gallery space – that used to be situated in Kalaghoda – alongside the artist and the late Kavas Bharucha, the art aesthete and passionate art collector. We surveyed the scene, which included a half-tonne sculpture named Miter, which hung like a beehive in the corner of the wall and a giant, immaculately constructed sushi belt, Faith Matters, which carried an assortment of sparkling aluminum, copper and brass bartans. At the far end of the gallery, a brass door, simply titled Door, was discreetly embedded in the wall. It was Bharucha who broke the silence. “Bravo!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in a congratulatory gesture. Ordinarily a man of few words, Bharucha had summed up the awesome impact of the exhibition. Gupta, his arms neatly folded across his chest, smiled modestly in response. His face betrayed only a hint of tension. There was nothing, either about his demeanor or the pristine gallery space, that otherwise suggested the intense grind and toil of the previous five days. From across the room, Bharucha’s wife, Khorshed, yanked on the brass knob of Door. “Does it open?” she asked incredulously.
But Gupta – although well known for his attention to detail and eye for perfection – had nothing to worry about. A formidable supporting team was in place to take care of everything. There were the sushi-belt engineers from Singapore who had assembled the intricate kinetic sculpture on site. Flora, the artist’s studio manager who had been recruited from France, managed the bevy of installers, technicians, welders, lighting experts, exhibition designers, photographers and videographers with expert precision. Also on hand, was the extensive Bodhi team consisting of curators, exhibition managers, publication coordinators, sales managers, logistics personnel, press officers and artist-relationship managers. An architect had to be called in for consultation since the infrastructure of the gallery had to be altered in many places to overcome the technical challenges of installing the massive works. The stair’s railing leading up to the second floor, for instance, was removed in order to get Miter upstairs and then put back in to place. The corner where Miter hung also had to be architecturally reinforced to hold up the work. Once installed, Miter, which loomed three feet above the ground, appeared to defy the laws of gravity. The silent repose that pervaded the gallery in the hours before the opening reception was preceded by hours of careful deliberation and orchestrated from start to finish.
The Subodh Gupta exhibition was just one in a series of cornerstone exhibitions by Bodhi Art. Anju Dodiya’s Throne of Frost was another such momentous occasion. Contemporary art and royal ar chitecture, broken mirrors and ornate stained-glass windows, exquisite Raja Ravi Varmas and cascading chandeliers together formed a lavish display at the Laxmi Vilas Palace in Baroda, also in early 2007. Both exhibitions reflected the dedicated vision and flawless choreography of an entire team in order to soar contemporary art to greater heights. In the end, START.STOP and Throne of Frost surpassed all expectations and delivered museum-quality exhibition that were also smashing successes – they were also, without a doubt, the most expensive solo exhibitions mounted in India’s history.
Painting the Perfect Picture: The Business of Art
Here’s an open secret: there’s no such thing as The Perfect Picture. The pursuit of perfection in image-making inspired hunter-gatherers who created the first-known cave-paintings to the present moment, many thousands of years later, with artists pushing existing boundaries to inspire new ways of looking at the world. If we had an example of the perfect picture – although art historians claim the Mona Lisa comes close – the raison d’être that has kept artists toiling away for centuries would seem somewhat futile. It’s the pursuit of the perfect picture that is the source of all creativity, not the creator. Although this supposition may seem blasphemous, it is entirely accurate for anyone who has expended time gleaning through the history of art.
Here’s another thing I’ve picked up while studying the art of the past: trends come and go, but good art lasts long beyond the Cinderella hour. At the end of the 19th century, a French artist called Bouguereau was the most popular and well-loved artist amongst rich art patrons in Paris. The classically-minded traditional painter who painted idealised female nudes bypassed intellectual provocation with popular aesthetic appeal. Time has all but forgotten him. Instead, history has dedicated space to those stalwart Impressionists who – at the same time Bouguereau was being championed – were held up to public ridicule. Controversy is not always an indicator of longevity, but it does signal the arrival of something new – and that’s when we should pay attention, especially if we want to be able to predict real talent when we encounter it. It’s not a mysterious science, although admittedly there are some who would have you believe that they’re somehow magically endowed with heightened extrasensory perception and powers of foresight!
Over the past few years, the question I’ve been asked most often is ‘How do you judge a good work of art?’ Yes, it is partly subjective; but what people are really asking is ‘Will it appreciate in value?’ While I am entirely cognizant of the premium placed on works of art – especially in recent times—I would still assert that the latter question is the wrong one to ask. Buying with one’s ears, instead of training one’s eye is the most common mistake new – and even some seasoned – art buyers make. It’s a short cut that proves the principle that the act of looking is always much more effective than eavesdropping on other people’s art collections. It works for them, but it may not work for everyone.
As I take a stroll around my pristine white space, in which paintings punctuate the walls, sculptures carve out their own niche and art creates its own internal universe, I reflect on what it is I actually do every day. It occurs to me that, while even the most astute and experienced amongst us art professionals can’t predict the future any better than anyone else, I take the liberty to assert that the best of us are well poised to offer fresh insights and enlighten minds. After all, we have spent thousands of hours looking, judging, determining – and collecting art.
Ultimately, the business of art is a personalised one. By now, I have met hundreds of people, with varying tastes, opinions, sentiments and notions about art. I haven’t forgotten a single face and I probably have a personal anecdote to tell about every artwork – be it a painting, sculpture, photograph, video or installation – that has been acquired from me. After the parties are over and the merrymakers have left, a job well done means artworks in my care have found good homes. I have never been more convinced than I am now that every artwork has its own destiny and everyone – whether they know it or not – harbors an art collector’s instinct.
(Click here for this article with images on-line on the Verve website)
Tags:AnjuDodiya, BodhiArt, CharlesSaatchi, FrancoisPinault, MFHusain, SubodhGupta, Verve
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