How to Buy and Sell Art

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Author: Michael Reid

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How to buy and sell art 2/6/04 1:43 PM Page i

How to buy & sell

art

How to buy and sell art 2/6/04 1:43 PM Page ii

For Nellie Dawes, ‘T-Bone’ our Jack Russell and ‘Lettuce’ the Kelpie

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How to buy & sell

art Michael Reid

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First published in 2004 Copyright © Michael Reid 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Reid, Michael, 1962– . How to buy and sell art. Includes index. ISBN 1 74114 323 3. 1. Art as an investment. 2. Art – Collectors and collecting – Australia. I. Title. 332.630994 Set in 12/14 pt Cochin by Midland Typesetters, Victoria Printed by BPA Print Group, Victoria 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents About the author Preface Acknowledgments

ix xi xiii

Part 1: Collecting art 1 Buying art • Like what you buy • Buying right • When not to buy art • Art shopping psychology • Make time for your collection • Commissioning an artist • Collecting associations • Developing patience when collecting • Reading art images • Artistic reputation • An artist’s early works • An artist’s track record • Art prizes and the market

3 3 5 7 9 10 13 15 17 18 20 22 24 26

2 Collecting categories • Indigenous Australian art • Contemporary Australian art

29 29 36

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How to buy and sell art

• • • • • •

The Melbourne Art Fair The Antiquarian Book Fair Migrant artists and the new wave of Chinese art Tassie talent cluster Works on paper: Etchings Collecting photography

41 44 46 49 50 53

3 Artists to watch • Who’s who of sculpture • Earlier neglected Australian artists • Artists of significance • Artists with room to move in the market • Artists with a developing track record

67 67 72 75 76 77

4 Corporate art collecting

80

5 Alternative approaches to collecting • The Derwent 2 Collection • Artbank

85 85 87

6 Selling art • Sales avenues • The trend in decorative art sales • The Internet

93 93 96 100

Part 2: The business of art 7 Art dealers and art consultants • What makes a good art dealer? • Strong dealer support network • Middle-ranking dealers • Fine art consultants • Interior designers

107 107 110 112 115 117

8 Art auctions • Art auction hype • Art follows money • Discovered art • Art auction catalogues

120 120 123 124 126

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Contents

9 Buying at auction • Buying from the smaller auction rooms • Auctioneers • Auction house staff • Art politics • Telephone bidding • Bidding in the room • Condition reports • The fall of the hammer • Purchasing unsold artwork—after-sales • The art contra-deal • Bottom trawling • Buy now, pay later • Buyer’s premiums when purchasing paintings • Private treaty sales • Questionable auction practices • A new auction sales system

vii

129 129 131 133 135 138 139 142 143 145 148 150 152 154 157 159 165

10 Selling at auction • The auction seller’s commission • The process of selling at auction • Free appraisals • Auction estimates • Pre-sale ‘estimates on request’

167 167 169 172 174 176

Part 3: The work of art 11 Owning art • Researching and documenting your collection • Educational programs • Art reference tools • Provenance • Cataloguing terms

181 181 183 185 187 189

12 Conserving art • Conservation of paintings • Conservation of works on paper • Framing • Lighting • Displaying art—the easel

192 192 194 197 199 200

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13 Lending art

201

14 Exploring quality art • The masterpiece • Quality control of artistic output • Signatures—a note to contemporary artists

204 204 206 208

15 Fake art • To begin with: Why is everyone so upset about fake art? • Types of fakes • The Margaret Olley to David Strachan theft • The law • Where do many fakes come from? • Why do even knowledgeable collectors and experienced curators get fooled? • Spotting fakes

212

Part 4: Superannuation, tax and insurance 16 Superannuation, tax and insurance • Grey power: The new growth engine of the art market • Art as an asset • Art banking • Superannuation • Some tax issues • Insurance issues • Conclusion Glossary Resources

214 214 215 218 219 220 220

227 227 229 231 235 239 247 252 255 262

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About the author A

fter a decade of arts industry experience with Christie’s London and Australia, culminating with the opening of a major representative office for Christie’s in Brisbane, Michael Reid has since the mid-1990s contributed weekly as Art Market Analyst to the business section of The Australian newspaper. Michael has obtained degrees in law (Sydney University) and arts (Melbourne University), a Master of Arts Administration (University of New South Wales) and two post-graduate diplomas—one in fine art. Until recently, Michael lectured part-time at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales in art history and theory and the art market. Michael advises private and corporate clients on the formation of their art collections. He works as art adviser to Macquarie Bank, Private Bank; is on retainer to Citibank Private Bank to look after their art-related sponsorship, and undertakes work for UBS Wealth Management. Michael holds a number of important ‘At Home’ art exhibitions each year, showcasing the work of significant Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists. Michael appears regularly on 702 ABC radio and has recently co-authored a privately published book on one of Australia’s most significant private art collections. For his clients, Michael publishes a well-received biannual newsletter. Michael is an approved valuer under the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts and

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x How to buy and sell art

Bequests Programs, a member of the Law Society of New South Wales, Museums Australia, the Australiana Society and the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society, and he has recently applied for membership of the Australian Antique Dealers’ Association. During the early 1970s Michael was—for one brief, shining moment—a Milk Monitor at Narrandera Primary School. Ph: 00 11 61 2 9699–3204 Email: [email protected] Web: www.michaelreid.com.au

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Preface B

eauty demands possession. Whether owned by the individual, the community or the state, over time and across many cultures, significant artworks have always been jealously admired and controlled. As part and parcel of our need to hold close and admire artworks, our understanding of art history and theory helps us to analyse the nature of beauty itself—the first half of the equation. Our understanding of the art market helps us to analyse how beauty is controlled and distributed—how we possess. The two fields of art endeavour, I believe, fit hand in glove. I highlight the interrelated fields of art understanding— between art history and theory, and the art market—because, much to my continued amazement, many in the art world continue to squirm, twitch and become quite hostile when faced with any discussion relating to art and money. This aversion to discussing art business is a form of narrow-minded nineteenth-century snobbery about all things trade. These considerable pockets of quasi-academic resistance give no truck to the notion that an investigation of the art market is a most helpful tool in understanding the life cycle of art—its chain of distribution, from creation to current resting place. Nor do I recoil from the notion of art as a serious asset; art has always followed money.

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An age-old tenet I have coined is the Medici Principle. The gravitational pull of art towards money can be dated to 1434 when the Italian Medici family of bankers, merchants and grand art patrons ruled Florence, spending lavishly on religious foundations while commissioning works for the family palace. The Medici wealth, based as it was on trade and not land, laid the foundation stone to the explosion of creativity we know as the Renaissance. A patron’s creativity was shrewdly balanced by the artist’s understanding of the market. The Italian Renaissance painter Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), commenting on his infamously talented colleague Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477–1549), stated ‘his brush danced according to the tune of money’. And so it has been since the beginning of currency. Having championed the working of the art market for many years, I do so within the framework of stressing to would-be collectors the importance of understanding the story of art. It is most important that they read as many art reference books as the body can bear. No collector or would-be collector should be without the basics: Bernard Smith with Terry Smith, Australian Painting 1788–2000 (Oxford University Press, 2003); Mary Eagle and John Jones, The Story of Australian Art (the ICI Collection) (Pan Macmillan, 1996); Wally Caruana, Aboriginal Art (Thames & Hudson, 2003); Susan McCulloch, Contemporary Aboriginal Art (Allen & Unwin, 2001); and Alan and Susan McCulloch, The Encyclopedia of Australian Art (Allen & Unwin, 1994). If the art academic’s attitude block to any knowledge of the art market were in itself benign, it would be easily dismissed as reactionary. However, when many business-averse art curators dismiss the centrality of trade on one hand, yet direct significant taxpayer art acquisitions budgets on the other, it becomes a serious problem. Invariably those that disdain the market, yet buy in the market, do so poorly. Many art museums have vast Indiana Jones-style warehouses full of art curators’ never-to-see-the-light-of-day-again art buying mistakes. Given the sheer volume of these buying mistakes, it is far from surprising that we don’t have many public art museums throw open their doors to allow the public to tour their treasure stores. As was said in a series of Australian Football League advertisements: ‘I would like to see that.’

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Acknowledgments I

am dyslexic. I find writing neither easy nor enjoyable. I write to earn money. Not unsurprisingly, I greatly prefer the cut and thrust of art dealing, the selling and buying of paintings, to the tortured process of putting my thoughts on paper. However, in a spooky Stockholm Effect kind of way—where you fall in love with your captor—I have for the last eight years been fortunate to write as art market analyst for The Australian newspaper. The News Corporation building in Surry Hills, Sydney, contains many hardworking, talented people and I am privileged (as one who struggles with the written word) to have been helped along with my ideas and writing by some of the best. I would like to thank my Australian colleagues both past and present: Bina Brown, Tim Blue, Terry Conroy, Tracy Grayson, Jacquie Hayes, Deborah Jones, John Kavanagh, Susan McCulloch, Clive Mathieson, Richard Sproull, Katrina Strickland and Michael Stutchbury. My first editor, John Kavanagh, gave me a break into the weird and wacky world of the newspaper; however, a strong team has continued to run with the art market ball—I thank you. As unusual as this may at first seem for one who writes weekly in a mass circulation newspaper, I do so without a reading audience in mind. I essentially write for myself. I write to answer questions that I have been ruminating on, and/or to marshal my thoughts on any particular art market subject. I write to improve my

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understanding of the profession that I work in. At best I write as I speak. I endeavour to string thoughts together clearly. This book, the distilled product of hundreds of newspaper articles written over many years, is my attempt to bring some continuous order to the issues surrounding the buying and selling of art. All these thoughts are in the end my opinion, and many within the arts industry may have the courage to differ. This book would never have seen the light of day without the help of Lisa Foulis, a talented freelance editor. Lisa knocked into shape what was, in the beginning, nothing more than one big book blob. I would also like to thank author and industry colleague Melanie La’Brooy for her structuring of the book, for her many helpful suggestions, her hard work and much encouragement. Wally Caruana, academic, author, my business partner and former senior curator of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Australia—for almost 25 years—worked with me, writing the chapters on buying and selling Aboriginal art. Wally is a legend; he is the foremost authority in Australia on the art of our first inhabitants and his contribution greatly elevates the standing of this book. I thank you, Wally. A special thank you to my colleague and friend, Genevieve Carson. Over the years I have drawn on many inspirations in order to fuel my writing: Huon Mallalieu, How to Buy Pictures (1984); Eileen Chanin, Collecting Art (1990); Allan G. Thompson, Buying and Selling Pictures Successfully (2000); Alan Bamberger, The Art of Buying Art (2002)—thank you, one and all, for going there before me. I would like very much to thank Alexandra Nahlous, Peter Eichhorn and Rebecca Kaiser at Allen & Unwin for giving the idea a supportive go.

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Collecting

art Part 1



Buying

art Chapter 1

Like what you buy I have no idea where the belief that you must buy art that you don’t like comes from, but like some introduced noxious art collecting weed it has a tenacious little life all of its own and it should be uprooted. Collectors and would-be collectors in some number continue to hold the belief that in order to own valuable art they must pay the money and occasionally be prepared not to like what they ‘have’ to buy. At least once a month I speak with a collector who has bought, or is contemplating buying, art that they don’t actually like—true, totally weird and so absolutely wrong. An art market bottom line has always been that if art is appreciated, it will appreciate. Financial common sense should tell a collector that the optimum resale environment into which they sell a painting is an expanding market of general demand. If you hate a painting, the chances are someone like you—and possibly a potential buyer—will also hate the painting. Such ‘having to buy art that you don’t like’ sentiments don’t nurture an expanding art market. Why buy on name alone when there are so many beautiful, academically important, dynamic paintings out there? Everyone can find any number of important paintings to suit their taste and budget, to which end further into the book I have listed some significant art market artists you should consider purchasing. These are artists across a range of styles, from the figurative to


4


abstraction, from Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, from easy on the eye to challenging, and some artists to watch out for in the future. Good doesn’t mean hard. Should you conjure up a financially significant artwork in your mind you will more often than not imagine a painting of great beauty. In a world market, Monet’s multi-million-dollar paintings of water lilies, for example, are not ugly things. A collector should visually enjoy art. The emotional and intellectual uplift that art can bring to our everyday lives is in the end what collecting pictures and other artworks is all about. Art has the ability to tell us who we are and about the society we live in. An old painting can be a bit like an historic document, showing the viewer where in a sense we have come from. Contemporary art should help us to make sense of where we are, while artists in any age have looked to the future, pointing us to where we would like to go. I cannot stress enough the importance and ability of good artwork to reach out and talk with the viewer. Good art isn’t wallpaper. If your art doesn’t talk to you, then change it. For a collector to not have an emotional attachment to their art is to misunderstand its appreciable qualities. Collectors and dealers who are attached to their art do better. I am so often relieved to see art dealers who in the end won’t sell the art they buy. For the good dealer there is a major art world catch-22 situation: they buy art to sell, yet as a collector they become mighty attached to the art and in many instances they won’t sell. It is this visual and emotional attachment that separates the better art dealers from mere art commodity traders. Take a tip from me: look to see what the art dealer collects and won’t let go. Superior art dealers trade paintings and build a personal art collection. This attitude of buying what you think will go up in value, as opposed to buying what you enjoy, indicates the reality that too many collectors, both novice and experienced alike, still headhunt signatures rather than artworks. Never buy just a signature; the artwork must stand on its own merits irrespective of the artist’s reputation. A bad painting from the hand of a good artist will always remain a bad painting and, accordingly, be treated as such in the marketplace. Given that the turnaround period for art resale is rarely less than ten years, that is a long time to live with an unloved artwork purchased solely on the strength of a misguided,


Buying art 5

slightly skewed view of art as a cold, somewhat emotionally detached commodity.

Buying right The value of a particular artwork is indicative of numerous unique subjective considerations. The trick to purchasing a quality painting or other artwork capable of obtaining strong capital growth involves the collector or first-time buyer holding up a ‘buying right’ template to the picture they are considering purchasing. If, prior to purchase, the collector is satisfied that the intended artwork favourably lives up to or exceeds each subjective consideration, then their art collecting risk with regards to that particular artwork has been minimised—the collector is buying right. The subjective factors that come into play when assessing the value of an individual work of fine art include the following: • The status or standing of the artist in question: are they already a somebody or at present a nobody in the art world? Not surprisingly, quality art buying more often than not relies on artists being already well known to the secondary art market. Collectors are advised to undertake their homework in this area. Treat with a grain of salt the assertions of the seller. Buy Alan and Susan McCulloch’s The Encyclopedia of Australian Art (1994) and John Furphy’s Australian Art Sales Digest (2004 edition). If the artist in question is in both these art reference works then they are at the very least on the secondary art market radar. • Artists have good days and bad days. Given the general level of substance abuse often found within the artistic milieu, quite frankly it’s not uncommon for artists to have good or bad years, or even a decade or two. Although not all artists partake of the dubious fuel of substance abuse, very few artists—like anybody—remain constant in the quality of their output. The trick for any serious collector of artworks is to understand and differentiate between the creative periods within any artist’s life, to chart and understand why art scholars and the art market prize one period of time or series of pictures painted within that period over and above other paintings painted in different years. An understanding of the artistic hierarchy of an


6

•

•

•

• •

•


artist’s dates and periods allows the collector to focus their buying when possible on those strong artworks or themes from the artist’s best years. The medium, condition, provenance, and exhibition and publication history of the work must pass muster to a standard of good to very impressive. (I will discuss these points in some depth later.) If in doubt, a collector should keep looking. Size matters, particularly with very, very large contemporary art. Be careful when purchasing your drop-dead wall statement that you are actually able to get that painting or sculpture in to the room. Many apartments and their service lifts don’t take large art well. Only the other day I was installing a two-metreplus Baluka Maymuru Larrakitj (hollow log) pole entitled Dhakandjali (2003) in the sitting room of my house. The pole could make it through the door, but I just couldn’t stand it up— the work missed going under the ceiling by about six millimetres. An artwork that is just too big will have a limited, sometimes only corporate, market to sell into. A painting’s subject matter must be neither offensive nor unpopular. For example, portraits of somebody else’s family are generally not all that easy to sell. However, if you have a portrait to sell, it is better that it is an image of a pretty, young girl with a cute doll, rather than Mr very ordinary John Smith. A picture of any bridge is generally considered difficult to offload. Overtly religious works, sexually provocative works or paintings of dead animals all equate to uneasy subject matters; this also includes artificial legs, slicing machines and so on. Funny that, men don’t normally gravitate towards paintings with meat-slicing machines predominantly illustrated. Whether a painting is signed or not. (I will discuss this later). The artwork’s previous appearance on the art market, and possibly the city, in which it is sold must be taken into consideration when purchasing an artwork. In a nutshell, avoid buying those over-exposed, tired pictures that keep surfacing for sale every two years. Collectors must take into account the cyclical nature of the art market and economy itself. The commonsense strategy is to sell in a boom and buy in a bust. In general, the last seven years have been a good time to sell.


Buying art 7

• It is very important to know of the availability and value of other works, by the same artist, on the market at the same time. After all, value is comparative. • Collectors should consider their final price: does an auction house buyer’s premium apply, or are there any hidden costs such as shipping and insurance that may distort the final cost? • An understanding of the general vagaries of taste and fashion is always a considerable help in deciding whether or not to buy art, as artists and subject matter have a tendency to move in and out of fashion. A collector with a mind for a good return on their purchase price should acquire works exhibiting universal themes and emotions.

When not to buy art Collectors frequently quiz me on how and when to buy art and occasionally what artworks they should buy. Essentially they are enquiring about all those art market things they should do, but it is just as important for collectors to consider what actions or situations should set the alarm bells ringing. Knowing what a collector should avoid doing is equally as necessary as knowing what to do.

Beware of buying art at night The chances of buying art impulsively are greater at night than they are during the day. At night your psychological defences are down; you tend to be less focused on rational, practical issues and more interested in entertaining yourself and having a good time. The best approach to considered collecting is to obtain a sneak preview during the day prior to the exhibition opening, or on the opening night place a reserve sticker on the artwork that takes your fancy. In that way, having reserved your artwork you return in the clear light of day to reconsider your possible purchase.

Beware of buying art while on holiday Holidays are a good time to relax; they are not the best environment in which to buy quality art. It has been my experience that absolute buying and selling meltdown occurs when a collecting


8


couple take a rare holiday. It is hardly surprising, then, that many of Australia’s largest and most profitable art galleries flourish in holiday destinations. Never collect art based on the artist’s name only. Never be star-struck by an artist’s reputation. You are, after all, buying an artwork (the object) and not the artist themself.

Beware of the sale deal Alarm bells should ring when an art dealer lowers the price of a painting drastically. Ask yourself why they are so desperate for a sale.

Beware of buying art under pressure Ignore the dealer who stands at your shoulder. You need space and time to make your choice.

Think twice before buying art that is for sale in restaurants Try to buy only from professionals whose only business is buying and selling art.

Beware of opening night fever When I come to think of it, I am hard pressed to find any market or industry so fuelled by alcohol as the buying and selling of art. Budding and hardened art aficionados are feted with exhibition opening night drinks, pre-auction viewing drinks, VIP client dinners and drinks, auction sale night drinks, drinks and more drinks. On more than the odd occasion, alcohol has prompted an exhibition sale or sparked a competitive bidding duel that has escalated the price of an artwork. Punters such as the screamingly drunken Tasmanian fisherman-cum-art collector at Christie’s a few years ago may well lose their heads and bid $16 000 for a painting they didn’t really want, but it is well to remember that art gallery and auction house drinks providers rarely cancel sales. Shopping and alcohol is the ultimate bad look. A sober collecting head makes the best art-buying decisions.


Buying art 9

Don’t be fooled by red stickers Beware the red spot. Denoting that a work has been sold by placing a small red sticker by its side is a common marketing practice in the art world. But it can also be used as a clever sales tool. Some dealers place red spots next to unsold works in order to give the appearance that the artist’s works are popular and selling well. This is especially useful with prints, when a handful of red dots next to the work will indicate a powerful thumbs-up to any doubting buyers. Try not to be influenced by a sea of red.

Art shopping psychology Sir Elton John, the universally acknowledged God of Shopping, recently descended on our shores and sent many an art and antique dealer into a lather. A prodigious shopper and significant fine and decorative art collector, it once tumbled out that Sir Elton had spent around A$90 million in a twenty-month period, an average of $4.5 million a month. In the midst of a rather messy court case filed by Sir Elton against his former management company, it was revealed that between January 1996 and September 1997 Sir Elton spent £293 000 (approximately A$900 000) on flowers alone. Confronted during cross-examination with this trifle, Sir Elton replied: ‘Yes, I like flowers.’ And so do we. Sir Elton has over the years amassed or disbursed important collections as diverse in object and period as vintage and veteran cars, contemporary photography, pop memorabilia, art deco jewellery, Biedermeier furniture, French glass, English porcelain and Aboriginal art. His taste is quite frankly broad and first class. Sir Elton likes to break the tedium of world touring with much world-class shopping. Retail therapy and its subsequent impact on buying art have, as a layman in pop psychology, fascinated me for some time. Just how and when collectors shop is an all-important consideration in knowing some of the pitfalls of buying. After all, collectors should understand some of the more prominent art buying patterns and not be enslaved to them. One large and significant class of fine art purchaser is the couple aged from 40 to 60 years. Politically incorrect as it may be,


10


it has been my experience that it is usually the woman who initiates much of the interest in art collecting, while the man carries the wallet. As such, a lethal art selling combination for any art gallery is to have the woman and man together. Art sales assistants pounce faster on couples. To have an art-interested couple walk through the gallery door is the dream sales environment. However, in today’s transcontinental business world this is far from easy to achieve. The art-interested couple may have time to spend only one day of the weekend together, so it is during this one-day spending window of opportunity that art galleries want many to shop. Following on from the ‘buying together on the weekend’ theme, absolute buying and selling dynamite ignites when the artinterested couple take a short rare holiday. As mentioned, it is far from surprising then that many of Australia’s largest and most profitable art galleries flourish in holiday destinations. The artinterested couple have a long lunch, start to wind down and then go for a restorative stroll. Bang—chalk up another art sale. Alongside holiday hot spots, many galleries close to up-market hotels and restaurants do a roaring post-lunch weekend trade.

Make time for your collection Have you tried to buy a Bill Henson photograph of late? Or, for that matter, a George Tjungurrayi, David Bromley, Wendy Sharpe, Leonard Brown or Philip Wolfhagen painting? And the list goes on. The chances are that, unless you were on some preferential art gallery waiting list, you arrived at the opening night exhibition only to find every single painting sold. Good contemporary artists are selling like hot cakes, while slow and poorly prepared contemporary art collectors are getting mighty hot under the collar. Confronted with today’s fast-moving, swift-selling contemporary art market, my collecting mantra is this: make time for your art collection, think clearly and move decisively. Don’t get angry; get organised. We are all time poor. While that may be the reason too many buyers allow their art collecting decisions to be pushed to the back burner, it is no excuse. Not allocating enough time in your work schedule to do things properly is simply foolish. If a collector doesn’t make regular time in their week or month to contemplate their art collecting strategy, then they have a major problem.


Buying art 11

I have seen highly astute businesspeople pore over potential financial investments and make considered, timely and ultimately wise decisions. I have also seen those same individuals make alarmingly ill-informed, on-the-run snap art decisions. I have seen vast sums of money spent without due process on what may or may not turn out to be a highly valuable art asset. Worse still, I have witnessed far too many collectors being crowded out by their mainstream work life, making no art collecting decisions at all and seeing the golden buying opportunity pass. It is imperative to make the time to fully consider every buying opportunity. Think clearly and be prepared. Make at least a cursory list of contemporary artists whose work interests you. You can start by buying a copy of Artbank’s book Art in Public Spaces (2001). This volume is a terrific publication that illustrates the use of contemporary art in homes and offices, with loads of images to help any collector form a list. (Artbank can be contacted on www.artbank. gov.au (02) 9662 8011.) However, more on Artbank later. By all means leave yourself totally open to the unexpected and new, but have some idea of who you may wish to collect and do the groundwork. Find out which art dealer(s) exhibit your targeted artist and get on that dealer’s mailing list. Track your targeted artist’s forthcoming exhibition dates, both in your area and interstate. As many of the best contemporary artists show nationally, if you miss out on buying from a Leonard Brown exhibition in, say, Melbourne, plan to catch the sale catalogue for the artist’s upcoming Sydney or Brisbane show. In some instances, exhibitions held in smaller markets often attract a smaller asking price. Some of my best buying, whether of colonial furniture or contemporary art, is done in Hobart or Brisbane. Make yourself and your interests known to the relevant art dealer, and get on the preferential list of collectors who are given priority access to the next show. Art dealers don’t muck around, so don’t badger them if you are not serious. In today’s seller’s market, be decisive. Having made time in your schedule, done some preliminary homework and having let your interest be known when you see an artwork you like, consider whether to purchase or not in a timely manner. Don’t dawdle. Remember that art dealers equipped with email images can reach prepared collectors almost anywhere. Even if only ten people


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attend the opening exhibition, the dealer can send out dozens of images to interested collectors. If you need to make some buying breathing space, do the smart thing and reserve an artwork. This will take the work off the market for some days. And if you still miss out on an artwork at an exhibition, take it on the chin, put it down to experience and move on. Almost all art galleries have more art for sale than what you see displayed in the white cube of the gallery. Galleries often have additional artworks stored in stock rooms, back offices and so on. Some galleries keep photo albums of art that they have in storage and/or pieces that they have access to out of private art collections. Whenever you are in a gallery and don’t see any art that interests you, never just turn around and walk straight out the door. Introduce yourself to the gallery staff, state exactly what kind of art you are interested in and enquire as to whether the gallery has similar works not currently on display. Good art galleries want you to rummage through their stock room. As an art sales strategy, many galleries make their stock easily accessible. Galleries like nothing more than the fossicking collector who thinks he or she has turned up some hidden gem not on public view. In a nutshell, you do yourself a major disservice when you browse in silence and then leave, because you miss seeing everything for sale that is out of public view. Also beware of the current trend towards art dealers publishing monographs on their artists, in what isn’t anything more than a slick marketing scheme to sell paintings. And this is how it works: A collector makes an enquiry about purchasing a painting. The art dealer will tell them that for an additional $1000 the painting will be featured—in a large colour plate—in the forthcoming book on the artist. Many bite at this ‘opportunity’. Big deal—vanity publishing holds little credibility and all the collector has done is paid another $1000 for some dubious future benefit. Concentrate on taking money off a sale—not adding to the cost of the sale. Buy quality. Whatever your budget, any art adviser worth their salt will direct clients towards purchasing, within the collector’s budget and taste, the best readily available example of a significant work in the marketplace. However, buying quality is, unfortunately, an art industry maxim that is far more easily discussed than achieved. Quality as an art world standard is a subjective ideal,


Buying art 13

a collecting benchmark that must be understood through a comparison between any number of similar artworks. And there’s the rub. The overwhelming majority of fine artworks, paintings and drawings, are original one-offs and such artistic individuality can make comparisons between even similar artworks difficult. Remember, a bad painting by a good painter will always be a bad work of art. In an attempt to gain a grip on buying quality, collectors are advised to discipline themselves to the hard slog of attending innumerable art auctions and viewing literally dozens and dozens of a particular artist’s work. Consistently viewing art allows a collector to develop what is known in the trade as an ‘eye’ for quality. There are no guarantees that all collectors will develop an eye, but there can be no doubt that the more you look the better you see. Aside from taking the time to develop a connoisseur’s eye, it isn’t too much for a collector to ask that their art dealer quality control gallery exhibitions. Sadly, not all art dealers cull inferior artworks as much as they should, although a good art dealer will sift the art chaff from the straw.

Commissioning an artist Commissioning an artist to produce an artwork on demand is a tricky business, indeed. I have seen monumental failures and great successes. Collectors wanting to head down the commissioning path need on the whole to be more involved in the buying process than is usual. They also need to keep an open, flexible mind and in many cases a sense of humour. Let’s start with the negatives. Possibly the most prevalent form of artist’s commission is one where the collector sees in an exhibition a painting they like and want, but the painting has been sold. No difficulty, the consultant or art dealer will tell you, the artist will paint another. A ‘paint one just like the last one’ type of commission can turn out to be one huge problem, as good and serious artists rarely replicate an artwork exactly. Having organised a commission undertaken by a talented and pleasingly edgy contemporary artist, let me assure you that sometimes the patron receives more than was bargained for. One example that I know of was to be a large work, similar in subject matter to a painting illustrated on the front cover of the then artist’s


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last exhibition catalogue. The original painting depicted a provocative, young, possible sex industry worker brandishing a hand gun in a multi-storey office block—all great and forceful stuff. On completion of the commissioned painting, the artist had indeed reproduced another come hither young lady in an office block with a menacing hand gun; however, taking the painting to the edge, the artist had repositioned the hand gun. Suffice to say that the angle of the hand gun’s dangle would have caused many an office worker to run into the water cooler and a few to blush. Unable to be hung in the public place it was intended for, the strong, quality painting was sold to a private collector and another successfully commissioned. Most artists, being the talented individuals they are, will want to change and progress their body of work with every single picture. The difficulty for the collector commissioning an artwork based on replicating another painting is that the image of the first painting is firmly etched in their head. A second work, no matter how small the variation, isn’t the first and never can be. In order to avoid the ‘paint one just like the last one’ commissioning complications, either order the artwork without an obligation to buy—an approach that often works—or let the whole commissioning process go. It may be best, if you miss out on the painting you really wanted, to wait for the artist’s next exhibition. In that way, if you get in early you can buy what you can see. Now for the positives. The commissions that achieve the most success occur when the confident, involved patron comes to the project with an expectation of quality but few requirements as to the artwork’s specific details. This affords the artist(s) the time and opportunity to undertake new work. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) commissioned in 2003 a major collaborative painting 1 × 11 m long for the atrium of their new offices in Belconnen in Canberra. The artists chosen were from Warlukurlangu Artists Association at Yuendumu, some 290 kilometres west of Alice Springs. The artists selected as the subject of the painting a Janganpa (possum ancestor) dreaming. All members of the Warlpiri-speaking community of Yuendumu have ancestrally endowed relationships to the site, either as owners or guardians. This subject was chosen to reflect the all-inclusive nature of the business carried out by the Bureau of Statistics.


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Kicking off the commission, Australian statistician Dennis Trewin and assistant statistician Kerrie Duff organised and accompanied the artists, on a trip that took them three hours northwest of Yuendumu to Mawurrji—a kind of ground zero for the Warlpiri possum dreaming. This creative pre-commission trip was undertaken to provide further inspiration to the artists, by refreshing their connection with the land and stimulating the group’s discussion as to who would lead whom in putting down the possum dreaming narratives. Due to the ABS’s creative involvement, and the provision of additional resources, in the following weeks 40 community artists (watched over by innumerable camp dogs) worked on and sang their narrative into existence. The result was that the ABS has on its hands a monumental canvas, a valuable painting and an outstanding commissioning success story.

Collecting associations It pays to belong. Collectors are well advised to engage with their peers, either in a collecting association such as the Australiana Society, or more widely through a subscription to a local state art museum. Whichever avenue of support is chosen, for what is often a modest tax-deductible outlay collectors can join a society or members’ organisation and develop their knowledge, while at the same time establishing important private and trade contacts. For when all is said and done, to be the recipient of all-important insider information a collector has to make the effort to get on the inside. Within a modest budget I collect among other things colonial cedar furniture. I have been a member of the Australiana Society for a number of years and my quarterly copy of its Australiana is much awaited. I read or scan all the articles and always look at the advertisements. I look to see which dealers support the society. It tends to be that the more knowledgeable dealers in the field of colonial art lend their support and advertise their wares in Australiana, a case in point being the regular advertisement taken by respected South Australian dealer Peter R. Walker. Walker advertises in and financially supports the magazine through awarding a writing prize for the best article contributed to the magazine. Remember, if you associate with the best people, you obtain the best results.


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To balance my nineteenth- and early twentieth-century buying interests, I am, for an ever-growing fee, a member of the Contemporary Collection Benefactors (ccb) group at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Membership of the ccb (groovy, baby) entitles me to attend lectures by curators and artists, together with invitations to gallery openings and the ccb Christmas party—the last one I attended was a total drunken hoot. A very enjoyable part of belonging to the ccb is ‘Eat Your Art Out’, which are events held at the homes of major collectors and artist studios. Funds raised by the ccb have enriched the Art Gallery with works by Colin McCahon, Cy Twombly, Bronwyn Oliver, Peter Atkins and Fiona Hall. I am most fortunate to receive the Historic Houses Trust, Maritime Museum, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery and Art Gallery of South Australia members’ magazines. I also receive via email copies of the National Gallery of Australia and National Portrait Gallery newsletters. From the art gallery magazines I monitor recent art museum acquisitions, as it is important for any art collector to know exactly whom the art institutions are collecting. This wasn’t the case a mere decade ago, when the art market kiss of death when describing or valuing a painting for sale was to label it ‘of institutional interest’. ‘Of institutional interest’ in those days meant an atypical, often dull painting, an overly academic work that appealed almost exclusively to the cash-poor art institutions, which were notoriously slow to make up their purchasing minds. Then, the stigma of institutional interest retarded an artist’s or painting’s full financial potential. This isn’t the case today. Increasingly, art museums have their eye on attracting audiences, so it is out with the academically important yet drab picture and in with the academically important dynamic painting. The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), which has one of the finest collections of any gallery and an outstanding director in Ron Radford, is an art institution whose collecting policies are worth watching. One particular issue of the AGSA magazine listed their acquisition of a strong 1950s Dorrit Black painting entitled The Road Makers. In terms of contemporary Indigenous work, the AGSA has picked up a Linda Syddick Tjungkiya Napaltjarri canvas entitled Tingari Dreaming at Walukurritja (2002).


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For those interested in the issues confronting art museums, a Museums Australia membership and magazine does the trick—but please, only if you are seriously hard core. Museums Australia also has an email news service. Finally, maintaining one foot in the grave of my former life as a criminal lawyer, I keep up my membership of the New South Wales Law Society. And let me tell you, the Law Society’s magazine is guaranteed to replace any sedative currently available over the counter at your local chemist.

Developing patience when collecting Collecting isn’t shopping. I have already noted the need for collectors or first-time buyers to be organised, to put aside time in their day or month to form and work through their collection strategy. A collector also needs to learn to bide their time, to be as patient as they can be in the art hunt. Good collectors don’t rush out to fill an arts order; instead, they take the time to know what they want and have the faith to wait and search thoroughly for it. It is probably best that I reveal a little home truth: I wasn’t born with patience. My glib, rather time-worn defence to this gaping hole in my character has always been, that if I had wanted to have patience I would have become a doctor. Humorous as this throwaway line may be, in my middle age I am at least attempting to learn some collecting patience. As is often the case, I am far better at instilling patience in others. Over the years, on a professional level I have spent a great deal of time holding back collectors from inappropriately timed buying. Whether spending up big time after a long liquid lunch on holidays at the beach or even at airports, there is the right and wrong time and place to buy quality art. In terms of a difficult time, an ever-increasing number of collectors want to begin their buying year in January. Admiring their verve as I do, the problem is that traditionally the whole of January and nearly all of February have been an arts industry down time. The January–February art shut-down phenomenon is changing, albeit slowly. A growing number of the upper-end and more astute dealers have cottoned on to the trend of the well-heeled expatriate collector returning home for an Australian summer break. This once-a-year family and friends trip is often the only


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time the nostalgic expats have to see and buy Australian art. Aside from this niche buying market, in terms of the broader collecting public as a general rule the volume of good-quality artworks and exhibitions doesn’t generally come to the market until early March. Alongside knowing when and where not to buy, long-time collectors have realised that by exercising a little collecting patience, there is a real chance that they can catch that must-have artwork the next time around. That’s right: due to death, debt and divorce—many, particularly older—artworks reappear on the market every fifteen years or so. Others, not necessarily the artworks that you would want, yo-yo up for sale almost yearly. One of my all-time favourite things to do during a quiet moment at my desk is to look through the late 1960s and early 1970s Christie’s catalogues. I call it ‘spot the old sales new again’. Although I should get out more, looking through any catalogue more than a decade or so old should reinforce to collectors this art-recycling trend. In a somewhat extreme example of art hunter patience, I know one high-end world-class collector, with bulletproof net worth, who has the infinite discipline to only buy counter—cyclically— that is, in a soft market. Yes, he can stop buying those Picassos and wait seven to nine years for the market to turn his way, and then he resumes collecting. This big game hunter has the optimism, patience and discipline to wait and pick up that blue period Picasso the next time around in a more favourable market. Not surprisingly, with that kind of cash and strategy, he has an excellent, wisely collected art asset. Back on earth, should I have held off collecting for seven to nine years, the chances are I would have gone under a bus and have achieved nothing. While looking on the bright side, with a softer art market expected over the next five years I can continue on my impatient and less disciplined collecting way knowing that I am now in-sync with the big boys.

Reading art images Although it is widely accepted that an image of an artwork can be manipulated on a computer screen to make the original work look far better than it actually is, it isn’t widely appreciated that some great art, no matter how good the image, fails to reproduce to anywhere near the quality of the original. For better or worse,


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collectors would do well to remind themselves that an image of an artwork is just an image, and often an inferior one at that. It catches me out all the time. There are thousands of contemporary artists working at any one time, and in response to this vast output I receive dozens of exhibition flyers every day. Although I travel a great deal, I still unfortunately need to make my viewing decisions based partly on my knowledge of the artist’s work and to a fair degree on the quality of the image on the flyer. If the exhibition flyer looks fantastic, it may well lure me to the viewing. However, I have to be doubly careful not to dismiss contemporary art that illustrates poorly (lucky art gallery). A case in point: having received an illustrated exhibition flyer from Philip Bacon Galleries showcasing his Davida Allen exhibition, I took the opportunity to view the latest body of work from an artist I have long admired and whose work I own. From the flyer, the seemingly crowded images were interesting but hardly compelling: in fact, a few works seemed a touch scrappy. With mixed feelings I went. In the flesh, however, what I had seen as ‘crowded’ pictures turned out to be multi-layered. Allen’s bushwalking paintings were as dappled and layered as the Australian bush. The three-dimensionality of Allen’s work, her paintings so thick and luxurious that they are almost edible, was lost on the two-dimensional reproduction. I had been caught out yet again. When discussing this phenomenon with my colleague Terry Conroy, assistant business editor for The Australian, he pointed out: ‘No matter how good a painting reproduces in a newspaper or a magazine, or even on heavy, glossy stock of the auction catalogue, the sheer presence of a painting—the way it can dominate a space—cannot be replicated.’ Good point, as images, even goodquality ones, don’t allow for the physicality of art. Alongside the three-dimensional nature and sheer physical presence of much contemporary artwork, neither of which can be replicated by an image, many intricate details and subtle shades of colour wash out in the printing process. In newspaper print, for instance, Aboriginal works of art are all too easily lost on a colour page. When reproduced in black and white, all is lost. The team responsible for laying out my art market page in The Australian sometimes agonises over which artwork to use to illustrate the article. Often, they have to choose the best work to reproduce on


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newsprint, not the best work to illustrate the point being made. Works that reproduce well on newsprint, even if they are not the better examples, tend to have distinct colour contrast, strong design sensibilities and a matt finish. As simplistic as this may at first seem, in a time-poor, marketingslick art world of email images, snappy exhibition flyers and glossy auction catalogues, some rather ho-hum contemporary paintings look great and some great art can look washed out. It is therefore most important that collectors, where physically possible, either form their buying decisions when actually standing in front of an artwork, or else have a trusted pair of eyes do the same for them. It isn’t to your advantage to make a snap decision based on an image of an artwork. Essentially, what I am saying is that you should not be unduly persuaded when reading images of an artwork. If anything, err on the side of the positive. By all means let an image of your prospective artwork whet your collecting tastebuds. However, unless you have confidently done your homework and know exactly what you are looking at, keep an open mind until you view the real thing. Many types of art practice, particularly contemporary art, reproduce poorly for many reasons.

