Where art thou, curator?

Organisers claim art fairs are “important” and that they’re “forums”. In reality they’re adrenaline-addled spectacles for a kind of buying and selling where intimacy, conviction, patience and focused looking, not to mention looking again, are essentially nonexistent. — Jerry Saltz, art critic,New York magazine

Judging by the footfalls, India Art Fair 2012 held at the NSIC Exhibition Complex in Okhla, one of Delhi’s biggest grounds, seemed to have struck it big. Over four days it hosted works from 98 of the world’s most exciting and influential artists, and galleries from 20 countries. At the outset it seemed a perfect combination of money, marketability and fantasia. While spectators gawked at so many Ravinder Reddys standing like gilded eyesores, rotund belly intact, it became a game in which everybody played: gallery persons desi and videshi , artists, dealers and buyers, window-gazers and a few (designer) handbag stealers.

A number of collaborative events had no catalogues or curatorial insights, and hurriedly put together releases smacked of floundering guesses and last-minute bric-a-brac.

This brings us to the lack of professionalism in the business model of galleries in India. And, as if that were not all, woes writ large with the truth of sales. Being a gallerist, or owner of a gallery, appears glam and glitzy, but a few queries revealed how low sales are, and many instances of harassment of foreign galleries by the customs department. “Indian buyers only want bargains and discounts, and we had to pay huge duties. It was an impossible dialogue, very difficult,” said a German gallerist.

Another downside of the fair was the hauled in, heavy at the seams look that most Indian galleries put on. “I think a lot of the Indian galleries had brought in dead stock,” said Vikram Bachawat from Kolkata. “After all, six Ravinder Reddys are too much for the eye.”

Clearly the need is to move beyond a mere “cookie-cutter corporate fair”.

Says the senior artist Arpita Singh, “How can you have a Ram Kinkar Retrospective without dates? Aren’t periods vital to the evaluation of a historical evolution?” This seemed to be a new trend in Delhi, both with the Ram Kinkar Baij (NGMA) and Sakti Burman (Lalit Kala Akademi) retrospectives.

Media reports too seemed ambiguous, with some stating that “80 per cent of the galleries sold more than one artwork, and up to 14 works were sold by a single gallery”. But names of galleries and artists were withheld. Questions curry around whether Indian contemporary art is the new real estate, but recession woes and lack of liquidity have both eaten into the market mobility, and recent auction statistics have shown that it artificially warps prices and affects the quality of art.

The Indian art market flounders in a sea of editorial/curatorial blunders and oversights. The truth is this detracts from the potential educational and academic value of art exhibitions. The new list of the Indian Art Fair 2013 shows that two great galleries — Hauser and Wirth London and Sundaram Tagore New York — are missing this year.