‘Art can’t be treated like stocks’ – Lifestyle News

India launched an art index in November last year, the IIMA-AuraArt Indian Art (Price) Index (IAIAI), based on hedonic pricing, joining the likes of Sotheby’s Mei Moses, Artnet and Wondeur, the three leading global art indices. But judging from word at the ongoing India Art Fair, the art world still has to warm up to the idea.

“India is a young country and just had the first level of modernists. We don’t have the provenance system for an artwork. When an artwork comes up for sale, people are not bothered to know where it is from, who bought it first, who the collector is, etc. It’s not easy to track art in a monetary bracket. It is also not good to compare the art market with the stock market. An artist can make small special editions for a charity or commission, but is he making enough work to be able to consistently index?” asks collector-patron Feroze Gujral, founder-director of non-profit art trust The Gujral Foundation.

Urvi Kothari, gallery manager, Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai, feels no single art index can perfectly capture all diverse valuation factors, but it does enable an investor to take an informed decision whilst drawing correlations with other asset classes and their investment returns.

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“With record-breaking auction sales and now with the boost of AI, the accuracy of these art indices has genuinely proven to deliver objective market analysis. One such is the Wondeur, which uses AI to recognise pricing patterns. The scale and scope of an index encapsulates a wide array of mediums such as paintings, sculptures, mixed media installations, prints, photography and more. It defines the end acceptance or rejection of the genre under the umbrella of a particular defined art index,” she says.

There are data points for modernists or progressive artist groups auctioned in India and globally, so indexing can be done for them. However, Jaya Asokan, director of the ongoing India Art Fair, feels, “At the moment in the contemporary art world, it is challenging.”

Agrees owner-director and curator Sharan Apparao of Apparao Galleries in Chennai, “It is difficult to control art. Art is not stocks or shares. An artist’s trajectory changes, the environment changes, so it won’t be accurate.”

Kishore Singh, senior vice-president, DAG, feels: “Art value can change. For instance, an artwork of MF Husain will be purely based on quality or historicity, thus indexing can be helpful if applicable at a certain level of understanding.”

He adds emphatically, “Take it with a pinch of salt or use it as a support system. But across the horizon, it can be detrimental for artists and galleries. For example, a painting by Raja Ravi Varma or Thomas Daniell is rare and historic, so you cannot follow an index. We cannot have a price range per square foot; it should never be the criterion.”

Gujral perhaps puts it best: “The movement in the art world comes from hype, which is not quantifiable. We use catalysts like a huge commission behind an artist or is he taken up by a renowned gallery, awarded globally, or his auction got him billion dollars. This kind of hype cannot be indexed.”

However, index creator Prashant Das, associate professor, finance & accounting, IIM-A, says, “The transparency will help in rationalising prices of the Indian art market, and the index time series information will tell us how over time the price of modern artwork is evolving in India.”

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But does this index affect an artist’s creativity? Das denies this. “He is very much aware of the evaluation. Unless we add economics to art, how do we sustain it? The index is a service to the artist community to help legitimise art as an asset class and create enthusiasm among potential art investors that demand art. By developing this index we are able to share a narrative around the economy of art,” he feels.

The IAIAI is a quarterly price index reflecting price movement in constant-quality modern art (paintings) by 25 Indian artists auctioned over time, like Akbar Padamsee, Anjolie Ela Menon, Bhupen Khakhar and FN Souza, to offer art enthusiasts, financiers and stakeholders data to calculate the percentage change in the likely market price of an artwork over time.