Artistic reputation Have you heard the one about the young artist who quits painting to take a well-paid job in banking? Or heads off on an endless world tour of inner self-discovery to the Golden Triangle? Or, worse still, is hit by a bus? Such realities are every contemporary art collector’s worst nightmare. As a collector, doing the hard slog, spending years viewing galleries and artist spaces, taking time getting to know the local contemporary art scene and then finally finding and buying ‘the next big thing’, what’s the worst that can happen? The artist stops painting! Result: their artistic reputation grinds to a halt and the value of their work plummets. Unfortunately, this phenomenon happens far too often and has become a major hurdle in collecting contemporary art. In terms of building a significant artistic reputation, it is important for both art practitioner and collector that the artist maintains a consistent, quality output over a considerable period of time. It is


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also imperative that the artist understands and moves through three fundamental professional stages in developing their reputation and career. The three areas on which an artist should focus are the studio, the commercial gallery and the auction house. For collectors, the risk of buying a financial flop decreases as the artist cultivates relationships in these areas. The desired result, of course, is a steady increase in the value of the artist’s work. At the studio level, a collector faces financial risk when tempted to hunt around in an artist’s work space in search of cheap paintings. This method of collecting is analogous to using a scattergun to hit a matchstick. The artwork can be relatively inexpensive, but be aware that maybe one in 500 young artists will go on to make a name for themselves. In this situation a collector’s eye is all he or she can trust. Collectors interested in hunting through an artist’s studio are well advised to contact the major art schools in each capital city. These schools are often attached to a university and are easy enough to find in the telephone book. Every major art school will have an end-of-year graduation exhibition; many are well worth a view. Second, a more reputable method of seeing new talent is at the gallery level (and this method is much less prone to risk). Check out young commercial galleries, specifically those contemporary art spaces that specialise in discovering up-and-coming names. Galleries that specialise in new talent include Legge Gallery, Darren Knight Gallery and Mori Gallery in Sydney; Gertrude Contemporary Art Space, Span Galleries and Fortyfivedownstairs (Flinders Lane) in Melbourne; Bellas Gallery, Soap Box Gallery and Doggett Street Studio in Brisbane; and Bett Gallery in Hobart. Alternatively, in buying from a long-established, more main stream art gallery (those that are members of the Australian Commercial Galleries Association), a gallery with a large client base, collectors will find themselves in good company, providing a greater sense of security in the choices of works they make. In terms of artists on the rise, watch out for Ben Quilty, the recipient of the 2002 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, who held only his second solo exhibition at Maunsell Hughes Gallery in Sydney in late 2003, an exhibition that was dominated


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by his obvious adoration of his Torana motorcar. I was fortunate to purchase two of these large buttery abstracted Torana paintings from that exhibition, many months before it opened. I was organised. These purchases were a fortunate buying combination of knowing what was heading out of the artist’s studio and into the art gallery. The final rung on the ladder of artistic reputation, and carrying a lesser degree of financial risk, is the good old rough and tumble of the art auction room floor. If a collector buys at auction the chances are that, when they come to resell, the artwork can be sold at auction. By contrast, only a small number of contemporary art dealers will re-offer artwork originally sold in their gallery. Testing an artist’s reputation in the auction market is considered by many to be the financial litmus test of success or failure. The entire art market, including dealers, sits in judgment at the major art auctions, which is precisely why auction prices are accepted as a truer indicator of market value than most gallery prices. As a general rule of thumb, auctioneers try to avoid offering names lacking a track record, as those names without a reputation at gallery level are likely to die on the block. Such cruel deaths, however, are not uncommon.

An artist’s early works Art museums and astute collectors have a tendency to pepper their holdings with as many good early examples of an artist’s work as they can. As a general collecting rule of thumb, an artwork from the near beginning of a desired artist’s career is often of greater interest than any number of later works. From an art history and theory point of view, an early artwork often tells us a great deal about the evolution of an artist’s style. The artwork, aside from being in its own right an object of beauty, may develop into an object of wider academic importance. An early sculpture or painting becomes a bridge between the artist’s initial thoughts, intentions and emotions and the later road they travel. One example would be Robert Klippel’s early welded metal sculpture entitled Opus-metal construction. Executed in 1958 and estimated at $20 000 to $30 000 in one of the early May 2003 art auctions, the work stimulated intense bidding interest during the auction to finally sell for $75 000. A good 113 centimetres high, this


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spindly, angular Klippel was developed during the time he spent in America in the late 1950s. Although Klippel hated New York, his exposure to the vibrant American art world left a profound impact on his long and productive career. Early artworks that are identified as being part of the development of a significant art movement are even more desirable. Even a ho-hum example by Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, Frederick McCubbin or Tom Roberts carrying the fabled provenance of Melbourne’s 1889, ‘9 × 5’ exhibition are big bucks—around $100 000-plus. Small in stature, only 9 × 5 inches (hence the name of the exhibition), these early outdoor painted landscapes launched Australian Impressionism. In some cases, an artist’s earlier work will often contain more energy and passion than later, more settled paintings, drawings and sculptures. Edgy, experimental and often less constrained by the conservatism of age, early works may be the product of an artist pushing their visual boundaries. Conversely, in the twilight of their career many artists can settle into recreating that ‘market successful’ well-worn look or style. An early artwork can be the leader that later artworks follow. One exception to the general ‘early is better’ rule is when an artist does not hit their creative straps until mid-career. There are many, many artists who build on their skills over decades, arriving late in their career at their best work. However, it is inevitably the first or earliest examples from this later mature flowering that are often the most sought after. Brett Whiteley’s early and critically acclaimed landscapes are escalating in value, and to my mind are some of his most naively beautiful works. From the beginning, Whiteley enjoyed enormous critical acclaim. In 1961 the Tate Gallery in London purchased his Untitled Red Painting (1960), making Whiteley the youngest artist ever acquired for that institution. An example of work from that time, Whiteley’s well-sized 122 × 128 cm Untitled Painting (landscape) (1961) made $211 500 against a low estimate of $140 000 in an early May sale in 2003. In the face of this critical acclaim, many collectors and the market in general have embraced Whiteley’s end of career Sydney Harbour-scapes. The majority of Whiteley’s big-hitting prices are paid for sand, sea and sky, not early rolling hills. Whiteley’s high point has been


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the large The Jacaranda Tree (on Sydney Harbour) (1977), sold at auction for $1.98 million in 1999. Although not an early Whiteley work as such, it was, from memory, one of the early Sydney panoramas. (Robin Gibson Gallery in Sydney first sold The Jacaranda Tree (on Sydney Harbour) in 1977 for $22 500, a figure thought outrageous at the time. The $1.98 million paid in 1999 was exactly 88 times the original purchase price.) Interestingly enough, the second highest-priced Whiteley painting sold at auction in 2001, the $1.1 million Lavender Bay at Dusk (1984), was painted years after The Jacaranda Tree. The early works of an in-demand artist are more likely to have been locked up in long-term, established collections. Their supply to the market is considerably less than their often readily available later companions. From a purely market viewpoint, this makes earlier works very desirable.

An artist’s track record Although difficult for any true lover of art to admit, the academic and monetary value of a particular artist at any point in time is first and foremost an indication of contemporary taste and social mores—to put it crudely, it is just plain fashion. The difficulty with this is that taste and social mores change all too regularly. Value isn’t timeless, nor is it set in stone; artists come and go, and prices rise and fall. The price asked for a particular artwork is a result of subjective considerations, not the least of which is the status or standing of the artist in question. Is the artist widely known or presently unknown in the art world? Not surprisingly, artists that are widely known are more often than not highly valued. When formulating a sensible collecting strategy, astute collectors are advised to place some store in the buying habits of the opinion-forming public and of private and corporate art collections. Chances are that when an artist’s work is acquired by a prestigious high-profile collector then the values flow on and up. Naturally, many collectors would be familiar with the better known, high-profile public art museums, and there can be no doubt that art world kudos gravitates to those artists collected by art museums. However, collectors are advised also to pay special attention to the buying habits of the corporate world, for example,


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the Allens Arthur Robinson Collection, Macquarie Bank, Ord Minnett, Wesfarmers and the NRMA collection. Conservative by nature, corporate collectors spending as they do private money tend in many ways to mirror cautious public taste, to a degree not often found in art museums. It isn’t surprising that art museums will at times purchase artworks that one could best describe as avant-garde—that is, curatorially in demand art of possible great academic importance but with very little resale value in the short to medium term (sometimes if ever). While currently not a name on everyone’s lips, works by artist Peter Cooley crop up in a number of all-important collections: the Australian National Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Philip Morris Collection, the Allens Arthur Robinson Collection, Macquarie Bank, Wollongong City Gallery, Griffith Artworks, Artbank, Ord Minnett and NRMA collections, which isn’t bad at all. Aside from having a strong institutional and corporate profile, Cooley also cracks a mention in the influential and indispensable art reference work of Alan and Susan McCulloch, The Encyclopedia of Australian Art (1994). As impressive as his list of collectors and art reference credits may be, another clue to the emergence and possible acceleration of Cooley’s status in the art world is through an understanding of his exhibition history. Cooley began exhibiting in 1983 with a selective group showing at Mori Gallery in Sydney. After being nurtured by the gallery for some thirteen years, Cooley was taken on board by Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney. With over 36 years in the business, few have achieved such longevity and influence as Ray Hughes. With a reputation for spotting art up-and-comers rarely equalled and an ability to build a market, Hughes has the capacity to showcase Cooley’s work to a large number of collectors. In mid-2003 Cooley held a strong exhibition in Melbourne with the important Gould Galleries. Prices of Cooley’s work began at $1100 for an oil study, averaged around $3000 for most paintings and peaked at $15 000 for a large premier work. Aside from the all-important mechanics of the art market itself, Cooley’s work contains all the hallmarks of a winner. He can actually paint. Cooley’s paintings are rigorous abstracts of the Australian landscape done from detailed drawings. His works are painted in the traditional manner, with wet layers of pigment


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varnish applied over and over to build up the painting’s depth of image and colour density. Cooley’s work obviously comes out of the modernist tradition, with influences from Cézanne, Kirchner, Marsden Hartley and Fred Williams. With a strong art practice well in hand, Cooley’s subject astutely taps into what many art critics and collectors believe is one of Australia’s few legitimate and original contributions to international art practice—our unique rendition of the physical environment. The Australian landscape remains central to our national self-image. Consequently, it is far from surprising that some of our best painters continue to work with the landscape.

Art prizes and the market While strolling around the New England Regional Art Museum viewing their inaugural $35 000 Country Energy Prize for Landscape Painting, ideas started to roll into my head. Should collectors care about which artists win what art prizes? How important really are art prizes in determining an artist’s future career prospects? These thoughts stayed with me, only to surface again with the announcement of the $40 000, 2003 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award given to painter Richard Bell for his work Scientia E Metaphysica. Bell’s winning painting had the rather cute though caustic, art prize-oriented, postmodern slogan ‘Aboriginal Art … It’s a white thing’ emblazoned across the canvas. To receive the award, Bell wore a T-shirt with the pronouncement: ‘White girls can’t hump.’ A day or so later, Bell was wearing another T-shirt with the words ‘I will not apologise’ printed across its front. Call me a cynical middle-aged bastard, but the performance was all a bit too stage-managed for me. The short answer to the question of whether collectors should care about which artists win what art prizes is, ‘Yes—kind of’. The $100 000 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, the $40 000 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, the $35 000 Archibald Art Prize, the $35 000 Country Energy Prize for Landscape Painting, the $35 000 Metro 5 Art Award, the $35 000 Cromwell’s Art Prize, the $18 000 Portia Geach Memorial Award, the $15 000 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize, the $15 000 Redlands Westpac Art Prize and the $15 000 Mosman Art Prize,


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to name but a few, all help to showcase art to a wider audience. And a larger audience equals a greater potential market. Art prizes help to place artists within their peer group. Many artists work in isolation, so it is important that they have an art prize vehicle through which to compare and contrast their work against others. Viewing Degrees of Abstraction, the winning Ian Bettinson entry at the Country Energy Prize for Landscape Painting, nestled as it was alongside the works of his 43 colleagues including Angus Niverson and Mandy Martin, was a treat for me and I am sure a learning experience for all who were hung. Art prizes build art professionalism. In our working life we all need deadlines and presentation standards, some of which we place on ourselves while others are placed on us. Rising to the art prize occasion is a good skill for any emerging artist to take on board. Many emerging and established artists don’t have commercial art gallery representation. An art prize affords an opportunity for unrepresented artists to keep their work fresh and alive in the community. It also affords collectors the opportunity of viewing artwork by artists that don’t normally show in a gallery near them, or indeed at all. Under these circumstances, if as a collector you see something you like, don’t be bashful in making enquiries as to who represents the artist. Leave your details with the art museum, and they will pass them on. In terms of the market, art prizes attempt to sift the art wheat from the chaff. No matter how difficult it is to select a winner there is always a first prize, and as politically unsound as this concept may currently be at least a decision is made. These decisions, made by art professionals, can guide the collector. It must be remembered, however, that the judges chose an artwork, and not the artist, for the first prize. It may be the only artwork of note the winning artist ever does; on the other hand, a good, normally consistent artist may have hastily and unwisely entered an inferior artwork. Do remember also that art judges can tend to take the path of least resistance, and often the winning entry isn’t the best artwork but the artwork least disliked by all. The awarding of any prize reflects the object. An accumulation of awards for specific artworks, however, adds pedigree to an artist’s general body of work. If an artist, either through an accepted entry or as a winner, has achieved a number of the more


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prestigious art awards, then it may be inferred that their artwork is usually consistently judged as being of good quality. There is no doubt that the more prominent art prizes provide artists with their time in the spotlight. However, the spotlight quickly fades. In the wake of some highly sophisticated Art Gallery of New South Wales media manipulation, known unto all as the Archibald Prize, the winning artist has about four years of fame. During those four years the artist must capitalise on a solid media presence to further leverage themselves into the collector’s consciousness and gain increased sales. If nothing else is achieved within that time, then the artist’s body of work settles back to the price level it was before winning the prize. Therefore, it is important for collectors and the market to track who wins what art awards. Art prizes give artists the financial means and the gift of time in which to knuckle down and undertake more, and hopefully superior, work.


Collecting

categories Chapter 2 Indigenous Australian Art Wally Caruana with Michael Reid From Aboriginal-run art associations Following the Great Australian Silence—the almost 200 years of cultural indifference and neglect in relation to our Indigenous peoples and their culture—the broader community’s only-decadesold cultural back-flip in wanting to embrace all things Indigenous has, in effect, created an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art market on steroids. Interest in Indigenous art as ‘art’ began in the years preceding the Second World War, with artist Margaret Preston and others advocating—well-intentioned but misguided— the adoption by non-Indigenous artists of Aboriginal graphic designs and motifs to create a style of art unique to this country. She was a little late: perhaps by 70 000 years or so. In the post-war years, ground-breaking field work by anthropologists such as Ronald and Catherine Berndt focused on the art of Aboriginal society; indeed, they were the first to identify individual artists by name and region in an exhibition of 1957. Within a year of two, the artist Tony Tuckson, then assistant director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, with the assistance and sponsorship provided by Dr Stuart Scougall, began visiting Aboriginal


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communities with the specific purpose of collecting works for display in an art museum, as opposed to the museums of natural history or ethnography. At the time, their interests lay in bark paintings and sculptures from the Top End. In the early 1970s the art of the desert was being opened up to collectors through the developments at Papunya, west of Alice Springs, where, for the first time, artists translated their traditional visual languages into European materials of acrylic paint, wooden panels and eventually canvas, to reach a wider audience than had ever before been possible. However, up to and throughout the 1960s, the sale of Indigenous art was channelled through the local missions and government settlements. To understand how the art centres in Indigenous communities operate today it is necessary to take a step back in time to see how the communities themselves developed. In the early days of European settlement of the far corners of the continent—the so-called Top End of the Northern Territory (that is, from Melville and Bathurst Islands, off the coast of Darwin, south to approximately the latitude of Katherine), the vast central and western desert regions, the Kimberley and northern Queensland—it was common to round up Aboriginal groups and resettle them on mission stations (and dozens of missions of a range of Christian denominations sprung up across the continent) or government settlements that were often established as supply depots for further exploration of the country. Thus the missions and settlements often ‘housed’ peoples who spoke different languages and had different customs and beliefs, leading to all sorts of social upheaval and cultural trauma. By and large, Indigenous groups were totally disempowered. The late 1960s, however, saw the rise in Indigenous selfdetermination and political power; indeed, until the referendum of 1967, most Aboriginal people didn’t even possess citizenship of Australia. The struggle for the recognition of Indigenous land rights led to the passing of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Rights Act of 1976, one result of which was that Aboriginal people were materially supported in their efforts to leave the settlements to return to live on their traditional lands in what are called outstations or homelands. Most of the missions and settlements have now become townships and continue to this day to service the recently established surrounding outstation communities. The


Collecting categories

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townships boast their own councils, health centres, schools, shops and other services. This model has now spread throughout remote Australia. And most communities now house their own art centres, which in many cases have become among the most profitable and vital areas of activity in the local economy. The art centre acts like a gallery, representing a stable of local artists in any city or town; it arranges exhibitions and sales, provides materials and studio space for local artists, and takes care of copyright matters. Just as importantly, the art centre documents the works of art, and handles and distributes payments to artists, ensuring they are paid properly for their work. The art centre is incorporated as a cooperative of local artists who appoint staff, including the art coordinators or managers (until recently, these were referred to as ‘art advisers’, but the term carries pejorative connotations of ‘artistic control’), accountants or bookkeepers, and gallery assistants. Apart from the latter, most staff are brought in from outside the community largely to avoid local bias or favouritism—everyone within a community is aligned by family and clan. Art coordinators bring with them varying degrees of experience of the art world. And the art centres have, over the years, been funded by the government through ATSIC (the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, which in 2004 provided over $4 million annually; at the time of writing, ATSIC was set to be abolished) and the Australia Council (which usually provides project grants). The intention of the funding is to help the art centres establish themselves as independent organisations, although only a few have managed this to date. In recent years, ANKAAA (The Association of Northern Kimberley and Arnhem Aboriginal Artists) and Desart have been established as lobby groups for and coordinators of the Top End and desert art centres, respectively. The community art centre structure is critical in counteracting one of the negative by-products of the booming domestic and international demand for Aboriginal art—the concentration by many unscrupulous art dealers on supplying quantity, as opposed to quality, contemporary art. Carpetbaggers, as they are known in the trade, continue to entice artists with quick money to work outside community-based art centres. The production of this body of work is known as a town painting, because the artwork can be produced


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in a town sweatshop factory and is often characterised by extremely poor quality. And in the end, it is the artists who suffer in terms of proper earnings and career reputation. Let us firmly state that not all town-based art is bad, and not all town operators are unscrupulous. However, it is difficult for novice buyers in this market to read every seller. It is difficult for them to know which out of a sometimes bad bunch of private town wholesalers one should go with. Unlike the ease of reading a community art centre stock number on the back of the artwork, town wholesalers are not branded on the forehead as a good or bad person. As a rule of thumb, what we suggest here is a guide for the novice collector interested in contemporary Aboriginal art. Community-based art centres provide their artists with quality art materials—and the artists’ materials must be of the highest quality, as local conditions can be breathtakingly harsh—and implement forms of quality control and combat commercial exploitation. Most importantly, community-based art centres allow Indigenous artists to work in their own time, a practice that is conducive to producing quality art. Carpetbaggers, on the other hand, are interested only in product and pressure artists to complete numerous canvases in a short period. Collectors are advised as a general guide to buy contemporary Indigenous art directly from well-known art-producing communities or from those art dealers who buy direct from those same communities. When buying Indigenous art, collectors should look for the community art centre stock number on the reverse of the canvas or bark; a lack of such a number should sound the buying alarm bells. Having found the stock number, give the relevant arts community a quick ring or email them to cross-reference their sale records with your painting. Buying direct from a community art centre isn’t without its inherent problems, time and distance being but two significant buying difficulties. Another is artwork quality control, with some community arts associations sifting and monitoring the quality of art they offer to a much greater degree than do others. And finally, some community art centres earmark the better-quality artworks for established art dealers—after all, they buy regularly and in bulk. For the record, a survey focused on the major community art centres, entitled The Art and Craft Centre Story: A survey of 39



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Aboriginal community art and craft centres in remote Australia, undertaken by Desart Inc. (ATSIC, 2000) shows that art sales from the top nineteen art centres totalled just shy of $5 938 000 in 1997–98 at an average of $312 546 per community (volume 2, p. 121). This had grown from a total of $3 033 000 in 1995–96 at an average of $159 617 per community; an increase of nearly 100 per cent over three years.

Buying from auction As the market for Indigenous Australian art has developed, the last decade has seen the establishment of a healthy secondary market for Aboriginal art. While many collectors usually trade art pieces in their possession through the private or commercial gallery from where they originally bought the works, there is an increasing trend to offer works for auction. The lure is the possibility of realising better returns, partly as a result of increased competition for a work, and the potential of overseas interest and the buying power that that represents. (In 2003, over 40 per cent by value, representing over $3 million, of the lots sold at Sotheby’s auctions went overseas.) In 1993 just over $300 000 worth of Indigenous art was traded on the local art auction market. In 2003 some $7.9 million of Aboriginal art sold at auction. Gallery sales made ten times that amount. The undoubted leader in the auction stakes is Sotheby’s, who in 2003 accounted for over $7 million worth of sales alone. Sotheby’s established a separate department of Aboriginal art in 1992 and tends to deal in the top end of the market, having achieved the record prices for individual artists such as Rover Thomas, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula and Kitty Kantilla. While Sotheby’s occupies much of the auction ground, several other auction houses have regular important sales of Indigenous art. After many years of selling a mixture of non-Indigenous and Indigenous art all in one, Shapiro’s, Christie’s Australia, LawsonMenzies and Bonham Goodman auctioneers have all established Aboriginal art departments. Leonard Joel’s tends to include Aboriginal works in their Australian painting and other general sales. In combination, the auction houses cover the range of quality and price brackets for Indigenous art and they regularly throw up


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‘bargain buys’ for those who know what to look for or who seek the right advice. The frequency of Aboriginal art auctions varies from house to house: Leonard Joel’s in Melbourne has weekly mixed auctions, while at the other extreme Sotheby’s has one Aboriginal art auction a year. The most popular categories of works at auction—apart from the work of particular individual artists such as those mentioned above—are without doubt paintings from the desert on canvas or board, especially works from Papunya created in the first three years of the movement (1971–73). Sculpture from Arnhem Land before 1970 is another strong category, but paintings on bark vary in price range. The work of the very best bark painters (and again, works with some age), such as Yirawala and Mawalan Marika, regularly fetch five-figure sums. However, this is an area where bargains can be had: the fragile nature of bark paintings has mitigated against high prices. Nonetheless, as collectors become more accustomed to handling and protecting bark paintings (after all, it only takes common sense and a few simple precautions), no doubt the market for this type of object will continue to improve in time.

Buying from commercial art galleries Commercial and privately run galleries have played a crucial role in the development of the market for Indigenous Australian art. Today there are galleries in the major urban areas across the country which specialise in Indigenous art, while the last few years have seen an increasing trend for more generalist private galleries to represent some individual Indigenous artists or communities. The specialist galleries grew out of those set up in each capital city by the major public funding agency of community art centres, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, in the 1970s, in order to establish and promote the market for Aboriginal art. Usually operating under the generic name of Aboriginal Arts and Crafts galleries, these were superseded by privately run concerns by the early 1990s. In an ideal world the private specialist galleries in each capital city would represent a number of particular communities and artists exclusively; thus, they—both the galleries and the communities—wouldn’t stray into each other’s territory. The situation today is a little more complex, as Indigenous art communities find



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they are producing a range of work tailored to particular sections of the market with the result that they may place work with two or more private galleries in any one capital city. The most reputable private commercial galleries deal directly with one or more art communities, whereby a consistent flow of work is more or less guaranteed, with regular exhibitions of the work of a community. These galleries deal in the primary market for Aboriginal art, and pricing structures are negotiated between the community and the gallery to provide the optimum returns for both (especially for the artists themselves) while setting reasonable retail prices. And, just to reiterate, these private galleries are in a position to provide accurate documentation and certificates of authenticity (again directly from the community) which guarantee the provenance of works of art. See the list of art dealers known to buy through Indigenous art communities in the reference section at the back of the book. The importance of the provenance of a work of Indigenous art, like that of any work of art, cannot be over-emphasised. As mentioned above, carpetbaggers and the like have in the past taken advantage of a burgeoning market that far outstripped the development of knowledge, discernment and connoisseurship on the side of the buying public. The problem continues to exist today, although its prevalence is often exaggerated, and steps are being taken, both on the government and industry levels, to rid the market of such unscrupulous activities. In addition, collectors generally are developing a level of knowledge and connoisseurship, and there are a number of tools available today to help them in their quest to collect confidently and better enjoy their collections. Two easily accessible and invaluable databases to which collectors can subscribe are NATSIVAD and AASD. NATSIVAD, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Visual Artists Database, developed by the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra and published by Discovery Media, lists the biographical details and exhibition histories of over 3000 Indigenous artists. It can be found at http:// gallery.discoverymedia.com.au/avad5/natsivad. The Australian Art Sales Digest (available through Acorn Antiques Pty Ltd at www.aasd.com.au) includes Indigenous artists in its records of sales of works by Australian artists.


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Outside the commercial gallery circuit, Michael Reid and Wally Caruana have established Caruana and Reid Fine Art, a consultancy which provides acquisition and collecting advice to our clients, background and contextual information on works of art, artists and art communities, as well as sourcing work directly from Indigenous communities. The artists represented range from the major practitioners today to emerging artists, and an emerging Indigenous artist may be in his or her fifties or sixties before they draw on decades of art experience in the private domain of ceremony to paint for the public domain. A feature of the consultancy is the annual ‘at home’ viewing of carefully selected works of art, including canvases, bark paintings, prints and the ever more popular larrakitj (painted hollow logs from Arnhem Land), from a range of Indigenous community art centres. The ‘salon’ style of presenting art dates back to seventeenth-century Europe, and the contemporary setting allows prospective collectors to discuss issues relating to the art, artists and any relevant topic, in friendly, quiet and private surroundings. Finally, remember that Indigenous art is one of the two main traditions of art in Australia. Every major state art institution (as well as more and more regional galleries) has a dedicated collection. Whether private and corporate collectors want to specialise in collecting in this area, or to include it in broader collections of Australian or international art, or merely to own the occasional piece, they must educate their ‘eye’ and read the literature; but, more importantly, they must expose themselves to as many works of art in the flesh as possible, and if necessary, seek sound advice.

Contemporary Australian Art Contemporary international art versus contemporary Australian art Like flies to a rotting carcass, international contemporary art collectors are drawn to the often sexually explicit, morbid in content or downright blasphemous in new art. Depicting sex, death, drugs and contempt, contemporary international art mines the seamy side of life for all that it is worth—and it is worth a lot. In stark comparison, Australian artists of newish art are a somewhat



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conservative, almost prudish bunch—and therein lies the rub. While there can be no doubt that over the last twenty years Australian artists have worked with a wider audience in mind, it would seem that this audience is still far from liberal. Should contemporary Australian artists and collectors wish to make it in the international big time, then they really need to loosen up some, baby. Christie’s New York’s early November 2000 Contemporary Art auction clocked up a solid A$26 million turnover for the sale of a mere 53 artworks. The top two works sold on the night were barely ten years old. Charles Ray’s disruptive sculpture entitled Male Mannequin (1990) is one of an edition of three, a life-sized, anatomically correct fibreglass mannequin that resembles a Ken doll. Male Mannequin sold against intense bidding for A$4.4 million. The evening’s second-highest price was paid for Untitled (Blood) from 1992 by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Untitled (Blood) employs a curtain of red and plastic beads as a metaphor for human existence. The artwork’s intentions range from ‘the luminosity of hope, to blood as a lifeline and its relationship to mortality’—yep, sure. An anonymous telephone bidder paid A$3.2 million for it. Other sale stoppers on the night included A$90 000 paid for the artwork With Dead Head, a photographic self-portrait of artist Damien Hirst aged sixteen with a severed human head, while the 1991 silk-screen image of Jeff Koons and his then partner performing a sex act sold for A$738 000. Maintaining the international contemporary art trends of morbid sensation, irreverence and sex art shock, Christie’s London’s A$6.7 million February 2001 contemporary art auction catalogue contained a foldout page stamped: ‘Warning: The following images contain graphic sexual content’—and they did. Coming to grips with Andre Serrano’s bold colour photograph entitled A History of Sex (The Fisting) brings tears to the eyes. While just a few sale lots along, the killing, stuffing, cutting up, rearranging, then sticking back together rather haphazardly of both a cow and an ostrich in order to produce Thomas Grunfeld’s A$67 000 Misfits (Cow) is art shock-horror at its borderline worst/best. Promoting this trend, the London catalogue stated that ‘when confronted with Thomas Grunfeld’s uncanny Misfits, the viewer is struck by mixed feelings ranging from amusement to horror and even disgust’. You


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can say that again—they see art, and I see a profound disrespect for the animal kingdom—Walt Disney would not have approved. In comparison, Christie’s Australia’s April 2001 $1.1 million, 131-lot contemporary art catalogue was built around an idea. Artists selected for inclusion in the catalogue were capable practitioners, some currently sought after in the market and reflective of their time. The auction represented art of the recent past and today, the art of an urban Australian X generation. Included in the auction were works by Peter Booth, Ken Whisson, Bill Henson, Emily Kngwarreye and Imants Tillers, to name but a few. The pre-sale auction estimates were right, with 86 out of the 131 lots being valued at $5000 and under. The majority were around the $3000 mark. Jumping off the page, Michael Nelson Jagamarra’s work Expressions of Dreaming was on offer at $3000 to $5000 (sold $3 525). Tim Maguire’s close-up of a flower bloom entitled Slit was on offer at $5000 to $7000 (sold $11 162). No problems there. However, what was overwhelmingly obvious within the offering was the lack of visually and intellectually challenging artwork. Despite attempts to reach a wider, international audience, the figurative, landscape and abstract content of much contemporary Australian art still smacks of a parochial ‘wide brown land’. Middle-class notions of Australian suburbia and the landscape continue to dominate. The auction top lots were Howard Arkley’s day-glow Eastern Suburbs Pink Home at $150 000 to $180 000 (unsold), Rosalie Gascoigne’s Lantern at $90 000 to $120 000 (sold $99 875), and Gascoigne’s Shoreline at $40 000 to $60 000 (sold $51 700). A CASE STUDY IN APPRECIATION OF DAVID LARWILL, CONTEMPORARY ARTIST The work of David Larwill can be found in many collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Sir William Dobell Foundation, Artbank, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Parliament House Canberra, the Holmes à Court Collection, the Baillieu Myer Collection, the ICI Collection, the Shell Collection of Contemporary Australian Art, the Western Mining Corporation, the Launceston College of Advanced Education, Deakin University, the Australian Football League, Allen Arthur Robinson and the New England Regional Art Museum, and there are more.



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Larwill’s work is also mentioned in Alan and Susan McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art (1994). Stand-alone books about the artist and his early influences include art dealer Ken McGregor’s David Larwill (Craftsman House, 1997) and Traudi Allen’s Roar (Craftsman House, 1995). Born in 1956, Larwill came to the attention of the collecting public as one of the founding members of the influential Roar Studios, an artist-run exhibition space in Melbourne that began in 1982. Larwill trained as a ceramist; as a painter he is largely self-taught. Using bold colours such as red, orange, yellow and black, Larwill populates his paintings with stylised human figures and animals—a kind of urban tribal funk. You can pick a Larwill painting a kilometre away. His artworks are sensory rather than intellectual; that is, you feel them, you don’t think about them. His use of colour and child-like forms give his works extraordinary strength of design and an immediate emotional impact. With Larwill the artistic experience is direct, your response spontaneous. Larwill’s visual simplicity and his utter lack of a deep philosophic undercurrent run contrary to the expectations of much postmodern art (yippee). The making of good art, ahead of an over concentration on visual philosophy, has contributed in no small way to Larwill’s growing market success. In the early 1990s a Larwill work on paper sold for $500 and a large oil made around $4000. In 2004, Jan Murphy Gallery in Brisbane offered up works on paper priced at $15 000 and large oils marked at around $70 000. What is unusual isn’t the solid escalation of Larwill’s values, which is great for those who got in early and to some degree was expected; what is an unexpected hallmark of Larwill’s values is that his paintings are sold through the gallery system for around the same values they are achieving at auction. For a contemporary artist this is most unexpected and it is indicative of his broad popularity. Generally speaking, few of the thousands of contemporary artists currently working have much, if anything, of a resale presence in the secondary art market at auction. And when they do, invariably the prices achieved second-hand for their art are around half of the original retail sale. This isn’t the case with Larwill; in 2002 an oil entitled Far North Queensland achieved $51 700 at Deutscher-Menzies in Melbourne.

Let me stress that Christie’s Australia is far from shy in wanting to offer up hard-edged art. Overseas, the company thrives on it. The problem is that there is very little quality, hard-edged Australian contemporary art out there in Australia to be had. To


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remedy this anomaly, in order to swim in the international art market’s main stream, it is recommended that contemporary Australian artists and collectors experiment to a far greater degree with provocative subject matter—let it go baby, throw your collecting art keys in the hat. Having said that, Christie’s Contemporary Art auction wasn’t totally void of hard-edged new work—there was one out of the 131 artworks that could be called ‘tough’. The third stanza of Mike Brown’s multi-coloured word painting entitled I Wish goes: ‘I wish I had a girlfriend. In pastel shades of blue. With tits like ripe tomatoes. And pubes of violet hue.’ The following stanza is an absolute doozey: ‘I’d fuck her every which way, I’d root her up the arse, And every time she sucked me off I’d shout “This gal’s got class!” ’. Much of the word painting, although illustrated in the catalogue, is bordering on unprintable. The painting I Wish went unsold on the night.

Pricing contemporary art To the detriment of all concerned, contemporary artists and art dealers consistently overvalue new art. Far too often collectors are confronted with stiff prices attached to a sea of unsold paintings: sometimes up to $12 000 a canvas for paintings hanging in an artist’s first exhibition, an unsold painting destined to do the rounds in their next, third and fourth exhibitions as well — don’t laugh, I saw such a case all too recently. Contemporary art does cost. Naturally enough, artists wish to make a good living—it is, after all, their job. Dealers, on the other hand, need to cover more than just basic costs. While, let’s face it, even a basic understanding of human psychology tells us that people tend to appreciate what they pay dearly for. Be that as it may, contemporary art shouldn’t cost too much. As no market grows without supply, stiff prices demanded for the artworks of emerging artists result in not only slow but few sales. More importantly, inhibiting the clearance of paintings into the art market denies the public an opportunity to own and re-sell works, in turn inhibiting the development of a broader secondary art market. When collectors come to buy contemporary art, when artists and art dealers come to price artworks for sale prior to an



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exhibition, all parties are well advised to understand the importance of a contemporary artist strategically growing a market through the sale and spread of reasonably affordable art. All these interest groups should support artists who are financially sympathetic to their buying public. After all, if a contemporary artist is prepared to hold a rational modest long-term market oriented perspective in regard to their work, then in all likelihood they will sell and survive, producing and distributing the volume of work needed to build a market and gain a broad public reputation. Charles Blackman is believed to have painted in excess of 36 000 works of art, while Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd whipped up possibly far too many artworks for anyone to ever count. These and a legion of other great artists made a name for themselves by getting their artwork out to the people—affordably and in very large quantities. The high prices we now associate with their artwork were established not in their youth, but in the context of mature, long-established exhibition and sales histories. In the art business, the younger and/or less experienced the artist is, the weaker their secondary market tends to be. Most young contemporary artists simply haven’t been around long enough to develop substantial followings, or for people who have bought their art to be putting it back up for sale, thereby initiating secondary market transactions. The general lesson to be learned here is that retail art gallery prices are not necessarily indications of what art is worth on the open market. Galleries can price their art however they wish, and are under no obligation to price it according to what it may or may not be worth on secondary markets. If a dealer feels like marking a work of art up ten or twenty times over its secondary market value, that’s his or her prerogative. This is why collectors should always have some idea of what art sells for on secondary markets before paying retail at galleries.

