The painting may be displayed in a museum in Paris – but thousands of people across the world can enjoy the same masterpiece in the privacy of their homes for a fraction of the cost of the original.

How many times have you entered an art gallery, experienced an immediate connection, but felt your heart plummet at the prices? Despair no more! If you cannot afford to buy an original, you could still take home something that will help trigger that aesthetic ‘experience’ again. Reproductions are ubiquitous all over Europe, where you can easily find Monet’s prints on canvas or paintings from Picasso’s blue period reproduced on hardboard. “Works of art, by their inherent nature of being unique, are impossible to own by more than one person. Reproductions allow many to enjoy a work they are not able to own,” insists Geeta Mehra of Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai. “The painting may be displayed in a museum in Paris – but thousands of people across the world can enjoy the same masterpiece in the privacy of their homes for a fraction of the cost of the original.”

Popularising art by making prints or posters is not new to India. Consider the cheap prints of Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings, condescendingly created by using the new printing technology of his time to ‘educate’ the masses about art. Available for Rs. 200 a decade ago, today the same prints would fetch nothing less than Rs. 5,000 each! The Ravi Varma prints exhibition, held earlier this year at Phillips Antiques in Mumbai, drew a good response. “These prints have become popular in recent times because they are old, hence in limited supply; they are by Ravi Varma, a recognised painter; they are attractive and colourful, hence popular as decoration; and finally, they are relatively expensive and in fashion today as a form of ‘kitsch’,” explains gallery owner Farooq Issa.