In 1982, I was a young dilettante and as my dalliance became passionate, my love affair became a lifetime commitment to art. It’s close to four decades now and the open-minded outlook has allowed me to be the insider from the outside.
Today, I see clearly how the system has evolved and where the paradigm has shifted. It is a new model altogether. There are disruptions as well as a change in the demography of the art world, mainly in the artists of course, but more importantly, there is a change in the collectors, curators, institutions and viewers, and the consumers of the art world. The media, the galleries, the curators and the platforms—be it a small international university museum or an important museum’s inclusion of one Indian artist and respected shows like Documenta and the host of biennales across the world—were all strands of the fabric that went into building the brand of ‘contemporary Indian art’.
It was through the post-liberalisation in India in the 2000s that a whole generation of artists gained visibility because of tight-knit connections that added to the brand of ‘contemporary Indian art’. The small international museums and curators who were closely connected, and the jet set who followed this introductory bunch took them to dizzying heights. Fantastic jargon positioned and fashioned artists’ brands that moved with the wave of connections. Mediocrity was polished like family heirloom silver and set on pedestals, and so that is how contemporary Indian art came to be.
Come Covid, there was some confusion initially and while the world felt topsy-turvy, the ‘contemporary Indian art’ world matured. What happened was most unexpected, the hierarchies changed!
The art world bloomed and exploded. The blue chip rose to dizzying heights. Art Platforms introduced young artists and technology to the art world which brought in a fresh new tribe of appreciators. The younger generation was not as acquisitive. They are tech-savvy enough to find a way to engage their mind spaces and stay connected with the art world. Fresh new artists found a place and they flew into the cyber skies meeting the young collectors. Post-Covid, the art world changed. Auction houses reached the blue chip to the hungry collectors and it was quite like buoyant trading. I call it trading because that’s exactly how it was in the absence of physical interactions.
Collectors, traders and the buying audience knew the pricing and exactly what was needed. They knew art and were able to ascertain its quality with their discerning experiences of the past. The trades were quick and profit margins small. Parallelly, galleries found new niches and quickly adapted to the new roster of building the next generation of artists using the new language of epistemology and philosophy, and ideas roping in a breed of ideators, be it curators, philosophers or thinkers.
The new hybrid art business kid on the block was technology. For example, NFTs are a new trend and an interesting disruption. The youth related to it.
Self-assured youngsters weigh the odds of price, idea and provenance and have embraced newness like never before. The immediacy of ideas, the mind connect and peer familiarity are a new dynamic in the art world, where auction houses had no role and now, galleries and online platforms are great inculcators of the new ecosystem that was born with technology as the great embracing factor.
The paradigm of art and the way it is enjoyed now has moved a generation very quickly which was aided by the events of the last few months that changed us all forever. The art worlds, both blue chip and emerging artists, adapted just as we all did. It’s a new hybrid that we will see unfold which is very exciting to follow!
Sharan Apparao
Gallerist and curator involved in the contemporary art world
sharan@apparaoart.com