The Melbourne Art Fair The endurance of art-hell through a veil of chardonnay is at times all part and parcel of life in the contemporary fine art trenches. And don’t get me wrong: working in the art world beats the alternatives. However, if I have to endure the living hell of one more


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thirty-something all-black-wearing, intellectually dribbling devotee of contemporary art bang on incoherently about theories of postmodernism, I will be compelled to slip the safety catch off my imaginary revolver. And there isn’t a jury on the planet that would convict me. There can be no doubt that the visual philosophies behind the art of now are central to the viewing experience. An understanding of the social and intellectual bedrock of today’s art equips the collector with a far greater ability to select the product of an artist whose work reflects now. And all great artists and all great art reflect their era. The difficulty for today’s collector is that the visual philosophy surrounding much postmodern art is unfortunately poorly communicated—unintelligible mind-sludge. Grappling with an understanding of today’s art can, for far too many collectors, be a confusing, mind-bruising experience—and it shouldn’t be so. Curators, academics, art critics, art dealers and artists—we all need to lift our clear communication game. Having said that, artists are often the worst offenders. Many contemporary artists create significant art only to then burden the viewing public with their indecipherable artist’s statements and written explanations. For the most part artists shouldn’t be expected, or even allowed, to write. After all, if writing were so central to the creative expression of visual artists we would refer to them as authors, novelists or writers—and we don’t. So contemporary artist hear my plea, stick to the process of making art and avoid confusing the world with wordy, pretentious explanations of your art. Would-be collectors of this art, take a tip from me: cut down on the unintelligible reading and spend your time viewing and seeing. And one of the greatest contemporary art viewing opportunities is the contemporary Melbourne Art Fair (www.artfair.com.au). The Melbourne Art Fair is a valuable visual tool for would-be collectors of contemporary art, as well as those who simply appreciate the genre and would like to learn more about it. Its nononsense commercial approach offers art lovers help in navigating the mire that is contemporary art. Its rigorous exhibition rules, selection criteria and the participation of major Australian commercial galleries all act as a filter ensuring that only quality artworks are represented. As such, the art fair is a representation of



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the best contemporary art on offer and provides an insightful snapshot of the contemporary art scene. I strongly recommend you attend, as you have the opportunity to view the most beautiful and amazing art and it may just change your visual life. Held every two years, the art fair has deservedly earned a reputation as one of the pre-eminent trade fairs in our region and it is without doubt one of the most important events in the contemporary Australian art calendar. With over 800 artists exhibited, it showcases the best of our regional contemporary artists, including those from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand. It also includes a smattering of artists from Europe and North America. The fair is effectively a big art world convention. Over 80 galleries have stands at the show. The rules state that they may only show and sell works by artists they represent, which allows many high-quality galleries to showcase their best established and emerging artists and gives a chance to recognise the important role that galleries play in the support of artists and the development of the art industry. Many smaller galleries and lesser known artists are also represented, although the fair is given substance by the many large galleries that take the chance to be involved in this art forum. Stuart Purves’s Australian Galleries has shown well-known artists such as Peter Churcher, John Coburn, William Robinson, Gary Shead and Jeffrey Smart. Utopia Art Sydney has exhibited its usual outstanding collection of Indigenous artists, including Emily Kngwarreye and Gloria Petyarre. Other names such as Imants Tillers with some regularity grace the accompanying high-quality catalogue. All works on display are for sale, which gives the fair an important commercial orientation and creates an interface for contemporary art and the marketplace. The rigorous selection criteria for the works ensure that collectors can have confidence in the standard of the works and the market potential of the represented artists. In addition to its commercial orientation and the fantastic contemporary art overview the fair gives art lovers, its great appeal also rests upon the enormous sense of occasion afforded by the exhibition space. The fair is held in the Melbourne Royal Exhibition Building; the scale, architectural style and history associated with this exhibition centre make the space enormously warm


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and exciting. It compares so favourably with most of its competition, particularly dreary white-walled centres like the Darling Harbour Convention Centre in Sydney. I always thoroughly enjoy the Melbourne Art Fair and make a special point of visiting it for all four of the days on which it is held. I try and encourage as many people as I can to attend. Experienced collectors, new collectors and those interested in contemporary art are ensured a wonderful experience; they will visually learn a great deal about the contemporary art scene in Australia and Asia. If you are unable to attend, consider buying a copy of the catalogue—it is a clear, concise document that lists what galleries sell which artists.

The Antiquarian Book Fair (yes they sell works on paper too) A reflective stroll amidst book dealers preparing for the recent Australian Antiquarian Book Fair served to remind me that, unlike antique dealers whose role it is to furnish a house, book dealers concentrate on furnishing a room: the library. And specialisation so obviously aids the outcome. For, unlike those awful general mishmash antique fairs, which tend year in and year out to lose steam and degenerate into a world of doyleys and a sea of mahogany late Victorian furniture, the book fair—driven as it is by the premier book dealers association, fresh stock and pent-up demand— continues to offer collectors a depth of choice to the highest standard. From the quality of books, maps, works on paper and ephemera on offer it is plain to see why the antiquarian market is the oldest secondary art market in the world. The inherent quality to be found in rare books, maps and manuscripts, their critical importance in the transferral of beauty and knowledge and their inherently tactile demand to be handled, all gel to make antiquarian collectibles a good store of value. Prices for Australian rare books currently represent good value for money. Prior to the recession, rare books doubled in value roughly every five years. With the 1987 stock market crash and subsequent recession in the art market during the early 1990s, prices for Australian paintings and decorative arts plummeted while prices for rare Australian books remained calm. The rare book market at worst corrected itself, and



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did not hysterically crash. Steaming out of the recession, the transnational book market is once again steaming ahead. Book prices have not only remained stable in the worst of times. In relative terms to other areas of collecting, it is still possible for a book collector to purchase amongst the best of their chosen field. The vast majority of painting collectors could never hope to purchase a fine example in their chosen area of collecting. A handcoloured first edition of Phillip, one of Australia’s most important First Fleet books, can be obtained for around $35 000. A comparable standard of excellence in, say, the Australian colonial paintings market would cost a collector over one million for a decent Eugene Von Guerard. The paintings market in fact makes the book market look relatively inexpensive. Many fields of collecting in Australia are naturally enough stimulated by, but in a real sense also limited to a concentration on buying artworks focused purely on an Australian subject matter. Within the book collecting field of Natural History however, subjects such as botanical art irrespective of the plant’s country of origin attracts an enormous cross-cultural following. Australian collectors of botanical works would as easily collect a Swedish edition of a significant botanical book, as Swede collectors would buy hand-coloured Australian works. In a nutshell, such international interest greatly extends collectors’ re-sale market from the purely domestic to international art market. While let us also not forget that international markets to a degree financially cushion collectors from regional economic depressions. Should the Australian economy experience a slow patch, who is to say that our Swedish botanical collector won’t be riding a wave of discretionary income—the broader the market the more secure the resale. Rare books become that way because they were printed in small quantities. Like wine, rare books are in a sense consumed. Also like wine, books when circulated tend not to return in original condition; wine is drunk and books are often neglected. The supply of a particular vintage of wine as with rare books substantially diminishes over time. For collectors, a fine copy of a rare book is improved via the desecration of its literary comrades. With the kick-start of the American economy expect demand for rare books in that market to substantially grow in the next few years. Over the last few years, the recent soft Australian dollar enabled


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overseas collectors to poach stock from domestic book dealers with relative ease. Today, although saddled with a stronger Australian dollar, this natural fence to overseas buying has been overcome by a number of overseas economies gearing up for some serious cash surplus. A combination of these realities will see Australian rare books escalate in value as they are snapped up to send offshore. Technology such as the Internet and email has substantially reduced the difficulties with ordering books on the global market. Books as objects, particularly rare books, lend themselves easily to the new technologies. In cataloguing a rare book, a reputable dealer or auction house fully describes both the positive and negative elements of that book, that is, how many colour plates the book has and how many colour plates are lacking. No other field of collecting is so brutally honest with the condition of the objects sold. A word of warning: before any collector feels so inclined to order a rare book from Alaska over the Internet, it is advisable to fossick domestically. Purchasing in Australia or New Zealand at least gives the collector a reasonable measure of come back. Buy from the Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers if at all possible. Collectors interested in forming a book collection should strike up a relationship with a dealer or auction house specialist. Balance specialist advice with common sense and your budget. Collectors are advised to purchase a copy of John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors (2000). Well into its seventh edition, Carter’s book clearly explains book trade jargon.

Migrant artists and the new wave of Chinese art From colonisation, Australian painting has been shaped and directed by artists born or trained overseas. Over the centuries, wave after wave of Europeans have been sheltered by and absorbed into Australian art history and its marketplace. Today the Australian art world stands on a crest of a particularly talented Asian art wave. Highly politicised, sarcastic, excessive, confronting and speaking to an international audience post-Tiananmen Square, a wave of Chinese artists has fled the political and cultural constraints of their homeland. This new Chinese-Australian art wave



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will project a significant degree of influence on the domestic art scene and its market. By way of contrast the first European wave of artists to hit our shores was focused on a rediscovery of the Australian landscape. European art world giants of the nineteenth century include the wandering, gold-lusting Eugène von Guérard and the art explorer Conrad Martens, to name but two. With entrenched reputations in the history of Australian art, paintings by many leading art migrants of the nineteenth century are prohibitively expensive. Good strong works by von Guérard now fetch into the millions. Paintings of a similar standing by Martens make many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unlike many nineteenth-century artists who came in search of a better world, twentieth-century artists fled to Australia from an evil one. Australia’s first wave of migrant artists last century began to arrive from Hitler’s Europe in the late 1930s. In a 1941 landmark arrival, Desiderius Orban, from Budapest, established an important art school in Sydney that influenced the careers of several generations of artists. Australia’s early and mid twentiethcentury roll call of migrant artists is an illustrious one. The artist Sali Herman came from Zurich, Danila Vassilieff from Russia, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack from Germany, Michael Kmit from western Ukraine, Josl Bergner and Louis Kahan from Austria, Judy Cassab from Hungary, Stanislaus Rapotec from Yugoslavia, Leonard Hessing from Romania, and Roy Churcher and Alun Leach-Jones from Britain. What was the effect of this twentieth-century immigrant flow on art? These art world migrants were able to educate a generation of Australians towards a more tolerant view of modern art, particularly abstract art. Modern art practitioners one and all, the values associated with artworks by leading twentieth-century art immigrants are creeping north—they are pricey but not prohibitive. At auction, paintings by leading European Danila Vassilieff sell on average for $19 000; the record price paid for the artist stands at $48 000. Paintings by Sali Herman average around $16 000, with $96 000 being the record price paid. Aside from the solid and consistent prices paid for the leading proponents in this field, values in relation to the artworks of lesser known practitioners vary considerably. The average price of a Stanislaus


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Rapotec painting at auction is $4000. Mid twentieth-century Australian art world migration is a field of art history currently much neglected. Their time will come, and continuing improvement can be expected in the value of paintings by immigrant artists of this period. Statistics relating to Australia’s demographic shift give some indication as to the direction of our art world future. In the Monash University journal People and Place (2000), Dr Charles Price concluded that should recent immigration trends be maintained, it is expected that between 1999 and 2025 the Australian population with some Middle Eastern or Asian background will grow from 9 to 19 per cent. Alongside this almost landslide-like demographic shift, Australia has over the last few years woken up to the frenetic Chinese scene. Almost daily, Chinese politics are in the news. At night we marvel at their movies: Farewell My Concubine, Raise the Red Lantern and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And during mid-2000 the National Gallery of Australia held the confronting and enormously popular exhibition entitled ‘Inside Out: New Chinese Art’. Highly attuned to the here and now, Sydney contemporary art dealer Ray Hughes held a commercially groundbreaking exhibition entitled ‘The New Face of China’ in August 2000. On display were works from Liu Xiaodong, considered one of China’s leading contemporary artists, Liu Wei, Zeng Fenzhi, Chang Xugong, Qi Zhilong and the Luo Brothers. Side by side with their former countrymen were talented immigrant Chinese-Australian artists Guo Jian, Dong Wang Fan and Wang Zhiyuan. Artist Guo Jian had already held a virtually sold-out solo exhibition at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space and Ray Hughes Gallery. In what is a significant follow-up to the new wave of Chinese fine art interest, Ray Hughes Gallery had on view an exhibition by Liu Wei and Zhao Gang entitled ‘Architecture, Sex, Rotting, Dissolving: Paint!’ Both artists trained at the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The values of artworks at the exhibition ranged from $3000 to $80 000. Unlike the art market’s creeping acceptance of many mid twentieth-century European-cum-Australian artists, I believe the inherently dynamic nature of much contemporary Chinese and Chinese-Australian art will witness a far greater social and artistic impact on the community and ultimately its market.



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Tassie talent cluster There is a great deal more coming out of Tasmania than just apples, wine, salmon, wood and catamarans. The last few years have witnessed a growing phenomenon, one that I have labelled the Tassie talent cluster of contemporary artists. This coming together and boom of southern creativity is far from surprising, for great talent, irrespective of the field, has always had a spookily magnetic attraction for its own kind—think the Bloomsbury literary set or the Heidelberg School. Continuing this creative tradition, Tasmania has become a contemporary art talent hot spot. Lately, local painters Philip Wolfhagen, David Keeling, Geoff Dyer, Raymond Arnold, Luke Wagner and Peter Stephenson, to name but a few, have been joined by mainlander Stewart MacFarlane and are all producing some of the more interesting, edgy and quality contemporary art on the market today. From sell-out show to sell-out show, Wolfhagen is one of the most important landscape painters of his generation. Wolfhagen’s inspiration is his surrounding environs. In August 2002, with the support of the Parks and Wildlife Service, he spent twelve days painting on Deal Island, the largest of the Kent group midway between Flinders Island and Wilson’s Promontory, in Bass Strait. Overawed by the power of the sea cliffs and the beauty of the eucalyptus forests, back in his studio in Longford Wolfhagen painted a large triptych 2 × 16.5 m. Once on display at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Archipelago: A work in six parts pulled in the crowds. This compelling work will in a decade or so be considered one of the masterworks of the new millennium. The painting has sold to a private Tasmanian collector. Held in a string of important art collections, the work of painter Peter Stephenson has since 2003 begun to seep through to the art auctions—and his resale values are doing just fine. A former Vietnam War veteran, Stephenson’s often fire engine red, rather angry figurative artworks display an energy belying his age. Deutscher-Menzies’s June 2003 Australian & International Fine Art auction had a large cracker of a Stephenson entitled White Leader Third Rescue (2001) estimated at $6000 to $9000; the work achieved $9987. A smaller strong offering from the same auction was a pencil and pastel Stephenson entitled Hot Sea/White Leader


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(2000) that carried an estimate of $1400 to $1800; it sold for $1410. There is tension in David Keeling’s art between the smooth realism of the painting’s surface and the ambiguity of the work’s subject matter. Lot 3 in the same Deutscher-Menzies catalogue was his Diorama (1999), a rather quirky, painted interpretation of a bird diorama. You know the ones—those nineteenth-century display cabinets where they killed really beautiful birds, stuffed them and put them back into a painted, landscaped boxed environment. This bitter beauty is all very Keeling and was estimated at $7000 to $9000 (sold $9540). Former Queensland-based painter Stewart MacFarlane moved to Hobart in 2002. This artist is noted for his loud, sexually gritty paintings, which display an almost cheap motel feel. A MacFarlane show in 2003 at Charles Nodrum Gallery entitled ‘Some Kinds of Love’ was possibly one of the better exhibitions undertaken to date by the artist. My pick from a strong grouping was Mercury (2002), a 122 × 153 cm oil on canvas. Not dramatically superior in subject matter to others, in the series of paintings in this exhibition the colour palette had settled back. Hobart isn’t as bright as Noosa and MacFarlane has greatly benefited from the softer light. Depending on scale and the level of finish, prices ranged from $10 000 to $12 500 for the large paintings. The smaller works were $1200 to $1800 each. The exhibition sold well. Standing in the background of MacFarlane’s Mercury (2002) in boxer shorts and with a glass of wine in his hand, is Luke Wagner. A picture framer by profession, Wagner is quickly sliding into the rhythm and discipline of a full-time landscape artist. Having held several sell-out shows at the Salamanca Collection in Hobart, Wagner shows in Sydney with the Brian Moore Gallery. Although his large works fetch up to $10 000, the hallmark to his 150-plus paintings sold in the last couple of years has been their accessibility and affordability—a couple of thousand each. Wagner paints and sells; his prices on the secondary art market will strengthen as his reputation spreads to the mainland.

Works on paper: Etchings As an art market analyst, I don’t as a rule undertake specific art exhibition reviews. I am happy to leave that daunting task to my



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colleagues in the art section of The Australian. However, on occasion an art exhibition for sale comes to the market of such timely importance and visual impact, as to demand the attention of all collectors and art professionals. Francisco de Goya’s suite of etchings entitled ‘The Disasters of War’, on view at Rex Irwin Art Dealer in Sydney during 2003, was such an exhibition. Goya (1746–1828) was the most powerful and original European artist of his time. Goya completed some 500 oil paintings and murals, nearly 300 etchings and lithographs, and many hundreds of drawings. He was exceptionally versatile and his work expresses a wide range of emotions. His technical freedom and ability are remarkable. Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) is a dramatic and macabre suite of 80 etchings. To my mind, these nightmare scenes, depicting atrocities committed by both the Spanish and the French during what the Spanish call the War of Independence, 1808–14, are the most brutally savage protest against cruelty and war that the visual imagination of man has yet conceived. The repulsive power of Goya’s art was harnessed to create a landmark anti-war protest—one that echo’s through the ages—a protest undertaken by a highly gifted, dark and troubled mind. Following the completion of this work, Goya virtually retired from public life. Rex Irwin Art Dealer’s staging of ‘The Disasters of War’ exhibition should illustrate to all collectors that the best of art is often found on the walls of a commercial art gallery and not in art museums. With few exceptions, the best of art is sold through the art dealer network before ending up in the white cube of the art museum. Artists have always undertaken work with the hard quick cash of the private collector and not the art museum in mind. In terms of art acquisitions, art museums have always been towards the mid-range of the big buck buying chain—private collectors have always had more cash, and they move faster. Irwin’s first edition suite of etchings, carrying as they do the provenance of the Infanta Maria de la Paz of Spain, is to my mind a more interesting edition than the artist’s proof copy, held by the British Museum. The British Museum’s artist’s proof copy, or that printing example run off by the artist in order to see how the whole thing looks in the first instance, lacks tone. The artist’s proof copy is all too fresh. Subsequent printing from the same plate softened


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the later etchings, providing a velvety black beauty not found to the same degree in the artist’s proof. In terms of an etching’s value, unconventionally their price depends solely on the collectability of the image and not the quality of work within the image. So in some cases the technically better etchings within The Disasters of War suite may sell for $1500; while in others, the less technically accomplished but nonetheless punchier blood-and-guts-type etching makes $5000. It is believed that Irwin’s copy of this rare first edition—all 80 etchings—was secured at Sotheby’s in London in 2002 for around $65 000. It is interesting to note that, prior to the exhibition opening, more than half the etchings were bought by artists. Alongside linocuts, silk screens, woodcuts, mezzo tints and a variety of other production processes, etchings as a body of work are all referred to under the old term of prints or, to be terribly modern, as works on paper. Irrespective of the broad label, prints have a popular appeal in a way not shared by paintings. Prints are readily available in large quantities, are generally sold at relatively modest prices and come in a greater range of subject matter. The practice of buying anything, no matter what, that happens to take your fancy isn’t one that can be recommended when forming a print collection. It is well known that print collectors don’t headhunt artists’ signatures to the same often shameless degree as do painting collectors. Why? Because print collections can be formed around themes and categories—for example, prints of famous inland explorers, wildlife or, for that matter, polo—in a way quite impossible today with watercolours and oils. Collectors are advised to use the medium’s strength, to capitalise on the sheer diversity of print subject matter to form collections centred on their own specific interests. For is it not far more fulfilling to pursue your own, often rather quirky tastes? For the record, I have a suite of etchings undertaken in Paris by the well-known Australian artist John Dent. When it comes to resale, buyers have always warmed to and paid a premium for private collections formed from the heart and with a mind’s eye to a particular style or flavour. Aside from the avalanche of subject matter available to print collectors, the very art of printmaking itself is a rather interesting topic of discovery. The process of making prints seduces many a collector, and it is far from uncommon for collectors to buy works



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along a particular theme across a variety of printmaking processes. To gain a handle on prints, collectors are advised to buy at least one easy-to-digest art reference book, and I suggest Paul Goldman’s Looking at Prints, Drawings and Watercolours: A guide to technical terms, published by J. Paul Getty Museum Publications (1989). Closer to home, Richard Neville, curator of picture research at the State Library of New South Wales, published in 2002 a work on Australian printmaking prior to the gold rush of the mid-1800s. Fresh scholarship in any field has a tendency to excite collectors and push prices north. Collectors should try to gain an understanding of the etching process itself. A plate of polished metal, usually copper, is coated with a dark acid-resistant film known as the ground. The etcher then draws a design upon the plate with a steel etching needle, which is held like a pen and cuts through the dark ground to expose the bright metal. The plate is then dipped in acid. The acid bites into the metal wherever the etcher’s needle has pierced the dark ground. The ground is cleaned off. Ink is rubbed over the metal plate and runs into the etched and acid cut grooves. Excess ink on the surface of the plate is rubbed off, leaving the ink in the grooves from which to print. Drawing is straightforward, while etching requires great technical skill. For my book, drawing and printmaking are both arts.

Collecting photography Colonial photography Over the decades writers of Australian art history have tended to somewhat breathlessly over-hype the role of late nineteenthcentury painters in the artistic rediscovery of the Australian landscape. Heroic images of our unique natural light, the enormous space we inhabit and the splendid isolation in which all this is framed are too readily associated, almost exclusively, with the development of the 1880s Heidelberg school of Australian art. Photographers, however, arrived in Australia as early as the 1840s and were the first group of art professionals to see the light. The first professional photographer known to have worked in Australia was George Goodman, who arrived from England on


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5 November 1842. After taking lessons from Louis Daguerre in Paris, Goodman purchased a licence to take photographs within the British colonies. Goodman’s earliest work tended to be portraits, for which he charged one guinea each. Photography very swiftly made its presence felt on portraiture. The universal appeal of wanting an accurate likeness of yourself or your family proved to be the death knell for the more expensive hand-painted portrait miniatures. But the same period that witnessed the rise of photography and the fall of portrait miniatures also gave rise to the first grave doubts as to photography’s artistic validity. The Sydney Morning Herald of 14 January 1845 stated that these first daguerreotypes had ‘a want of life in the portraits, and a sameness in all, which made many prefer the ordinary miniature paintings’. Another Herald reporter referred on 4 May 1846 to the ‘cadaverous unearthly appearance of these pioneer portraits’. The essence of the criticism that surfaced in the Herald during the mid-1840s still lingers. However, the international art market debate over photography’s status as an art form was settled long ago. Leading exponents of early Australian photography, such as John Lindt, Charles Kerry, Richard Daintree, Nicholas Caire and Charles Pickering—all pre-Heidelberg school—bathed their subjects and landscapes in a world of shadow and sunshine. It was early Australian photographers, and not Australian Impressionist painters, that first mined the unique differences inherent in our light, landscape and people. Much of the early work of Australian photographers was of an international standard. Bernard Holtermann and Charles Bayliss set a then Australian record for any photograph at auction in 1994 for a colonial work. The 1876 Holtermann Panorama of Melbourne, the property of Heytesbury Holdings via the Holmes à Court Collection, sold for $17 250 to the La Trobe Library, Melbourne. Putting Holtermann’s incredibly rare and important panorama to one side, most early Australian photographic prints from around the 1880s sell for under $1000. Compare this to the established photographic markets in London and New York, where early photography consistently achieves strong prices. The relative availability at affordable prices of Australia’s best early photography may well indicate a somewhat soft, and therefore good, buyer’s market.



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Unlike most other art forms, the market for early photographs tends to be predominantly image-driven. It isn’t advisable to buy any early photograph solely on the name of the photographer; the image itself must be a collector’s first priority. If the image is interesting and the photograph is the work of a well-known photographer, then and only then has the collector obtained an added bonus. The real money in early photography always remains in the image. Rare early images—for example, an outdoor daguerreotype of a cityscape—would be far more sought after than images taken by a known photographer indoors. Why? Because it was so difficult to obtain an outdoor image with the cumbersome photographic technology of the day. So, alongside the importance of the image itself, is the importance and rarity of the early photographic process—there are a dozen or so differing types of early photographic processes. The most valuable period for early Australian photography tends to be pre-1860s, while the most accessible period tends to be work pre-1880s—a pair of outdoor daguerreotypes that comprised a panorama of Sydney by Charles Bayliss sold to the National Gallery for $10 000. As with paintings and works on paper, location, subject matter and quality are all-important considerations when collecting early Australian photography. Many early photographs derive their main interest and worth by depicting locations and subjects radically changed by the modern world. The more information you can unearth about the image, then the more dramatically will its value increase. Location: Early metropolitan or town views attract considerable interest from collectors, libraries and art museums. The market for much early photography was originally driven by libraries wanting to visually complement their Australian literary holdings. A good 1870s view of the city of Sydney will in 2004 achieve between $1000 and $2000, photographs of other capital cities somewhat less. The same Sydney view taken in the 1890s will achieve around $600, while an 1870s view of a country town begins at around $300. Subject: As with associated books and manuscripts of their day, early depictions of Aboriginal people are keenly sought after. A large body of studio portraiture taken of Aborigines has


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developed a consistent collecting profile. Reconstructed Aboriginal portraits act, in many instances, as a visual indication to colonial attitudes. Photographs of Aborigines placed in a studio setting throughout the late nineteenth century were in essence sanitised propaganda. John Lindt’s modestly clad stereotypes of an Aboriginal people ultimately subdued were, in their day, sold to a worldwide audience as visual proof of the tamed noble Australian savage. An unrealistic comfort to early settlers, such images today sell for $1000 to $3000 (heavily depending on condition). In terms of subject, portraits of known sitters, identifiable locations, or objects of historic or scientific importance are all images that, due to their content, encourage continual interest and resale value. Condition: Photographs are not easily repaired. You fade, I fade, and photographs not looked after fade as well. Although the general rule is that a good image in poor condition will be of little resale value, if the image has great desirability and rarity, the rarity in an early photograph may outweigh any condition problem. Buy photographs in good condition and keep them away from direct sunlight. Early Australian photographs are far more than mere snapshots. Colonial photography was the forerunner in style to the development of numerous trends in Australian art history. Early Australian photography provides a window through which the collector can view the genesis of our national identity. They are images of who we were and a reflection of how we saw ourselves.

Modern and contemporary photography Following the First World War, the mass production of consumer durables over exposed photography. As industry re-tooled to a peacetime footing, mass production and marketing of consumer products enabled the general public to access cameras as never before—e.g. the Box Brownie and a flood of inexpensive photographic paper. Aesthetic standards plunged, and photography as an art form suffered. ‘Photographic’ soon became a term to be rigorously avoided by all painters—and so it remains today. The general public’s perception that photography was a mild amusement, a substitute and somewhat poor relation to painting,



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has prevented photography’s due recognition as an independent art form for well over a century. In Australia, this perception began to change in the late 1960s, when through the efforts of photographers Athol Smith and John Cato a department of photography was established at the National Gallery of Victoria. The Sydneybased Australian Centre of Photography opened in 1974 and the tide turned. Red-letter dates and periods for the development of the Australian photographic market include the following events: • In the early 1970s, Gael Newton, now senior curator of photography at the National Gallery of Australia, was employed as the first full-time curator of photography in any Australian art institution. • In 1973 the National Gallery of Victoria established Australia’s first stand-alone photography department in a public art gallery. • In 1975, Bill Henson became the youngest artist to be awarded a survey show at the National Gallery of Victoria. • In 1976 the National Gallery of Victoria held retrospective exhibitions of Max Dupain and David Moore. • In 1981 the Art Gallery of New South Wales held another Max Dupain retrospective. • In 1981 the Australian Commonwealth scheme Taxation Incentives for the Arts (now the Cultural Gifts Program) led to numerous gifts, including a Philip Morris donation of 895 photographs. • In late 2003 to early 2004, the Museum of Contemporary Art held the important exhibition, Tracey Moffatt—her second, major art museum exhibition. Invaluable reference texts for those interested in collecting modern photography include Jack Cato’s The Story of the Camera in Australia (1955); Gael Newton’s Silver and Grey: 50 years of Australian photography 1900–1950 (1980) and her 1988 work, Shades of Light: Photography in Australia 1839–1988; and Helen Ennis’s Picturing Australia (1988). Established for more than twenty years in North America and Europe, the art market in photography is finally coming of age in


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Australia. Playing an increasingly important role in the local art scene, the Australian photographic market offers collectors the opportunity to buy examples of work from the best practitioners at affordable prices. In collecting photography there are entry points for just about every budget. Photography is one of the few remaining mediums in which it is still possible for a collector of modest means to form a major collection. Key images from Australia’s leading twentieth-century photographers sell in most instances for under $3000. Of the 151 Max Dupain (1911–92) photographs sold at auction between 1994 and 2003, the average price was $3729. The highest price paid at auction for a Dupain photograph stands at $22 800 for his print Bondi (1939). Unlike the majority of photographers, Dupain’s work continues to reach out to overseas collectors. One of his key images—Manly Beach (1938)—was recently centre stage in Lisbon, Portugal where it was illustrated on the front cover of a major international photographic exhibition catalogue entitled Waterproof. Since the start of the new millenium, lagging ever so slightly behind, yet nonetheless mirroring the North American art market experience, selected contemporary Australian photographs from a core of high-profile photographers have gone off with a sales bang. By now many would be familiar with Tracey Moffatt’s large, coloursoaked autobiographical image Something More, 1 (1989). Having come from a thin sale at auction base in 2001, in twelve months Moffatt’s work had smashed all records for prices achieved at auction for photography. In 2002 her work soared to $223 250 for a suite of six cibachrome prints and three black and white photographs—Something More, 1 was part of that suite. Individually Something More, 1 (in various printings), pre and post the sales record, has come to auction five times since 2001; prices for the 1989 print have settled to a steady but nonetheless whopping $88 000. The important Museum of Contemporary Art’s late 2003 to 2004 ‘Tracey Moffatt’ show has further consolidated the photographer’s reputation and values. The photographic Archibald Prize, or more precisely the inaugural Citigroup Private Bank Photography Portraiture Prize, held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2003, contained a number of visual clues as to the rapid market success and future



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direction of contemporary photography. The Citibank Prize, which proved vastly more interesting and far more of a crowd puller than the adjoining painting Archibald Prize, contained many wall-sized photographs that to a degree mimic the physicality of much contemporary painting. Spookily enough, over the course of its 165-year life span, photography has had a complicated relationship with painting. As photography in the nineteenth century depicted the world with greater visual accuracy, painting veered from realism to Impressionism. As the Post-Impressionist painters ventured back towards the representational, many art-camera groups such as the Sydney Photo Circle experimented with a painterly, out-of-focus camera style. In the 1960s, the Photo Realist painters concerned themselves directly with optical precision; and over the last few years contemporary photography, like contemporary painting, has grown in scale to wall-sized proportions. The technology now available to contemporary photographers allows them to work on a far greater scale than was previously imagined—in some cases, whole buildings have become the photographer’s new canvas. The sheer size and wall power of much contemporary photography has brought it to a head-to-head struggle, vying as it now does, with painting, for the attentions of contemporary collectors. A CASE STUDY IN APPRECIATION OF DAVID MOORE, PHOTOGRAPHER The death of photographer David Moore in January 2003, at the age of seventy-five, has resulted in the loss to Australia of one of our foremost artists. A creator of iconic images, Moore’s career was forged at the highpoint of international photojournalism. It was a talent tempered amidst the rough and tumble of high-profile international assignments for publications such as TimeLife, Fortune, National Geographic, The New York Times and The Observer. Moore’s work is held in major collections throughout the world, not the least of which are the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Le Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Known and collected overseas, at home Moore’s photography is broadly appreciated and will continue to appreciate. Moore’s accumulated photographic archive now amounts to more than 200 000 images. The breadth and depth of his working life, a period of


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over 50 years, produced an extraordinary collection of diverse material. Seizing this very theme by the curatorial throat, Gael Newton, senior curator of photography at the National Gallery of Australia—and our foremost authority on photography, opened ‘The Spread of Time, The Photography of David Moore’. This exhibition was a photography must visit. Regardless of whether Moore’s photographs are black-and-white or colour, whether they were taken in the 1950s or 40 years later, the golden artistic thread that binds all his work was an ongoing fascination with the structure of the image within each frame. Moore had an eye for both design and detail. Moore looked to the geometry of a photograph, the relationship between all the elements depicted, no matter how small. Moore’s strong sense of photographic design, of immediate visual impact, coupled with quality output, an eye for detail and a nose for the popular, all combine to underpin his broad art market acceptance. Irrespective of whether collectors acquire paintings, porcelain or furniture, across the broad field of the arts almost everyone responds to Moore’s work. And I can attest to this from personal experience. For I collect photography and hang around 30 photographs along my dark—no direct natural light, please—corridor to the kitchen. Moore’s quintessential late 1940s Australian depression photograph entitled Redfern Interior is guaranteed to stop visitors in their tracks every time. The bleak yet compelling image of a struggling family in a Redfern slum was one of only two photographs included in Edward Steichen’s famous exhibition, ‘Family of Man’, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955. It pulled the crowds then and still does. Despite the sheer volume of Moore prints sold, his work tends to be tightly held by collectors and rarely comes to the auction market. (This is in contrast to the paintings market, which is somewhat of an art recycler’s dream, throwing up for sale as this market does many of the same paintings every fifteen years or so.) The significant sales outlets for Moore’s worth remain the retail galleries—Josef Lebovic Galleries in Sydney and Christine Abraham’s Gallery in Melbourne. On Moore’s thin secondary market—the floor of the auction rooms—the inherent strength of his images has enabled them to sustain consistent resale values. At auction Moore’s work averages around $2000 an image, the highest price at auction paid for a Moore photograph being $6600 for a non-vintage print of the photograph, Sisters of Charity, Washington DC. In what can only be considered as an inspirational burst of late professional energy, in early 2000 Moore tackled one of his last great



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photographic assignments, producing as he did five identical folios of 50 images—the best of the best over the 50 fifty years. The folios, for sale through Josef Lebovic Gallery, include architectural photographs, landscapes and people—images that have resonated across a generation of Australians. The last folio from the series to sell achieved $250 000 in early 2004. For those unable to own one of the folios, a limited edition book produced to accompany the release of the folio and signed by Moore is on offer at $385. For a comprehensive survey of his work, collectors are advised to buy his two-volume work, David Moore: Australian Photographer, chapter & verse, published in 1988 and on sale in many bookshops for around $110.

More importantly, many contemporary images contain a choreographed filmic quality—that is, the photographer has become a director and the photograph radiates that glossy, slick quality that you often associate with a film still. Like a film, many contemporary photographs tend to tell a story, rather than capture that decades-old ‘decisive moment’. Aside from Dupain and Moffatt, blue-chip modern and contemporary Australian photographers include Lyndell Brown and Charles Green (collaboratively), Pat Brassington, Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton, Carol Jerrems, Laurie le Guay, David Moore, Axel Poignant, Robert McFarlane, Bill Henson, Narell Autio, Rosemary Laing, Patricia Piccinini, Leah King-Smith, Ricky Maynard and William Yang, to name but a few. In deciding what to purchase, a collector need go no further than the words of leading American photographer Diane Arbus: ‘It is that which you have never seen which you truly recognise.’ A good photograph should leave the viewer with a better understanding of the sitter, society or the environment. There should exist a degree of emotional intensity in the photograph. Lyndell Brown and Charles Green’s work, The Waves (2003) ($5150 framed), taps into the social/political and visual zeitgeist; it is a contemporary layering of images in the one work. First off we see a daguerreotype (an early form of photography) image of a nineteenth-century Japanese tattooed man (illustrating our then fascination with all things oriental). Juxtaposed with this early image is a photograph of the Tampa, the Norwegian container cargo carrying nearly 500 refugees which arrived in Australia in 2001 under a storm of controversy (representing our rejection of


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the outsider). Overlaying both is the Australian landscape. This photograph looks at the way our social attitudes change over time. It works for me. Along with emotional intensity there are several factors that affect the price a collector will pay for a modern or contemporary photograph, including: • the acknowledged importance (reputation) of the contemporary photographer; • the importance of a particular photographic image in relation to the photographer’s body of work; • the availability of the photograph in question (limitation of the edition); and • the actual condition of the photographic print. It is important for collectors to understand the distinction made within the trade between vintage and modern prints, as this is another factor that will influence price. In early and modern photography, vintage prints are those printed within five to ten years of the date of the developed negative. In contemporary photography the time scale in relation to a vintage print, between taking the photograph and printing the image, would be much less than five years. These prints achieve a price premium. Photographic prints executed after five years are referred to as ‘late printing’ or modern photographic prints. Non-vintage work shouldn’t, however, be viewed as inferior. Some photographers actually prefer doing modern prints, as they often have better equipment as time goes by. Although each photographic print is unique, photographers sometimes ‘edition’ their photographs so that collectors know precisely how many prints have been produced from any one negative at any one time. Each photographer takes up a different practice in this regard—be aware of the differences. This is how it is done with etchings. Editioning is a recent practice. A CASE STUDY IN APPRECIATION OF ARTHUR BOYD, MODERN MASTER In 1999 we experienced the tragic loss of artist Arthur Boyd, the multitalented painter, potter, etcher, lithographer and ceramic artist. A number of subsequent exhibitions provided collectors with a timely opportunity to



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critically break down Boyd’s oeuvre, or body of work, into its primary dates and themes. Tackled with a broad brush, the following are the important periods and series of paintings within each period to watch out for. Aside from an early inclination to paint the landscape, Boyd’s teenage works from the late 1930s, mostly views in and around Murrumbeena and Rosebud in Victoria, contain a number of common threads. Boyd’s early works are invariably small; he painted outdoors, scooting between vistas on his bicycle, so obviously transportation problems were a major influence on the size of his canvases during this period. In a creative sense, these gemlike domestic works display an innovative use of paint applied with a palette knife. Boyd’s works from this period are relatively undervalued. As could be expected, the Second World War and the fallout of two atomic bombs had a devastating effect on Boyd’s world view. Reflecting a time of horror and despair, Boyd’s then apocalyptic works drew their inspiration from the damnation of the Old Testament and the chaotic, riotous art of sixteenth-century Flemish painter Pieter Breughel. In terms of both academic importance and the marketplace, this period of Boyd’s art is by far the most coveted and expensive. The majority of works from this period are in institutions. When and if such works come to the market, as one did in 1999 at Sotheby’s, then expect stellar prices. In that sale a dark, academic and some would consider difficult work entitled Abraham and the Angels (1946) sold to a private room bidder for $398 500. Today you could double that. Still under the shadow of despair during the late 1940s, Boyd headed inland to the emptiness of northwestern Victoria. In a succession of landscapes known as the Wimmera series, he depicted the toil and loneliness of farming a seemingly barren land. Heading further inland during a tour of central Australia in the early 1950s, Boyd became acutely aware of the dereliction and poverty experienced by ‘half-caste’ Aboriginal people, falling as many did between two antagonistic worlds. Conceived as in a dream, Boyd’s Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-caste (the Bride) series is a monument to the tragic impossibility of the mixed-marriage love—a strong universal theme dripping with Boyd’s disdain for racism. In that series the half-caste bride leads her Aboriginal lover away from potential harmony to eventual disaster. The record price to date for a painting from this series was established in 2001 at $1 057 500 for the large oil, Bridegroom Waiting for His Bride to Grow Up (1958). The work carried an auction estimate of $600 000 to $900 000. From the mid-1970s an older, less angst-ridden Boyd returned to the tranquillity of landscapes and water he had first discovered as an innocent


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youth. The Shoalhaven series, extending as it does over decades, ranges from a small number of exquisite works on copper through to massive water views. Boyd dipped in and out of the same or similar themes throughout his life. Aside from some important exceptions, collectors in the market for a Boyd are advised to buy artworks from within these periods and themes: • • • •

teenage works of the late 1930s, which are undervalued; the Wimmera series of the late 1940s; the Bride series from the early 1950s to the early 1960s; and the Shoalhaven series from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.

