The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Now that the facts and figures of the Sotheby's sale are in, one can do some analysis. And of course, things are not what they seem to be. If one looks only at the highest price bid for a work, one can come seriously unstrung. For example, in this auction a work of Abdur Rahman Chughtai, which was owned by the dancer Ram Gopal went for £27,600 (roughly Rs 14.4 lakh).

But then one cannot explain how an equally good, if not better, work remained unsold. This was his Young Man and Woman by a Pond priced at between £10,000-£15,000. A far better reckoning is the price per square centimetre with a weightage for the centimetres unsold. It will give us a relatively low estimate for artists of uneven production in comparison with those who do not allow uneven work or too much, to come into the market.

From this perspective the highest score was that of Chugtai. His Mughal miniature like works to fairly large watercolours sold for no less that Rs 435 per sq cm, going ahead even of Ganesh Pyne at Rs 338 per sq cm. This should not surprise us for there is already a taste for Mughal miniatures in the British art market and the recent exhibition of the Padshahnama miniatures from the Queen's collection also seems to have helped to bring this style into the limelight. Moreover, as an artist no longer alive, his work attracts the cultural grave-diggers who prefer to invest in a dead artist's work as it is limited to a certain number. Then, Chughtai's work seldom comes up for sale. This may yet be another reason why his works sold at the price they did. Still, the basic reason seems to be the taste for miniatures in England.

Similarly, a self-portrait of Gaganendranath Tagore sold at £2,530 (Rs 1.3 lakh approximately). It was a small watercolour 22 cm x 14.5. Jamini Roy's Gouache on paper, 34.5 cm X 50 cm, portraying musicians, also sold at the same price. An excellent watercolour of a baboon by Ram Kinkar Baij sold at a slightly higher price of £3,220 (Rs 1.7 lakh approximately). Arpana Caur's The Body in Just a Garment, sold for £2,530 (Rs 1.3 lakh).

A watercolour by Arpita Singh sold at £1,495—£5 below the lowest price quoted (that is, for Rs 78,000 approximately) while a landscape by Paresh Maity fetched £1,265 (approximately Rs 66,000).

It is evident that the taste in London does not reflect our press hype. Manjit Bawa, Manu Parekh and Jogen Choudhary, all failed to sell even one work. And Laxma Goud sold only four out of eleven works up for sale. What sells is good square centimetre. In this category, we have George Keyt, the very popular Sri Lanka artist; Ram Kumar, whose portrait of the art critic Richard Bartholomew is coming up for sale at Christie's; Anjolie Ela Menon, who has come down considerably to Rs 68.6 per sq cm this time; and F N Souza, who sold only eleven out of nineteen works up for sale, while M F Husain sold five only out of fourteen works put up for sale. Just any work by a well-known artist will not do. The only exception seems to be Jamini Roy, whose work still sails at around Rs 98 per sq cm.

Collectors now seem to be filling up gaps in their collections with works from the twenties to the early fifties, but serious works. The failure of Husain's commercial drawings of this period to sell even for £600 is proof of that. Younger artists often draw a blank because of this. But as a good rule of thumb, the Bengal School and the Bombay Group still hold their own in the arena of our contemporary art, reflecting the fact that tastes change but there is always room for good art, as Beochar Ram Manoahr Sinha found out, when two of his early works sold at Sotheby's this time.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.