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

important lessons to imbibe from crises is to emerge with a deeper love and respect for humanity, regardless. This alone allows one the compassion to rebuild with greater joy, otherwise it is so easy for cynicism and compromise to enter the journey and slowly dilute all the earlier passionate work from a time when idealism was seemingly more energetic. It allows one never lose that inner joy irrespective of the tittle-tattle of others; never let any one voice but only all voices dialogue with your own inner voice. This is what a developing civilization like India saps from all, the inner joy; preserving that through all crises is the most sacred and precious task, wealth will always follow once that joy rekindles vision, but that joy will never return once it is sidestepped for shorter term short-cuts. as a result, our foundations will still be rock solid, with material buffers clearly in place and the speed of growth better paced so as to carry all team members, stakeholders and public interest with common drive. Members from Osian’s senior management are already evolving into positions of leadership as new scholars, creative minds and administrators continue to join. This time my personal bandwidth will not be exhausted to the point of daily breakdown, allowing the rest to take care of itself, for the vision of Osian’s is indeed brilliant and on the ball. It has stood the test of time, and led the way in which the art infrastructure is progressing, and it will continue to create and inspire many new platforms in the years to come, hopefully becoming one of the finest cultural and educational institutions in the world. This crisis has indeed been the making of Osian’s. (That said, I do pray that we do not see another crisis for a while.) Rebuilding the Art Market naturally, many of the senior players in the art market will have to take on a much more selfless role becoming more systematic and innovative with their collaborations and integrating their energies into the larger infrastructure- building needs of the market. achieving a serious industry status will not be easy, but unless dialogue is opened with all sectors of the economy and communications are made daily to clarify how the art market functions, from its pricing- valuation models and collateralization norms to sourcing processes, from archival responsibilities to authenticity and title matters, from public education outreach to governmental collaborations, there is little chance for a significant material leap and/or paradigm shift. In themonths to come, many new initiatives and partnerships will be announced by Osian’s, and we are sure and hopeful that other players will also take the cue and begin to rebuild the base with a fresh kind of solidity-cum-risk taking and public accountability. In this context it needs to be understood how unsustainable it is to have an Indian modern and contemporary art market where the ‘top’ 10 artists constitute over 63% of the total public global auction sales, this after more than 120 years of modernism playing with contemporary art. If we assume that merely one thousand people in India made the decision to become artists every year for the last 100 years, i.e. 100,000 artists, then after 100 years only 0.01% of artists contribute over 62% of all public auction sales. It is unfathomable that this is a market. Creative genius is just not that elusive in humanity, nor is humanity that blind in financially recognizing such. These statistics are in fact more unjust than the worst economic inequality India can show on its lorenz curve. Thus the art market is totally unsustainable on the existing terms, especially if it wishes to become a leader, much less compete with the emerging radical Chinese instincts of market-making, influence- sharing and awareness-building. Of course, the market is only one part of the larger cultural infrastructure-building platform. The other pivotal piece of the jigsaw is naturally the education programs and the manner by which these are propagated. Hopefully in the coming months many of us will take forward new innovative initiatives in this area. Yet, the amount of work required demands undiluted focus and obsession. Who will make this sacrifice in these times of prudent mediocrity? From day one Osian’s has always believed that in the realm of art and culture the kind of institution required is a new model, which takes the best from the corporate entity, the charitable society and the government trust frameworks. From this should emerge a robust infrastructure-building oriented institution that can be financially self-sufficient whilst upholding the highest standards and needs of joyous creative discipline and intellectual rigor. The key is thus to be a free and innovative private-sector entity functioning with the same sense of responsibility as a leading public-sector company. easier said than done, but genuinely possible. Yet the value system which emerges from such a mix leads to the dangerous dilemma of non-financial criteria dominating many financial decisions, and therein exist the source of several problems. The economic world has endeavored to minimize the dominance of emotion and other non-financial criteria with regard to decision-making and corporate governance. naturally, the balance still eludes all of us, especially in the realm of art and culture. The difficulties which befell the Osian’s art Fund were to some extent determined by this mix.