A CASE STUDY IN APPRECIATION OF SIDNEY NOLAN, MODERN MASTER In 2001 Sotheby’s trounced all opposition, to snare a significant sale of ninety-five artworks from the Estate of Sir Sidney Nolan. Following Nolan’s death in 1992, his estate had been negotiating with the British government over back taxes. The sale represented a then $2.5 million fine art spill, with the majority of the works fresh to the market. This one-off, highly specialised auction, comprising as it did a single artist’s offering from one of Australia’s better known and most accomplished and prodigious artists, afforded the collector an opportunity to view a concise, almost sculptured, sale of artworks that range across Nolan’s broad creative output. Nolan’s work is often experimental and all too regularly patchy; however, there can be no doubt that the art of Sidney Nolan is central to both Australian art history and the art market—Nolan is an uneven force that no one can deny. However, alongside the importance of the artist himself, such a sale provides collectors with an opportunity to understand, map and appreciate the many differentiated creative periods within any artist’s life. Collectors are encouraged to use the Nolan sale as an art market exercise, to chart and appreciate why art scholars and the art market prize one period of time—or series of pictures painted within that period—over and above other paintings painted in different years. An understanding of the artistic hierarchy of Nolan’s dates and periods—or, for that matter, any artist—allows the collector to focus their buying, when possible, on those strong artworks or themes from an artist’s best years. Nolan liked to paint in a series, evolving a particular theme, and many of his most significant series were represented in that Sotheby’s sale: the small and highly personalised Tent and Angel paintings, of which top-quality works are estimated at $18 000–$25 000 (sold $31 150); to the haunting,



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beautiful Wimmera series (yes, he had one too), illustrated as I have never seen before in a delightful watercolour, (Lot 95) on offer at $3000–$5000 (sold $8 700); and representative works ranging from his Central Australian work to the D.H. Lawrence and China series. However, Nolan’s best-known works are based partly on historical narratives, such as the Ned Kelly, Burke & Wills, Mrs Fraser and Gallipoli series. Although it must be said that, in terms of his historical narratives, Nolan’s aim was to convey emotion, rather than any details from the past. By far the most famous Nolan series is that of Ned Kelly. And let us use this series to highlight the different pricing structures that come into play with Nolan’s work. Of the original suite of Kelly paintings produced between 1945 and 1947, only First Class Marksman remains in private hands. Sotheby’s originally sold First Class Marksman in 1989 for $825 000—a price five times that of any other Nolan at auction until the late 1990s. At the beginning of the last recession in the early 1990s, the painting was re-sold privately for around $400 000. First Class Marksman is now on loan from the Vizard Foundation to the National Gallery of Victoria. Should that painting come back to the market today, it would carry a low estimate of at least $2 million. A second-series Ned Kelly painting produced in 1954 and entitled Death of Constable Scanlon sold in mid-2000 for $1.3 million—an auction record for the artist. Second-series Kellys are becoming increasingly scarce. However, Nolan in the mid-1960s and late 1970s went on to produce a third and fourth series of Kellys. There were no third-series Kellys represented in that sale. However, fourth-series Kellys abound. Lot 21, simply entitled Ned Kelly, painted in the late 1970s, came with an estimate of $35 000–$45 000 (sold $81 750), while Lot 75, another fourth-series Kelly, entitled Kelly V and painted in 1979, carried an estimate of $30 000–$40 000 (sold $56 450). In yet another dimension to the same theme, Lot 1, featuring a 1970s wool tapestry, also entitled Death of Constable Scanlon, carried an estimate of $50 000–$80 000 (sold $70 250). So why does the art market financially distinguish between years with early Kelly images ranging from a million dollars, down to the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid for his 1960s images and the tens of thousands of dollars for his later 1970s work? What distinguished between images that are not dissimilar, painted in the same medium by the same artist? Well, the feeling of an early painting can be quite simply different, and the art market pays for that difference. In collecting the paintings of a great artist, a


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collector absorbs the framework of their ideas, the artist’s understanding of their visual world, their intellectual and imaginative power. In collecting early examples of an artist’s oeuvre, you are acquiring the history of the transmission of those ideas. It places you nearer to the artist; it puts you, so to speak, several metres further into the studio of Sidney Nolan. And that’s a very big deal. A TIME LINE OF NOLAN’S CREATIVE OUTPUT 1938–41 Early abstracts: Angel and Flowers; Tent series; Luna Park 1942–43 War and the Wimmera: golden modernist landscapes 1945–47 First Ned Kelly series 1945 Earliest Burke & Wills painting; St Kilda series 1947 Queensland paintings (early Mrs Fraser) 1948–50 Outback subjects including hotels, Burke & Wills series and ‘aerial’ landscapes; paintings on glass 1953 Carcass series—the Queensland drought 1954–55 Second Ned Kelly series 1956–57 Greece, Troy and Gallipoli series 1958–60 Leda and Swan and second Mrs Fraser series 1961–62 Second Burke & Wills series 1963 Africa series 1964 Antarctica series 1965–66 Robert Lowell’s poetry—Dante and Juvenal; further Kelly and Burke & Wills paintings 1968–73 Paradise Garden, Snake and Shark series 1970s Tapestries 1972 Miners series 1974 Oedipus series 1970s–80s Further Kelly and Burke & Wills subjects 1982 D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo series 1980s Large aerosol landscapes and abstracts; Chinese subjects


Artists to

watch Chapter 3

Who’s who of sculpture It is mid-year and the annual round of media hype concerning the amount of prize money awarded for portrait painting in Australia has come and gone. The smudges and dribbles of the art world engender enormous amounts of press coverage. Be that as it may, the title of Australia’s richest contemporary art prize is actually shared between portraiture and sculpture. At $105 000, the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award is one of the more lucrative prizes on the local art world calendar. Developed from the bequest of the late Keith Wood, the Melbourne-based biennial prize and exhibition was created in honour of his late wife—the painter Helen Lempriere. Alongside the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award is the Canberrabased National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition ($50 000) and the Sydney-based Sculpture by the Sea award ($20 000). These highly important prizes are not only stimulating huge public interest in sculpture but they are also generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in sculpture sales and an increasingly discerning audience. Established as a joint partnership between the National Gallery in Canberra and Macquarie Bank, the introduction of the National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition went a long way to influence the


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current market appeal for large-scale sculpture exhibitions being staged both indoors and outdoors. Aimed at promoting sculpture in Australia, these types of events bring together the best of contemporary sculpture and the results have proven popular among artists and collectors alike. Sculpture has long been seen as a neglected medium compared to painting. However, sculpture’s strength lies in its durability and placement. The success of ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ lies in its stunning, yet accessible location along the Bondi to Tamarama walk in Sydney. In 2003 over 300 000 visitors to the exhibition witnessed the work of among the best of emerging, mid-career and established sculptors in Australia today. Many visitors who accidentally stumbled across ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ have now become its biggest supporters. As a result of public interest, an education and public program will be introduced in 2004 allowing the public an opportunity to speak with participating artists. Thanks to the corporate sponsorship dollar, every year two internationally renowned Australian sculptors create or contribute a work to the exhibition. The demand of exhibition sales and collector commissions has seen the development of Sculpture by the Sea Art Services. This service produces an e-newsletter, an informative guide to works for sale and profiles of sculptors. Sculpture by the Sea Art Services sources and installs sculptures to meet the specific needs of private and corporate clients, property developers, local councils and art consultants. It boasts the largest database of sculptors in Australia. Sculpture by the Sea Art Services placed some $420 000 worth of sculpture with new clients in 2003. The death of Australian sculptor Robert Klippel in 2001 placed a spotlight on the individual achievements of Australian sculptors. The ‘Robert Klippel Retrospective Exhibition’, held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2003, was heralded as the finest solo exhibition of an Australian sculptor to date. Over 250 pieces of the sculptor’s best collages, assemblage, abstract and figurative sculpture was on view. In addition to the free exhibition, the Art Gallery of New South Wales published a comprehensive art reference book and CD-ROM catalogue raisonné. Alleged to be the first of its kind produced on an Australian artist, it provides information on more than 1200 of Klippel’s sculptures.


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The absolute blue-chip names of Australian contemporary sculpture—such as the late Akio Makigawa, Inge King AO, Tom Risley, Bronwyn Oliver, Fiona Hall, Richard Goodwin, Andrew Rogers and Ron Robertson-Swann OAM—can, on average, be purchased for a fraction of what is paid for their painting contemporaries of the same standing. Formerly an assistant to Henry Moore, Ron Robertson-Swann OAM—is represented and exhibited both nationally and internationally. A recipient of the J.B. Were Distinguished Invited Artist Award at the 2002 ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ exhibition, his works range in value from $5 000 to the monumental $120 000 for commissioned steel installations. However, for those with a modest budget and an aesthetic sense of humour, an absolute hit at the 2002 ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ exhibition was Claire Healy’s Tamarama installation entitled Oasis: a large above-ground swimming pool, fenced to keep the riff-raff out, with accompanying fake palms—with or without swimmers, yours for $15 000. With between twenty and 100 sculptors short-listed in each prize, it is now time for us to consider who will last the distance commercially, critically and art historically. It has to be said from the outset that, from my experience, it won’t be the curatorially slick ‘museum-style’ sculpture that whips buyers into a sustained frenzy. As always, beware of any art accompanied by a lengthy essay! To my mind, those sculptors that will make it through the laundromat of life will inevitably produce readily accessible (without gimmicks), versatile sculptures that thrive in the home, office and garden. The passing of several great sculptors since the mid-1990s has stimulated a surge in retrospectives and dedicated sculpture prizes and exhibitions. However, amid all this activity, it is near impossible for collectors to obtain a solid working list of significant Australian sculptors. The following lists are offered to collectors who aspire to develop a more discerning eye for sculpture. Compiled with the assistance of my colleague Genevieve Carson, a curator and specialist in Australian sculpture, we have created our working list—it’s not exhaustive, but it’s a damned good start. The selection should appeal to all tastes, whether you prefer more classical, figurative sculpture or something a little less conservative and abstract. These sculptors have earned the recognition


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of being included in major art prizes, exhibitions or retrospectives. Many are the creators of art in public spaces, and several have been at the centre of healthy controversy over public art commissions. Many of these mid-career sculptors have weathered art market cycles and have built strong, enduring reputations. TABLE 3.1 Artist Lyndon Raymond Dadswell (1908–86) Margel Ina Harris Hinder (1906–95) Rayner Hoff (1894–37) Robert Klippel (1920–2001) Gerald Lewers (1905–62) Edgar Bertram Mackennal (1863–1931) Akio Makigawa (1948–99) Lenton Parr (1924–2003) Anthony Pryor (1951–97) Oliffe Richmond (1919–77) Kathleen Shillam AM (1916–2002) Howard Taylor (1918–2001) Barbara Tribe (1913–2000)

Mediums

Style

bronze, plaster copper, timber, bronze

figurative & abstract abstract

bronze, stone bronze, timber, steel bronze, steel bronze

figurative abstract abstract figurative

marble & stainless steel steel, painted, concrete steel, painted bronze, aluminium bronze, stone

abstract abstract abstract figurative & cubist figurative

bronze, timber bronze, ceramic, stone

abstract figurative

TABLE 3.2 LIVING CONTEMPORARY SCULPTORS Artist Mediums

Style

Tom Bass (1916– ) Peter D. Cole (1946– )

figurative abstract

Augustine dall’Ava (1950– ) Anne Ferguson (1939– ) Herbert (Bert) Flugelman (1923– )

bronze timber, marble, bronze, steel stainless steel, marble, stones, azure, quartzite steel, marble, granite bronze, timber, mild & stainless steel

abstract abstract abstract


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TABLE 3.2 LIVING CONTEMPORARY SCULPTORS (CONTINUED) Artist Mediums Style Marea Gazzard (1928– ) Richard Goodwin (1953– ) Nigel Harrison (1956– ) David Jensz (1957– ) Inge King OA (1918– ) Phyllis Koshland (1949– ) Michael Le Grand (1951– ) Hilarie Mais (1952– ) Ian McKay (1936– ) Clement Meadmore (1929– ) Ron Mueck (1958– ) Brownyn Oliver (1959– ) Michael Snape (1951– ) Ron Robertson-Swann OAM (1941– ) Ken Unsworth (1931– ) Richard Goodwin (1953– )

ceramic steel, cloth, timber mild & stainless steel, timber steel, timber steel, bronze bronze steel, painted steel, timber, mixed media steel steel, painted fibreglass copper steel steel, painted steel, river stones, mixed media steel, mixed media

abstract figurative abstract abstract abstract figurative abstract abstract abstract abstract figurative abstract abstract figurative abstraction abstract figurative

TABLE 3.3 THE NEXT GENERATION: SCULPTORS TO WATCH Artist Mediums Style Angus Adameitis (1979– ) Sebastian Di Mauro (1955– ) Anna Eggert (1952– ) Robert Hague (1967– ) Deborah Halpern (1957– ) Donna Marcus (1960– ) Russell McQuilty (1951– ) James Powditch (1966– )

steel, oiled & painted astroturf, polystyrene stainless steel mesh, paint, glass beads steel, painted bronze, ceramic, foam, fibreglass stainless steel, aluminium steel, paint timber, paint, steel, mixed media

abstract abstract figurative abstract figurative abstract abstract abstract


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TABLE 3.3 THE NEXT GENERATION: SCULPTORS TO WATCH (CONTINUED) Artist Mediums Style Alexander Seton (1977– ) Duncan Stemler (1963– ) Andrew Thompson (1973– ) Ah Xian (1960– )

marble, sandstone, limestone, steel stainless steel sandstone, stainless steel cloisonné ware

figurative abstract abstract figurative

Earlier neglected Australian artists Mortimer Menpes and Violet Teague A neglected artist can be a collector’s special friend. Each generation of collectors discovers, but at the same time overlooks or discards, any number of painters, sculptors and photographers. The work of the discovered artist is pored over, published and lionised. Discovered artists are propelled into the public consciousness, their critical success more often than not capped off by a new and substantial asking price for their artwork. Those artists who never quite make it, or who make it big and subsequently burn out, invariably slide into a kind of art market suspended animation. The art world terminology used when describing this distinction between first-rung and second-rung artists is ‘major’ and ‘minor’ artists. The theory is that although minor artists are often capable of remarkable individual pieces, on balance their general body of work is considered inconsistent, unfashionable and thus inferior in rank to the more sought-after work by major artists. Distressingly, Australian collectors have a tendency to be crushingly parochial in their buying. Quite often the so-called minor artists of an earlier generation were relegated to their now lowly academic or art market status simply because they travelled extensively or lived for long periods overseas. The turn-of-thecentury work by influential Anglo-Australian artist Mortimer Menpes (1855–1938) immediately springs to mind. Menpes is one of the few Australian artists, dead or alive, who is regularly


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exhibited overseas. His work has been shown in recent years at the Barbican Gallery in London, the Grand Palais in Paris, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington and the Setagaya Art Museum in Tokyo—to name but a few high-profile art museums. In contrast to his continued international success, Menpes has struggled to maintain a profile on the secondary art market in Australia. Many local collectors and art museums have simply forgotten Menpes. Although he was born in Adelaide, any number of influential overseas art reference books refer to him as British. He was well known at the turn of the twentieth century. His later relegation to minor status was partly due to his extensive travelling. He spent time in India, Japan, Mexico, Morocco and Egypt, and lived for many years in England. There was also a certain amount of envy in his later treatment. Unlike most other Australian artists living in London at that time, such as Tom Roberts, Menpes was immensely successful. In the 1890s, when London was the wealthiest city in the world, Menpes was said to have been the most exhibited artist of the decade. His grand Chelsea mansion, designed by the celebrated architect Arthur Mackmurdo, still stands as a testimony to his prosperity. A once major but now minor artist—a classic out-of-sight, out-of-mind scenario. Menpe’s artwork awaits rediscovery. Art world distinctions and stereotypes are hard to shake. Unfortunately, once placed in this major–minor caste system, it is very hard for a minor artist to move up the ladder. However, great academic and financial returns are available to collectors who revisit a minor artist’s body of work through fresh eyes. Collectors are advised to consider bucking the trend and buying selectively from the work of good but neglected artists. In so doing, collectors can obtain top-quality work inexpensively. And there is always the possibility that artists will be reclassified up the status pole from minor to major significance. This happened in the case of the National Trust’s exhibition at S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney of the ‘Art of Violet Teague 1872–1951’, co-curated by Felicity Druce, grandniece of the artist, and Jane Clark, a director of Sotheby’s Australia. Violet Teague was among Australia’s most internationally recognised artists around the turn of the twentieth century, winning medals for her work in America and Europe. Her lush portrait style was


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compared favourably to that of the master of the serene portrait, Rupert Bunny. She painted open-air ‘impressions’ with Phillips Fox at Heidelberg. She was a pioneering figure in Australian printmaking with her delightful Japanese-style woodblocks, while her altar paintings and murals were remarkably ambitious in both scale and composition. Along with so many Australians of her generation, Teague responded wholeheartedly to the First World War, putting aside her own art to raise funds for the Allied cause. The further contraction of Teague’s personal world in the late 1920s, when she virtually retired to care for her ageing father, essentially ended her career. Teague’s work has not had a sole exhibition since 1938. Not surprisingly, Teague’s impact on the Australian art market has been slight. Since the early 1990s eight works have been offered to the market, of which five have sold. The top price was $28 750 for the large portrait of Margaret Alice sold by Christie’s in 1993. The average price for a work by Teague is just over $6000. Disappointingly, a good, late maritime study entitled Cloud of Sail was unsold on the hammer with expectations of $10 000 at one Christie’s Melbourne sale. Teague’s work on the whole commands modest prices. It is difficult to find Teague mentioned in many of the standard Australian art reference works. She remains missing from the index of both Mary Eagle’s Story of Australian Paintings and Christopher Allen’s Art in Australia, although Teague does crack a whole sentence in Bernard Smith’s Australian Painting 1788–1990. She is also mentioned in Alan and Susan McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art and in Janine Burke’s Australian Women Artists 1840–1940. In the case of Violet Teague, collectors need to learn to look beyond the horizons of the pack.

Other neglected Australian artists Also neglected are the following Australian artists: • • • • •

Harold Cazneaux, photographer (1878–1953) Sir William Dargie (1912–2003) Sir Ivor Hele (1912–93) Nora Heysen (1911–2003) Isaac Walter Jenner (1836–1902)


Artists to watch

• • • • • • • • •

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George Washington Lambert (1873–1930) J.W. Lindt, photographer (1845–1926) Joseph Lycett, book illustrator (1774–1828) Mortimer Menpes (1855–1938) Hilda Rix Nicholas (1884–1961) Harold Septimus Power (1878–1951) Thea Proctor (1879–1966) David Strachan (1919–70) Roland Wakelin (1887–1971)

Recently rediscovered Australian artists Look out for these recently rediscovered artists: • • • • • • • •

Jean Appleton (1911– ) Herbert Badham (1899–1961) Clarice Beckett (1887–1935) Olive Cotton (1911–2003) Grace Crowley (1890–1979) Bessie Davidson (1879–1965) Rah Fizelle (1891–1964) Joy Hester (1920–60)

Earlier neglected Indigenous artists These early Indigenous artists are also neglected: • • • • • • • •

Paddy Jaminji (1912–96) Mawalan Marika I, bark painter (1908–67) Mathaman Marika, bark painter (c. 1920–70) Narritjin Maymuru, bark painter (1922–80) Anatjari Tjampitjinpa (1927–99) Uta Uta Tjangala (1920–90) Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri (c. 1936–84) Munggurrawuy Yunupingu, bark painter (c. 1907–79)

Artists of significance When putting together a list of collectable artists, it is far from difficult to nominate the likes of Ian Fairweather, Rosalie


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Gascoigne, Joy Hester, Robert Klippel, Lloyd Rees, William Robinson, John Peter Russell, Paddy Japaljarri Sims, Jeffrey Smart, Tim Storrier, Rover Thomas [Joolama], Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Tony Tuckson, Fred Williams or the very best of Brett Whiteley—it’s a no-brainer, in fact. These are all established, historically significant artists with a medium- to long-term proven financial track record. In essence, bought at the right price and in good condition, these are blue-chip artists through and through. To add them to my most collectable list—and numerous others—would be nothing short of dumbing down the exercise and stating the bloody obvious. I have compiled my list of most collectable artists with an eye to those artists whose work is still within the budgetary reach of many collectors; to those artists whose output may have been unjustifiably overlooked—and may well be positively revisited by the market. George Tjungurrayi is an artist who has experienced a degree of financial take-off, yet there is still plenty of financial room to move with his art. It is taken as given that you would buy a good, strong example of the artist’s work in good condition from one of their better creative periods.

Artists with room to move in the market Established non-Indigenous artists The following are well-known, regarded non-Indigenous artists with an established following: • • • • • • • • • •

Davida Allen (1951– ) Peter Booth (1940– ) Leonard Brown (1949– ) Cressida Campbell, printmaker (1960– ) Olive Cotton, photographer (1911–2003) Lawrence Daws (1927– ) Ken Done, early works (1940– ) Max Dupain, photographer (1911–92) John Firth-Smith, early works (1943– ) Bill Henson, photographer (1955– )


Artists to watch

• • • • • • • • •

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Michael Johnson (1938– ) David Larwill (1956– ) Noel McKenna (1956– ) Euan McLeod (1948– ) David Moore, photographer (1927–2003) Gwen Hanson Piggott, potter (1935– ) Wendy Sharpe (1960– ) Imants Tillers (1950– ) Ken Whisson (1927)

Established Indigenous artists The following are well-known, regarded Indigenous artists with an established following: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Ian W. Abdulla (1947– ) Gordon Bennett (1955– ) Johnny Bulun Bulun, bark painter (1946– ) Robert Campbell Jnr (1944–93) Butcher Cherel Janangoo (c. 1920– ) Banduk Marika, printmaker (1954– ) John Mawurndjul, bark painter (1952– ) George Milpurrurru, bark painter (1934–98) Robin Nganjmirra, bark painter (1951–91) Trevor Nickolls (1949– ) Lin Onus (1948–96) Jack Jakamarra Ross (1922– ) Ken Thaiday Snr (1950– ) Thancoupie (1937– ) Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, early works (c. 1932–2002) Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri (1960– ) George Tjungurrayi (1947– ) Judy Napangardi Watson (1925– ) Roy Wiggan (1930– )

Artists with a developing track record I categorise contemporary non-Indigenous and Indigenous art practice into two groups below with some degree of hesitancy. For


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today, many contemporary artists see themselves (and occasionally some do work) in the sphere of international contemporary art, a world without boundaries. That is the Utopian dream and we are heading in that direction, but we are not there yet.

Contemporary non-Indigenous artists Watch out for the following: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Narelle Autio, photographer Jason Benjamin David Bromley Lyndell Brown and Charles Green Peter Churcher Lucy Culliton Peter Cooley Adam Cullen Richard Dunlop Shaun Gladwell Nicholas Harding Louise Hearman Cherry Hood Guo Jian David Keeling Rosemary Laing, photographer Lindy Lee Angus McDonald Stewart MacFarlane Amanda Marburg Mandy Martin Lewis Miller Angus Nivison Patricia Piccinini, photographer Ben Quilty Philip Wolfhagen Michael Zavros


Artists to watch

Contemporary Indigenous artists Watch out for the following: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Vernon Ah Kee Julie Dowling James Iyuna, bark painter Roy Kennedy, printmaker Leah King-Smith, photographer Wanyubi Marika, bark painter Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra Ricky Maynard, photographer Eubena Nampitjin Mitjili Napurrula Denis Nona, printmaker Alec Tipoti, printmaker Prince of Wales

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Corporate art

collecting Chapter 4 C

orporate art collections are normally the result of visionary management. Quality corporate collections most often reflect a real desire by an organisation to contribute to the local art scene by supporting new and mid-career artists. It is no coincidence that corporate collectors are often also strongly linked to other philanthropic pursuits. The corporate collecting of today, particularly the type we see in Australia, is very different from that which helped fuel the art boom of the 1980s. That period was characterised by heavily borrowing, high-profile business personalities who somewhat cavalierly threw around other people’s money, concentrating as they did on buying showy big-ticket paintings by as many internationally well-known artists as they could cram into the cargo hold of their chartered jet. It does sound like fun, though. Important and interesting corporate collections today focus on the long-term pursuit of collecting quality emerging artworks from predominantly local artists. The collections reflect community involvement, but they have also developed as a marketing tool, where the vision and goals of the organisation can be mirrored or even shaped by its art collecting strategy. In this way, the culture and image of the company is inextricably linked to the evolution of its collection over time. Leaders of these collecting organisations are


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also able to see the benefits to employees of keeping beautiful works of art in the workplace. In addition to the role that it may play in attracting and retaining quality staff, the artwork will provide stimulation and inspiration to those within the organisation. Wise corporate collectors are also able to understand the distinct financial benefits of good art investments, particularly where the company in question understands the local art market and is able to make astute purchases. A smart and well-researched acquisition strategy may for a small outlay ensure that the collection contains the Whiteleys, Kngwarreyes and Gascoignes of tomorrow. As art consultant to Macquarie Bank, Private Bank I regularly have the pleasure of visiting their offices in Martin Place in Sydney. My first unforgettable visit in 2002 was to see the winning entry of the Macquarie Bank-sponsored, inaugural National Sculpture Prize, sculptor Ah Xian’s life-sized work entitled Human Human, Lotus Cloisonné Figure 1 purchased by the Art Gallery of Queensland. The Macquarie Bank’s art collection is an inspiration. Displayed predominantly in public areas of the bank, I couldn’t help seeing the link between the style of modern and contemporary art and the organisation itself. Innovation and potential are the common threads linking the early career artists included in the collection, reflecting the youth and verve of this dynamic, highgrowth bank. The collection showed the role that art could play in underscoring an organisation’s culture and reinforcing its marketing and image to the public. The art committee responsible for selecting the art concentrated on new and emerging artists, who, through the quality and innovation of their work, have huge potential. Concentrating on landscapes, the collection’s theme is ‘The land and its psyche’. Macquarie Bank argues that landscapes reinforce and reflect the unique ‘spirit of place’ that underpins our sense of being Australian. Those responsible for formulating the collecting strategy and for making the individual purchases have shown great taste, insight and a real eye for selecting the right up-and-comers. Elizabeth Cummings, Peter Cooley and Mandy Martins are all included with high-quality works representative of their importance and success in the current art scene. Macquarie Bank is justifiably proud of the success of its selection criteria. They argue that the reputations of the artists at the


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core of the collection grew in tandem with that of the bank. A Tim Maguire obviously acquired in the early days of the collection, a strong Wolfhagen and a technically inspiring Cressida Campbell particularly caught my eye. However, the crowning glory must be the 1989 Rosalie Gascoigne Plain Living, a wood on marine ply. Another collection with Gascoigne as one of its central artists is the Allen Arthur Robinson corporate collection. It is an older and larger collection founded in the 1970s and containing over 1000 artworks, but with a similar commitment to the acquisition of emerging artists. Allen Arthur Robinson uses the collection as a tool to inspire and provoke its employees. Given the fierce competition for good staff within the legal profession (and there is a recruitment talent war going on out there), the firm clearly understands the role of art in creating a stunning visual environment and the benefits that can result. Most employees have a painting in their office, making the collection a part of the everyday working life of the firm. The artwork isn’t always bland or safe; the firm enjoys the controversy provided by some of the pieces. It reserves its most challenging artworks for public and client areas. The collection is host to four Gascoigne paintings, the most impressive of which is Market Garden, purchased in 1989. Other artists whose works were acquired in the early days of the collection and which have proved to be astute purchases are Gloria Petyarre, John Peart, Ildiko Kovacs and Helen Eager. Mining the exhibition trend for public institutions to unearth the hidden treasures of private and corporate Australia, the Art Gallery of Western Australia dug up a real gem in 2000. Their recently unveiled and appropriately titled exhibition, ‘Side by Side’, brings together paintings from Australian Capital Equity, the Kerry Stokes Collection, and the Wesfarmers and Holmes à Court collections, to name but a few. Corporate art nestled side by side with key artworks from the Western Australian State Art Collection—and the corporates looked good. Alongside Australian Capital Equity, Holmes à Court and Wesfarmers, corporate Australia has assembled any number of important art collections—the ANZ, NAB, BHP, ChaseManhattan, Esso and Macquarie Bank collections—the list goes on. Those collections range in composition from early Australian paintings through to contemporary art expressed in various


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mediums. Aside from a significant commitment by these corporations, banks and legal firms to the formation of an important art collection—a tie that binds is their overall profitable, good corporate governance and quality of product or service. On reflection it is far from surprising that some of our more high-profile, financially savvy corporations, banks and legal firms should invest significant time and money in collecting art, for the benefits to forming a corporate art collection are manifold. Although corporate art collections are generally instigated at the behest of one person, as time goes by their visual force has the capacity to resonate throughout the enterprise. As a consequence of the personal enthusiasm of John Bennison, Wesfarmers’ managing director from 1974 to 1984, Wesfarmers famed 560-work art collection now acts as the visual cement that binds a corporation with far-flung business interests. A corporate collection with its roots in colonial, landscape and pastoral paintings complemented a business with its roots in rural Australia. As the company grew and changed—Wesfarmers now includes Dalgety’s, Wesfarmers Federation Insurance, Bunnings Hardware and interests in the provision of energy—so has the focus of the company’s collection to take in much cutting-edge contemporary art. As briefly discussed, a corporate art collection has the capacity to make a strong visual statement as to enterprises’ intentions. The dominant theme inherent in the contemporary art Macquarie Bank Collection is that it reflects the aims of the bank—that is, a young Australian institution on the cutting edge of banking. Consequently, represented in the collection are primarily, though not exclusively, young emerging artists. Contemporary works by Fiona MacDonald, Judy Watson, Louise Hearman and Idris Murphy nestle alongside Rosalie Gascoigne, John Firth-Smith and Peter Booth. A corporate art collection can provide a business with a strong sense of identity, and a clear identity within the marketplace is worth a great deal of money. As far back as the groundbreaking ‘Aboriginal Art’ exhibition held in 1961 at Qantas House in Sydney, forward-thinking Australian organisations have capitalised on the international recognition of Australia’s Indigenous art practice. Indigenous art provides Qantas with a strong regional identity. Qantas has been known from time to time to paint the odd plane with Aboriginal motifs.


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A corporate art collection has the capacity to provide a relaxing yet motivating work environment. It isn’t surprising that retail banks such as the NAB and ANZ have developed formidable art collections. In large organisations with challenged staff morale, art provides a positive office ambience. Many of the artworks scattered thoughout the retail banks are valuable, providing employees with a sense of beauty, trust and ownership—positive feelings. Works from retail bank collections appear for marketing purposes on calendars and Christmas cards, and are lent from time to time to art museums—all in all good, public relations. And finally, a quality corporate art collection can act as a good store of value. In the process of fine-tuning their corporate art collection the ANZ Bank consigned to Sotheby’s May 2000 sale Arthur Boyd’s important work The Dreaming Bridegroom 1 (1957–58). Purchased in 1996 for $310 000, the painting was knocked down for $954 000, including auction house premium. And in the news in the late 1990s, the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra paid $5.3 million for John Webber’s 1782 portrait of Capt. James Cook. The repatriated portrait was purchased at auction in 1983 for $504 000 by London-based art dealer Lady Angela Neville acting on behalf of Alan Bond. In the midst of the 1992 recession, Christie’s Australia dispersed 60 artworks to the tune of $5.75 million from the Dallhold Collection formed by Alan Bond. It was quite possible the best return on purchase price of any Dallhold investments.


Alternative approaches to

collecting Chapter 5

The Derwent 2 Collection Having literally defended grandmother rapists in a court of law (you don’t need to go there), I am hardly fazed these days by appearing in public; I freely admit that I could talk even if I were buried metres-deep under wet canvas. Therefore, I was pleased to accept an invitation by the Derwent 2 Collecting Circle in Hobart to speak at one of its general meetings. Having been invited as a guest speaker, I was surprised and delighted to learn so much myself. The Derwent 2 Collecting Circle consists of 25 art lovers whose contributions of $500 a quarter over a ten-year period go towards building a significant collection of contemporary Australian art. With this financial strength, the collecting circle can acquire and hang a range of good-quality contemporary works of significant value that, as individuals, many within the group couldn’t necessarily afford. Since 1999 the Derwent 2 Collecting Circle has purchased paintings by John Kelly, Warlimirrnga Tjapaltarri, Maggie Napangardi Watson, Hector Jandany, Henry Wambiny,


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Rick Amor, Melinda Harper, James Gleeson, Rosella Namok, Aida Tomescu, Philip Wolfhagen and Paul Partos. As paintings are purchased, they are rotated around members’ walls. The Derwent 2 Collecting Circle thus has $50 000 a year at its disposal. In recent years, most purchases have fallen into the range of $5000 to $15 000 per painting. At such a collecting rate this could allow the purchase of some 50 to 75 artworks during the life of the collection, a collecting outcome that aligns well with membership numbers and manageability of the final collection. As this is not a small amount of money, one of the great strengths of the Derwent 2 Collection is its detailed, transparent and capable administration. A rotating purchasing subcommittee works from a clear and considered collecting policy. The Derwent 2 Collection has a readily understandable and available constitution. Early in the life of Derwent 2, a set of collecting criteria was established to guide any member wanting to put forward an artist for possible purchase. These criteria are: • Is the artist of national standing? • Do state galleries or other important collections collect the artist? • Has the artist regularly shown his or her work in commercial galleries? • Is the work representative of the artist? • Is the work of a manageable size from the point of view of hanging and transporting? • Is the work within the budget of the collection? • Has the work been completed within the last ten years? Alongside this strong collecting template, the Derwent 2 Collection has drawn up a hit list of contemporary artists worth considering for purchase: Indigenous and non-Indigenous, photographers, sculptors, and a special category devoted to Tasmanian artists. Aside from the artists already collected, ‘hit list’ artists include Robert Macpherson, Bill Henson, Tracey Moffatt, Susan Norrie, Tim Maguire, Gordon Bennett, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Akio Makigawa and David Keeling, to name but a few. As impressive as the collecting structure and focus are, the detailed plan for the Derwent 2 Collection also provides for a creative exit strategy. When the time comes to wind up the collecting circle,


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members will hold an orderly internal auction. To begin with, an art dealer and a major auction house will independently value the collection. An overall collection value will be agreed upon based on the average value less 25 per cent, indicating the estimated selling cost of the collection should it be sold on the art market. The value of the collection will then be divided into 25 equal shares. Members will be able to bid for paintings. Lots at auction will be sold in the order of their acquisition. Members spending in excess of their notional share value will be required to top up their winning bid with cash. Those members who spend under their allotted nominal value will obtain a refund. Reserves will be placed on artworks. Ultimately, the objective of the auction is for the individual members to keep the art the group has collected. I gather that the auction of the original Derwent 1 Collection was a very social occasion indeed. Interestingly enough, one Christie’s contemporary art auction sold a number of paintings originally purchased by and internally auctioned off from the Derwent 1 Collection. Selling on their low estimate, Tim Maguire’s work Black Tanks (Lot 24) achieved $23 500, and Jo Furlonger’s large oil Falling Figures (Lot 118) made $11 750. The artist Imants Tillers has spoken to the group. Academic and gallery owner Paul Greenaway from Adelaide has also given a talk to the group. The meeting I attended was held at the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania—and it was a hoot! These people are not passive collectors; the effervescence of the 90-minute questionand-answer session flew by. It was a joy to meet this group of likeminded people, the Derwent 2 Collectors, who thoroughly enjoy the art collecting journey.

