The Art of Collection

There are, after all, several ways of looking at a canvas. “As long as people look at art and not lean on it during the opening, I think I am okay with self-confessed first-timers,” says Mortimer Chatterjee who is very encouraging to new collectors and young artists. With the premium rising on art, mainly through auction sales where prices are hitting the crore mark, there is a constant need to cultivate and groom new collectors interested in getting involved in art.

New money, the upwardly mobile yuppie that likes to be seen as cultured and the corporate buyer with more money that art know-how is the new breed of collector. And the job of the cognoscenti now is to inform these new comers.

On the other end of the spectrum is the art collector who is always on the lookout for a “deal” that is not a snob-value, high price buy.

Mr M arrives at all the art dos with this expectant look that usually goes beyond the paintings on the wall. His hawk eye gleams with wicked conspiracy as he rubs his hands together and stage whispers, “Do you know where I can get a good Atul Dodiya water colour for a reasonable price?”

The ladies tend to have a lot more charm when it comes to cutting a deal. “I’ll buy you lunch if you can tell me which gallery is the best to tap out a genuine Francis Souza,” tinkles madam X with laughter and charm that could set even a Trojan horse off his stride. Of course, when no Souza is forthcoming, her smile wanes and she sets her sights on the next likely looking “informer”.

The truth is the older, seasoned collectors are as ferocious as bulldogs when it comes to guarding their art territory and they almost never share drawing room conversation about their latest buy. A grunt is the most you’ll get out of them as they continue staring at the work of art before them as if the dancing apsaras on display were coming alive.

Some even carry a little magnifying glass in their pocket, and when no one is looking they tiptoe up to the painting and examine the signature. If you happen to have a MOMA visiting card (Museum of Modern Art, NY) in your jacket pocket, then the need to be surreptitious is totally abandoned. “What year? Is the canvas treaded? I can’t quite make out the signature here, what do you think is it genuine?” questions that gets slung around at high decibels much to the chagrin of the gallery owner.

Most gallery owners are quite happy to entertain an informed and questioning collector who makes his/her private trips to the gallery long before the show is even mounted. “My serious collectors usually come to view the work when crowds are not there and visit more than once before deciding to buy it,” shares Geetha Mehra of Sakshi Art Gallery.

Some collectors have such a good rapport with artists that they often pick up the works directly from them. MF Husain tends to sidestep the gallery as middleman (Pundole Art Gallery is the exception) and usually deals directly with his buyers. Although his last commission of 100 paintings was for Rs 101 crore for Guru Swarup Srivastava, things took a turn for the worse when the corporate was booked in a forgery case.

With the advent of the online gallery and auction site, a new species of art buyer is now playing the field. The kind that jet-sets between New York and Mumbai, buys most of their art online and hardly keeps it long enough to register the real colours on the canvas before he sells it of the next buyer in Dubai. The least said about this species the better. As Bangalore-based curator A Ramachandran points out, “It’s no wonder we see the same work of art surfacing in different auctions, there is so much of in-buying and collectors seem to collect only to sell.”

Then, there are collector-turned-dealers who sit on the cusp and usually have some of the best collections because of how informed they are and also their access to art is made more easy since they sell and buy art with a frequency that, perhaps a corporate collector doesn’t. A case in point is Lavesh Jagasia who started off by collecting painters like Paritosh Sen, Jehangir Sabavala and SH Raza to name a few.

Today, Jagasia has his own business in art, a serigraph studio that is flourishing with an online and real presence. “It took me years to build my own collection and there is no way I intend to part with any of my art any time soon. However, I did see a gap in the market for good, singed artist prints. Serigraphs of original works are the answer for people who love art but cannot afford it,” says the designer turned art entrepreneur.It takes a collector to sell to another.