Anjolie Ela Menon: Hard times

Mumbai, May 5: Sending shockwaves through the art world, an art gallery has accused painter Anjolie Ela Menon of having a hand in a fake painting sold in her name. The painter has threatened to take the gallery to court.

The Mumbai-based Gallery 7 has claimed that a “Menon” that passed through its hands, called Female Head informally, is a fake that is the work of Hamid, Menon’s assistant, and it was sold to the market with Menon’s knowledge. The gallery owners claim to have a VCD in which Hamid says how it is he who often completes Menon’s paintings.

Menon, one of India’s leading painters whose works cost Rs 2.5 lakh on an average, has denied the charges strongly. She has pronounced the painting to be fake and said it was the handiwork of Hamid, but claimed she was innocent of it.

Last month, a Sunday newspaper carried the report on fake paintings being circulated in the market and named Menon’s Female Head, also mentioning Gallery 7 as its seller.

Menon has dismissed as “garbage” the charge that her paintings are not her own work. She has said the video was a “cover-up” operation on behalf of the gallery to hide the fact that they were selling a fake.

The fake painting came to light when collector Sushma Agarwal, to whom the painting was offered for Rs 5 lakh, decided to cross-check with Menon. The artist said it was a fake. Before that it had passed through experienced hands: Gallery 7 had sold it to art dealers Jai Bhandarkar and Pranali at Rs 250,000, who sold it to Chemould Art Gallery at Rs 275,000, who sold it to art dealer Aditya Ruia at Rs 300,000, who was planning to sell it to Agarwal at Rs 500,000.

The Menon-Gallery 7 battle may be set for a court battle, but it brings to light a problem that is dogging the Indian art scene for some time.

With prices going up, some people are out to make fast money, originals be damned.

Chemould Art Gallery owner Kekoo Gandhi, through whose hands the fake Menon has also passed and who is a respected name in the art world, said he was not aware of the latest developments, but added that fakes were rampant in the market.

Other painters and gallery owners also stress that fakes are a growing problem and the Menon imitation is a sign of the times — a fallout of the booming Indian art scene.

“With so many galleries having come up, unfair practices have crept in,” says Gandhi, who added that he himself had raised the question of a fake K.H. Aras being sold by a gallery two or three years ago.

Painter Chintan Upadhyay said there weren’t too many fakes in the India market, but admitted to having spotted a fake Bendre himself. In Mumbai recently, there was a fake Tyeb Mehta and a fake Husain that were spotted.

Painter Krishnamachari Bose admits to having come across a fake Roerich.

“It is bound to happen with the price of Indian art going up so much,” says Vimla Patil, former editor and art aficionado. “A D. Prabha sells for Rs 2.25 lakh now. There are many Johny-come-latelies in the Indian art scene who want to buy art. They end up with the fakes,” she says, adding that Husain, Menon, Shreshtha and Raza are among the names copied most. She says it is a fall-out of an art scene where prices have shot up due to the presence of wannabe art-buyers but the connoisseurship is missing.

It is money that also leads to hasty selling, says an art dealer who will not be named. “Look at the Menon fake. It changed hands five times in six months, and every time it was sold with a good profit margin. The last person would gain Rs 200,000 if the painting was not found out. And all of them art dealers and gallery owners. Either they were very ignorant or they knew that it was a fake and were being just plain greedy,” he added.

Art dealer Ashish Balram Nagpal says he is appalled at the naivete of the art dealers involved in the incident. “I have never heard of such a thing. It shows the experts in a bad light.How could a painting pass through the hands of so many connoisseurs before it could be found to be fake?”