Artbank Rent your art collection and avoid singed fingers. Artbank, an innovative Australian Government art rental initiative, is uniquely positioned to protect budding private and corporate fine art collectors from the all too familiar burns associated with bad fine art choices and economic downturns. The Australian Government (Malcolm Frazer’s government of all things) founded Artbank in 1980 to acquire a collection of contemporary Australian art for rent. This scheme provides collectors


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and corporations the opportunity to display the best of contemporary Australian art on their walls at affordable prices. You can have an original work of art for as little as $165 (or $150 without GST) a year with a minimum rental outlay of $550 (or $500 without GST). Rental fees for business are tax deductible. Launched in 2001, Artbank: Australian art in public spaces is a must read for novice and experienced contemporary art collectors who want to delve into the field of contemporary art collecting. Both the book, released to coincide with the 21st anniversary of the founding of Artbank, and the services provided by the Artbank team are well worth considering. For the novice, with only a few ideas when it comes to the subtleties behind medium choice, artist, size, hanging and framing of contemporary art, consulting the Artbank team is an option. The ability to rent a contemporary artwork under the guidance of expert curatorial advice is a godsend to those collectors, government departments, professional practices and corporations that would like time to acclimatise themselves to new tastes. Jackie Dunn, co-author of the 200-page coffee table book, said: ‘This is my proudest moment at Artbank. It shows a real coming of age.’ And indeed it is—the book showcases the magnificent collection. Since its inception in 1980, Artbank’s collection has grown significantly and branched out from merely collecting paintings. At present there are 9000 artworks in total, 3000 of these being paintings. The rest are textiles, ceramics, glass pieces and photographs by more than 2800 artists and craftspeople. Artbank’s director Antonia Syme said: ‘I’m thrilled that the book shows the diversity of work and artists from young and emerging to senior, more established artists.’ In fact, ‘Artbank’s policy of acquiring works by emerging artists has meant that for many artists their first sale of any real consequence was to Artbank.’ Artbank spends around $600 000 plus a year purchasing artworks from young and emerging artists. This is equivalent to the combined contemporary acquisitions budgets of the National Gallery in Canberra and every state gallery in Australia. Although initially funded by the Australian taxpayer, commendably, for a government operation, Artbank has been self-sustaining since 1992, with a steady flow of rental fees covering the scheme’s acquisition and administration costs. The director and the curatorial



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team make the acquisition decisions that are approved by the Artbank Board. Money made through rental is used to acquire more works. Consequently, Artbank’s annual expenditure on art has increased from $270 000 five years ago to a record $620 000 in 2003. During the same period rental income has grown from $1.14 million to $2 million plus. Client numbers continue to grow and currently stand at 550 plus. Artbank’s acquisitions focus on representing the diversity of current Australian art practice. Collectors initially hesitant with the concept of ‘contemporary art’ would do well to remember that twenty years ago, when Artbank first started, contemporary art purchases included Margaret Olley, John Olsen, William Robinson and Jeffrey Smart, which are all still in stock. Artbank’s clients include Australian overseas embassies, government departments, corporations, small companies, professional practices and individuals, for example lawyers Blake Dawson Waldron, Cisco Systems, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The proportion of Artbank’s clients from the government sector has fallen from 60 per cent to 40 per cent over the past twenty-three years; however, private clients are increasing in number. ‘We have some private collectors who like to complement their existing collections. One client recently rented another Jeffrey Smart to match the one in his study, while another private collector wanted her husband to “live with” and familiarise himself with Aboriginal art,’ noted Dunn. For both corporate and private clients, ‘We can go from the ground up. We conduct site visits, and consult with a client’s public relations and interior design teams if necessary. We only charge the client for the rental of the artwork. Extra consulting services are free. We can accommodate their unique personal or corporate identity,’ said Dunn. Individuals, corporations and an increasing number of private clubs have turned to renting art from Artbank as a means of initially developing, or indeed enhancing, their collecting skills—a kind of collecting with training wheels. Along with Melbourne restaurants Marchetti’s Latin, est est est and Sydney’s MG Garage, the University and Schools Club in Sydney has over the last few years sought assistance from Artbank


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to revamp its art collection. The University and Schools Club once hung purely traditional, largely landscape paintings but my, how things have changed. By renting contemporary Australian paintings, sculpture and decorative arts from Artbank, the establishment’s private member’s club hopes to: • encourage existing and new members to enjoy its art collection, a collection that is changing regularly and encompasses both the traditional and cutting edge. The display of quality art has always lent itself to powerful subliminal messages such as status and intellect; • be more flexible in its collection strategy by exposing its members to a wider group of emerging artists without needing to make major capital investments in the short term; and • afford members a breathing space within which to contemplate Australian contemporary art. No value judgments need be made in the short term. Incidentally, the club is now buying contemporary art, effectively weaning itself off Artbank. The club has astutely inaugurated an acquisitive art award entitled the Millennium Art Prize. Thirty invited artists have been enticed to enter the competition, which has a first prize of $15 000 and a member’s choice award of $5000, with the winning entry staying with the club. Artbank’s terms of rental are straightforward. Works are rented for twelve-month periods, with options to renew each year. Fees are payable annually in advance. Prior to inclusion in the Artbank collection, trained and experienced curators judiciously vet artworks. This sifting process helps to ensure consistency of quality and overall standards. Budding collectors would be confident that, no matter what their personal taste, the works available for rent are among the best of their oeuvre. Artbank does occasionally sell works surplus to requirements, but only very quietly at auctions so as not to destabilise that artist’s market. However, should a collector be interested in acquiring an example of an artist’s work represented in the Artbank collection, then the curators are more than happy to direct the collector to the appropriate art dealer.



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The Artbank book gives potential clients an insight into the full service provided by Artbank, from the strategic use of natural light and glass that allows a wide range of contemporary painting to be displayed in the Johnson and Johnson Medical building in Sydney, to Melbourne barrister Frank Saccardo’s placement of the semi-rural imagery of Stephen Bush’s The Silos—a sublime rejoinder to the industrial landscape seen from the windows of his chambers. Painting does not, however, steal the limelight. Positioned in the atrium of the Office of Film and Literature Classification is Johnny Wajtparali’s Morning Star which is carved from wood. The reception area of Hartley Poynton’s Perth office provides a bold example of eclecticism; in that office, the artist Christopher Hodges’s stainless steel artwork, Repeater (1998), features in the foreground. David Jenz’s 1992 steel and slate sculpture sits on the reception desk and Ann Thomson’s painting, Planes II (circa 1980), hangs from the wall. Collectors should be aware that due to the well deserved popularity of Artbank, highly sought after works from established artists tend to rent quickly. Paintings and decorative arts rotate back to the Artbank collection from Australia’s 70 or so embassies, consulates and high commissions, government departments, private and corporate collectors on an almost weekly basis. It is important that collectors keep an eye on this revolving stock; if a collector cannot find exactly what they want one week, chances are it will pop up in the near future. Artbank can arrange weekly pickup and delivery to virtually anywhere on the map. On the whole Artbank avoids a volume of stock from any one artist. Nevertheless, artists held within the collection to look out for include Pippin Drysdale and Gwyn Hanssen-Piggott (ceramics), Bill Henson (photography), Ken Thaiday, Roy Wiggan (Indigenous craft), Ben Edols and Kathy Elliott (glass), John Kelly (painting) and Elizabeth Kelly (sculpture). Most important of all, a collector should remember that when hiring from Artbank, they are directly supporting emerging artists during a crucial period in their career. ‘Many renting clients go on to buy their own collections, and we certainly encourage this,’ observes Dunn. ‘We charge a sliding scale, so that artworks valued at $100 000 are more attractive to


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rent than ones valued at $900, but all are mighty reasonable. And of course a key advantage to renting artwork is that the rental payments can be tax deductible for business. I have been and continue to be a very strong supporter of Artbank.’


Selling

art Chapter 6

Sales avenues Does your ever-growing art collection require a good culling? Or do you simply need to offload the odd painting or two to raise some much-needed cash? Then now is a good time to consider selling Australian paintings. The planets orbiting the art market solar system are all but aligned. In the face of worldwide recession, the Australian economy is relatively strong. Business confidence is high, as is consumer confidence. All the indicators point to significant levels of discretionary art spending overhanging the market. Although there can be no doubt that it has been a general art seller’s market since the mid-1990s, we are on the cusp of change. The favourable art market planets won’t stay aligned forever. It would be a brave art market analyst indeed who would predict over the next five years a continuation of the same seller’s market. I believe that, for at least the next year, the Australian art market will remain strong. However, should the world economy look a touch tricky by the end of this year, then the continued mediumterm strength of the seller’s art market is anyone’s guess. Should you be considering selling an Australian painting, there are essentially four fine art sale avenues from which to choose: auction; private treaty sale; placement with a dealer on consignment; and the art dealer cash or on-the-knocker sale.


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Auction In no particular order, the first sale avenue may be auction. The late March/ April art auctions are traditionally the best art sales of the year. Those paintings that fire best at auction are either particularly valuable or rare. Sale by art auction best suits those paintings by a sought-after artist of a saleable subject matter that are fresh to the market from a long-held private collection. The auction system is particularly geared to the dispersal of collections, and it is a method often favoured where more than one family member owns the painting. Unfortunately, auction house commission rates are creeping north. Double-check for any hidden selling costs such as paying for a colour illustration in the sale catalogue, freight and insurance, which all add up to around 20 per cent of the painting’s sale price. The auction houses pay vendors one month after the sale. And should your beloved painting fail to sell at auction, then it fails to sell very publicly indeed.

Private treaty sale A private treaty sale is the confidential brokerage of fine art by auction houses outside the public auction process. In private treaty sales the auction house places artworks directly with clients. Private treaty sales will be discussed in some depth later in the book.

Placement with a dealer on consignment A third sales avenue is to place your painting for sale with an art dealer on consignment, which is best done with the art dealer you purchased it from. As a rule of thumb, collectors should only ever buy paintings from art dealers that have a return-sale policy. A willingness to re-sell artworks indicates the extent to which the art dealer believes in and stands by the quality and desirability of the art they sell. A good art dealer really knows their clients’ taste; as such, they are far more likely than, say, an auction house to provide a tailored, personalised service. Art dealers are able to match a consigned painting with an existing client. To make life easier for everyone,


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collectors are advised to tie their consignments where possible to an art dealer’s upcoming exhibition schedule. So, if you have a Stewart MacFarlane painting for sale (lucky you), consign the painting to the next MacFarlane dealer exhibition. Most art dealers charge a 40 per cent resale commission. While it is always best to set a time limit on sales by consignment, you should give the art dealer six months, then consider other dealers or alternative sale avenues.

Art dealer cash or on-the-knocker sale Finally, every collector should consider the art dealer cash or on-the-knocker sale. After all, to pay quickly is, too often, to pay twice. Many art dealers have the financial wherewithal to offer a firm sale price on the day, cash or cheque, no mucking about. This sale avenue should only be considered by those collectors who have already done their homework. You should know when it is a good time to take the money and run. Collectors are well advised to monitor all art institutions for dates surrounding forthcoming retrospectives, for a good public hanging is a good time to sell. For example, the famously forgotten Clarice Beckett (1887–1935) was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition showing in Sydney at the National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery in 1999. Major retrospectives undertaken by institutions engender enormous academic and public interest. The particular artist’s work highlighted by a retrospective, whether Brett Whiteley, Sir Arthur Streeton or Clarice Beckett, ultimately financially benefits from the positive groundswell in scholarship and media interest. Throughout the duration of the Beckett exhibition some 14 000 people took the opportunity to view the soft-focus realism that comprised Beckett’s retrospective. Not surprisingly, then, at Sotheby’s autumn 1999 auction (the Vrisakis Collection) three Beckett paintings went through the roof. The first work to go into orbit was the small suburban view entitled Beaumaris. Estimated at $8000 to $12 000, it sold for $23 000 to an anonymous buyer, having been pushed up by Melbourne dealer Lauraine Diggins on the telephone. A few lots later a more interesting, yet restored, Beckett entitled Figures on a Beach Low Tide Beaumaris estimated at $5000 to $8000 made $31 050. (Add in a


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person and an artist invariably adds on value.) The final rather empty Beckett, Unloading the Coach, estimated at $3000 to $5000, made $11 500. The current auction record price for a Beckett stands at $102 220 for Autumn Morning (Early Morning, Beaumaris) achieved by Christie’s in 2001.

The trend in decorative art sales Led by a surge of interest in both modern and contemporary painting, the current art market is strong. The decorative art market, by comparison, has been sales patchy. Antique dealers and auction house specialists have over the last decade been struggling to engage and stimulate new, younger collectors. For as much as it pains me to print this, much of what is offered en masse in decorative art sales, that is, artworks 100 years old or more, is yesterday’s taste. Bucking this general trend, the highly successful sale by Christie’s in 2002 of the estate of the late Joan Dickson together with the property of Andrew Stuart-Robertson hit upon a growing sales formula. The public went crazy for great quality works, assembled by collectors with a strong sense of personal style. Christie’s did not so much sell lot after lot of individual antiques; more than that, the catalogue with its biographical introduction on the life of Joan Dickson and accompanied by a photograph of her house and personal taste sold Joan Dickson’s flair. And Joan had style. Joan Margaret Dickson (1918–2002) was the daughter of Arthur Purnell, a noted architect who practised for many years in China. In fact, there was a strong Chinese influence to the collection. From the 1940s Dickson furnished homes, apartments and holiday houses with a distinct personal flair. The idea of combining antique furniture with hard-edged contemporary paintings, so popular overseas yet so rarely used in Australia, made her house a showplace. Many collectors who purchased at the Christie’s sale were in effect paying homage to a most influential tastemaker. The first 72 lots of the Dickson estate, which kicked off the general sale catalogue, made $200 000 against a low estimate of around $90 000. Sale highlights included a pair of Venetian glass mirrors that carried a pre-sale estimate of $8000 to $12 000 but


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achieved $28 200. A pair of Napoleon III ebonised and red tortoiseshell pedestals sold for $30 550, against an estimate of $10 000 to $12 000. A marble statue of a male nude made $99 875, carrying a pre-sale estimate of $30 000 to $50 000. This was an eclectic group of objects bound together by Joan Dickson’s personal elegance. Hard on the heels of the Dickson dispersal came the contents of decorative art dealer Andrew Stuart-Robertson’s Sydney terrace. Andrew now lives and works in London. More uniform in its theme and overall look, the eighteenth-century European grand tour passion of Andrew Stuart-Robertson looked marvellous in Christie’s rooms and in the catalogue. Again, a room photograph of Stuart-Robertson’s house went a long towards forming in the would-be purchasers’ eyes what they could achieve in a decorative sense if they purchased his antiques and therefore his style. StuartRobertson’s George III bookcase, estimated at $6000 to $8000, sold for $10 575. His William IV mantel clock achieved $18 800 against a pre-sale estimate of $3000 to $4000. Marketing style as a means of putting a little bit of zest back into bulk antique offerings has been on the sales agenda of the major auction houses overseas for years. I remember the groundbreaking offering by Christie’s London in 1995 of the 507-lot Rudolf Nureyev sale. This legend of dance was renowned as a monumental shopper, so antique dealers all over Europe would put their best antiques in their shop window when Rudy was performing in town. Late at night, following another sell-out performance, Rudy would cruise the antique shop windows, buying on sight. One of his people would ring through the orders the next day (don’t you just love a decisive buyer). Christie’s sold Nureyev’s style. They recreated every major room from his New York apartment in their London salerooms, a lavish viewing of not just how Nureyev placed works from his collection in his apartment, but of how Rudy lived and partied. At the tail end of 2003, Leo Schofield, former PR man, then food critic, columnist, and now arts czar-cum-member of Christie’s Australia advisory board, disbursed much of the contents of his historic 1840s seaside villa, Bronte House. The $1.25 million dollar Schofield neo-Gothic spill was just the right note on which to end another strong sales year.


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Spotted house hunting in Tasmania, known to be thinking about property in Byron Bay and Noosa, Schofield on-sold the remaining four years of the Bronte House lease. Like many bootsand-all collectors, Schofield clears out, moves on and begins collecting anew with some regularity. About a decade ago, Schofield sold up his then collection of Regency and French Empire sculptures and furniture in order to built a formidable collection of neo-Gothic furniture, sculpture and artworks more befitting the architecture and interior of the early nineteenthcentury Bronte House. Prior to the Regency collection, he decorated St Kevin’s in Queen Street Woollahra in appropriate Arts & Crafts gloom. Schofield, a long time collector, has a reputation for driving a hard bargain. Christie’s undertook the sale at zero seller’s commission. Schofield has widely admired good taste, an eye for detail and a reputation in the trade for paying top dollar for very good things. With the auction held on site, the dispersal of the contents of Bronte House offered up a wonderful opportunity for the public to have a good sticky-beak at what was a fine collection in a great house—a heavily themed viewing. Commenced in 1838 by the colonial architect Mortimer Lewis and finished, following his ruin in the financial depression of the 1840s, by Robert and Georgiana Lowe, Bronte House is really a pattern-book cottage ornée—a single story seaside cottage in the pared-down Gothic style. In true picturesque fashion the house, sited dramatically above the ravine leading down to the beach at Nelson Bay (now called Bronte) in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, was at the time a fairly remote hideaway, but is now encircled by suburbia. During his tenure at Bronte, Schofield created a significant garden and the interiors and collections within the house itself were a compelling visual notebook to his enthusiasm for history, art and the decorative arts and gardening. The two dominant and in a way opposing themes in his collecting were Schofield’s emphases on the Classical and the Gothic. The simplified Gothic architecture of the house demanded its counterpart in much of the furnishings and decoration. Not surprisingly the sale abounded in ornate Gothic arches and other motifs on grand bookcases and sideboards, to chairs and even cushions and letter racks. Noteworthy was a mahogany pedestal


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sideboard attributed to the famous cabinet making firm of Gillows and estimated at $10 000 to $15 000. A set of six mahogany dining chairs with Grecian and Gothic detailing, probably the work of George Smith, upholsterer to the Prince Regent was estimated at $12 000 to $15 000. Schofield’s interest in the Gothic favoured the more delicate and derivative ‘gothick’, a more refined throwback to the eighteenth-century notion of the Middle Ages, instead of the serious and more archaeologically correct Gothic of Pugin and the later nineteenth century. In keeping with the early Victorian period of the house and the theme of a ‘House Sale’ was a swag of early nineteenth-century coloured glass, embroidered cushions and pictures, silver, watercolours, prints, linen and china. Also the decoration of the garden was up for grabs; urns and planters, wirework stands benches, even the croquet set went. Running hand in hand with the passion for things Gothic was the Classical—Schofield’s collection of Grand Tour souvenirs mainly collected from various overseas auctions. Classical works ranged from the very large and impressive, over-life size, early nineteenth-century Italian marble head of The Genius of Death, after Antonio Canova at $30 000 to $40 000, to the more modest, being the bronze reductions of famous statues and buildings of antiquity (estimates ranged from $2000 to $10 000). A group of Pompeian style gouaches by and after Michelangelo Maestri provided a visual counterpoint to the sculpture, with their classical figures emerging from black backgrounds. Dating from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century all these pieces speak of a time when any civilised person undertook the ‘Grand Tour’ of France and Italy to immerse themselves in classical culture, and collected a few tangible reminders of the visit. Although styling an auction room—as one can easily do with decorative arts—is considerably more difficult to achieve amidst the sprawl that is a general art sale, none the less the impact of an art collection marketed and sold as a taste package can be tremendously successful. In early 2003 Sotheby’s achieved a staggering $9.3 million sold, with a clearance of 82 per cent by lot and 92 per cent by value for a general art sale—this is a new turnover record. In a nutshell, the sale went off, helped to no small degree by a single owner collection.


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The first component to the offering was 57 lots—in a separate catalogue—from the collection of Sir David Davies. An assemblage of colourful, rather obvious and largely minor works from well-known artists, attracted many new buyers to clear $4.3 million with 97 per cent sold by lot and 99 per cent sold by value. A series of large, late, loose and almost psychedelic Shoalhaven landscapes by Arthur Boyd all found homes—some to the Sydney trade. One of the few academically important Arthur Boyds, The Hunter (1959), was bought in the room by private Melbourne art consultant John Playfoot for $647 600 against an estimate of $400 000 to $600 000. A quality Sidney Nolan for that collection, The Kelly Gang, Bushranger Portrait (1945), sold in the room for $143 100. The big ticket item in the collection was the large Russell Drysdale, The Outstation (1965), sold to an anonymous collector for $1.2 million. This work first appeared and was sold by Sotheby’s in 1983 for $120 000, reappearing at the height of the recession in 1994 to sell at auction for $200 000 to Sir David Davies.

The Internet The growth of e-commerce has taken place at a bewildering speed. To be reminded that the first popular computer hit the mass market just under two decades ago is a sobering experience. With computers now dominating our everyday life, e-commerce via the Internet has already begun to radically extend the consumer’s reach—in terms of accessibility to a global market and the inundation of choice. To successfully ride this wave of change, collectors need to be aware of and distinguish between the different types of Internet e-commerce websites on offer. Websites are not all the same. Collectors should distinguish between those websites that primarily convey information, even very important information such as can be found at the National Gallery of Australia’s home page, and the growing number of websites that offer an interactive art industry service—such as an online auction channel or valuation service. Understanding the shades of difference between websites enables collectors to obtain the best from them. E-commerce is simply using the Internet for what is called transactional


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purposes—the buying and selling of goods, information and services. There are as many types of websites as there are business opportunities. However, as a rule of thumb, websites used to sell art generally fall into one of four main categories: information sites, vetted auction sites, person-to-person auction sites, and fixed-price art sites.

Information sites The website www.aasd.com.au sells information about the Australian art market. For a subscription of $22 per month or $110 per year, www.aasd.com.au provides the collector with a most comprehensive alphabetical listing of over 130 000 artworks sold by some 5000 artists at auction between 1991 and 2003. I subscribe to this website and suggest you do the same.

Vetted auction sites In-house art and antique specialists vet the art or objects that are put up for sale. A good local example of this is Bruce’s Auctions (www.bruces.com.au), the long-established Adelaide arts auction house. In November each year, Bruce’s conducts a two-day fine and decorative art sale, entitled ‘The Adelaide Collection’. In order to reach their clients, Bruce’s has harnessed the Net in an altogether more traditional manner. It conducts an electronic viewing which enables prospective purchasers to inspect a fully illustrated and descriptive catalogue and to register either a written or telephone bid in order to participate in a live-time auction. Bruce’s combination of Internet and live-time auctions enables the worldwide public to participate in a local Adelaide sale. Bruce’s acts for the vendor; it maintains control over the objects in its possession; and it is able to ship objects direct from the sale venue while at the same time providing the authentication and guarantees that the art public have come to expect.

Person-to-person auction sites Rather harshly, the influential London-based Art newspaper has described this category of Web-based art sales as little more than a


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‘glorified garage sale’—trading everything from antiques to cars and CDs. Leaders in this area are eBay.com, and yahoo.com. These companies provide a sale forum only; they generally neither own nor vet the quality of goods traded on their site. Today, eBay has tens of millions of registered users and goods worth $2 billion were reportedly traded in 2003.

Fixed-price art sites These websites are often an extension of an existing art gallery, or they may be an online gallery set up by artists themselves. With fixed-price sites it would be my strong recommendation to stick with those art dealers or artists who have a long-established reputation behind their often-glossy e-commerce fronts—far too many art-playing charlatans hide behind websites of straw. After decades of art industry experience, and I have to say somewhat reluctantly, I decided recently to set up a website myself. Contrary to the actions of others, I made it a point when growing my business not to develop a website until I had a firmly established art dealership with a significant core of good clients. Having achieved this, my primary motive for finally establishing my website (www.michaelreid.com.au) was to provide greater service to my existing long-distance and overseas clients. When opening an exhibition, I can now download all the images to everyone at the same time—it’s fast and fair. I don’t expect to make a substantial number of art sales solely from my website; it exists more as an electronic calling card. It is my belief that if you are seriously considering buying art, you should deal with the art dealer behind the website and not just the electronic site itself. From experience, receiving art images by email or browsing through a Web page works best for those collectors who know roughly what they are looking at. The whole concept of leisurely browsing and then buying quality art over the Internet is, to my mind, largely over-hyped. Even though many of my clients purchase from email images and/or (hopefully) from my website, invariably they take the time to discuss the artworks with me— while looking at the image. Call me a doubting Thomas, however: I have yet to meet a collector who has spent serious amounts of art money based solely on an Internet romp.


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Should, however, you want to go ahead and flatten the old credit plastic on the Internet, there are a number of online buying and selling issues that need to be considered—especially if you are buying outside Australia. Generally, buying and selling online is no different at law from any other retail trading. Legislation regulating the sale of goods, and laws against false advertising, apply online. The difference lies in: • Enforceability: It may be difficult for both the buyer and seller to enforce their legal rights across numerous legal jurisdictions— this is a significant issue when buying or selling overseas. • Security: Good security is essential for e-commerce transactions. Purchasers are becoming less wary of buying online, and many banks now offer guarantees to the purchaser. However, the seller continues to bear the risk of fraud. • Privacy: Sellers may hold on file a great deal of commercially sensitive information pertaining to buyers. This needs to be dealt with appropriately. Websites need to inform and reassure any prospective buyer as to a company’s privacy policy. Interested parties are advised to do their sales homework. Some categories of artwork are appropriate for online sales, but many are not. In very general terms, the Internet best sells those artworks that are easily quantifiable and internationally appealing. Books, silver, works on paper and sculpture are just some of the more buoyant and easily quantifiable sale categories. All are categories of artwork, often accompanied by hallmark books or a catalogue raisonné—a definitive listing and description of what the artwork should look like. Size is important. There is little point in offering for e-sale some whacking huge piece of sculpture that would require the buyer to outlay an arm and a leg in shipping costs. Small, readily identifiable, easily transportable artworks sell better over the Net. Most importantly, it is worth remembering that the Internet can never substitute for the actual viewing of an artwork. It is imperative, therefore, that the collector obtains from the auction house or art dealer a condition report on the artwork prior to sale. The Internet can be used to request further information, and you


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may want to ask for any additional images to be sent in hard copy form. However, don’t become a collecting pain in the arse; by all means request additional information without obligation, but do so only if you are serious.


The business

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Art dealers and

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any people would rather eat their left arm than set foot in an art gallery, simply because they expect to be treated—and occasionally they are—with withering disdain by some clad-inblack, face-furniture-wearing assistant. I entirely sympathise. I have the same dread of entering a betting shop. We should, however, remember that entry to a commercial exhibition is free, as is entry into auction houses. Nobody is expecting you to make a purchase in return for the simple favour of being shown the stock. A good dealer likes to talk about the art he or she is selling. Good dealers are not elitists; they welcome the young and the uninformed into their shops and galleries because they genuinely want to share the pleasure of ‘just looking’. After all, that eighteen-year-old making a small down-payment on a modest object might become a life-long customer. It is never wrong, it is never a faux pas, to ask of something: What exactly is it? Why is it so important, why so valuable? In essence, what I am saying is: Go in, don’t give in.

What makes a good art dealer? The late 1980s witnessed a number of unscrupulous and opportunistic art dealers churn and burn both collectors and their


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creditors. Faced with mounting debts, more than one high-profile art dealer skipped the country, leaving the professional reputation of their colleagues and industry soiled. However, the actions of a small minority of art dealers should never be allowed to overshadow the most important of all art industry relationships: that between art dealer and art collector. There are those collectors who place art dealers somewhere between used-car salesmen and slave traders. On the other hand, some people refer to art dealers as patrons of the arts. This divergence of opinion reflects the fact that the term dealer masks considerable variety. Art dealers differ in many ways: some only sell the work of dead artists, others that of the living. Some dealers specialise in the paintings of creative innovators, others in tourist art. Dealers themselves have different ideas about the nature of their work, with some seeing themselves as antiquarians or pioneers, entrepreneurs or speculators. The art market is complex, diverse and changeable, as is the art dealer. Irrespective of an art dealer’s field of specialisation, there exists a standard that separates a good art dealer from a mediocre one. An astute art collector would be well advised to understand and apply the following criteria when seeking to build that allimportant relationship with an art dealer. The best art dealers: • Don’t just flog art; more importantly, they add to the art reference store of knowledge. The best art dealers are imaginative and enterprising—they want to contribute to knowledge and understanding in their fields through exhibitions and, when possible, through research and publications. As part of his ongoing commitment to art scholarship, one of Australia’s foremost art dealers, Philip Bacon, director of Philip Bacon Galleries in Brisbane, held in April 2004 the important ‘Donald Friend Retrospective’ exhibition. Bacon has sponsored, over the years, the publication of many art reference books and has conducted curated selling exhibitions of key (yet neglected) Australian artists—the Isaac Walter Jenner exhibition of a few years back springs to mind. • Enjoy their work immensely and enjoy sharing their enthusiasms. If they are to prosper they need to develop ever greater expertise in their chosen field, so a good art dealer never stops learning. All good art dealers have a detailed historical and technical


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knowledge of their subject, as well as refined aesthetic sensibilities. It is imperative that all dealers develop a nose for detecting the dubious object. Dealers must be people with judgments in their specific fields that a collector can respect and trust. Nurture their regular customers regardless of wealth. They learn about their customers’ personal interests and tastes, and they guide them into making the most appropriate purchases according to their means. Willingly share their knowledge but recognise that they can’t know everything. They openly seek out further information and other opinions when required. Have good relationships with museums and art gallery directors and curators. They recognise these professionals as colleagues with differing, yet complementary, roles to play in moving forward our understanding of art. Are civic-minded and impartial. They are only too happy to see those private collections they helped to develop end up in the public domain of art museums. Have a friendly and cooperative relationship with other dealers. It must be said, however, that this isn’t always an easy thing to do. Are part-scholar and one hell of a detective. A good art dealer will comb university libraries in search of the master’s and doctoral theses of fine art students. Such publications contain a gold mine of commercially sensitive information on the whereabouts of important paintings. Remember: students are required to footnote their findings! A good art dealer will scan death notices, read wills, and take note of marriages and divorces. For such punctuation marks on the grammatical journey of life dictate the all-important division of our art objects.

When looking around a commercial art gallery, pay special attention to the art reference books and exhibition catalogues that make up their library. Gallery libraries are usually in plain sight, but when you cannot find one, ask whether a library exists. An art gallery library contains reference books, exhibition catalogues and periodicals that relate to the type of art the gallery sells. A comprehensive library is an indispensable working-tool for the good art dealer. The possession of a comprehensive library is also an excellent indication of how serious that gallery is about knowing


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the history behind the artworks they sell. Beware of galleries that don’t have much of a library. Galleries with minimal art references tend to be more interested in merchandising art, than in educating collectors, while a non-existent library really equates to a walk-inthe-door, turn-around and walk-straight-back-out situation. The collector who understands and seeks to reflect these golden generalisations in their relationship with their chosen art dealer will be all the better for it.

Strong dealer support network Wasted talent is a cliché. We all know gifted people who come to nothing. Unfortunately, far too many bright young artists squander their gifts, smashing their creative ability on the rocks of indifference, poor discipline, sloth and substance abuse. It may come as somewhat of a surprise to some, but it requires a great deal more than just raw talent to make a mark in this world. Among other attributes, significant success requires a potent and balanced mix of drive, hard work, discipline, focus and a supportive environment. Gifted people require sometimes enormous personal and professional support. Gifted people can be difficult; and let me tell you, behind every great artist is a strong art dealer support network that helped to make them so. A network of established art dealers exhibiting and supporting an artist across Australia is one sure sign that the artist in question may just have the right stuff to succeed. As quality art stock is always difficult to come by, a good artist’s work will, wherever possible, be shared by eager art dealers. Most quality artists have art dealer representation in every state, particularly the populous eastern states. As a rule of thumb, collectors are advised when purchasing art to make enquiries as to who represents the artist in other states. If no other art dealer represents the work of your prospective art buy, then like some cheap middle-European red wines, the collector could presume that the artist in question does not travel well. Granted, this is a harsh and exceedingly general statement; however, it is one that deserves some consideration. Art dealers, like horse trainers, maintain and groom a stable of prospects, tenderly whipping their charges in regular workouts to build up to that one exhibition every two years or so. Major art



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dealers are in the business for both love and money, and will back also-rans for only so long. To enter the stable of a major art dealer is in itself a big deal, a sign that the art dealer has selected and will nurture that one art world thoroughbred from amidst a paddock of country picnic race hacks. The support by a good art dealer network of a particular artist is analogous to the weight of respectability punters place on a share offer underwritten by a prestigious high-profile financial institution. In other words, a good art dealer network, like a prestigious share underwriter, is a strong indication of a possible market winner. It was with these rather no-nonsense thoughts in mind that I visited the studio of contemporary figurative artist Peter Churcher. I have followed Churcher’s career and exhibitions since 1998 and was delighted that he was made in 2002 the official artist of the War Against Terrorism (Australian War Memorial). Churcher exhibits with Philip Bacon Galleries in Brisbane, Australian Galleries in Sydney and Lauraine Diggins Fine Art in Melbourne. Although Churcher’s work is not represented in every state and territory in the nation (yet), the east coast triumvirate of Bacon, Australian Galleries and Diggins is as strong an art dealer network as you are ever likely to have. And why are these major art dealers interested in the artwork of Peter Churcher? The man has serious talent. Interestingly enough, Churcher’s first degree was a bachelor of music from Melbourne Conservatorium. It was while studying in Paris for a master’s degree in music that Churcher relinquished the world of sounds for painting. Growing out of the disciplined training one associates with the world of classical music, Churcher’s artwork is heavily composed—it is ordered, refined, structured and considered. In particular, his preparatory drawings sing. The quality of his oil paintings renders many a viewer totally absorbed. However, don’t get me wrong; Churcher’s subject matter is often difficult, blunt and unsettlingly sexual. Some paintings work well; others less so— but these black sheep are increasingly rare. In terms of subject matter, I would imagine that not every collector would have been interested in hanging the blood-smeared Craig the Butcher, sold for $14 000 by Lauraine Diggins in 2001, in their home. However, in my opinion it is a fine painting and one that would command a current market value of around $25 000.


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The exhibition’s centrepiece was the 208 × 264 cm oil entitled September 2001, which sold for $25 500 to a corporate collector— today that painting would be worth in the region of $40 000-plus. The painting assembled a rather motley, yet riveting crew, comprising Monique, the sixteen-year-old Goth and John, the tattooed, bearded classical musician, an ex-bouncer, a male model and a schoolboy. The painting’s structure, detail and quirky quality elevates September 2001 from the weird to the wonderful. With the foreseeable support of Churcher by such a strong art dealer network, the artist has a bright future indeed.

Middle-ranking dealers Having unearthed the next generation of significant contemporary Australian art, it seems only fitting to now sift through the next generation of significant Australian art dealers, as the two go hand-in-glove. So, who are the up-and-coming 30-something, gallery-owning art dealers with any real depth of art industry experience? Following the October 1987 stock market crash, the art market boomed for three glorious years before violently contracting in mid-1990. Painting prices plummeted, and fine art stock devalued while art gallery overheads remained constant. Art dealers struggled to sell paintings to clients, who overnight experienced a substantially reduced discretionary income. A number of middleranking art dealers and small galleries simply went under. A number of art dealers fled overseas. And thankfully, a legion of fine art consultants, many working from home with nothing more substantial than quasi-interior decorating skills, vanished. The last recession significantly depleted the depth of experience and talent within the Australian art market. There were significant survivors. Leading their industry from the top, major established art dealers who operate out of galleries include Joan McClelland, Charles Nodrum, Brian Collie, Lauraine Diggins, Bridget McDonnell, Bill Nuttall and Robert Gould of Melbourne; together with colleagues Denis Savill, Eva Breuer, Rex Irwin, Stuart Purves, Christopher Day, Roslyn Oxley, Dr Gene Sherman, Robin Gibson, Ray Hughes and Martin Browne in Sydney. Sam Hill-Smith in Adelaide, Nevin Hurst in



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Tasmania, and Philip Bacon and Win Schubert of Queensland round out a select band of grand survivors one and all. The major art dealers operating out of galleries during the recession continued to be successful because they maintained the financial wherewithal to own outright their stock. When the painting is yours, as opposed to selling a painting on consignment, a dealer has greater sale flexibility, not to mention an improved sales margin. The more established art dealers also display a tendency to sprinkle their exhibition calendar with a mix of established contemporary artists as well as the big-hitting, late modern art exhibitions. For aside from a small number of contemporary art stars, the chance to earn real money comes for the major art dealers when they hold the curated exhibitions from established modern artists such as Whiteley, Blackman, Boyd, Nolan, and so on. Another trading ability that separates the major from the minor art players is the art dealer’s capacity, with a significant client base behind them, to re-sell a painting over and over again, in and out of Australia. This capacity by the major art dealers to trade in paintings—the buying and selling through clients and at auction—is in stark contrast to the smaller operations of many purely contemporary art selling galleries, who rely for their entire business on one-off sales from relatively unknown or emerging artists. Another notable development in art dealer behaviour that sprang from the recession of the early 1990s was a marked increase in major inter-dealer trading support. Prior to that recession, art dealers who traded in the secondary market purchased outright paintings for resale—this was a strength that enabled them to own and hold through a recession. In that instance, if a painting went unsold, then off it went for a few years to the storeroom, before returning to the gallery for sale. However, scarce buying money during the recession changed all this. Wanting to lessen the cost of ownership, paintings began to move between art dealers, particularly interstate, in order to offer up ‘new’ stock to another market. Essentially, the major art dealers began consigning paintings to each other, as opposed to solely purchasing their own stock. Today this is commonplace. From this more cooperative approach to art dealing, born out of the late 1990s, we now have a market where it is run-of-the-mill to see art dealers, their colleagues and even clients


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form partnerships or syndicates and becoming shareholders, rather than outright owners, of a painting to be bought and sold. Fortunately for the Australian market, a number of up-andcoming gallery-owning art dealers worked through the recession and are now carving out successful careers for themselves and their artists. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but collectors are advised to keep an eye on the next wave of major art dealers, who include Jan Murphy (Queensland), Darren Knight and Tim Olsen (New South Wales), Scott Livesey and Guy Abrahams (Victoria), and Paul Swain (Western Australia)—and myself, of course. Jan Murphy, director of Jan Murphy Gallery in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, is among a select few 30-something galleryowning art dealers to stand tall amid the much older, more established ranks of Australia’s leading art dealers. Murphy’s personal taste and style is much sought after by collectors. A former assistant to the director at Melbourne’s Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Murphy combines solid academic knowledge with some eighteen years’ experience as an art dealer. Murphy deals on the secondary art market and holds up to twelve exhibitions a year focusing on established contemporary painters. Darren Knight, director of Darren Knight Gallery in Waterloo in Sydney, initially supported his passion for dealing in contemporary art by working nights in a record store. In 1997 Knight moved to Sydney from Melbourne, where he’d had a gallery since 1992. Knight is committed to exhibiting artists of his generation and represents twenty artists from Australia and New Zealand. Knight enjoys articulating the intellectual framework behind an artist’s work and, as such, he has secured a strong following. The gallery has recently reopened after extensive renovations. The new space features an improved exhibiting gallery upstairs and the addition of a ground floor, private viewing gallery and stock room. The ongoing exhibitions in the private viewing gallery will highlight selected recent works by gallery artists such as Noel McKenna, Louise Weaver, Joanna Braithwaite and James Morrison, and will run in conjunction with the gallery’s program of solo exhibitions in the upstairs gallery. Scott Livesey began his career with auction houses Leonard Joel and Sotheby’s before reinventing Melbourne’s Kozminsky Galleries. Livesey has learned the art dealing trade from the



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ground floor up and sees himself wearing many hats, including that of broker, framer, restorer and adviser. Livesey is firmly ensconced in Melbourne’s art strip in High Street in Armadale. His dealing room produces three or more quality sales catalogues a year, from colonial through to Indigenous and contemporary art. Guy Abrahams has been a director of Christine Abrahams Gallery since 1987. He is currently the Victorian chair of the Australian Commercial Galleries Association Inc. (ACGA). Guy is an approved valuer for the Commonwealth government’s Cultural Gifts Program. Christine Abrahams Gallery, now in its 25th year, exhibits works of quality and innovation from a stable of over 40 leading and emerging contemporary Australian artists. The gallery shows a broad spectrum of the visual arts, including painting, drawing, sculpture, prints, photography and ceramics. Paul Swain, from Perth’s Greenhill Galleries, is a graduate in fine art from the British Institute of Florence. Swain comes from a family line of dealers and saw his transition to dealing as a natural step. Since taking over Greenhill Galleries, Swain has introduced many emerging artists to the gallery’s stable. Swain plans to exhibit his artists more on the east coast in the near future and will take several of his Western Australian artists to exhibitions in Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States during the next few years.

