There’s this artist-friend.
Well, I would now de-couple friend from artist. Ever since this once-modest and talented painter was jettisoned by a savvy art impresario onto the international art scene – you know art fairs and galleries in Europe and a bit of an iffy touchdown in New York – he began to walk taller, a swagger adding bounce to his once hesitant stride. The slightly unkept look was restrained. He moved into a more upmarket area from his little place in a forgotten part of the capital, a city said to be sniffy about right addresses and such things.

Socialites took him over, each one cajoling him to give her his next canvas (actually there are many he-socialites in this picture as well) even before it was dry. Code for before rivals could get it. Following in the wake of other flavours of the day he became a conversation piece in Delhi’s chi-chi soirées. I suppose this was the closest we have to Tom Wolfe’s devastating take on radical chic: ‘interesting’ people from the other side of the tracks are supposed to add colour and buzz to a party. And, the painter just smiled enigmatically. Word got round that he had bought several flats in Delhi.

It wasn’t long before arrogance began to creep in. The ‘I’ pronoun took over. He no longer had time for those he had previously spent hours with over cups of chai, those he had done adda with over cheap rum. Time became money: the more he painted, the more he earned. He kept churning out more and more of the same kind of stuff, daring not to change the template lest he break his winning streak. A much of a muchness set in.

But that isn’t all. The dreaded R word, recession, has now popped up: the art world has begun to turn on a slower axis. Prices for his works have fallen: apparently many stars of the art scene have seen a precipitous fall of at least 40 per cent. Mortgages have now piled up. From being in the black he is suddenly in the red. The impresario no longer woos him. The swagger has gone – both his and that of the dealers. And he, poor thing, appears to have shrunk, back to his former self.

The inner Bohemian
Could this be a blessing in disguise for our ex-Bohemian and others like him? Perhaps, hopefully. With the market-driven hype and spin slowing down and the frenzy of finding the Next Best Thing abating, artists might actually get down to doing what they are supposed to do: to make what they really want to and stop worrying about how much their work will go for at the next auction. It can be great time-out – for reflection and for the painters to get in touch with their inner Bohemian again.

As for the curators and gallerists, many of them can be seen moving around with long faces: “The money’s dried up. We better start doing something else,” lamented a much-sought-after curator. Yet, several amongst them have been muttering on about recession being a good thing for Indian contemporary art. The search for the new, the exciting, the shocking or even the most deliciously decadent has often ended in a cul-de-sac.

Finally, we might be returning to the poor-but-happy times. Please don’t get me wrong: I am not advocating a return to the garret for the artists. I refer to the good old days when conversation at a gathering of artists was more about art – about ideas and techniques – than about the art market and real estate.
And then, perhaps only then, can we come across works of art that move us, that touch us at a deeper level. When art is not just paint-deep, just like beauty is getting to be only skin-deep.

Recession and beauty
I was recently at an elegant garden luncheon party in Lutyens’ Delhi. The harsh winter sun had been tamed by the magnificent old trees that stood like sentinals from another era. It was brunch time. Ergo: time for mothers and fathers to bring along their offspring. It hadn’t been quite a year since I had seen the same group, give or take a few. However, most of them had lost so much weight that I could barely recognise them. The men seemed to have lost their paunches and the women a lot else besides.

But their loss did not surprise me. It was the little girls. Almost all of them looked like little Barbie dolls – some so slim that they did not have proper shadows. It wasn’t just the banishment of fat. Quite this side of their teens they looked like miniature adults – some with little heels and fitted tops. I suppose girls will be, well, women. Like their mothers they stayed away from things fried and turned their little noses up at things sweet.

Childhood seems to be shrinking. My massage lady is a great source of information about changing shapes and more. After all, who can be more of an insider than she? And she tells me that girls as young as nine and 10 were getting large parts of their bodies waxed. It was, according to her, peer pressure at school. If they didn’t, they would be made fun of.

The obsession with looks is obviously spreading like a virus. If you are fat or ugly you have only yourself to blame in an age when everything can be fixed. In her new book, Bodies, Susan Orbach writes about websites that offer to digitally enhance photographs of your children. This way you will think of them as having been beautiful even if they were not.

The preoccupation with perfect bods is not just about aesthetics – or even health. Somehow, being fat or even plump for our twittering classes is a recipe for losing class – of moving down the social ladder. And worse, becoming invisible.

Perhaps, in times of recession being thin is not such a bad thing: you can drastically cut down your food budget and walk rather than ride!

Madhu Jain is an author and a journalist. She writes for several publications and is currently working on her second book. She also curates art shows.

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