Osian's Auction Catalogue Creative India Series 1 Bengal | December 2011

Creative India BENGAL | The Artists and Printmakers of the ‘Picturesque’ 11 10 naturally, connected to this was also the key duality inherent in Osian’s – i.e. its existence as both a collector-cum- archive and a seller-cum-auction house. This was obviously our greatest strength, pivotal to creating a new financially independent cultural institution-building model, whilst simultaneously leading to perceived conflicts of interest, irrespective of one’s personal integrity and the ability to balance both those duties. The establishing of the Osian’s art Fund in 2006 was thus intended to separate to some extent these two aspects of cultural infrastructure-building – i.e. the long-term extraction and sharing of knowledge from the art object, and the relatively short and medium term activity of trading in art as a capital asset. Therefore, the unfortunate inability of the Osian’s art Fund to fulfill its redemption expectations and promises on time led to its own damaging fallout. Yet we are constantly working towards the full and final closure of the Fund and thankfully it is getting closer every day. [Please refer to ‘note on the art Fund’] Fourthly, my own stubborn unwillingness to follow the so- called ‘necessary processes’ nor even the delegation of such decisions which real-estate development in Mumbai demands, led to the failure of building The Osianama at the site of Minerva cinema. In turn this led to the accumulation of large levels of debt which became untenable, placing huge pressures on all other activities not least our banking relationships and commitments. nevertheless, the concept of The Osianama remains pivotal to our vision, and so has been relocated to new Delhi, albeit in a smaller avatar to begin with. It will open shortly. Fifth, related to the above was our constant aversion to being bullied by certain agencies coupled with one’s conviction that despite the many delays within our Indian judiciary system, the system itself is still capable of bringing justice to all who wish to stay honest especially those who, like ourselves, have the resources and opportunities to hire decent legal counsel, and who have the principles and stamina to fight it out through litigation when left with no other choice. Unfortunately sometimes those delays and energy loss can push one to breaking point. Sixth, the scale and cost of the non-profit activities (e.g. the film festival, long-term preservation of artifacts, [digital] archiving for the long term knowledge-base on Indian civilization and World Cinema) were constantly expanding. This caused the principal revenue generator, i.e. the auction house, to become burdened with too many cross- subsidizing obligations. Further, our principle stand against sponsorship added to the pressures. additionally, too many intellectual and academic principles were imposed on the running of the auction House which were not financially effective (e.g. our refusal to prioritize financially successful individual artists over the history of Indian art and other equally historically significant artists or regions). The solution to many of these issues has been to restructure Osian’s; to cleave certain activities and in the process create smaller more specialized teams. Ideally this should allow each activity to not only flourish free of certain cross- subsidizing obligations, but also for each team to become more open to collaborate with specialized entities and hence in the process find its own financial independence. Further, as is evident with our forthcoming auction ‘Creative India Series 1 - Bengal’, Osian’s as ever does not pander to the whims of the market, if anything we have become even more convinced of the correctness of our path. Hopefully the market itself is now more mature and will understand the overwhelming priority of historical significance for their collecting and pricing-valuation models. Seventh, the inability of the India asia arab art Fund to take off and launch as planned during 2008-09. The failure of this created a whole sequence of negative consequences which had to be resolved systematically amid a very mistrustful atmosphere. naturally a few competitors tried their best to drive in the knife (as also a few ‘well-wishers’ in the bargain), but step by step the matters are being resolved as blessings have eventually out-gunned the ill-will. Today, though still consolidating on many levels, Osian’s is much more sound in structure, financial processes, clarity of implementation and purpose, simply because of the love, loyalty and trust that friends, shareholders, Unit-Holders, clients, the media, and the general public have shown in so many instances. People do stand by you during difficult times, some naturally more than others. Most may not go out of their way to help always, and many may fall in our eyes, but it is important to recognize that most people function on fragile foundations, forever trying their best. Some are unfortunately more intimidated by negative perceptions and dire surroundings than others and so prefer to maintain a distance from seeming controversies. Yet one of the most