Fine art consultants One of the more worrying trends to bubble to the art market surface since the mid-1990s has been the proliferation of inexperienced fine art consultants launching themselves on to an unsuspecting collecting public. These consultants have little more than a good address book and possess skills no more substantial than that of a quasi-interior decorator as, unfortunately, there are no formal qualifications or mandatory accreditations required for anyone to set themselves up in the business of advising on art. (In contrast, the Australian Commercial Galleries Association, whose members include some—but not all—of the better art dealers, is an industry collective that has membership standards.) Sadly, there is no peak membership body for art consultants. As such, an astute art collector would be well advised to apply the following general criteria to the art consultant they may wish to employ.


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Does the art consultant have any specific fine art tertiary qualification? It is more than acceptable for collectors to be on their own learning curve. After all, building a collection is all about obtaining and applying knowledge. However, an art consultant should already possess that knowledge and understand art history and theory. This is part and parcel of why they are paid. The art market is awash with professional refugees from the law and accountancy, which is not too much of a problem—even I am not too embarrassed to admit to my law degree. We all make mistakes. However, to work in the art market requires fairly specific learning, and all professional refugees worth their salt should obtain postgraduate university qualifications in fine art. Those that go the extra kilometre to academically retrain indicate a greater commitment to their newfound employment. Alongside formal book learning, the next criterion to apply to your proposed art consultant is: have they been in the market for some time, and specifically, did they work through the last recession? Work experience counts. Many art consultants entered the market during the latest selling boom and all they know is blue sky trading. When the market tide turns (and experience informs us that it may do so again), it will be important to obtain selling information from those that have lived through a buyer’s market. Hand in hand with time spent in the market, obtaining broad and varied training is a must for an art consultant. Has the consultant worked for a major local or overseas auction house? Have they worked for a significant regional or state public art gallery? Were they employed—and for a lengthy period—by a prominent member of the art trade? A combination of at least two of these differing employment avenues is acceptable. Given that there are no professional qualifications required to hang out an art consultant shingle, those consultants who have been through the lengthy vetting process to gain accreditation as a Commonwealth government-approved valuer for the Cultural Gifts Program should impress. Accreditation to this program enables the consultant to undertake art valuations in their specific field to a decent standard for collectors wanting to donate artworks to art museums within the taxation system. Double-check that the proposed art consultant is an approved Commonwealth government valuer.



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Finally, can your proposed art consultant refer the collector to a range of existing clients, both modest and high net? And is your proposed art consultant widely known in the art trade? What do the major art dealers think of that particular consultant? After all, the collector, in employing a consultant, is leveraging both their knowledge and their industry contacts. Obtaining good art is partly about inside access, or the ability of the consultant to source quality objects for possible purchase from a variety of hard-toget-to people and places. If the art consultant has few quality art trade contacts, then they are of little value.

Interior designers Museum art curators tend to see themselves and the role they perform as public opinion formers. In contrast, many art dealers actually are. Adding yet another, more recent, ingredient to this taste-making mix, I have noticed over the last decade a growing number of interior designers whose work has shaped both public taste and art collecting. The rise and rise of the interior designer and their impact on what we buy can hardly come as any surprise. Look to the newspapers and magazines that flood our life, promoting as they do ‘desirable homes’. Look to the property market, a market that advertises heavily, and you will notice the innumerable newspaper lifestyle liftouts which feature an inside sticky-beak into other people’s newly made-over houses. Those magazines and liftouts rely to a significant degree on interior designers—those on the ground and in other people’s houses—to feed the style editors with the constant new looks they demand. Even though a particular interior designer may work exclusively at the very top end of the market, by having their work appear in national magazines that designer’s style is picked up and widely copied. This trickle-down influence of a handful of major interior designers on the wider community should not be underestimated. What does an interior designer do? Like antique and art dealers, interior designers work with architects in the style trenches and hand in hand with private clients to carve out a suitable living environment. In a nutshell, we walk through and live


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under what architects do. Inside that space, antique dealers essentially work from a person’s waist down, on the surfaces associated with the floor and the objects that you either bump into or can drop. Art dealers work above a person’s waist, focusing on those artworks you may or may not want to look at. Good interior designers should be able to work with architects and dealers to coordinate and balance the entire job. A ho-hum decorator will throw a three-colour rug on the flood and match the room to its palette, a rather expensive and all too common decorating trick. Next time you look at a glossy magazine, look to the floor to take in the whole room, spot the rug and you can see where the room came from. Those with greater ability, who move beyond decorators to designers, will work from the visual (colour, lighting, form) to the tactile (surface, shape, texture) to the auditory (noise, echo). The designer must have an aesthetic, practical and technical appreciation for these elements. In addition, they must be familiar with the various styles and history of design, art and architecture. Interior decorators and designers have moved the market. With today’s living space (one long multi-purpose living room with a kitchen crammed down the other end), architects and designers have all but done away with the formal dining room. Out with sideboards, formal dining chairs and table. Whole categories of antiques have been wiped out. Wall space has dramatically declined. Alongside the general absence of objects that is minimalism, designers now focus on displaying that one-off trophy antique, the antiquity of which offsets the modernity of their design. Demand for the unusual, imposing and idiosyncratic antique has seen big prices paid for the unusual single object. Around the trophy antique, designers gravitate towards commissioning reproduction furniture. Many designers will argue that it is far easier to commission a work in the style of an original, within a job’s agreed time frame, than it is to find the real thing. This may be true, but it is none the less terribly sad. At the lower end of the professional scale, many decorators will push over-framed multiple prints, torn largely from nineteenthcentury books, down their client’s throat. If I never see another architectural print again it will be too soon. The decorator’s reliance on multiple prints (for all the same time-efficient reasons



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as their insistence on repro-furniture), serves to erode the art market for original works. Take a tip from me: by all means allow your designer to direct and coordinate the job, but please don’t let them buy the art.


Art

auctions Chapter 8 Art auction hype Peter Wilson, the architect, and some say founding visionary, of modern Sotheby’s, never had any doubt that art was about money and glamour. ‘Art for art’s sake is really an awful lot of rot,’ he liked to say. The gospel according to Peter Wilson was that art should yield cash as well as social class—and to a large degree, so it does. The Wilson Doctrine, or the spectacle of collectors competitively bidding for social class, financial status and almost by-the-by artworks, can be traced in the modern era to 9.30 pm on the London evening of 15 October 1958. Peter Cecil Wilson, or PCW as he was known among the art trade, the then new Sotheby’s chairman and charismatic auctioneer, raised his gavel to auction seven then still-unfashionable Impressionist masterpieces from the estate of the German banker-cum-art collector Jakob Goldschmidt. Maximum publicity, as stipulated in the contract of sale, attended the event. Wilson peered through a barrage of television lights across an audience in evening gowns that included Somerset Maugham, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Kirk Douglas and Lady Churchill—the intelligent, the tasteful, the glamorous and the powerful. Two liveried porters carried in the first canvas to an


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overflowing room, a self-portrait by Manet. The reserve was £45 000, and the Manet sold in seconds for £65 000. Art sales records tumbled. Within five minutes Wilson tackled the redsmeared Cézanne entitled Garçon au Gilet Rouge (Lot 6). When the bidding stopped at £220 000, or double the highest price ever paid for a modern picture, Wilson in a firm, yet demanding, voice asked: ‘Two hundred and twenty thousand, two hundred and twenty thousand. Will no one offer any more?’ The art market snapped, gasps turned into applause and in the span of 21 minutes the inseparable fortunes of Sotheby’s and the art world were forever changed. Today’s retail-oriented art auction houses go way beyond the lucrative yet mere introduction of new money to old objects. Savvy marketplace-aggressive, multinational auction houses ultimately specialise in the art of presentation, the creation of new art markets and the sustenance of the all-important art market hype. Australian fine art collectors eagerly anticipating painting auctions would do well to remember that the compact domestic art market—a market worth around $100 million a year at auction—is an open one that is susceptible to much behind-the-scenes embellishment and shenanigans. Following standard international art auction practice, the Australian representatives of the big three—Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams & Goodman—together with Australian-owned fine art auctioneers Deutscher-Menzies and Shapiro Auctioneers, have developed sophisticated social and media strategies that lure in the punters wanting to exchange cash for art class. On a basic social level, budding and hardened art aficionados are feted with an instant social life. Moving beyond a general goodwill sweep of interested collectors, the major international art auction houses are all too able to wheel in the social big guns when a little art world buttering-up is required. A good example was the old Australian hand, the London-based former chairman of Christie’s Australia, Lord ‘just call me Mark’ Poltimore. As charming as only an Old Etonian Peer of the Realm can be, Lord Poltimore, for years a specialist in nineteenth-century paintings at Christie’s London, was able, like any true hunter, to beam an almost spotlight-intense charisma on his chosen art world quarry. Although now down to only one aristocrat on the Australian board,


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Christie’s can still, if necessary, call on the contacts and services of the Right Honourable The Lord Carrington KG. And that’s no mean feat. It never ceases to amaze me the degree to which Australian art world insecurities can be massaged away with a little Anglo-aristocratic art-collecting oil. In all fairness, however, this is hardly a domestic phenomenon. After all, Her Royal Highness The Infanta Pilar de Borbon Duchess of Badajoz did not make it for all those years to the international Advisory Board of Sotheby’s Holdings because she ran off a mean photocopy. Her Royal Highness is a somebody, even if her name is only used on a letterhead to impress the insecure somebody who is not. Aside from the social and interpersonal whirl that Australian art collectors are encouraged to participate in, the behind-thescenes media and public relations juggernauts employed by the auction houses are slick, well-oiled machines. They are expensive, all-consuming media monsters designed to whip up and bend public opinion, to put private collector bums on seats and prise open wallets. In the tussle for a larger slice of the Australian art market pie, the international art auction houses are winning the media war. A thousand art collectors crammed into one Christie’s paintings auction to witness a pivotal moment in Australian art history. Some $16 million was raised from the dispersal of the Harold E. Mertz Collection of Australian art, a holding of 153 paintings amassed by New York businessman Harold Mertz in the early 1960s for $300 000. At least 65 new records were set. Benchmarks were raised, including dozens of new artists’ personal best records, along with the record for the highest price paid at auction for the work of a living artist and the record total for a painting sale. Prior to the 2000 sale in Melbourne, the Harold E. Mertz Collection toured Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Sydney. It appeared in industry-specific advertising campaigns and became the subject of innumerable photo shoots. Collectors were told— and possibly rightly so—that the Mertz collection was the best thing since sliced bread, and as such they absolutely must have a part of it. Not surprisingly, the trend of the evening sale witnessed a significant shift in both volume and quality buying away from the art trade to a mass of private art collectors. As Sydney art dealer


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Alison Renwick noted: ‘It’s like Whiteley’s painting of the boxing match out there [sold for $332 500]. Private collectors are standing toe to toe with the art trade and slugging it out for the big prizes. And it’s evenly matched—just.’ Private telephone and room bidding was the hallmark of the Mertz sale. Sydney and Melbourne dealer Denis Savill said: ‘I was the wimp of the night. I may have bought $500 000 worth of pictures, but I missed out over and over again. I underbid on some $3 million worth of paintings.’ As Roger McIlroy, managing director of Christie’s Australia, noted from the rostrum, over 12 000 people had viewed the Mertz collection. And from the traffic jam outside the sale venue, it was obvious that most of them tried to turn up on the sale night as well.

Art follows money Sydney has replaced Melbourne as the financial capital of Australia, and on current art market form Sydney is tipped to replace Melbourne as the art collecting capital of Australia. I give Sydney ten years, for capitalism is a heartless organic beast and one without loyalty. The new multi-million dollar Federation Square (the actual gallery attached to the square has a rather cumbersome title—but we call it Fed Square) and the massive redevelopment of the National Gallery of Victoria newly opened or not—the art money is on the move out of Victoria and into New South Wales. The recent launch of both Federation Square in Melbourne and the new National Gallery of Victoria are, in terms of halting the shifting art market, little more than a few fat fingers in the bursting dyke. This sales charge north can be tracked to a number of intense weeks-cum-marketing and sales blitz in 2001, when the then Phillips International (now Shapiro Auctioneers), Sotheby’s and Christie’s achieved a combined $18 million in art sales, by far the largest concentration of significant fine art to be offered and absorbed in Sydney’s collecting history. The major sales shift had begun. The northern sales focus of the largely Melbourne-based multinational auction houses—Christie’s, Sotheby’s, DeutscherMenzies and Shapiro Auctioneers—began as an attempt by the auction houses to grow their sales by selling out of a sluggish Melbourne catchment area towards an effervescent and almost


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totally undiscerning Sydney one. And it’s not just the auction houses. Many of the top Queensland art dealers now sell a considerable portion of their stock to the hungry Sydney art trade. Overheard in heated conversation, respected Queensland art dealer Jan Murphy retorted: ‘If another southern dealer tries to poach my stock south I will scream . . . my Queensland clients come first.’ You go, girl. Art sourced throughout Australia is currently being sold into the Sydney arms of a new breed of moneyed collectors—fund managers, merchant and private bankers, property developers and IT specialists, all with a taste for buying art fuelled by the filthy lucre of truckloads of ‘city’ money. The noticeable result of all this increased auction house competition, between Shapiro Auctioneers, Bonhams & Goodman, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Deutscher-Menzies, for fresh stock has resulted in those auction houses undertaking large general sales that contain a small number of fine works together with a bulk of largely art crud. Too few fresh, quality artworks are padded out with an inordinate amount of tired stock. And what better place to sell all this ho-hum art bulk than Sydney, a city hardly noted for its depth—connoisseurship or otherwise.

Discovered art It’s the stuff of saleroom legend, the little old lady wandering through the door, clutching an artwork wrapped in newspaper retrieved from the top of some dusty cupboard or under the spare bed. That overlooked African mask, the long-thought-lost painting, all rediscovered and sold for a bundle. It does happen and you can find them. Some years ago a totally bizarre gadget, essentially a mangle of brass arms and keys, walked through the door of the auction house where I worked. Its new owner purchased the intriguing thingamajig at a local market on a whim during a trip to India for a couple of hundred rupees. That weird mechanical contraption, the one we pretended to type on until we got all the keys stuck, turned out to be one of the earliest examples of the world’s first calculators. The incredibly rare mechanical calculator subsequently went to auction in London and after intense bidding was knocked down to a Swiss dealer for around £7 million—oops.


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Long-buried, staggeringly beautiful artworks do occasionally just come out from who knows where. In mid-1997, Melbourne art dealer Neville Healy at Leonard Joel’s general decorative arts sale spotted and snapped up what was described as a ‘fine Georgian portrait miniature brooch . . . depicting King Louis XV’ (Lot 820) for $12 000. After further investigation the artwork turned out to be a 4.9 cm tall oval enamel portrait miniature on copper by Geneva-based Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702–89). The work depicted George III (1738–1820) as the Prince of Wales. Within a few months, the brooch was resold in London for around $307 000. Some artworks appear and reappear right under the market’s very nose. Around the same time as the miniature, Joel’s offered for sale, with a full-page colour illustration, a painting by William James Muller (1812–45) entitled Portrait of an Arab that carried an estimate of $10 000 to $20 000. Unsold, the work reappeared in their next auction as Portrait of Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous soldier, explorer, translator, botanist, zoologist, geologist and writer. Even with some additional cataloguing the painting attracted virtually no interest, selling at the knockdown price of $1980 to a Melbourne private art dealer. The painting was then on-sold to London art dealers Spink for many, many, many times the purchase price. We all had our chance, and unfortunately for happy bargain hunters, Leonard Joel’s no longer has a stand-alone fine art department. But let us not forget the present. American mother of four, Jo Anne Walker was at an exhibition in Alice Springs in 1973, saw a small Aboriginal painting she liked and bought it for $90. In late July 2003 Walker, who for 30 years didn’t consider the painting to have any great monetary value, sold the artwork at Sotheby’s Aboriginal art auction for $118 400. The painting, entitled Water and Bush Tucker Dreaming, was a rare early board by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula and was in almost perfect condition. Walker lived in Australia for five years from 1973 with her four sons while her husband worked at the US–Australian Defence Space Research Facility at Pine Gap. When the Walker family moved back to America the painting went with them, hanging in various places in the home and, more recently, in her office in the art department at the Louisiana Tech University where she works


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as a secretary. Jo Anne was reported to have said: ‘We just hung it wherever we had a place for it.’ And so would I. Undiscovered great art of significant financial value is out there and the best thing is, you don’t have to be a high-flying know-it-all art specialist to re-identify it. All you need is a digital camera and access to a know-it-all art specialist. Collectors are advised to get into the habit of carrying around a digital camera. Take happy snaps of that strange-looking European painting at the auction viewing, go to the website of any of the major international auction houses, and send in your images and details of the artwork. The auction house website people will forward your query to the relevant specialist. If you want to move things along a bit and go direct to a specialist, drop into any of the local offices of the big auction houses and get some old overseas art catalogues. The London- and New York-based art sales catalogues will often list in the back the relevant art department heads and you can then email them directly. With a good-quality image scanner, you can simply buy all the catalogues from Australian and New Zealand art sales, scan in good-looking artworks of non-Australian origin and send those images to the major auction houses for comment. A word of advice: if you see something at Christie’s Australia that you wish to doublecheck with an overseas pricing, don’t send the image to Christie’s in London—go to Sotheby’s, and vice versa. What I am telling you is an age-old trade secret. Long before digital convenience, many of our leading local art dealers were doing exactly the same thing, photographing anything that took their eye, developing the film, and sending express post photographs to relevant overseas art dealers or auction house specialists. Armed with an up-to-date value—on the European or North American art market—the local dealers bought and resold, making consistent and sometimes considerable profits. And it was all done without having any clue, in the first instance, as to the identity of their target art buy.

Art auction catalogues Have you a Whiteley, a Brack or a good William Robinson? If so, then chances are that an auction house painting specialist will be


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falling over themselves to secure that modern or late modern painting for inclusion in their upcoming round of auctions. If you own a significant painting, then you will find that you have a strong negotiating tool. Collectors should use their painting’s wall power to maximise its sale value while at the same time reducing the cost of selling. The first thing that will maximise the under-the-hammer price at auction is the marketing reach of the auction house you choose. Sotheby’s and Christie’s, as long-established firms in Australia, have achieved enviable art world connections across the field of collectors, academics, curators, dealers and the like—both within and outside Australia. Deutscher-Menzies, however, has over the last few years gravitated towards specialisation in the engine room of the Australian art market—modern works of art. Deutscher-Menzies has had significant dealings in John Brack and Fred Williams in particular, and is likely to find good results for sellers of these and other moderns. The newly reconfigured Shapiro Auctioneers (the old Phillips International) is making a huge effort to secure consignments. With a strong pre-sale estimate, a privately consigned, front-cover Brett Whiteley abstract in one recent Shapiro sale was testament to slashed sales commissions and a willingness to give good paintings a go. Whichever firm you choose, make sure that the auction house uses your painting in their marketing advertisements, sale flyers and party invitations. Seller’s commission is something you need to consider. Rates for mid-range paintings and up are normally about 10 per cent plus. On a valuable painting this figure can be substantial and may start to resemble something you would expect to pay for selling a house rather than a painting. Don’t be afraid to shop around to find the best sale rate. Most auction houses will eventually deliver some form of flexibility on the seller’s commission for a good-quality painting or for a known collector. If you have a valuable painting, aim for as close to zero sales commission as the auction house will bleed. Find out whether the auction house would be prepared to use your painting on the front, back or inside cover of their sale


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catalogue. Analysis shows that you should attempt to negotiate a prominent position within the catalogue for your painting. Back or inside covers are the best, but the front cover should also enhance your chance of improving the under-the-hammer price. The sale prices for paintings included on the covers of catalogues for the major painting auctions since 1988 indicate that you are much more likely to achieve a premium over the lower estimate if your painting is on the catalogue cover. You are also twice as likely to achieve a significant premium; that is, in the order of 100 per cent. Interestingly, this phenomenon is more pronounced for the back cover and inside covers, which implies that the auction houses may factor in some of the benefits of being on the front cover when calculating the estimated price for the piece. The chance that the painting will remain unsold also seems to be heavily affected by its position in the catalogue. The average number of paintings left unsold at an auction is about 25 per cent, which remains the same for paintings on the front cover of a catalogue but drops dramatically for those on the back and inside covers to 15 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively. What about finding your painting as lot number one in the sale catalogue—should this be viewed as a positive or a negative? If you have ever suspected that the auction houses like to get their auctions off to a rousing start with an undervalued lot that is sure to sell at a premium, an analysis of all first lots confirms this widely held suspicion. In all painting auctions held in Australia since 1998, lot number one has outsold its lower estimate 92 per cent of the time; this compares to a figure of 66 per cent for other works in the catalogue. Lot number one is likely to be left unsold only 5 per cent of the time, while other works find themselves languishing at an average of 24 per cent. More spectacularly, in 50 per cent of all sales lot number one has doubled its lower estimate, a figure that averages only 5 per cent for all other works! While these figures prove that the auction houses probably undervalue early lots, it also shows that the market can see a bargain and early auction nerves among the serious bidders are not a problem for sellers.


Buying at

auction Chapter 9 Buying from the smaller auction rooms Is it not always the way? (As a former lawyer I will probably die without leaving a will. Many lawyers, in fact, do just that.) Numerous professionals essentially don’t follow their own advice. In the art world, having written on the virtues of collectors cataloguing and researching their art collection, I decided to act on my own advice—well, at least I acted. Having purchased in the 1990s, at what was then Goodman Auctioneers (now Bonhams & Goodman) in Sydney, two rather beautiful contemporary landscapes for $420, seven years later a long-delayed rush of common sense to the head compelled me to discover just who had painted them. If I ever knew, I had forgotten. As is often the case with contemporary artists I couldn’t read either of the signatures. When I turned the paintings over, the inscription and signature on the reverse of both paintings confirmed them as early landscapes by Chris Langlois, an artist whose early work I thought I had never seen and whose later work was of interest to me. So I had to laugh, as my early, rather modest paintings were worth at least $4000 each. My epic journey of fine art discovery impressed on me two simple collecting truths: buy what you like; and take every


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opportunity to buy art from the minor art auction salerooms, for there are bargains to be had out there. Coming as I do from rural and regional Australia, I was able to instinctively warm to the landscapes of Chris Langlois. Born in Gosford, New South Wales in 1969, he studied visual art at the Universities of Newcastle and Sydney. His later works have an atmospheric feel. Well-known Sydney art dealer Martin Browne represents Langlois, and his paintings can be found in the public collections of the Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, New England Regional Art Museum and Maitland City Art Gallery. Large Langlois paintings sell for around $18 000, while his works are beginning to flow through to the secondary art auction market. So, first and foremost, I obey the golden rule of collecting— I buy artworks that I like, and that mean something to me. I don’t merely headhunt signatures; I buy my taste irrespective of fashion or art market trends, and I advise all collectors to do the same. By all means let a good art dealer tutor, mould and extend your taste; but most importantly, let it always remain your taste and not theirs. My way-overdue research also reinforced to me the benefits to be had in scrounging around the second-tier art auction rooms. Although there can be no doubt that Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Deutscher-Menzies and Shapiro Auctioneers, by and large, sell the best fine art, let us not forget the quality and bargains to be had in the small auction achievers. One of the country’s finest, Adelaide-based family auction house Bruce’s Auctions offers three specialist art sales a year comprising approximately 200 paintings with a dollar lot average of approximately $2500—all happy hunting. As a rule, Bruce’s tends to ship their big dollar pictures to Christie’s for sale. However, as in the case of the great Hans Heysen, whose following is stronger in South Australia than it is in the eastern states, Bruce’s takes the option to sell at home. At a $370 000 fine art sale at Bruce’s in 2003 two absolutely cracking Heysens, Hill Landscape with Gums, estimated at $25 000 to $35 000, sold for $47 000, and the impressive Ramparts of the Wilpenas, estimated at $20 000 to $30 000, sold for $35 000. Smaller operations can achieve big results Further west, Perth’s Gregson Flanagan Fine Art Auctioneers, established in 1994, conducts two to three stand-alone fine art auctions


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a year. Gregson Flanagan also rents artworks, conducts exhibitions, and undertakes valuations for insurance, family settlement and tax incentive purposes. The company provides storage facilities and advisory services to collectors and superannuation funds. While providing clients with a broad sweep of Australian paintings and works on paper from which to choose, Gregson Flanagan catalogues have, over the last few years, been long on artworks by the likes of Elizabeth Durack, Guy Grey-Smith, Robert Juniper and William Boissevain, artists with significant Western Australian roots. A recent sale highlight was the $75 000 achieved in 2001 for Arthur Streeton’s delightful still life Canterbury Bells (1932). The work is now part of the Rohan Skea Collection and was recently included in the mini-blockbuster exhibition held at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, entitled ‘[Arthur Streeton] The Passionate Gardener’. So do like Streeton did and dig around. Significant second-tier auction players in Sydney include Lawson-Menzies, Dalia Stanley and Co., Gavin Hardy Auctions, John Williams Fine Art Auctioneers, Raffan and Kellaher, and Bonhams & Goodman Auctioneers. In Melbourne there is the important family-run Leonard Joel’s and Aingers.

Auctioneers The sale—or otherwise—of a painting at auction can be determined by the opening bid. If the auctioneer accepts a starting bid that is far too low and the sale stalls and the artwork remains unsold, then the stated value of the artwork has been downgraded in a very public way. On the other hand, if the auctioneer calls for an opening bid that is far too high, some potential bidders will lose heart and may not enter the art sales buying fray. Either way, an auctioneer has to choose their opening bid judiciously. Auctioneers like to bring the salesroom with them. In the absence of telephone or book bids, most auctioneers will open the bidding on a lot by taking a starting bid that is a number of increments below the low sale estimate. If the sale estimate is $8000 to $10 000, the auctioneer may open the bidding at, say, $6000. By law, the auctioneer may take bids on behalf of the seller from those present in the salesroom (not the chandelier), from


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telephone bidders, or by absentee written bids up to the amount of the reserve but no further. The auctioneer’s age-old strategy is to bring bidders in at a comfortable level, in the hopes that competition will build buying momentum above and beyond the low estimate reserve. If the artwork reaches reserve or the bidding goes wild, all is well. However, an auctioneer is playing with fire if they adopt a strategy of opening with a very low bid. If the auctioneer opens bidding at $3000 on an artwork with a low estimate of $8000 and that lot stops dead in the sale water at $3500, then in the open market that artwork has been judged by the buying public to have a sale value of no more than $3500. This is obviously a great deal less than the $8000 to $10 000 quoted by the art specialists in the sale catalogue. Bad though this outcome is, from the auction house’s point of view all is not necessarily lost. Auction houses are statistically very aware; they like high sold and low unsold sales figures. If confronted with a difficult selling climate or an overpriced artwork mistakenly taken in for sale—and in a rush they do this all the time—the auctioneer, by taking a low opening bid or by leaving the artwork unsold many increments below its printed low estimated value, significantly reduces the nasty little value of artworks left unsold statistic. So, if the artwork remains unsold at $3500 against an estimate of $8000 to $10 000, then the unsold figure is taken as being $3500 and not the low estimate. In this scenario the auctioneer has stuffed up and the auction house’s original sale valuation was obviously way off. However, the new low benchmark sale figure of $3500 may entice a needy seller to offload the artwork after sale at a figure somewhere above $3500 and below $8000. The auction house can still possibly crunch an after sale, thereby boosting their turnover figures. From the owner’s point of view, their artwork has been massively devalued in front of an opinion-forming audience. If they really need to sell quickly, they are unfortunately at the mercy of art wolves. Should the owner wish to re-enter the painting for sale with that or another auction house at some future date, chances are the resale estimate will fall in line with the disappointing salesroom bidding: new sale estimate $3000 to $6000. How an auction is taken is very important indeed; the auction is the culmination of all endeavours that precede it. Months and


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months of hard work, sourcing, sifting, pitching for business, valuing and cataloguing all comes down to the do or die auction, which is why on the night the auctioneer’s energy, interest in and understanding of the artworks they are selling is most critical. An auctioneer needs to be very clear and decisive. They are, after all, a form of art sales traffic cop, regulating sales flow with but a few brisk movements. Auctioneers have the capacity to develop a positive selling mood in the room; if deadly dull, an auctioneer can lose an audience. For a good auctioneer to be great, they must be consistent and up-beat in the face of sales adversity. In terms of painting sales, Christie’s Australia’s managing director and auctioneer Roger McIlroy is most commanding from the rostrum. On a good night he is technically head and shoulders above his peers. His weakness, however, can be seen in the great strength of his rival, Justin Miller of Sotheby’s. Miller knows his subject matter: Australian paintings and furniture. When Miller is up and rolling, his side quips about what is good and what is really good are informed. Anita Archer, an auctioneer at Deutscher-Menzies, is a nononsense player. This is not a criticism in an industry where auction times have blown out from hours to almost day-long affairs, where it is refreshing to listen to someone getting down to quick business. Lawson-Menzies auctioneer Paul Sumner, the former head of Sotheby’s second-tier London saleroom, understands worth, and rarely starts his opening bids too low. With a few more years under his sale belt, Sumner could well become prominent among auctioneer equals. Two of the better all-round auctioneers in the game sell predominantly decorative arts rather than paintings. Ronan Sulich from Christie’s and Jonathan Alford from Abeshouse, Bubb and Alford Associates in Sydney are quick, decisive, knowledgeable and intelligent auctioneers—and it makes all the difference. See the ‘Resources’ section at the end of the book for the names and contact details of the main auction houses.

Auction house staff The auction houses are notorious for staff turnover. At the top of the staff tree, the directors of our major auction houses are among


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the highest-paid people in the Australian art world. Below the level of director, however, wages fall to a mere pittance. Few at the top of the staff tree leave, while most at the bottom eventually do. In what is a highly competitive market, this revolving door of specialist auction staff disrupts the all-important continuity of knowledge. Within a climate of constant change, collectors should look towards obtaining mature specialist advice that is based on longterm industry involvement. Recent times have witnessed an unusual changing of the management guard. Paul Sumner has returned to Australia to take up the position of CEO at Lawson-Menzies in Sydney. Sumner started his twenty-plus-year career in England before working with Rushton’s, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and now Lawson-Menzies. In Sumner’s case, his knowledge will at least stay within the industry; it has just moved around a bit more than most. Sumner took over the day-to-day reins of Lawson-Menzies following a turbulent twelve months. In that time almost all of Lawson-Menzies’ specialist staff left and/or were replaced. Art specialists Sally Hardy, Georgina Pemberton, Craig Chen and Margaret Hunt moved on. Tribal and Indigenous specialists Guy Earl-Smith and Sophie Ullin left. Jewellery specialist David Bubb is no longer with Lawson-Menzies. However, all will be glad to know that the knowledgeable Phillip Thomas, head of decorative arts, remains. Specialist staff turnover such as this provides leading art dealers with all the ammunition they need in their struggle to compete with the auction houses for the arts dollar. Age correlating to wisdom has always been a hallmark of the art world. Bigtime collectors, often in their fifties and with a significant painting or collection to sell, prefer to receive serious advice from their peers, not young auction house whippersnappers. Dealers are firm in their belief that the specialist knowledge required within the industry takes decades to obtain. The leading dealers have all been around for at least that long, many up to 30-plus years. Many of the specialist staff at the major auction houses, on the other hand, are in their early thirties and have been with their current employers less than six years. The effect of staff churn on an auction house is also felt in the erosion of crucial long-term client–specialist contacts. Individuals


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within a company, not the company itself, nurture important clients over many years. A case in point is Sotheby’s directors Jane Clark and Mark Fraser. Although Fraser is the first person to accredit all success to the good old team effort, the Clark–Fraser combination is personally credited with winning both the Kerry Stokes Collection and BP Collection art sale dispersals in 2002. Specialist staff churn within an auction house also reduces that organisation’s ability to win business. As important specialists leave the auction world they invariably take with them client knowledge and, occasionally, client loyalty. The professional void created by departing staff only serves to intensify political manoeuvring or jockeying for new job titles. (Art politics are poison.) A prolonged company reorganisation due to staff churn distracts an auction house’s concentration from competing in the marketplace. Collectors should be wary of all this arts industry instability. When seeking advice or obtaining sale valuations, collectors are well advised to shop around between the auction houses and dealers. Compare the depth of knowledge expressed by various specialists in their field. Be attuned to the fact that the name of prestigious companies can often lend a degree of credibility to some art specialists that on their own they may not deserve. At the same time, collectors shouldn’t be impatient. Fine and decorative art specialists are rarely experts. Be prepared to accept the fact that sometimes a specialist may not know the value of an object or be able to identify the maker. A fine art specialist who admits as much is an honest and rare bird indeed. Allow time for the honest and capable specialist to do their research and obtain a valuation. Collectors shouldn’t be swayed by an auction house or dealer who merely offers the highest valuation. After all, throwing around telephone number-length valuations is all too easy. The hard part is in the specialist actually delivering money into the collector’s hand—and those specialists more likely to deliver on the money are those with proven industry experience.

Art politics I shall digress for a brief moment into the murky world of art politics, for that beast is only too alive and thriving in the art auction houses.


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The world of work is marinated in politics. Working with others is for many nothing short of a Machiavellian dance—and a none-too-subtle one at that. Having worked on the land, in finance, academia, the law, the media and in the art market, it has been my observation that no other profession comes close to the arts industry in terms of the sheer time-consuming venom that is office politics. After decades of observation, I have developed a theory as to possibly why this is so. In the arts industry the name of the game is empire-building. It is not so everywhere else. In the world of finance, for example, individuals can be highly paid. Although many in the city may well hate their job, they know they are well paid for what they do. They compensate for the dull grind of the profit sector by engaging in a little letting-off-steam or regular retail therapy. In the CBD you see this category of existence all the time—angry faces, brisk strides and a clutch of shopping bags heading back to office. This phenomenon can be understood to be immediate, short term, cash and credit driven, work place stress-release in action. Aside from the financial stress redistribution that is significant discretionary income, city folk, through their regular wage and bonus reviews, know exactly where they stand professionally at any time in relation to others in their industry. In the finance industry, employees can differentiate between themselves and others by looking to the money they earn. The, ‘I earn tens of thousands of dollars more than that person, this one earns much more than I’, kind of thing. A financial hierarchy of recognised worth is based purely on a combination of salary and a bonus. This hierarchy of worth formulated as it is on a combination of salary and a bonus is regularly calibrated through remuneration reviews, which act as a strong performance indicator. You receive a big bonus; therefore, you are achieving. You don’t receive a bonus; therefore, you are not achieving—all very cut and dry. By contrast, few people in the arts industry are well paid, and the salary bands that could serve to divide and highlight a colleague’s station come relatively all bunched together. Unless you are a trust fund baby, few can engage in retail therapy to lessen the


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woes of a hard job-slog day. As in many industries, a drought of discretionary income builds much professional frustration. The alltoo-familiar cry of arts industry employees is: ‘When will I ever be able to afford to buy a house in Sydney on a salary of $36 000?’ However distressing this may be, it’s not the specific arts-related workplace problem that I am concerned with. In the arts industry, as salary increases (God forbid) are generally nothing more than the cost of inflation and the whole idea of a bonus is nothing more than a vicious rumour, it is near impossible to correlate professional achievement with the universal touchstone that is money. As financial remuneration isn’t the great professional highlighter and/or divider in the art world, the majority of arts argy-bargy tends to centre on the need to distinguish—in nonfinancial ways—one player’s success over others’. In the arts, it’s not about the cash; it’s all about marking and growing a player’s territory. In my previous auction house employment I witnessed ferocious stand-up, knock-down, take-noprisoners fights over who was going to catalogue the watercolours. ‘Who really cares?’ I can hear you think, and on the face of it I couldn’t agree with you more. However, there is far more to these distasteful confrontations than at first meets the eye. In the professional art hothouse, getting ahead of the competition equates to taking on more responsibility via staking out greater workplace territory. The need to continually grow one’s arts fiefdom—as opposed to growing one’s salary—creates much of the dog-eat-dog reputation of workplaces in the arts. In the art world, importance is displayed by being seen to do more, as opposed to being paid more. As a way of indicating their success, arts people tend to take on greater responsibility, in order to gain more control over greater professional territory. So, what should be the arts industry’s strength—the natural inclination of its people to take on added responsibility—is in reality its weakness. An inherent structural flaw within the profession, caused by a muddy career path and clear lack of standing, drives players to make a grab for new territory and status. If you work in the arts industry, have you ever noticed how difficult it is in your arts organisation to contain colleagues to the boundaries of their employed position? Ah, but back to the more tangible stuff.


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Telephone bidding There are a number of ways for a collector to bid at an art auction, each with its merits. Some bidding methods are more complicated than others. We will look briefly at bidding in the room and absentee bidding, before we take a closer look at the ever-growing phenomenon of telephone bidding. The most prevalent form of bidding is the age-old, physical attendance in the room, throwing-up-your-paddle-and-going-for-it method. The collector fills out a form prior to the auction registering their residency details with the auction house. If the collector is unknown and they wish to bid on an expensive lot, the auction house may ask them for a banking reference. Having filled in the form, the collector is given a numbered paddle which they can wave about to their heart’s and bank balance’s desire. The second method is known as leaving a bid on the book, or absentee bidding. The collector who cannot attend fills out another form detailing how much they are willing to pay for a specific lot. During the auction the auctioneer executes the bid on the collector’s behalf. Auctioneers will always begin the bidding by taking bids left on the book. In effect the auctioneer duels the absentee bid against those in the room. The auctioneer cannot bid above the collector’s written instruction, and theoretically they should attempt to secure the lot for less than the maximum amount left by the collector. Unfortunately, less scrupulous auctioneers will start the bidding with the maximum amount the collector is willing to pay. The final, and increasingly more popular, method of bidding is by telephone. When it comes to telephone bidding, most auction houses have some sort of minimum lot value requirements—say, lots valued at or over $5000—before they will allow collectors to register for this service. That minimum threshold requirement is designed to weed out the small niggly bids that can otherwise be left with the auctioneers on the book. Telephone bidding is most likely to appeal to those collectors wanting to remain anonymous or those intending to spend a serious amount of money, collectors with the financial flexibility and the wherewithal to go that one bid higher on a moment’s notice depending on the competition and rhythm of the sale.


