Indian artists lend their colours to the world of NFTs

What do MF Husain, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Raja Ravi Varma and Gobardhan Ash have in common? Apart from being the tallest names in the world of contemporary art, the year 2021 has seen works by these Indian masters venture into the world of Non-fungible Tokens, or, NFTs, in art. Still, in the early stages of adoption, India has seen major participation in the NFT space covering celebrity collectibles across Bollywood and sports, and digital artists taking the first leap to gain value. At the centre of a strong cultural legacy, contemporary art, and economic growth, India is perfectly placed on the path of establishing a big presence in the digital token economy.

Auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, and closer home, Prinseps, have all entered the NFT market. Amidst the pandemic last years, Aparajita Jain launched Terrain.art—India’s exclusive blockchain-powered online platform focusing on art from South Asia. The platform mounted its first edition showcasing 27 works by legendary Bengal artist Lalu Prasad Shaw, certified using NFTs. With more platforms coming up with unique offerings and easy accessibility, it is bound to increase NFT’s utility across all mediums of art and its participants for the greater benefit of the creative community.

Digital art has long been around. With NFTs in the picture now, this art is lent tamper-proof provenance on the blockchain. It suddenly makes digital art a great collectible. “The art world is in the midst of a silent revolution. These unique digital assets that can be used as individual identifiers for physical assets on a blockchain provide our current and future collectors with a transparent, tamper-proof and trustworthy method of buying, selling, and securing their existing collection. This will effectively cut down on the production of fakes,” Jain says.

NFTs support a wider resolution to long-standing challenges of the art market of copyright infringement, provenance tracking, and royalty payments, along with creating new avenues to monetise creativity. With wider acceptance for transparency and the technology itself maturing for easy accessibility, the demand for NFT-certified assets would be the new model. Based on reports from Chainanalysis, the global NFT market grew to a whopping $41 billion in 2021 from a mere $200 million in 2020. Art constituted 10 per cent of the total NFTs. The NFT market is further projected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 39.6 per cent to be a $300 billion-plus market by 2030. With newer blockchains, the technology is more environmentally friendly, cheaper, and quicker to record transactions to support the growing demands.

Bengaluru-based Harshit Agrawal, an artificial intelligence and new media artist, who became the first Indian artist to join the NFT art bandwagon, says, “I think it’s interesting to have the masters become part of the NFT space. Though their work wasn’t born in the digitally native space, its digitisation for NFTs could lead to reinterpretation of the original essence of the physical medium. It simultaneously offers a great scope for augmenting the work with more dynamic and interactive capabilities possible through today’s technologies. It additionally makes a representation (the NFT of it) of the work timeless since it’s stored on the blockchain. The provenance of the token will be traced and transparent too.”

And NFTs are here to stay, both in the art space and otherwise. As a technology, they are a novel way of assigning uniqueness and therefore collectibility to digital assets. There is a huge shift in many aspects of our lives to the digital and therefore NFTs will have a huge role to play. For the arts, they give digital art a method to being collected and sold multiple times, keeping its provenance secure.

It encourages artists to think more deeply about digital media and for collectors to build a collection of digital artworks without the worry of duplicity. Needless to say, masters too are making a move. After Shaw’s outing with Terrain.art, with an objective to enshrine his body of work for posterity, Hefty Art—the leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development—recently partnered with The Estate of MF Husain to bring his celebrated works via NFTs.

Owais Husain, representative, Estate of MF Husain, says, “My father, in his enduring and prolific career, had a pulse on innovation and what was to come next. As an artist, I am pleased and looking forward to introducing my father’s iconic artworks in a new avatar via NFTs. Through the sweeping breadth of his paintbrush, Husain changed the face of modern art in India, thus taking his place in history. Noticeably, I believe this move will have a similar effect as it positions itself to play an essential role in the transformation of art markets worldwide.”

The transition to NFT has opened the floodgates to a whole new world of excitement. Revolutionising how artists are seen today, NFTs represent a new horizon of possibilities to showcase their work on a global scale like never before. Vinita Angelo, COO/Co-Founder, RtistiQ, a distinct physical and digital art marketplace, also recently brought the art of Raja Ravi Varma onto the NFT platform.

“Varma’s body of work has played a crucial part in the culture and landscape of Indian art. While these amazing works of brilliance have been appreciated and revered over the years in India, the works are restricted from exports outside the country being considered national treasures. We now have the opportunity to reach a much wider audience of connoisseurs with the possibility of his art being made available and accessible with full ownership and authenticity,” Angelo says.

Earlier this year, Prinseps—a research-focused auction house—stepped into the world of NFTs offering 35 gouaches on paper by Bengal artist Gobardhan Ash, making it the first Indian auction house to do so. Vice-president of the auction house, Brijeshwari Gohli, says, “NFT is the present and will grow and expand in the future as well. Art on a digital medium has been established since the 90’s with video art. Art on digital screens is a mere progression as technological advances are taking place. The primary issue with digital art was its ownership. With blockchains and tokens coming in digital art is now being legitimised as a means of trading and establishing ownership.”

It is synergistic in every sense to collaborate and bring together the NFTs of masters as an extension of their own legacy. NFTs, in a very short space of time, have proven to be a very sought-after and popular platform where art lovers can own a piece of art, albeit in a digital virtual format. Kiran Nadar, Indian art collector and philanthropist, chairperson—Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, says, “I think all things digital in art have experienced a real upswing due to the pandemic. With big names like Christie’s holding auctions for NFTs, it will be very interesting to see how the market evolves. No doubt it is playing a big part in accessing new audiences and creating a breed of artists and collectors. It is most definitely a new world to grow and explore with opportunities for all types of artists and collectors.”