In the present cultural and economic situation different and unequal power relations unfold. Sites are the result of cultural, economic, ethnic, technological and medial constructions. Artist has become conscious of the economic benefits that are attached to the business of art. With the business crossing the conventional boundaries, artists are trying to convert their creativity in terms of money. This is where the art is facing the compromise by the artists and sometimes losing its value in terms of quality. The traditional values are facing new challenges and culture is gearing up to the strange influences.

Art in India is increasingly separate from the rest of its material context, and furthermore, the world of art is increasingly tied to the related worlds of criticism, auction, appraisal, and commodification. This is neither necessarily a sign of degeneration, especially in a global world where artists are more or less able to benefit from a global market which values some sites of abstraction more than others. Yet, some parts of the India’s art world enter, however tentatively, into the empire of the exhibit, the collection and the commodity; there is a healthy countervailing tendency in the wider social world of things in India. The challenge for the India’s artists and critics is to find pathways through the global market without losing entirely the magic of materiality and the unruliness of the world of ‘things’. The unruliness thrives on the transient state of the artwork, the plenitude of social life of things can take, and the hazy borders between things and the persons whose social life they enrich and complicate. This tension between the rule of the commodity and the unruliness of the thing itself marks the space where Indian art and its makers can find a possible space of redemption, in which, abstraction can remain the subsume of materiality rather than is masters.

Indian contemporary art, after a consistent trial since the early nineties, has managed to carve a niche in global market. A study up to 2000 shows that the South Asian artists in particular occupy negligible space in the global market. Till 2005, as the discussion with Subodh Gupta, a leading artist, reveals (Interview with the Author, Unpublished), international investors have not recognised the potency of Contemporary Indian art. International investors have just begun to look at Indian art market and one could just observe that the young artists are making their way into the world swiftly. So the race is in motion and the participants are set for the challenges. Thus the art in India is in no way invalid or contain less vigour.

While one understands the situation of the market, a natural problem with regard to the quality content in art, gets attached naturally. Though there are few loose knots at points, holistically majority of the artists deal fairly with their creativity in India. One major conversion has been the intellectual in put in the artists. It means the artists are ready to expose themselves inside-out without hesitation in explaining their point of view, however small or big the issue it is attached to. Artists are also better exposed to the global conditions and therefore, their vocabulary also has started matching the demand. There seem two kinds of trends in the world in the perspective of Global demand; one that conforms to the moving stylistic expression tending toward the abstraction that is aesthetically matured; and the other, falling upon the indigenous elements, carrying the local essence and serving onto a mass those are re-defining the cultural ethos. In both the cases the level of creativity stands far more significant as compared to economy. The market is also maturing to the new definitions and their interpretations in contemporary art. Therefore, India, while fulfilling both the demands, those are mentioned above, is creating an economic space for its own without any compromise.
   
Dr. Pradosh Kumar Mishra
Associate Professor
Department of History of Art
Banaras Hindu University