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Telephone bidders are asked to fill out a registration form detailing the lot(s) they wish to telephone bid on and their contact telephone numbers. Take my advice: always leave at least two telephone numbers. The primary telephone number should, if at all possible, be a land line. I cannot count the number of times over the years that the whole process came to a screaming halt when the mobile phone bidder drove through a tunnel and telephone service was lost. Make all telephone bidding arrangements at least the day before the sale. Obtain confirmation of all details and make doubly sure the auction house has the right telephone numbers. During the sale, sit by a land line with your mobile phone in hand and wait for the auction house to call you, hopefully several sale lots before the one you wish to bid on. Get the kids off the phone and keep them off. If bidding for the first time, it is probably best to have an experienced telephone bidder with you. So that you can hear and learn, have the telephone bidder at your end put the conversation on conference call. An experienced telephone bidder will ask for someone with telephone experience from the auction house that they know and trust. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Obtain a feel for the room. Ask the person taking your telephone bid how many other telephone bidders are bidding on the lot, and who else is bidding in the room. Ask how the sale is going. Get a feel for the rhythm of the sale and soak up as much information as you can. If you happen to know what the major players look like, then all the better. Being able to identify other room bidders may help you to decide how far you are willing to go. Do remember that technology can fail. If things go wrong with the telephone connection, and they often do—then such is life.

Bidding in the room When bidding on an artwork at auction, a collector’s immediate concern will be how much do they have to pay to secure the lot. Naturally enough, this is a focus on the end game. However, collectors would be well advised not to neglect the bidding process itself. For the amount you pay to secure a winning bid can in many cases be directly influenced by the way you bid in the first instance.


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The manner in which you place your bids, decisively and with confidence, is from my experience far more important than any nuts and bolts bidding strategy itself. The do you bid early, or do you bid late conundrum, is more often than not an irrelevant consideration, one ironed out by the personality of the bidder themselves. Men of an aggressive business persuasion tend to enjoy marking their territory with a hard and fast upfront bidding strategy. They take the floor, capture the attention of the auctioneer and hope to intimidate the room with a do not even think about competing against me bidding stance. Many art dealers favour this up front, no nonsense bidding strategy. On the other hand those who rely on stealth, as opposed to force to achieve an outcome, will often wait till the very last minute to put up their bidding paddle, essentially dropping in over the top of the crowd to place their first and hopefully last bid. This softly, softly bidding approach allows the more patient and observant amongst us to know who their competitors are. However, collectors who wait to the very last instant can and occasionally are overlooked. I have never known one bidding strategy to work better than another. With the sale of Brett Whiteley’s The Jacaranda Tree (On Sydney Harbour) (1977) in mid-1999 the bidding started with great expectations at $700 000. After taking just two bids from the floor a businessman collector yelled out to the auctioneer a bid of $1.2 million dollars. Without doubt this slay-them-in-the-isles bidding strategy broke the rhythm of the auctioneer and may well have cleared out a number of purchasing hopefuls. But in the end, the hard and fast businessman bidder did not secure the lot. Collectors should ditch all notions of applying any specific bidding strategy and concentrate on being comfortable and confident with the act of bidding. Learn not to be intimidated by the process. Attend a lot of art auctions and watch others. Begin by asking a more experienced person to bid for you. Stand in a conspicuous place, get used to the fact that you will often be bidding in front of a large crowd. People will stare at you—get over it. Be definite when you bid. Use a bidding paddle to catch the attention of the auctioneer. Do not play those silly-bugger games of surreptitiously lifting a finger or scratching your nose. Or worse still, darting from behind some pillar or door to make your bid-


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strike. Leave such cloak and dagger actions to the misguided. Remember if you do not want to be seen bidding, leave a bid with the auctioneer on the book or make a telephone bid. If you are bidding in the room, assume you’re under scrutiny and learn to live with it. Be forthright and clear in your actions. The sale of an artwork can take 30 seconds. Auction rooms, because of their heavy-duty lighting and the service of alcohol (do not drink) can be hot, restless, boisterous places. In the midst of all this sound and fury, contemplate the sound of one hand clapping, and be calm and considered in your actions. Do not act like one Melbourne runner (one who scouts sourcing art for galleries) who when bidding leaps around, waving his paddle as if he were a helicopter given control tower clearance. This look-at-me display of nervous bidding is of little value. The runner bids mostly to the lower estimate and then drops out, almost every time. The runner would save a great deal of time and energy if he just lifted his paddle and bid in a clear no-nonsense fashion. Clarity of bidding avoids sending mixed messages to the auctioneer and to our advantage we always want to send the correct message. Raising your paddle registers a bid. A paddle waved sideways asks the auctioneer to register a half-bid. Requesting a halfbid requires bidding clarity. For example, if the bidding is going up in $100 dollar increments, and it currently stands at $300 against you, to wave your paddle sideways is to ask the auctioneer to make your next bid a half increment bid—$350. half-bids are only taken towards the end of the bidding. Being clear and decisive in one’s actions also stands you in good stead should things go terribly wrong. In a large crowd the auctioneer can miss a bid. Should you ever wish to dispute the fall of the hammer, do so immediately and calmly so that the bidding can be reopened quickly and without fuss. Just the other night I witnessed a scrappy bidder, disputing the fall of the hammer in rather an aggressive manner. The bidding was reopened, went further than the scrappy bidder had so obviously intended, but because he had made such a scene sloppy to-do in the first place, and for so long, I am sure he was pushed to buy the lot. Certainly he did not look happy, having disputed the bidding and then bought the lot.


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Condition reports The Australian public could on occasion be forgiven for misunderstanding the role of art auction houses. The theatre, bordering on entertainment, so often whipped up and promoted by the auction houses themselves, often eclipses their rather more traditional role. Aside from the provision of a swish sales venue and near hysterical marketing, auction houses are first and foremost in the arts service industry and offer a number of special client services, not the least of which is the provision of condition reports prior to sale. Collectors should, prior to bidding, request an auction house condition report. A little-known service, the provision of an auction house condition report on a painting or decorative artwork is an industry service designed to augment the information contained within the standard catalogue entry and accompanying illustration. Unlike a catalogue entry, which is designed to describe an artwork, a condition report goes beyond the surface and details faults and material difficulties inherent within the artwork. Depending upon the competence of the person who provides the condition report, most painting reports describe and explain any cracks, bumps or over-painting that may or may not be readily apparent to the untrained eye. A condition report is a vital art world tool that will alert and educate the collector to creeping, unseen damage such as mould on paper or extensive latter restoration on paintings. The catalogue entry for a particular Lot 155 in one of Christie’s Melbourne sales read in brief: ‘Eugène Von Guérard (1811–1901), Southern Italian Coastal Scene, oil on canvas estimated at $160 000 to $220 000’, which is all straightforward, no-nonsense information. However, a collector interested in this large, detailed and charming work would, because of its age and possible expense, request a condition report. Any condition report on this painting would have no doubt indicated that the canvas on which the painting was executed had at an earlier date been relined, possibly using animal glue. As canvas weakens with time, many old pictures are relined as a matter of course. A relined canvas isn’t necessarily a problem, though it couldn’t be considered a sales strength. However, the use of older, inferior animal glue may indicate a long-term difficulty requiring future attention and possibly modern relining.


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The early, rather tough process used to reline the canvas (the glue was fixed by literally ironing the old and new canvas— flattening the paint) would possibly explain the fine uniform web of cracks on the painting’s surface, which was most noticeable in the pale blue of the sky. In a 157-year-old painting such condition difficulties should almost be expected; in this case, a condition report would educate as much as alert the collector. The vast majority of condition reports are undertaken and provided by in-house auction painting specialists or art dealers. However, in the case of big-hitting, very expensive paintings, many within the industry will commission independent specialists to conduct an exhaustive pre-sale survey of the painting. David Stein of Sydney, Erica Burgess in Hobart, and Judy Dunlop in Melbourne are widely respected in the art conservation industry for their knowledge, expertise and objective detail. If an auction house or art dealer is unwilling to commission an independent condition report and a collector is contemplating buying above $50 000, they would be well advised to commission their own signed, detailed condition report. Be safe, not sorry. A collector should read the catalogue entry carefully and study any accompanying illustration closely; if the painting isn’t illustrated in the catalogue the collector should request the auction house to send or email a photograph of the work. If the catalogue entry, photograph or condition report supplied by the auction house or art dealer on purchase doesn’t reflect the reality, then the buyer has well-documented grounds on which to consider cancelling the sale. On their part, auction houses and art dealers have resorted to lengthy legal preambles attempting to limit any liability in regards to the information provided. However, try as they may, no amount of legal mumbo jumbo is able to deflect a strong suit for negligence, particularly negligent misstatement from a professional. Finally, buyers should be reasonable about the number and timing of requests for condition reports, and should always plan ahead.

The fall of the hammer The crowd booed. For a whole day it was a major arts industry to-do. And this is how it all started. Lot 616 offered at Sotheby’s


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November 2001 decorative arts sale, an early nineteenth-century Georgian mahogany serpentine chest of drawers, sold on the hammer to a well-known Perth antiques dealer for $27 000. The chest of drawers carried a pre-sale estimate of $6000 to $8000. But no, that wasn’t the big deal. Five lots after the so-called sale, on the instructions of Sotheby’s then managing director Martin Gallon, bidding was reopened on Lot 616. The chest of drawers was subsequently knocked down to a new London-based telephone bidder for $42 650. The crowd wasn’t happy. The vendor was very happy. Although the to-do was amicably settled, it does raise a number of fundamental questions. What actually does the fall of the hammer really mean? And what would have happened if the original buyer of the chest of drawers had inadvertently left the building before the second re-offering? Essentially, when at auction is a sale a sale? When a collector registers to bid, either in person or by telephone, they sign a bid form essentially agreeing to the auction house’s conditions of business. Stating the buyer’s and seller’s rights, these lengthy and detailed rules are printed in the rear of the sale catalogue. Take along your lawyer and a magnifying glass. Technical failure or missed telephone bids are not, as stated in the conditions of business, the responsibility of the auction house. The auctioneer reserves the right to refuse any bid deemed insufficient. The striking of the auctioneer’s hammer marks the acceptance of the highest bid and marks the conclusion of the contract for sale between the seller and the buyer. However, it is also within the auctioneer’s privilege during the course of the auction to withdraw or re-offer lots as they see fit when the auctioneer believes an error or dispute has arisen. In relation to the November 2001 incident, and on reading Sotheby’s conditions of business, Sotheby’s were not liable for the missed London telephone bid. At the same time, however, it was well within Sotheby’s discretion, as printed in the conditions of business, to reopen bidding. After all, Sotheby’s are endeavouring to obtain the best sale price for their vendor. As anyone who has ever attended an art auction will attest, it is not uncommon for a sale lot to be re-offered. Should a bid have been missed or disputes in the room arise, either before or directly after the fall of the hammer, the auctioneer simply begins again. Be


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that as it may, the announcement to re-offer Lot 616 came approximately five minutes and as many lots after its initial sale, which is most unusual. Even though the room erupted into booing and Sotheby’s staff members were visibly embarrassed, Sotheby’s managing director instructed that bidding be reopened. In New South Wales there is no specific legislation that covers auctioneers of fine and decorative arts. The Auctioneers and Agents Act 1941 was removed and streamlined in the early 1990s to become the Properties, Stock and Business Agents Act (backdated to 1941). Not unsurprisingly, this Act is more tailored towards the sale of houses, cattle and cars. Layered across the Act are the Commonwealth Trade Practices Act 1974, the Fair Trading Act 1987 and the Sale of Goods Act 1923. And remember, legislation is distinctly different in every state and territory. In the absence of clear purpose-built legislation in the first instance, the auction house’s terms and conditions of business govern the relationship between the auctioneer, the bidder and the seller. So, by reopening the bidding, Sotheby’s did what they were able to do, but it was an action within the letter of the law, rather than within its spirit. Given such goings on, bidders participating in any art auction would be well advised to thoroughly understand that the auction house might re-offer a lot at their discretion. As for the predicament of the Perth antiques dealer, as he was in the room when Lot 616 was re-offered and he participated in the new round of bidding, in effect it could be argued that he agreed with Sotheby’s reopening the sale. On the other hand, had the dealer been out of the room and unaware of Sotheby’s intentions to reopen the bidding, then it could well have been a case of lawyers at a hundred paces, conditions of business notwithstanding.

Purchasing unsold artwork—after-sales Even after the strongest art auction a substantial percentage of the works on offer fail to make reserve and remain unsold. Collectors can sift through unsold works post-auction and go on to make what is called in the industry an after-sale offer. The strategy of purchasing by private negotiation after an auction should form part of a collector’s acquisition strategy.


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The November 2002 round of painting auctions in Melbourne was astonishingly successful, with the major auction houses selling some $13.5 million of paintings over three days. This is a quantum art market leap in comparison to the $5.5 million sold over the same period a mere two years prior. Statistics of the number of lots sold by value, figures of the overall auction turnover and the percentages sold were published. What are rarely reported in any depth, however, are the unsold figures. Of the nearly 1300 lots on offer over the three-day auction, around 37 per cent remained unsold—some 481 artworks. Such a volume of unsold artwork represents a happy hunting ground for astute collectors. In considering whether to make an after-sale offer a collector should keep in mind a number of points as to why a work can be unsold at auction. The sale estimate and reserve may simply have been too high. Other, more interesting examples by the same artist may be on offer elsewhere. The unsold work in question may be out of favour, either the artist or subject matter no longer being in vogue. Inexperienced collectors or institutions may have had difficulty making up their minds to buy in the relatively short period of time in which auctions are conducted. Also, the unsold work may exhibit a condition problem rendering it less than desirable, no matter what the subject or even how inexpensively it is priced. Auction houses have traditionally been wary of after-sale offers. Their objective is, after all, the sale of fine art at public auction. However, times do change. During the art market recession from 1989 to 1995 a heady mix of competition for scarce quality stock, falling auction attendances, high company overheads and the need to make budgets, relaxed entrenched views on auction houses partaking in negotiated sales. In today’s booming art market the auction houses, although not-over-the-moon about negotiated after-sales, are still open to reasonable bargaining. In the last round of November 2003 sales, a number of art dealers were seen buzzing around after-sale picking up the unsold stock. Collectors should be prepared to move immediately on an aftersale offer. In 2001 Lot 38 at Sotheby’s, The Medical Examination— Sir Russell Drysdale’s painting of Second World War recruits being probed and prodded—was unsold on the hammer at $250 000 against expectations of $400 000. It sold swiftly after auction for $332 500. Big game hunters tend to move very fast.


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For more modestly priced paintings, collectors should be prepared to attend the auction rooms early on the day following the auction. The day after one Lawson-Menzies fine art sale, I purchased for $2200 against a low auction estimate of $3000 a Harold Septimus Power oil entitled Cattle Drinking. A significant Australian artist, Power was known for his horse studies and work as an official war artist during the First World War. His very fine cow picture remained unsold on the night of the auction essentially because its subject matter is atypical and deeply unfashionable; had the work been a Power horse painting it would have been worth $8000. Everybody, it seems, wants moderns—but not me. Buying after-sale and against the modern trend, I obtained a good cow picture undertaken to a high standard from an artist I normally couldn’t afford. Coming from the country, I can live with the subject matter. Collectors need to be aware that the day after a sale, auction house specialists separate their sold from their unsold artworks. Such an arrangement allows dealers and collectors the opportunity to view unsold works quickly without confusion. At this stage, auction house specialists tend to be frank as to their client’s asking price. The expected price range as reflected in the catalogue’s printed estimates is placed to one side; the parties talk bottom line. The signing of a sales receipt by a seller allows the auction house a reasonable time in which to conduct an after-sale. As long as the auction house sells at the reserve or above, within a few days, all is smooth. If a collector’s offer on an artwork is less than the reserve or is made a good while after the sale, auction house specialists will contact the owner to discuss the offer. This can take time. Purchasing after-sale is only one of a number of options in a sensible acquisition strategy. (Other options include purchasing at auction itself, through an art dealer or directly from an artist. Preferably one’s purchasing strategy would be a combination of all four.) After-sale purchases should not become the strategy. Too many inexperienced collectors, more in tune with a sense of saving than quality, end up with an assemblage of works that look picked over and second best. As a rule of thumb, collectors should only make an after-sale offer on an unsold artwork if they were sufficiently interested in purchasing the same work at the auction, but at a lower price.


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A collector should avoid falling into the trap of purchasing any work simply because it’s believed to be cheap.

The art contra-deal There is an ongoing problem to which I have found at least part of the solution. The problem being, that having just bought a large, 1842 two-storey sandstone house in the country, all my loose cash is currently heading towards replacing the guttering. All well and good, yet with six-metre ceilings the country house demands large contemporary paintings. However, much of my existing art collection that hangs in our small workers cottage in the city, when transplanted to the big house will make me look like a stamp collector. So with little money, how do you rotate and upgrade your existing art collection? The part solution is called the art swap contra-deal. The art auction house contra-deal is when you consign for sale one or a number of paintings to an auction—hopefully selling them—and then apply the monies raised to purchasing a fresh, better and more relevant painting from the same sale. If it all works out, the buying and selling becomes an auction house book entry, with little hard cash needed to change hands in order to secure your fresh, wanted picture. So in the early March rather sales-patchy Deutscher-Menzies Sydney auction, I consigned two good, yet modest paintings: Lot 464, E.A Harvey’s, North West Europe (1932) 44.4 × 59.5 cm oil that sold for $2440 and Harold Septimus Powers’s Cattle Drinking, 29 × 49.5 cm oil that sold for $2318. I had always planned for these modest pictures to go into my study, but as the study has graduated to a library, out they go. After deducting the costs of the sale, I had $3451.50 to play with—hardly the World Bank, but at least it was cash I did not need to dredge up. On the hunt for a large painting, I spied Chris Langlois’s, The Three Sunrises No. 7 (1995), 171 × 150 cm, which was unsold on the hammer at $6000 against an estimate of $7000 to $9000. I made an opportunistic art move, and offered $7143.50 including buyer’s premium and GST for the work, essentially returning to the vendors what they paid for the painting at auction in 2002. The after-sale offer was accepted.


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I already own two superb early Langlois landscapes, and I imagined hanging all three examples of his work, the two early pictures and a later one, so as to tell the story of the artist’s growth and change. So deducting my sale proceeds of $3451.50 from the purchase price of $7143.50, I had to hand over $3692 in hard cash to Deutscher-Menzies. This was OK as Langlois oils of that size and quality currently retail for approximately $13 000. Now mine was a rather modest, contra-deal. This method of refreshing stock, without a substantial cash outlay is, however, a widely used strategy in the art trade. Any number of gallery owning art dealers will put many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tired, hard to shift stock into the auctions—good luck, uninformed punters—and do the contra-deal to secure maybe a few less pictures, but invariably artworks of better quality, fresh to the market for future sale. Should the contra-deal purchase become part of a collector’s purchasing strategy, there are a number of serious considerations that one must take on board in order to play this game. To begin with, you pay both a seller’s and buyer’s premium on your art swap. So what you have purchased should be a definite art upgrade (as was my contra-deal), obtained for reasonable money. Most importantly, do not buy in the auction before your consigned artworks have sold. Many an inexperienced art dealer has been burnt buying on a sure thing that did not happen. They were inadvertently left with a substantial cash outlay and their old stock to boot. When you are serious about collecting in this manner make it your business to know what is coming up for sale: make the telephone calls and take the time to learn of any pictures that you may be interested in, and when they have been definitely consigned for sale. Then you consign the paintings you want to off-load, and you ever so sweetly ask the auction house-painting specialist to place your old unwanted artworks in the auction catalogue for sale, before the painting that you are interested in. Then on the night you will know—no educated guesses—that your old paintings have sold, and for how much. Such logical selling and buying allows the more numerate art aficionados amongst us to compute the precise figure to which they can bid on the wanted, upcoming paintings.


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The art swap contra-deal is far from inexpensive, but the whole process is of enormous benefit to the organised collector wanting to refresh their collection, through a series of straightforward transactions relying in the end on possibly a small top-up payment to secure a vastly more desirable painting. It works for me.

Bottom trawling Confronted with the late November wave of painting sales from Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Deutscher-Menzies and Shapiro Auctioneers, collectors would do well to exercise some buying patience and steel themselves for the long haul. For those collectors who wait until the end of the evening, art sale bargains can be had. To better understand this new trend, let us briefly turn back the sales clock. For decades, quality and profitability were the hallmarks of the long-established art auction houses. Although their fixed cost structures were high, they faced little competition, kept prices for their services artificially inflated, and managed to make good returns while keeping their top end painting sales small and exclusive. In recent years increased competition from new, more aggressive market entrants and the cessation of fixed pricing structures has changed the cosy world of the art auction houses. The major players compete over an annual art market worth around $100 million. With big management salaries, staggering printing costs, rents and so on, the auction houses have to cover large fixed cost bases. Given the variable nature of their income—that is, taking 20–40 per cent margin on each painting sold (from both buyer and seller), in order to balance the books and make a return for their owners—the auction houses have had little choice but to significantly increase the number of artworks they sell. In short, the requirement for volume has replaced the old emphasis on quality. In the late 1960s and early 1970s art auctions contained around 130 lots. Art auctions were held in relatively spacious market conditions, with sales for one house often spaced up to six months from the competition. Today, 500-plus lot sales are standard and three to four auction houses can offer the same volume of art over a week. Thousands upon thousands of artworks hit the secondary market at least three times a year.


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In those earlier decades, auction houses would evenly ‘salt’ the 130-lot sale catalogue with important paintings appearing right at the end of the auction. More often than not, to keep bidders in the room for the entire sale, the last lot was a major painting. Today, all-important works are crammed into the beginning of the sale. The rationale of the auction houses in doing this is to establish a selling rhythm that, fingers crossed, builds sales momentum and lasts. Today, very few major paintings are now offered beyond Lot 125, and many collectors bail out at around this point. With some art sales lasting up to four or five hours, only art professionals and a few die-hard collectors have the stamina to sit through to the end. With lot after lot of low-value, possibly mediocre works, the tedium can be mind-numbing, even with chardonnay-based fortification. However, if you do manage to stick around to the near end, bargains can be had. Having crunched the numbers from the last round of sales, the trend is clear. The data show that the best bargains are to be had at the end of long sales. Of course, not all of the tail-end offerings are of good quality; however, a well-trained eye and a little patience may lead the astute buyer to some well-priced gems. Many of the lots appearing towards the end of sales are silkscreens, mezzo tints and etchings, which are all commonly referred to as prints. Prints make an excellent entry point into the art market. A well-selected, high-quality print from an established artist will retain its value and may well increase significantly over time. In a recent round of sales many good-quality prints were sold for $500 to $600. At one Christie’s sale, good-quality prints from Donald Friend, Jeffrey Smart, Brett Whiteley and John Brack all went unsold. A David Hockney lithograph with a reserve of $1500 also failed to excite. All these prints were reasonably priced, and sale fatigue may well be to blame for their poor showing on the night. At a Sotheby’s sale of the Orica Collection (technically called, ‘Art from the Kerry Stokes Collection including works formally in the Orica Collection’), prints by Lloyd Rees were going for as low as $600 and Nolan’s for $400, which in some cases wasn’t much more than the cost of their frame. So, in terms of obtaining artwork often below market value, if you are capable of enduring the boredom, take a tip from me and stick around until the end of the sale to buy.


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Or, at the very least, make a quick after-sale offer on those you like of the artworks that didn’t sell.

Buy now, pay later For decades, fine and decorative art dealers have purchased at art auction, then taken delivery of the goods without immediate payment. In this long-standing, rather cosy art world arrangement the auction house acts like a mini-bank, providing the art dealer with a month’s free credit on their purchases. This window period of opportunity gives the art dealer time to on-sell their newly acquired stock, raising the cash to pay the original purchase invoice and, hopefully, reap a tidy profit on the way. The art auction houses would prefer collectors not to know about this practice, as they prefer you to bid and pay for artworks at almost the same time. In the spirit of art world transparency and fair play, collectors should be aware that under certain straightforward conditions they too might ask an auction house for time to pay so that they can juggle finances, make savings and plan art acquisitions. A decade ago, most art auction house conditions of purchase gave the successful private bidders seven days in which to pay. However, times have changed. On reading the extremely fine print sale conditions in today’s art auction catalogues you may be confronted with something like this: ‘In accordance with the conditions of business, interest at a rate of 6 per cent per annum on the purchase price may be charged should purchases not be paid for within two working days after the auction.’ On another page of the same catalogue you might also note that the auction house pays out sellers 35 days after the sale. It is in this period, between the fall of the sale hammer and the auction house’s desire to pay out their vendors, that the flexibility of delayed payment exists. So, having purchased on the hammer Graham Fransella’s large oil entitled Figure in a Desert at auction for $7000, how do you lift the rather draconian ‘pay in two days or else’ purchase conditions from your shoulders? The answer is simply to ask. Going into an art auction, most collectors will have formed a basic target list of possible art purchases with a mind’s eye as to how much they can afford to pay. And don’t forget, when considering the cost of purchase, to factor in both the auctioneer’s


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commission—up to 20 per cent on the hammer—and any shipment costs. Having in your mind a firm idea of what you are after and how much you want to pay, politely approach the auction house head of department or sale specialist to discuss the delayed payment option. Although I shouldn’t need to stress the importance of courteous business manners, having been in the shoes of the auction house specialist, I know that the public can be rather blunt. From past experience, it is amazing what specialists can go on to achieve on behalf of a considerate client. If this is a collector’s first approach, request two weeks to pay. Unlike the art trade, it is most unlikely that the auction house will release goods without payment to a collector. That isn’t unreasonable; after all, collectors aren’t looking for extra time to buy and then flog the artwork, but instead generally require time to pay in order to organise their finances. It is most important that collectors strictly adhere to the time-to-pay agreement, as most auction houses stick to the 35-day period to pay out their sellers. Don’t forget to ask the auction house specialist about any hidden costs associated with delayed payment, such as storage fees. Delayed purchase doesn’t mean escape purchase. You have to pay; in a legal nutshell, the fall of the hammer is a contract of purchase (if the auction house wants it to be). This leads us to the cautionary tale of one newly arrived colourful art world identity, who many years ago in his desperation to publicly be seen to hunt art with the big boys, made one hell of a BIG killing (his own). Frantically bidding among and against many in the saleroom, he purchased nine paintings valued in total at around $400 000. (At the time, that number was a significant slice of the art sale.) However, half an hour after the sale, our smooth-as-ice art dealer told the auctioneer that he had no money. The ethically challenged art dealer took a risk that the auction house would be quietly furious, with the emphasis on quiet. The dealer thought that the house would buckle—after all, no one in the industry likes to publicly discuss non-payment—move on and sell the paintings to the under-bidders. Amid all this, our art dealer was hoping that his name would be splashed all over the papers and around the art trade as a big, important buyer. (I will one day write a book about media junkies.) Oh, how wrong he was! The house swiftly contacted the under-bidders; although all paintings


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found new homes, the auction house was about $100 000 short of the hammer sales total. Applying over 200 years of charm and death threats, the auction house pressured the art dealer into consigning a swag of his stock—at fire sale values—to their next sale. The proceeds naturally enough were applied to the debt, with interest and commissions. And our poorer, though none-the-wiser, reneging art dealer was prohibited from buying at that international auction house ever, ever again. A delayed payment strategy is most likely to work if the collector already has, or intends to build up, a relationship with the auction house. In any number of ways, it pays to be personally known to the art sellers. So, hit two birds with the one stone; think long-term and get to know the characters within the art world. Build that business relationship so that as a collector you may use it to your future benefit. Aside from the art world at auction, delayed purchase in the art gallery world is good old out-and-out lay-by. Don’t be embarrassed to ask for delayed payment, as many reputable art dealers and auction houses would rather wait a reasonable time for the remainder of the sale money than not make a sale at all.

Buyer’s premiums when purchasing paintings In the good old bad days when Christie’s and Sotheby’s were engaged in art market collusion, their respective commission structures—that is, both their selling and buying premiums—were exactly the same and were set in anti-competitive stone. Thanks to the duopoly-busting tenacity of the American courts, this has all changed. In today’s more open, crowded and competitive fine arts industry at auction, just what premium a collector will pay at auction depends on where they buy. An analysis of the differing premiums between auction houses will demonstrate to the collector a great deal about how the auction houses view themselves and each other. Christie’s, with a flat 17.5 per cent buyer’s premium on sale items of any value, is the most expensive of the new commission structures, but it is also the least complex. Christie’s must believe that clarity and lack of complexity are important to their buyers, and certainly this is in part true.


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By raising buyers’ premiums to such an extent, Christie’s is quite plainly making a statement of confidence in the quality of its brand, service, marketing ability and stock quality vis-a-vis the competition. It would seem that Christie’s feels no threat from new entrants and no need to target particular market segments. It is positioning itself as the market supremo, with the assumption that it can afford to be the most expensive because it believes it is the best. Sotheby’s, on the other hand, is taking care of the bottom line and attempting to improve its market share at the high end. With a 20 per cent buyer’s premium for sale items up to $20 000, its higher rates for low-value sale goods more adequately reflect the administrative and marketing costs attached to these items. By gradually decreasing the buyer’s premium to 10 per cent for items of $500 001 and over, Sotheby’s hopes to pick up a greater share of the lucrative big-ticket art sales. Sotheby’s seems unfazed by the complexity imposed by their graduating scale of fees. The four separate fee brackets represent by far the most complex of the offerings by the auction houses. Deutscher-Menzies, having ambushed their competitors with a recent string of knockout sales, has positioned itself strongly against Christie’s. Deutscher-Menzies’ sale rates match the Christie’s rate of 17.5 per cent up to $100 000 and then fall to 15 per cent for all sales above that level. Given their commission structure, it’s almost as if Deutscher-Menzies views Christie’s as its main competition for high-end business and has disregarded the rest. Shapiro Auctioneers, on the other hand, is taking a more traditional new entrant’s approach. In the absence of a strong brand and no perceptible service advantage, it is resorting to competition based solely on price, and offers the lowest or equal-lowest buyer’s premium across all market segments. Its offering commences like Christie’s and Deutscher-Menzies at 17.5 per cent and falls to 10 per cent for all sales of $100 001 and above. Basically, it is attempting to buy up market share. All of these changes bring some interesting new variables into the auction rooms. The first is a new complexity, which can be illustrated by the following examples. With an existing bid of $20 000 on a painting, increasing the bid to $20 100 will result in the purchase price falling from $24 000 to $23 618. This effect is exaggerated for higher-value items, where increasing a bid by


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$100 to $500 100 would reduce the commission paid by $25 000. This represents a potential conflict of interest for auctioneers who, sensing a slowing in bidding activity, may be more likely to drop the hammer while bids are still in the higher bracket for buyer’s premium rather than attempt to gain a higher price for the seller. The second new variable is the large difference in overall outlay for the purchaser depending at which sale an item is purchased. A very large benefit may accrue to buyers using Sotheby’s or Shapiro over Christie’s, and to a lesser but still significant extent Deutscher-Menzies. A buyer will pay $660 000 for an item with an underlying value of $600 000 through Sotheby’s or Shapiro’s, but would pay $705 000 at Christie’s or $690 000 at DeutscherMenzies. The difference is a huge $30 000 to $45 000! The following tables should help arm buyers with information to formulate their strategies when buying at auction. TABLE 9.1 PERCENTAGE BUYER’S PREMIUM Christie’s: Sotheby’s: 17.5 per cent of the hammer price Deutscher-Menzies: $1–$100 000: 17.5 per cent of the hammer price $100 001 and above: 15 per cent Shapiro Auctioneers: $1–$50 000: 17.5 per cent $50 001–$100 000: 15 per cent $100 001 and above: 10 per cent

$1–$20 000: 20 per cent of the hammer price $20 001–$100 000: 17.5 per cent $100 001–$500 000: 15 per cent $500 001 and up: 10 per cent

TABLE 9.2 TOTAL OUTLAY, INCLUDING BUYER’S PREMIUM, FOR THE PURCHASE OF A PAINTING C = Christie’s; D-M = Deutscher-Menzies; SA = Shapiro Auctioneers; S = Sotheby’s

Total outlay

Buyer’s premium C

$10 000 $30 000 $150 000 $600 000

$1 750 $5 250 $26 250 $105 000

D-M $1 750 $5 250 $22 500 $90 000

SA $1 750 $5 250 $15 000 $60 000

S $2 000 $5 250 $22 500 $60 000


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Private treaty sales Private treaty sales, the confidential brokerage of fine art by auction houses outside the public auction process, have become one of the more controversial methods of selling in today’s art market. Private treaty sales cause dealers to see red. The art and antiques trade views private treaty sales as yet another example of a grab for the retail arts dollar by the auction houses. Largely due to the predatory nature of this behaviour, the auction houses rarely publicise this alternative form of sale. In a brazen display of corporate confidence, Christie’s London jewellery department has made it official: in late November 2003 it sent out a client flyer offering to buy or sell jewellery without going to auction—the auction house becomes the dealer. This rather up-front declaration dovetails neatly with a long-term trend for the major auction houses to promote private treaty sales alongside, or even ahead of, auction sales. Not to be outdone, however, Sotheby’s America sent out a slick sale catalogue for the private treaty sale of ‘Monumental Masterpieces of Modern Sculpture’ on view until early April 2004 at Islesworth, a private golf coursecum-gated community in Florida. Impressive as these moves may be, in this instance London and New York were lagging behind Australia; some years ago Sotheby’s ran a full-page advertisement in a painting sale catalogue requesting ‘tenders in excess of $70 000’ for the private treaty sale of a circa 1915 Australian oval blackwood desk. Collectors need to be aware of the pros and cons inherent in this method of sale. During the recession of 1989–95, in an effort to boost bottom-line profits, auction houses ventured outside the auction process altogether and embarked on an ambitious scheme to negotiate private treaty sales for important artworks. Auction houses are able to trawl their extensive insurance and sale valuations undertaken over the years with an eye to approaching clients whom they consider may sell, or even buy, privately. Should works of art remain unsold at auction, rather than re-offering goods that have been shopped around, the auction houses may suggest a private treaty sale. Private treaty sales allow the auction house, like the dealer, to confidentially place artworks directly to clients without the


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attention associated with putting works up for public sale. Public sales require major auction houses to print glossy, heavily illustrated catalogues that are distributed to the thousands of potential buyers. Sales are widely advertised and hundreds of people attend an auction viewing. Often, high-profile private collectors, corporate clients or those under financial stress are reluctant to acknowledge publicly their desire or need to sell. In the relatively compact Australian art market, it is rare for major artworks at auction to maintain the cloak of seller confidentiality. Paintings, in particular, are studiously tracked, often over generations, by dealers, other collectors and rival auction house specialists. Confidentiality can be a real problem in the auction process. The concerns of such vendors are grist to the private treaty sale mill. Through private treaty sales, clients more often than not keep their artworks at home or in the office while the auction house discreetly sends images and details to a limited number of potential buyers. Depending on the allure of the artwork, private treaty sales can be conducted relatively quickly when compared with the drawn-out auction process, a bonus for those in financial need. Private treaty sales enable the auction houses to drastically reduce overheads. It is now standard procedure for the larger auction houses to view their offerings in a number of states before sale. With private treaty sales the object in question stays in the collector’s possession, so both parties save on repeated transportation costs. Private treaty sales also enable the auction house to reduce the costs associated with general handling and the cataloguing and publication of artworks in the sale catalogue. Savings to the seller include the not insubstantial cost of colour illustration in the sale catalogue, which can be anywhere from $500 to $1000. Other cost benefits to the seller may include savings on any additional insurance that may be required to cover the public sale process and possible extras such as reframing of a painting. The seller’s commission associated with public auction sales can, as we know, be flexible, but it can also be a hard fight. There is a 10 per cent-plus sales commission on objects sold over $5000, plus insurance, transportation and so on, and 15 per cent plus sales commission on objects sold for under $5000. Auction rates are more often than not set in stone. On the other hand, the inherent savings associated with private treaty sales allow for a greater


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degree of client–auction house bargaining. With private treaty sales, auction houses charge a reduced sales commission of around 10 per cent flat, or sometimes much lower by agreement. The downside of an auction house negotiating a private treaty sale to the seller is that their artwork is only circulated to a select number of potential buyers. Private treaty sellers forgo any premium associated with competition in the open market, a discretion that can retard the eventual sale price. As well, because private treaty sales are negotiated discreetly, the auction houses are unable to sing their own praises on an important sale. Successful sales publicity is, after all, the basic marketing strategy of the auction houses. Inherently, auction houses find it very difficult to be both successful and quiet! Private treaty sales are generally only undertaken if the artwork is valued for sale at over $20 000. When planning a sale, always get advice from an art dealer. The auction house private treaty option should only be considered if you need to sell very quickly or quietly.

Questionable auction practices Manipulation of sale statistics A major crisis is looming in the Australian art market. Contrary to the standard auction industry practice of an auctioneer calling a lot ‘sold’ or ‘unsold’ after the fall of the hammer, a minority of auction players are heading back to the bad old days. In some instances, they will call out a bidding number on the fall of the hammer when in fact the lot in question hasn’t sold. Paintings so obviously unwanted are being knocked down as ‘sold’ to either questionable telephone bids or dummy room bidders. Bouncing bids off the wall in an attempt to draw out the punters before either selling or passing in the artwork is one thing. Actually faking the sale by indicating to the auction room that the painting was sold to an imaginary bidder is another indiscretion altogether. By faking the sale instead of passing in the lot, the auction house is not only bending the law, but is knowingly fabricating important sales statistics. After each sale, the auction ‘sold’ figures, real or otherwise, are collated for end-of-year publication in a


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number of widely used art market sale indices. These indices are industry bibles used by auction house specialists, art dealers, curators and collectors to help form buying and selling views. If the basis on which the market makes decisions has been purposely distorted (in order to boost an auction house’s turnover figures), then all public confidence in the market will evaporate overnight. Much dubious buying has lately been hidden behind telephone bidding. It is widely believed, and in some cases hilariously proven to be the case, that no one has actually been on the other end of the line. The auction house specialists effectively use their own bid while playing a telephone bidding game in order to boost the possibility of sales in the room. When a painting fails to make the sales reserve, the auction house specialist will call a ‘winning’ telephone bidder’s number. I recently witnessed an auction house specialist bidding on the phone on behalf of an alleged client, and in the drama of the moment forgetting to take his finger off the receiver. The truth was he was talking to thin air! In another bogus telephone bidding incident I picked up a written bid form from the floor of the auction room—left strewn around—after the sale. The bid form had written on it in a well-known art specialist’s handwriting, instructions for the sale telephone bidders. The instructions went, ‘Lot 32, ring a friend and look animated.’ In another twist, the old-fashioned on-site dummy bidder is being used to break the rhythm of fake telephone sales. In this scenario, the auction house attempts to get an unknown person to bid on behalf of the auction house. The dummy bidder, for all intents and purpose, poses as a real buyer making a real sale, which in terms of the market completely distorts sale statistics. The problem with perpetrating this age-old method of deception is that we all live in a very small world. The most recent example of the obviously ‘anonymous’ dummy bidder in the room (noted by every art professional within cooee) bought all the over-priced art auction dogs on the reserve against absolutely no interest in the room. So much for anonymity; after a whole nanosecond of enquiry our bidding friend turned out to be a business associate of the owner of the auction house! The perpetration of fraud and the distortion of sales statistics is a most serious business. It is time for the relevant state authorities to look into the legality of these practices for the sake of consumer


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protection. The authorities need to attend the sales and note those artworks called as ‘sold’ and ‘unsold’, then crosscheck these announcements from the rostrum against the auctioneer’s book, dispatched sales invoices and later published sales figures. They need to follow the sales chain to its very end. For if an artwork is unable to make the sale reserve on the night, then it should be clearly noted by the auctioneer as unsold. End of story!

