Global patrons of Art

For all the philosophy behind it, the stories of artists struggling in garrets, the disdain “true” artists are said to have for money, there has never been art without patronage. Except for his inclusion in the court of Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’ de’ Medici, duke of 15th century Florence, Alessandro Botticelli might have never painted The Birth of Venus. Without Pope Julius II, Michelangelo would never have created the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The patronage of the maharajahs of Travancore, Baroda, and Mysore allowed Raja Ravi Varma to become the most iconic of India’s painters.

Today, large companies have replaced royalty in the bankrolling of art. There’s Deutsche Bank, which is said to have at least as many works of art as the Louvre. J.P. Morgan has an art programme, through which it buys art and supports artists. The Guggenheim family is forever associated with the eponymous museum in Manhattan, which was founded by Solomon Guggenheim in 1939 to give the public access to his collection, though their fortunes came originally from mining (see what Guggenheim Partners is up to these days in “Guggenheim is Flexing Its $170 Billion Muscles”). It’s a trend that’s catching on in India: Tina Ambani’s Harmony Art Foundation invested in works by Francis Newton Souza and Sunil Das, for Anil Ambani’s headquarters in Mumbai’s Ballard Estate; Malvinder Singh of Religare bought an Arpita Singh mural for close to Rs 10 crore; Rajshree Pathy of Rajshree Sugar plans to set up a private art museum in Coimbatore; and, of course, Kiran Nadar, wife of tech billionaire Shiv Nadar of HCL Technologies, has invested between $200 million (Rs 1,085.8 crore) and $250 million on Indian artists (see Nadar’s effect on the Indian art market in “The Valuer of Indian Art”).

Global recognition for Indian artists has often occurred despite the lack of an Indian market. In 2005, Bernard Arnault, owner of LVMH Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, bought a Subodh Gupta piece for Rs 49 lakh ($90,000) and in 2006, Francois Pinault, boss of PPR, spent an estimated $1.5 million on another. But it was only after Nadar bought his work at a hitherto unheard of sum that Gupta’s worth rose in India.

Similarly, prize-winning, Mumbai-born artist Anish Kapoor had his first exhibition in India in late 2010, 40 years into a stellar career that includes enormous installations across the world, including Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millennium Park, often considered one of the most popular public artworks in the world. The exhibition received considerable sponsorship from the Tata Group and LVMH, the latter largely because they were familiar with Kapoor’s work as they had one of his pieces in their Dallas store.

Now, the Ermenegildo Zegna Group’s philanthropic arm, Fondazione Zegna, has similar plans. Through a project named ZegnArt Public, they have sponsored an installation by young contemporary artist Reena Saini Kallat which was donated to the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (BDL) in Mumbai (formerly known as the Victoria and Albert Museum), and opened to the public last month. The company plans similar collaborations—one a year—over the next two years in Turkey and Brazil, the emerging markets they are focussing on after India.Ermenegildo ‘Gildo’ Zegna, CEO of Ermenegildo Zegna, refuses to disclose how much the company plans to invest in the project, but says “it is a meaningful price” in terms of the money, as well as the work that has gone into organising the initiative.

“I think the formula for success for any brand, particularly in luxury, has four points,” he elaborates. “One is style, the product. The next is design. We make sure to have the right design in the stores and link with well-known artists that help us evolve the brand. The third is environment, and the fourth is art.” Through these four, he postulates, the customer discovers that there is more to the brand than the product.

Gildo Zegna is also fascinated by the connect between culture and growth, an interest he shares with his sister Anna Zegna, image director for the group, and director of Fondazione Zegna. They jointly conceived the idea for ZegnArt. The result, for India, is Kallat’s piece Untitled (Cobweb/Crossings), a giant spiderweb strung across the museum’s facade, composed entirely of rubber stamps bearing the colonial names of Mumbai streets that have now been Indianised.

Anna Zegna says that she understands how hard it is for young artists in India, but believes it is tough everywhere. “Few countries are investing in culture, but public-private partnership can be of great help,” she says. BDL director Tasneem Zakaria Mehta says the public-private partnership between the Bajaj Group and the Mumbai authorities is what finally allowed the museum’s restoration and conservation. “We would have never been able to achieve the quality we achieved here if we did not have private funding,” she says. Art lovers in India can only hope that other large companies follow suit.