Art on the high street

One has heard of branded porcelain ware, branded pottery and so on. But branded paintings?

It might seem blasphemous but AnYahh is a store that is trying to take art out of its elite wine and cheese gallery format into a branded retail outlet format. “The basic concept is that we wanted to bring art to many. With the kind of luxury real estate development happening, we figured that every house will need one piece of art, but paintings in our country are atrociously expensive,” says Asheesh Sethi, the promoter of the store.

Sethi who runs an advertising firm, Noshe Oceanic, that caters predominantly to the retail industry and has a capitalised annual billings of Rs 120 crore, claims this is the first such experiment in a branded art store. The attempt is to make the customer covet the store's imprint on the painting rather than the artist's signature.

Shoppers can pick up works here from Rs 6,000 to under Rs 1 lakh. Right now, AnYahh has just two outlets – one in Delhi, and one in Noida -- but Mr Sethi says store-in-store format outlets will be opened soon at the CNM store at Inderpuri, Kapsons in Punjab. “Till now, we didn't have the critical mass of paintings to open more outlets – but now, with 3,000 odd works of art with us, we can get aggressive,” he says.

Sethi's concept is simple – he has 20 upcoming artists, many of them fresh graduates from the premier art schools, on his company's rolls, who are allowed free rein to their creativity at a studio in Daryaganj.

It might be aiming at the masses, but the AnYahh store at South Extension in New Delhi is pretty lavish. None of the clean, simple lines of an art gallery, instead it looks more like an opulent set with throne-like sofas, ornate mirrors, and overstated decor. The 250-odd paintings displayed on the beige and gold papered walls and on sliders (much like those used by tile showrooms to display tiles) are in mixed media.

While Sethi's point about giving struggling artists a platform to showcase their creativity sounds good, critics might blanch at this commercialisation of art.

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