Art of collecting antiques
By Manohar Malgonkar

COUNTRIES such as India, China, Indonesia, Egypt, which had ancient civilisations had become veritable storehouses of artistic treasures that were virtually imperishable, since they were made of either stone or bronze. To destroy them you actually had to use a sledgehammer.

Well, they were so destroyed by the conquering armies of Islam with the utmost thoroughness. Predictably enough, much statuary was buried underground where some of it may still remain. I possess a stone Mahishasur-mardini, which, so I was told, was encrusted with the hardened coating of the earth in which it had lain buried for close to a thousand years.

At that, in the parts of India which did not come in the direct path of iconoclastic invaders, much statuary, both in stone and bronze, remained intact, and the conspicuous example of this is the Belur temple with its thousand or so wonderfully carved stone statues, barely a day’s walk away from the fragmented ruins of Halebid, which were once great temples.

Then came the armies of Britain’s empire-builders, who indulged only in random vandalism, yet helped themselves to whatever artistic objects they found in the palaces, temples and the houses of the ordinary citizens of a conquered country. This systematic plunder of artistic treasures ceased only after the process of building the empire had been completed. It was not till the turn of the present century that art treasures came out into the market place as it were, retrieved from concealment, and to be displayed openly, in temples and places as in private houses of the well-to-do; to be bought and sold and bargained for and, above all, to be sent to foreign lands wherever there was a demand for them.

Right from the start of the 20th century, that demand became positively insatiable. America’s suddenly affluent society was becoming art-conscious. Men from poor backgrounds who had made their fortunes selling timber, or whale-oil, or tobacco and determined to be accepted into high society were either donating vast sums to universities and museums to open new art collections in their names, or setting up museums themselves. They bought entire Roman buildings and had them re-assembled on their estates in America; they bought over entire private collections in Europe and sent out scouts all over the world looking for paintings statuary, tapestry, carpets, garden ornaments, even floor-tiles and broken pillars of ruined temples.

That was where some of our most valuable bronzes went. Mr Pande, a Parsi gentleman who lived in Mumbai till the mid-forties and now lives in New York, owns the world’s best collection of Indian temple bronzes, said to be even superior to that of the Chennai State Museum.

To be sure, even during the Raj, there were rules about taking art treasures out of the country. But obviously there must have been certain exemptions, for the Pande collection is entirely legitimate. In any case, the laws requiring all antique statuary to be registered did not come in till the mid-seventies. Whatever had gone out of the country before then had, well, gone for good.

Mr Pande left India when the Raj gave over and settled down in New York. He had taken out his entire collection of stuatuary with him. The house he bought in New York did not obviously have enough rook to display all his images, so, according to an interview his wife gave to the Press in the mid-sixties, after he had found the right places in his house for his best pieces, he sold his surplus bronzes to some of America’s major museums.

Art goes where the money is. Museums and private collectors in Europe cannot compete with the Americans. And in the past, the antiquities of India and Nepal were, in a manner of speaking up for grabs. They were taken away by Americans on postings quite openly and legally. In a house in Bangor in Maine, I saw a collection put together by a USIS official I had met in Bombay. It was so valuable that, because it was kept in a private house, the owner had found that insurance companies were reluctant to insure it. But then Americans didn’t even have to visit India or Nepal to buy art pieces. There were art dealers in virtually all of India’s major cities who did a regular trade in exporting antiques, seemingly without breaking any rules.

But since the Antiquities Registration Act came into effect, the flow of Indian art objects to foreign countries has all but stopped. Paradoxically, the demand for genuine old pieces is more vigorous than ever. One reason for this is the cheapness of the Indian rupee. What seems to us a staggeringly high price is dirt cheap in terms of dollars. Just as an example, in the late sixties, I bought in Bombay’s Mutton Street, six Indo-Portuguese dining chairs for Rs 150 each. You can still find some in the same street, at around Rs 4000 each. In America you’d have to pay more for a factory-made chair.

The law of supply and demand has driven the world’s art trade underground. Italy and Greece, the two European countries which, too, were virtual store-houses of antiquities, have also tightened their laws. Antiquities are now thought to be national heritages. Not items of export.

Alexander Stille, a writer on Italian antiquities reveals that the Mafia has now muscled in on Italy’s art trade.

"Worldwide, the black-market trade in art is estimated to be between two billion and six billion dollars a year — the fourth highest criminal enterprise after drugs, arms, and money-laundering."

Surely, our antiquities, too, are a part of this clandestine enterprise. Still, one cannot help wondering. How can this be possible? If the principal buyers of all antiquities are the great museums of America, awash in dollars given to them by America’s super rich, and governed by boards composed of men and women eminent in public life, with purchasing committees formed of well-known experts and under the direction of men handpicked for their achievements in scholarly pursuits: Surely, they’re not going to buy stolen art? — buy antiquities from shady characters?

The truth seems to be that even the most venerable museums are no less averse than you or I about bending the rules when it comes to a question of laying their hands on something they particularly wish to possess. Mr Stille, for his part, describes their buying policy as: "Don’t ask; don’t tell."

He sites examples. The Metropolitan Museum of New York, which had paid a whopping 2.7 million dollars for an ancient Greek silver service, described it in their catalogue as, "presumably found together a generation ago."

How is that for a pedigree certificate?

In the same manner, the J. Paul Getty Museum, in 1988 exhibited some ancient Greek sculptures which, Mr Stille reports, were so unique that they caused "an art sensation." But their display also seems to have caused "an art scandal" of such stink that the museum removed the exhibits from its gallery and made an announcement that the pieces were returned to their previous owner.

There is an ancient proverb which warns: to try to trace the source of a great river or the ancestry of a great king is a fool’s errand. At some stage, the trail gets muddied. Surely, this is just as true of antiquities. At some stage in their centuries — old history, they must have been stolen, from a temple or a private shrine. After that it acquires ownership claims, which is called provenance. And this can never be taken right down to its origins.

So a reputed museum buys a unique piece from a reputed dealer in New York, who bought it from an equally reputed dealer in Switzerland, who bought it from a Lebanese dealer in Naples who...

Give up? the trail is already getting confusing.