KEY POINTS:
TV Santhosh is one of the emerging stars of India's sizzling art mart.
Back in 2005, the champagne corks started popping when one of his canvases was auctioned for US$16,000, which was considered a triumphal figure at the time. But Santhosh's ratings have been shooting up and, last November, one of his paintings was snapped up at Christie's for US$400,000.
Or, look at 93-year-old Maqbool Fida Husain, the Grand Old Man of the Indian art world, whose canvases are coming with higher price tags than ever before. In March, a fierce bidding war pushed a Husain painting to US$1.4 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York.
In fact, although hard-headed stockbrokers may be reluctant to admit it, a person taking a few bets in the Indian art mart five years ago would be many brushstrokes ahead of people who had invested in blue-chip stocks. And that's even though there has been a five-year sharemarket bull run.
"The market's being driven by the availability of funds and the desire to possess a good piece of art, much like people want a good car or a piece of fine jewellery," says art critic Ella Datta.
It hasn't always been like this. Back in the 1950s, Husain used to bicycle around Delhi, dependent on a handful of buyers and gallery owners who picked up his canvases for a few hundred rupees.
But as India's economy has blasted its way on to the fast track, Indian art has been rocketing upward. And, in the past few years, has even caught the discerning eyes of top international collectors.
Cross the world to two industrial sheds converted into the Initial Access gallery in Wolverhampton, UK. The gallery, owned by Frank Cohen, one of Britain's top collectors, has a show called A Passage to India, displaying sculpture and paintings by its most promising contemporary artists.
Cohen has been travelling to India for the past two decades but only began buying contemporary art about three years ago.
"There's a great deal of interest in the new art from India, "says Cohen. "The boom is just beginning."
Travel southwards from Cohen's gallery to London and it's adman-turned-art connoisseur Charles Saatchi, who's snapping up avant-garde pieces of Indian art like Subodh Gupta's sculpture Spills, which has stainless steel cooking utensils spilling out of a bucket.
Gupta is being called Delhi's Damien Hirst and his striking works, including a one-tonne buck-toothed skull crafted from aluminium pots and pans called Very Hungry God, have made him a top pick among international collectors.
Saatchi's show is jokily called The Empire Strikes Back and it'll be on later this year at his new gallery. Elsewhere in London, the Serpentine Gallery is preparing for a blockbuster show on Indian art and architecture by year end.
Across the Atlantic, the Marlborough Gallery in New York has just exhibited Indian-born, Paris-based artist Vishwanadhan. And other collectors like LVMHs billionaire boss Bernard Arnault and Francois Pinault, who owns Christie's, are also snapping up carefully selected pieces whenever they spy an opportunity.
Why has the world suddenly fallen in love with Indian art? At one level, there's the sheer globalisation of the art world with rich collectors hunting for talent far beyond their own shores. Also, prices in the West have soared so steeply that even wealthy collectors are finding it too costly. Datta says: "Collectors are looking at India and China in a big way. Compared with prices in the West, Indian or even Chinese art is much cheaper."
Then, there's sheer opportunism. The critics are predicting that India's art world is ready to march down the same highway to riches that has already been taken by the Chinese. In the past decade, Chinese art has performed a Great Leap Forward that would surely have startled Chairman Mao.
Chinese art is now a global phenomenon and there's a starburst of talent in the Middle Kingdom.
But Indian art is still pint-sized compared with the Chinese. It's reckoned the Indian art mart was worth about US$350 million last year. That's a big leap up from earlier years (in 2003 it was worth just US$5 million) but its still got a long way to go compared with the Chinese whose pieces commanded US$1.5 billion.
Nevertheless, Indian art is now turning from a small-scale cottage industry into a leviathan in its own right.
New galleries are springing into existence and old-timers say business has never been so good. Four new auction houses have made splashy debuts in the last year.
India's art mart perhaps not surprisingly first began to show signs of life at the same time its economy was being opened up to the world in 1991.
By the mid-90s the market was big enough for Christie's and Sotheby's to hold regular Indian art auctions in London and New York. In those days, the key buyers who kept the market buzzing were Indians living abroad, who had the cash to snap up the relatively inexpensive canvases that came on the market.
Today some Indians abroad, like hedge fund manager Rajiv Chaudhuri, have turned into key market players. In 2005, Chaudhuri made history when he bought a canvas by 83-year-old Tyeb Mehta for US$1.1 million - it was the first time that an Indian artist had crossed the million-dollar mark.
Today that figure has been eclipsed. In 2007, Raqib Shaw, a young Indian who's based in London, has had work sold for U $5.49 million. Shaw who moved to London as a youth is barely 34-years-old and his intricate Garden of Earthly Delights III is inspired by Hieronymus Bosch with a distinctly Kashmiri flavour.
As India's art world hots up, the merchant banks and money managers are getting into action, setting up art funds that will collect money from investors and hire experts to advise on the best buys.
What does all this tell you about India in the 21st century? About two decades ago, only a handful of rich business families could afford to put art on their walls.
Today, there are executives, investment bankers living in India and abroad and fast-rising young software professionals who get hefty bonuses and stock options and who have cash to spare for expensive art.
Then, there's also the rise of India in the world. Datta says: "It has a lot to do as India as an emerging economy. It's not just economic muscle but also a cultural expression. So whether it's cinema, literature or art, everything Indian is finding its moment in the sun."
