The charity show is a good measure of which artists sell, for organisers prefer not to stock unsaleable art as their aim is to raise funds. When we look at the show in aid of young Tushar at Art Today and in aid of an NGO, Prayas, at AIFACS, we see that a number of artists figure in both shows. They are Anjolie Ela Menon, perhaps the only woman artist after Amrita Sher-gil, who has reached the top ten in India;Aparna Caur, who is rising steadily over the last decade or so; Jatin Das, who after M F Husain, perhaps the only artist who excites strong public passion; Shamshad Husain, Dhiraj Choudhary, Sanjay Bhattacharyya, Bulbul Sharma, Vijender Sharma,Veer Munshi and Sukumar Chatterjee. One can see how the organisers have the market in mind, for these artists vary considerably in style, though figurative artists, predominate.

The sales, however, are different. At the Art Today exhibition, the highest price paid for a work of Anjolie Ela Menon was Rs 1 lakh, followed by a canvas of Paramjit Singh at Rs 55,000; two works by Satish Gupta at Rs 50,000 each; a relatively small work of Paresh Maity at Rs 30,000; a work on wood by Bulbul Sharma at Rs 35,000; and one by Sukumar Chatterjee went at Rs 25,000. One can clearly see that there are a number of artists, primarily figurative, whose work, if and when it comes into the market, sells. Figurative art sells but only if the price asked for it is reasonable. Those of ourartists who have overpriced themselves, generally fail to sell. The art buyer today is a wise buyer, balancing quality of work and its price as the basis for buying it.The name counts; but only at a secondary level.

Hype, of course, counts for very little. But the knowledge that an exhibition is on is important. Organisers of exhibitions should take greater care to advertise their shows in advance and not rely on the press to do their job for them, free. Charities would do well to employ a public relations agency to project their work and arrange for buyers to look at the works on sale. Being penny-wise and pond foolish does not help in art. Both gallery owners and charities should note this. The AIFACS show of Prayas suffers from this lack of projection, so I imagine most people will have to contact the Prayas headquarters in Jaipur to get the works they want. Among the works, if one looks at both the price and the quality of these, I found Rekha Bhatnagar's abstract pastels at Rs 4,000 each a good buy, aswell as Pramod Ganpatya's canvas Charcha at Rs 18,000, Shahid Parvez' canvases at Rs 15,000 each, Shabbir Hasan Qazi's abstract canvas at Rs 8,000, Chintan Upadhyaya's dypitch at Rs 8,000 and Kanhiya Lal Verma's traditional paintings at Rs 5,000 each, to be bargains. Other works of quality are Anjloie Ela Menon's Vipasana at Rs 50,000; Rajeev Lochan's mixed media work at Rs 40,000; Bulbul Sharma's Deer at Rs 30,00; Vineet Kumar's Sphuling at Rs 40,000; Surendra Pal Joshi's work on balsa wood at Rs 20,000; Abbas Battiwala's work at Rs 60,000; Dharmendra Rathore's works Music and Silence at Rs 25,000 each; Amrut Patel's canvas Oh!Motherland at Rs 30,000; and Moti Jharotia's and Kavita Nayar's prints ar Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 each are all within the golden mean of quality and price. This does not mean that other works of value are not there. But a buyer has to choose. That is the principle of good buying.