Ramping the value of artwork Many years ago I had the dubious distinction of bringing the term ‘ramping’ into the arts industry lexicon. It was a word that I pulled somewhat out of the hat when live on radio to encapsulate the then growing phenomenon that is entrepreneurial art galleries manipulating a painting’s value via the art market at auction. Times haven’t changed. Ramping the value of a contemporary artist’s work through the auction system—that is, when a gallery consigns and then publicly buys back the artist’s painting for a new auction benchmark—still takes place. Let me describe just one method of how this is done. Hypothetically speaking (of course), say a gallery places the contemporary artist on a retainer of $110 000 per annum, on a four-year contract to produce 25 paintings a year. At a buy price of $4400 a painting, the gallery sells the work at exhibitions for $12 000. The profit pool of $7600 per painting is then put aside and ‘reinvested’ by the gallery in the auction system. Having a pool of money to play with, the gallery then consigns a number of the artist’s paintings across several of the auction houses, subsequently bidding up and more often than not buying back the work. Surprise, surprise, the contemporary artist in question, whose paintings carried a pre-auction estimate of $8000 to $12 000, achieves $30 000-plus per painting at the auction. Within weeks of the auction, the artist’s new and escalated sales price for their work is recorded and published, sometimes by the media, but far more importantly by a swag of industry sales digests. And this makes it true—after all, it is in print. At first glance this may seem a rather protracted and costly gallery practice, not to say illegal. However, the rewarding endgame of all these shenanigans is to create an inflated and false


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auction floor price, a deceptive benchmark both in public and in print, a benchmark used by the gallery to justify their asking price of that artist’s work. The dealer points to the public auction price printed in the sales records and raises across the board the value of that artist’s work to $30 000-plus per painting. By the by, the gallery has a substantial holding of the artist’s work newly marked up and all ready for sale. Without naming artists or galleries, there are a number of telltale signs of ramping that a collector can look out for. The scam works best when the gallery enlists the services of an embittered mid-career contemporary artist, a painter with a minor reputation who feels that he or she has been unjustifiably overlooked by the market and thus has few ethical qualms in partaking of a little market manipulation. Although the artist in question could be an emerging contemporary practitioner, it does help to whip up the all-important buyer enthusiasm if at least some of the public have heard of the artist’s name. So, generally, they are minor mid-career artists. In order to attract public attention, the gallery will take out a large colour illustration in an art auction catalogue. This is a big giveaway, for it is highly unlikely that a private collector would fork out, in addition to the auction house sales commission of up to 20 per cent and insurance of 1.5 per cent, transport costs and so on, the rather significant expense of around $700-plus for a full-page colour illustration. Paintings that carry presale estimates under $20 000 don’t deserve such a selling outlay. Do the maths; the return for the private collector on a possible low estimate $8000 sale after expenses would be around $5500. Illustrations do sell paintings, so a couple of hundred dollars could well be spent by a private owner for a quarter-page art auction illustration. But $700? No way. However, the $700-plus illustration cost is small beer to the Machiavellian gallery. Finally, there you have all these mid-career nobody artists with full-page colour illustrations, carrying sale estimates of $8000 to $12 000 in the holy of auction house holies—the first 80 lots of the sale. This is another dead giveaway. As much as physically possible, the auction houses place only important certain sellers in the first half of a sale. As explained earlier, this is designed so that every lot sells, creating where possible a selling rhythm that will


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hopefully hold up throughout a many hundred-lot sale. From over a decade of art auction house experience, there is no way an auction house paintings specialist would put such a low-value painting by a minor nobody in the first hour of the sale—that is what part two sales are for—unless, of course, they were fairly confident that come hell or high water a buyer could be found. Then again, the auction house specialist may just have an inkling that the eventual buyer of this mid-career contemporary artist of modest value coming up in the first hour of the sale could well be the seller.

Dealer rings The Lord of the Rings may well be the title of a popular trilogy of books and films, but it is also—and has been for centuries—the name given to another more sinister art world force. A ‘ring’, in the art world, is a pod, a gaggle or a den of dealers getting together around the time of an art auction to anti-competitively work out among themselves who will bid on what—and to how much. Although a great deal less frequent and much less sophisticated in the Australian market, the London dealer rings have a significant influence on the auction sale of entire categories of artworks—values down and not values up—in fields as diverse as silver, porcelain, books, paintings, and so on. So influential and open are the dealer rings in London that, when I was working for an auction house, my then boss in the book department would regularly send me after a sale on a tour of the local pubs (life can be hell in the art sale trenches) in order for me to spot where the book dealer ring was conducting their after-sales divvying up of the spoils. To this day, the auction houses find it almost impossible to stop the dealers from engaging in such activity. But at least, or so the theory went, by seeking out the ring, the dealers knew that we knew what was going on. Although highly illegal, the dealer ring is still commonplace overseas. The simplest arrangement is for, say, two dealers to agree to divide up the lots they both want. So, one won’t bid on Lot 80, while the other will stay clear of Lot 85. It might be more complicated, with each agreeing not to bid on several sale lots. This relatively low level of anti-competitive behaviour occurs with some


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regularity in Australia and, unfortunately, not just among the dealers. By what could only be described as a gentle-persons’ agreement—although a breach of the Trade Practices Act—art museum directors and curators all too frequently inform-cumwarn off others in the art museum fraternity from bidding against them for prized artworks. I have seen this happen, to the great detriment of the vendor. The next level of the dealer ring is when, say, dealer A is prepared to bid to $10 000 on a painting and dealer B indicates they would spend up to $15 000 on the same work. Dealer B will then not bid against dealer A unless the painting goes over the $10 000 dollar mark. Presumably, dealer A will agree to the same arrangement on another lot for his good friend, dealer B. Where several dealers, in this frame of mind, find themselves frequently attending the same art auctions and pushing each other’s prices up, the ring nominates one of their number to bid on behalf of them all—while the others keep out of it. They may nominate different members of the ring to bid on different lots, to allay any suspicion of collusion. The ring agrees in advance which lots they are going for and to what price. After the sale the ring will then hold another mini-auction among themselves, in some discreet location (the pub). This anti-competitive strategy can save the ring 20–30 per cent on the purchase price they would have paid if they had all bid against each other on the open market. The ring can be very defensive if another outside dealer appears on the buying patch. Each time the interloper starts to bid, one of the ring will join in the bidding to push the price beyond what the intruder is hoping to pay. The outside dealer either finishes up paying too much for the painting or fails to secure the lot at all. Either way, with a little shared outlay, the ring hopes the intruder will conclude that this particular auction, or auction house, isn’t a good place at which to buy pictures and will keep away. This scheme can also be used to dissuade the private buyer from thinking they can obtain bargains at auction. I have seen this happen at auction in Australia on a number of occasions. The buyer defence against these aggressive, anti-competitive practices is simply not to bid beyond the upper purchase price that they have determined prior to the sale. Alternatively, one can lurk behind some auction room door or pillar—however, that is where


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the dealers dwell—so that the ring cannot see who is bidding. Or, best of all, remain anonymous by either leaving a bid on the auctioneer’s book or undertaking telephone bidding.

A new auction sales system In order to feed the art auction monster, to meet ever-growing sales targets, industry players have long pursued a strategy of volume over quality offerings. While it would in theory be far easier to sell fewer artworks at a high value than many at a low value, the competitive reality of increased budgetary demands and a relatively small pool of quality stock has seen auction house specialists go long on sales bulk. Now, it is fairly standard for auction sales to run over two days, and for general art catalogues to contain at least 500 lots. One by-product of this art bulk approach is the tedious hours collectors are forced to endure sitting through lot after lot of art crud. Sotheby’s 2003 Aboriginal art sale was way too long. Soon the auction house will have to start serving breakfast. Starting at 6.30 pm, the first evening sale ended at 10.15 pm, the second evening near 11 pm. The auction was so protracted that I began playing Snake on my mobile telephone—and I had never before even attempted to explore such a diversion. In an attempt to whip things along a bit and, golly gosh, even hold the attention of buyers, Bruce’s Auctions, Australia’s oldest auction house, has been trialling a new, no-nonsense auction selling system. In essence, Bruce’s publishes the reserve for each lot in its sale catalogues. To commence bidding, the auctioneer calls the reserve price three times and the auction proceeds in the usual fashion. If only one bid is received, the item is sold at the reserve price. If no bidding is forthcoming, the item is passed in and the auctioneer moves immediately on to the next lot. A sale pace of approximately 200 to 250 lots per hour is then achievable. This is a far more radical sales system than it at first appears. The traditional practice is for the auction house to print a catalogue with suggested sale estimates. The sale reserve, for the more reputable players, is somewhere at or just below the low printed estimate. The auctioneer would then open the bidding, in an attempt to build and drag out buyer interest, often many incremental bids


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below the printed low estimate. For example, if the estimate is $100 to $200, then the auctioneer kicks off by asking the room for a bid of, say, $20. The reserve may well be $90 and the collector has to sit through much sales padding before the artwork is anywhere near the reserve price. With this drag-them-out auction method, sale rates of just 60 to 80 lots per hour are unfortunately far too common. Bruce’s more up-front selling system relies heavily on the auctioneer appraising accurately the value of the artwork. Gone are the standard ranges of auction estimates, say around $1000 to $2000, known as guesstimates in the industry. What is left in their place is the value at which a sale will occur, say, $90. If anything, in order to entice bidding from a standing start, this new system requires the auctioneer to err on the side of price caution. No more throwing estimates about, either too high to entice a vendor to consign a good painting for sale or too low to pull in the punters, when the auction house well and truly knows the lot’s reserve is above the lower estimate. The act of publishing the reserve price also provides greater transparency to the auction process. The prospective purchaser knows that there is no purchasing the lot at auction below the reserve price, and that whatever price is offered and accepted by the auctioneer at or above the reserve price is going to secure the item on offer. The practice of having an established and printed floor price totally wipes out the need for ‘dummy’ bids, or bidding on behalf of the vendor in an effort to build up the sale to a reserve price. This alone would eliminate much behind-the-scenes shenanigans. The new system would at the same time go some small way to returning dignity and professionalism to the entire auction industry, an industry that has suffered badly from a multitude of shady practices—just think real estate auctions. Bruce’s Auctions intends to develop its new sales system more fully. No doubt it will take some time for the vendors of the highervalue lots to be convinced that the publication of their reserve price is to their sales advantage. In the medium to long term, however, this innovative auction sales system should be of benefit to all concerned.


Selling at

auction Chapter 10 The auction seller’s commission A seller’s commission impacts greatly on the price received by the collector and should be a major consideration in deciding whether to sell and through which auction house. Knowing how to get the best deal could add thousands to the amount you take home. Traditionally, Australian auction houses have differed only marginally in their approach to the seller’s commission, with most favouring a clear and straightforward approach based on falling rates for higher, under-the-hammer prices. However, one house is introducing a radical new approach that will see sellers paying more for good results. Christie’s takes a formal approach for private collectors with a standard schedule of rates. It argues that standard rates save confusion and add clarity to the selling process. It takes a stiff amount of 20 per cent at the lower end of under-the-hammer prices, which rate very quickly falls to 10 per cent for all sales over $10 000. Andrew Shapiro, from Shapiro Auctioneers, also advocates clarity. His rates start at 15 per cent for items under $5000 and fall to 10 per cent for those over. He argues that he would prefer to compete in other ways to access quality items. Andrew cites the


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quality and layout of his catalogue as one way he differentiates himself to gain quality stock. He also argues that this provides his customers with a selling advantage. Sotheby’s seems to be taking an altogether different approach. When asked to discuss its seller’s commission, Sotheby’s representatives denied us a schedule of rates and said they were unable to discuss their seller’s commission. This is something dealt with on a case-by-case basis with each customer, they said. This lack of transparency contrasts glaringly with the approach taken by Christie’s and Shapiro’s, in particular. Deutscher-Menzies has traditionally charged standard rack rates of between 10 and 15 per cent, with a charge back for insurance and illustration. This figure of 10 per cent has been the standard commission for mid-range to expensively priced paintings. However, Deutscher-Menzies has been known to charge as low as 6 per cent on more expensive paintings, particularly those over $200 000. The flexibility shown by the house has traditionally been determined by the desirability of the object and the loyalty of the client in question. Deutscher-Menzies is in the process of determining a radical new way to structure its selling commission, which is to be offered as an option to prospective sellers. Chris Deutscher hopes to announce a tiered commission structure based not upon the final under-the-hammer selling price, but on the final price compared with the estimate. Under the new scheme, lower-value items will probably still be priced at normal rates. However, sellers of more valuable paintings will have the option of paying less for results between reserve and lower estimate, a higher level for results between low to mid estimate, and more again for results between mid to high estimate and above. The auction house is also considering a fourth tier, which could kick in when the price achieved is higher than the high estimate. Although the tiers and commission rates applicable to each are not yet final, the rates will probably range between 6 and 15 per cent. Chris Deutscher argues that it is all about striking up an arrangement favourable to both parties. He believes that sellers are willing to pay more for good results, and his auction house likes to be rewarded for good efforts. Deutscher is unable to see any conflict in the tiered system, (for example, a tendency to provide a low


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estimate). He says that Deutscher-Menzies has always tried to price conservatively and attractively and believes that a low estimate usually leads to the best results. In the case of the new tiered system, he argues that if Deutscher-Menzies is wrong in its estimates then it suffers through lower commission. On the other hand, when it gets it right everyone wins. Chris Deutscher also argues that with the new structure, Deutscher-Menzies will move away from giving bargain commission rates to ensure that it obtains good stock. The kind of highly prized item he may traditionally have underbid was Lot 1 in their May 2002 auction. William Robinson’s Hillside (1985), gouache on paper, was estimated to sell between $18 000 and $24 000. Its final price, including buyer’s premium, was $47 000. Depending on how aggressive Deutscher-Menzies was on underbidding the other houses for this painting, it may have received virtually no seller’s commission. Under the new system, however, Deutscher-Menzies would be handsomely rewarded for obtaining such spectacular results for its client. Deutscher-Menzies has prepared a document called ‘Selling with Deutscher-Menzies’. It argues that the new commission structure gives potential sellers a very real incentive to use DeutscherMenzies. It also argues that Deutscher-Menzies is the only auction house on the east coast of Australia to sell only art. One of its biggest competitive advantages is that the owners of the business operate the business, which provides enormous flexibility over and above its competitors.

The process of selling at auction It is everyone’s dream that the less than really useful, midVictorian silver coffee pot left to them in Aunt Mabel’s will may turn out to be a coveted decorative artwork worth tens of thousands of dollars. Hope springs eternal. But how does one find out whether the family heirloom is, in fact, a harbinger of the family fortune or just a sentimental keepsake? Simple: consult your local antique dealer or auction house, coming soon to a town near you. Following in the footsteps of the highly influential Antiques Road Show in Britain, the majority of Australian auction houses now provide in-house or at a venue near you obligationfree valuation services at no charge.


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An auction house open day is an opportunity for collectors and the newly inherited to both demystify the auction process and obtain some free advice. Selling at auction involves a series of clearly defined stages that, once stripped of the auction house jargon, are easy to follow. Let us suppose that Aunt Mabel’s coffee pot has been dusted off and is ready to be sold. It is important to contact two or more auction houses, which can be done on the telephone or by turning up at one of their offices—please make an appointment. If the sellers don’t live close to an auction house, then they could write enclosing a clear photograph of their artwork together with measurements, artist or maker’s name, medium, signature or hallmark if known. Alternatively, check whether one of the auction houses will be holding valuation open days in your area so that you can show your artwork to a visiting specialist. When making an appointment, be sure to arrange to see the specialist with expertise in your type of artwork, whether it is paintings, furniture, porcelain and so on. The industry is notorious for high staff turnover and newer specialists may not have the extensive knowledge of the market that their more experienced colleagues have acquired and that you are entitled to expect. If the specialist thinks that your coffee pot would have a market at auction, then you must decide whether or not you wish to sell it at the price they estimate. This estimate is usually given as a band of value—for example, $3000 to $4000. Don’t forget that this doesn’t necessarily mean that you will achieve this price. Estimates are given only as an indication of what price a lot may sell for, and they are printed in the catalogue. A more important figure than the estimate is the reserve price, the figure below which the auctioneer won’t sell the item. If the bids at the auction don’t reach the reserve price, Aunt Mabel’s coffee pot will be returned to you. Unlike estimates, the reserve price isn’t printed in the catalogue. If, after getting a specialist’s opinion of how much the coffee pot might make at auction, you are still unhappy about the reserve price, then either ask that it be changed or don’t consign it for sale and seek another opinion. The auction world is highly competitive and it is possible to cut a better deal, particularly with regard to selling charges, by playing off two or more auction houses against each other.


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The major fine art auction houses, with some variations, charge sellers 20 per cent commission on works that sell for under $10 000 and 10 per cent on works selling for over $5000. The selling commission rates—for low-value items—at the major auction houses are difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate. However, smaller auction houses can be very competitive on the selling commission, so you should shop around. There is always room to negotiate on the other costs charged by auction houses. These include: • Illustration charges: The specialist may recommend that the coffee pot be photographed for the sale catalogue. They almost always do. Specialists like to see fully illustrated sales catalogues—particularly at your expense. Check out and weigh up the cost of having a quarter-page, half-page, etc., colour or black-and-white illustration. Weigh up the pros and cons of illustrating your artwork in the sale catalogue. After all, is it really such a big sales deal that your modestly valued coffee pot comes with a pricey colour illustration? Illustrating an artwork in sales catalogues can be a very expensive exercise indeed, greatly sapping the final cash in hand that you may receive. • Shipping or freight charges: These are the costs of transporting the coffee pot to the auction house’s office, and sometimes to another city for pre-sale viewing. • Insurance charges: This is usually around 1.5 per cent of the hammer sale price. This charge can also be levied on works that are passed in (remain unsold on the hammer). There is also transit insurance should the coffee pot be taken to another venue to be put on view prior to the sale. Sometimes personal insurance is a cheaper option. All of these details, together with a description of the coffee pot and a proposed auction date, are written on a receipt form which must be signed both by a representative of the auction house and by the seller. By signing the receipt form you are saying that you agree to the prices written on it and also to the conditions of business of that particular auction house. Make sure that you read the conditions of business carefully, particularly the sections relating to commission and expenses as these can mount up considerably.


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Some auction houses ask that you pay a contribution to general expenses if the lot isn’t sold. Once the receipt form is signed you are committed to sell. Should you wish to withdraw your coffee pot from sale, you may incur a penalty charge.

Free appraisals Almost every other week a letter or flyer crosses my desk inviting me to a free, no obligation auction house appraisal open day. The auction house specialists will, I am told, be in Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, West Wyalong, or some other city or town near me, on a designated date to assess my ‘masterpieces’. Come along, I am implored; now is just the right time to avail myself of this valuation service. Increasingly, the general public and collectors are using this method of appraisal service to obtain an up-to-date market valuation of their artworks. As easy and convenient as these appraisal days are designed to be, the free appraisal service comes with a number of inherent pitfalls. In the arts industry an open day is called doing a ‘sweep’. Alongside a client mail-out for the area to be covered, we always ran a series of advertisements in the local newspaper, obtained a high-profile venue from which to set up shop and hopefully joined forces with a prestigious local charity. There is nothing like a good bit of local cross-marketing. The specialists then motor or fly into town, put up the company banners, and meet and greet allcomers. They were long days and you would see everything from squashed tin toys to the work of important English equine painters. The best open days had an element of the English Antiques Road Show fun-fair experience about them. Let us never forget, however, that the main reason auction houses offer free appraisals is to attract merchandise to their sales. They are not offering a public service or a price research service for your collecting needs. At best the specialists will tell you what you have and place a value on it, full stop. The auction house specialist won’t perform more indepth research or finetune the accuracy of their initial sale figures unless you consign the art to them for sale. If you hold an artwork of modest value, you will be moved along quickly in a rather charming manner.


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Aside from the rather slam-bam nature of these valuation affairs, the less obvious problem with free appraisals is that they aren’t really market appraisals at all. They are only quick approximations of how the auction house thinks your artwork will fare at their sales. The estimates don’t necessarily reflect how the artwork might perform at someone else’s auction or what the artwork’s fair market value may be. What one auction house can sell an artwork for might be completely different from what another auction house may achieve. Hammer prices, in many cases, more accurately reflect the client bases of various auction houses than the value of the artwork that is sold. Another difficulty with free appraisals is that the auction house staff who conduct these open days tend to be the younger, less experienced members of the team, who aren’t necessarily able to accurately assess dollar values. Like many industries, the art bigwigs don’t travel well and tend to stick close to the comforts of home. The juniors do much of the grunt work. Actual auction results may differ drastically from what you are told at the open day. And even the major auction houses can be way off in their estimates, with art selling for either far greater dollar amounts or failing to sell at all. Keep in mind that auction houses try to keep estimates on the low side, because that means they stand a better chance of selling the artwork. In relation to valuation open days, be aware that less scrupulous art and antiques dealers and appraisers hold them in order to buy artworks cheaply. They ‘appraise’ artificially low and then offer to buy on the spot at or below those values, so be extremely careful in any circumstance where you think you are obtaining an appraisal at no cost. When you try to get something for nothing, that’s pretty much what you end up with—not much. Either learn how to price art on your own by establishing working relationships with experienced auction house specialist or dealers, or hire an experienced valuer to assess prices taken from recent auctions, art sales reference books, CD-ROMs and so on. If you would rather stick with the free auction house open day method of appraisal, make sure you use this service by consigning artworks for sale through them as regularly as possible. In that way, the auction house specialist will spend more time evaluating whatever you bring them.


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Auction estimates As a service to collectors, and prior to the introduction of the buyer’s premium, the publication of an auction house sale estimate alongside the description of a painting was a useful guide for collectors. For example, a Roland Wakelin painting (Lot 20) may have carried an estimate of $5000 to $6000. This estimate, set as it was by auction house paintings specialists, was intended to be both a helpful indication of the expected painting’s sale range and the likely sale price of a painting on the fall of the hammer. However, following the introduction in the mid-1980s of the buyer’s premium (now, in many cases, 20 per cent) payable on the fall of the hammer, these guesstimates, as they are known in the trade, have become a deceptive hindrance. The whole practice of publishing auction estimates, once intended as a helpful service, has been distorted into a major industry disservice, one that needs to be thoroughly overhauled. Auction house estimates—say, an expected sale price range of $5000 to $6000 for a painting—continue to be set on the expected hammer price and not the most important number of all: the final figure a collector will have to pay. At the fall of the hammer on a $5000 painting a collector would have to pay, with buyer’s premium and GST, nearly $6000—or the upper end of the printed sale estimate, on what was a low-estimate purchase. This is no minor matter, for as the numbers get bigger the discrepancies between estimated hammer price and the actual sale price become ludicrous. In the 2003 August round of sales, Christie’s offered up Brett Whiteley’s Arkie Under the Shower (1986–87) carrying a pre-sale estimate of $800 000 to $2 million. Even if the painting had sold on the hammer at the printed low estimate of $800 000 the purchaser would then have had to pay Christie’s a 17.5 per cent buyer’s premium, together with GST on that premium. All up, what Christie’s was really wanting was an asking price of a shade under a million dollars and not, as printed, $800 000. Not surprisingly, punters sat on their hands for that one. Don’t despair, the next day Christie’s got the Whiteley away on favourable purchaser terms to a Sydney art dealer for an all-up price of $810 000—in reality, nearly $200 000 short of the wanted printed low sale estimate and accompanying premium and GST.


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Aside from the printed estimates having little relevance as to a final price guide, the auction houses have a sneaky tendency to spruik these apples and pears results, comparing favourable prices achieved—inclusive of the sales commission—against hammer price estimates. So, our $5000 purchase on the hammer, becomes nearly $6000 when you pay up, and is championed by the auction house as a sale achieved against the high sale estimate of $6000— when it wasn’t. This distorted comparison-cum-marketing tool was most noticeable with the 2003 November round of art sales. During those sales many, many paintings sold on the hammer increments way below the low printed estimate. However, coming through the statistical whitewash, with the action houses adding premiums and GST to the hammer price, they announced that the sales were on the low estimate. This distortion, dragging the low hammer price with premium and GST up into the printed sale estimates range, makes the auction houses look like they got it right. They look like they have correctly estimated a painting’s worth, when in reality they were way off the mark. If printed auction estimates are to have any relevance whatsoever, these estimates must be based on an expected sale price range, taking into account the buyer’s premium and GST. The printed estimates must reflect the final price expected to be paid and not the hammer price. Should auction house specialists be incapable of factoring in these rather straightforward changes into their auction sale catalogues, then may I suggest the auction houses re-design their currency converter sale boards. That is those whopping big electrical sale boards used all over the world that convert bidding from US dollars to English pounds, to yen, Aussie dollars or whatever. These boards can be reconfigured to factor in buyer’s premium, so within a second the real price payable—being the current auctioneer’s sale increment, plus buyer’s premium and GST—would be broadcast across the saleroom for all to see. That this printed auction estimates purchasing confusion has been allowed to continue years after the introduction of buyer’s premium—which greatly distorted the original intention of sale estimates—makes one wonder whether the auction houses really give a damn. Or do they, as has been my experience, benefit financially from all this muddy sales water, with new collectors, in the


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heat of the moment, bidding in the misguided belief that the printed sales estimate in the auction catalogue represents purchasing reality—when it isn’t even close.

Pre-sale ‘estimates on request’ Twenty years ago, art auction catalogues offered paintings to the market without printed pre-sale estimates. As the years rolled on, collectors demanded a degree of guidance as to sale values, so today thousands of paintings appear on the art market at auction accompanied by a sales estimate. As previously mentioned, the value today, if any, in providing collectors with printed sales estimates is highly debatable. Rant though I may on this issue, in an attempt to reconfigure a now dud sales indicator, the practice continues to exist. However, amid the widespread provision of pre-sale auction estimates there exists one auction house exception to the general rule, and that is the term ‘estimate on request’. This enigmatic little valuation phrase was designed by auction house specialists to politely avoid the sometimes thorny issue of value. The term ‘estimate on request’ printed below a painting’s catalogue description allows the auction house a considerable breathing space in order to avoid informing collectors, the media and the general public of a painting’s likely sale price—sometimes the auction house specialist just doesn’t know. If it suits the auction house, they can delay confirming a pre-sale ‘estimate on request’ until almost the day of the auction itself. In the period between strategically leaking pre-sale publicity, the delivery of the allimportant sale catalogue and the eventual sale of that painting some weeks later, unencumbered by a printed estimate which is difficult to publicly change, auction house specialists take the time to shore up and manipulate the sale of the painting. For the collector, then, the ‘estimate on request’ caption means any number of possible alternatives. The first is that the auction house is unable to actually value a painting within publication time constraints. Occasionally a work can be extraordinarily rare, and owners are notorious for holding on to their important paintings until the very last minute. If the specialist had months instead of weeks for reflective research and comparison they may well be able to establish a price before publication. Time is always of the


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essence, and in many instances time constraints preclude a professional determination of value at short notice, thus the ‘estimate on request’. Alternatively, the specialist may not have a clue as to an artwork’s value, and this is far from uncommon Some years ago Christie’s was confused about the value of a Charles Alexandre Lesueur (1778–1846) watercolour entitled Animaux de La Nouvelle Hollande, so it was catalogued ‘estimate on request’. The difficulty was that nearly all of Lesueur’s drawings and watercolours of Australian subjects are in the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle du Havre in France. Essentially, there was no market touchstone for this rare and very beautiful watercolour. However, in an effort to test the water and establish some benchmark value, Christie’s indicated to the press that the watercolour was on offer for in excess of $70 000—in hindsight this was somewhat off the mark, as the work sold for $211 500. An alternative to the auction house specialist who doesn’t have a clue, is the situation where the auction house may be a touch embarrassed as to the strength of a particular estimate on an artwork consigned for sale. Basically, the auction house specialist has—in order to consign a painting for sale—had to throw around some rather big sales numbers. In the clear light of day the specialist has over-quoted on sale price. Then we see ‘estimate on request’ popping up in the belief that it is best to avoid the sale price issue—better not to print such a strong estimate at all—than to run the real risk of printing an estimate and potentially scaring off punters at the first glance. Several years ago Sotheby’s attached an ‘estimate on request’ to Russell Drysdale’s painting The Medical Examination, a work depicting Second World War recruits being probed and prodded, which in my opinion is an interesting but not eminently liveable painting. With whispered high expectations of $400 000, not unsurprisingly on the night the painting went unsold at $250 000. The painting sold after auction for a negotiated $332 500. You can bet your bottom dollar, that if Sotheby’s had consigned the painting to sale with a reserve of $300 000, they would have proudly printed the pre-sale estimate in the catalogue at that number. As it was, with the vendors wanting closer to $400 000, Sotheby’s thought it best not to scare the punters—hence the ‘estimate on request’.


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Finally, the term ‘estimate on request’ allows the auction house the opportunity to, as they say in the trade, crunch sellers. The luxury of choosing not to print an estimate in a catalogue allows extra time in which to liaise with owners—liaise being a polite word for beating them over the head with doom and gloom predictions until, out of sheer terror, they reduce their reserve. So, the auction house specialist takes a painting in for sale, significantly over market value at, say, $100 000—in that way stopping the competition from securing the work for sale. The auction house specialist places an ‘estimate on request’ on the work in the catalogue. Over the following weeks the auction house specialist pressures the vendor into dropping the price to, say, $80 000. Having secured a reduced reserve, a quick saleroom notice estimating the painting at $8000 to $120 000 does the trick. After all, ‘estimate on request’ is just a term and one not set in concrete.


The work

of Part art3



Owning

art Chapter 11

Researching and documenting your collection Collectors would do well to remember that the mere act of owning art doesn’t in itself constitute the formation of an art collection. In order for artworks to move beyond being merely an assemblage of art objects, they must be documented, catalogued and researched. After purchasing or inheriting art, the first step in forming an art collection is to list and document your artworks, which isn’t as stupid as it may sound. Having worked for many years as an art valuer for a major international auction house, it never ceased to amaze me when a collector or, even more alarmingly, a valuer found some long-forgotten artwork concealed behind a wardrobe or wrapped in old curtains lurking in the loft above the horse stables (a painting by Constable, would you believe). So that you don’t lose track of what you own and, just as importantly, so that your relatives after your mortal demise don’t overlook your treasures, a collector should at the very least list what they own. Extensive documentation became a regular feature of fine art collecting during the seventeenth century. Creating art object inventories and maintaining records of ownership such as gallery labels, exhibition labels, auction house numbers stencilled or


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drawn on the reverse of a picture frame, sale documents, letters and sale catalogues all serve to create the basic paper trail necessary to establish an artwork’s very existence and identity. Collectors should learn to treasure such documentation to the same degree as they treasure the artwork itself. Alongside the formation of an inventory, collectors are encouraged to have a crack at cataloguing or professionally describing their own artworks. Basic cataloguing isn’t difficult, and if you ever need to make an insurance claim the documentary evidence of a listed, catalogued and photographed art collection goes a great deal further in obtaining financial compensation than the vague, somewhat charred remains of an empty picture frame. Get hold of a good art auction catalogue and copy the cataloguing style of the big boys. Cataloguing styles vary, but in a nutshell the formula is pyramidal. At the top of the pyramid is the artist’s full name, date of birth and death; under that is the title of the painting; beneath that is exactly where and how the painting is signed, if at all. Under these facts you describe what the actual painting is constructed from, then you round off all of this information with the painting’s size (height by length) and the date that it was painted. For example: Frank Jeffrey Edson Smart (1921– ) Reflected Arrows Signed lower right Oil on canvas 50 × 59.9 cm Painted in 1976 Together with art auction catalogues, a copy of Alan and Susan McCulloch’s The Encyclopedia of Australian Art will give you all the artist names and painting dates you could ever wish for. If any information concerning the artwork is unknown, consult the seller or your art dealer, auction house or family to fill in the blanks. Beyond documentation, good collectors value-add to their collection by undertaking reading and research on their artworks. Even though self-interested research on a painting will more often than not throw up a collector’s wishful thinking—a triumph of hope over experience—occasionally fresh scholarship comes along


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that throws new light on a fine old art friend. A few years ago, Sotheby’s re-offered to the market a large colonial painting by Henricus Leonardus van den Houten (1801–79) entitled The Exploring Party (Burke and Wills) Coming Upon an Encampment of Natives signed and dated 1879. Research undertaken by the owner, and topped up by me, indicated that the painting might well have been exhibited in Melbourne as early as 1861. An eighteen-year difference between the date on the painting and its possible first exhibition served to propel this $50 000 picture from a latter, mere depiction of the Burke and Wills saga to a visually important historic document of the time. As a history painting, it sold for $376 500 to the National Library in Canberra. Knowledge is profitable. So, what was thought to be a painting undertaken after the Burke and Wills expedition, turned out to be a contemporary painting of the day, actually depicting an eyewitness account of the doomed party leaving Melbourne. Give it a go; research isn’t a daunting task. Most artists who have been around for any length of time have a least one book that discusses their work. If totally stuck as to which books to consult or generally what direction you should take, make a list of your artworks, have a crack at cataloguing them, and together with that data and a number of clear colour photographs head along to an art museum open day (usually held once a week) for identification and further research help. If you live far from a readily accessible public art museum, telephone to ask for assistance, track down the relevant curator and send in what information you have for evaluation. Art curators are, after all, public servants, and in the grandest tradition of their institutions I am only too sure they would be of service to the public (webbed toes crossed).

Educational programs In order to develop collector knowledge and create a form of brand loyalty among potential fine art buyers, Christie’s, LawsonMenzies, Shapiro Auctioneers, Deutscher-Menzies and Sotheby’s from time to time all have on offer a variety of education programs—that they either run or sponsor—specifically designed to both instruct and influence potential collectors. Many of these programs, particularly the Christie’s education course, offer a far


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better grounding in Australian art than an interested party would receive at the overtly visual art philosophy-orientated art departments run by the universities—trust me, I have worked in both. Collectors of fine and decorative arts should augment their hands-on art collecting experience with user-friendly, industrybacked art theory programs. For collecting art is, after all is said and done, primarily a task of obtaining and applying knowledge. Should a buyer wish to form a collection rather than a mere assemblage of objects, it is imperative that the collector gains a thorough understanding of their area of interest. The educative function of auction house programs has become an integral marketing tool through which the major players circulate their all-important corporate identity. However, the marketing strategy of the auction houses aside, the value of these courses to the collector cannot be overstated. A solid grounding in fine and decorative art theory provides the collector with a critical and knowing eye. Among other uses, an understanding of history and the trends and styles that filter though art theory affords a collector the ability to identify, contextualise, authenticate and date art objects. Of the trade education courses on offer, Christie’s, with offices in Melbourne and Sydney (they closed down their Brisbane office), undertakes the most widely available and comprehensive of the auction house education programs. Christie’s respected director of education, Felicity St John Moore, tours short, intensive, Australian art theory subjects between Melbourne and Sydney every year or so. Christie’s Australian art courses have become an industry must for collectors, curators and dealers alike. Christie’s art courses are far from inexpensive; however, broken up as they are into manageable knowledge chunks, they are for my money among the best art learning in the country As a by-product of market specialisation, Shapiro Auctioneers coordinates and tailors its lecture programs to coincide with forthcoming specialist sales. It has been noted since the late 1990s for concentrating on niche markets. Managing director Andrew Shapiro, a connoisseur of twentieth-century art and design, makes his knowledge available throughout the year by conducting regular lectures on this increasingly lucrative area of collecting. These are a must attend, if twentieth-century decorative arts is your field of interest.


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Shapiro Auctioneers, ever astute to corporate cross-promotion and the likelihood of possible art museum de-accessioning, has recently joined with the Art Gallery of New South Wales to sponsor a diploma course entitled ‘Modern Art in the Making— 18th to Early 20th Century’. Although not specifically Australian in focus, it must be remembered that much Australian art is derivative by nature. As such, the Shapiro Auctioneers-sponsored Art Gallery of New South Wales lecture series provided a number of fascinating links between art periods, styles, artists and their subsequent reflections on the Australian art experience. As an educational-cum-marketing component of its general paintings sales, Deutscher-Menzies regularly undertakes free lectures and gallery walks. Director Chris Deutscher, an art industry player of immense knowledge, speaks generally on DeutscherMenzies’ auction offerings. This experience is not to be missed and, unlike general university lectures, you can ask questions. Aside from these general floor talks, when a particularly important work is offered up for sale, Deutscher-Menzies has been known to pull in the big academic guns. Several years ago, respected former Melbourne University head of fine art, Dr Ann Galbally, spoke to an enthralled gaggle of collectors on the artist John Peter Russell and friends. These talks are generally free. Fine art collectors are urged to join their local state museum or gallery. Those collectors fortunate enough to avail themselves of the education department within the Gallery Society at the National Gallery of Victoria have on tap one of the most comprehensive education programs for members of any arts museum in the world. Remember that art education is the key to unlock the great door of collecting (sorry about the cliché) and all you need do is let your fingers do the walking and contact a bunch of auction houses and art museums near you. Most (but not all) of the knowledge on offer is free of charge.

Art reference tools I don’t sit at a desk; rather, I perch amid a sea of bookcases overflowing with auction house catalogues. Having outgrown my office, I have converted a colonial cedar linen press to cope with the overflow exhibition catalogues. Art reference books are


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stacked on chairs. Auction and exhibition catalogues, art reference books and flyers are the tools of trade for all good art dealers, auction house specialists, art academics, serious collectors and commentators. Catalogues are much sought after, hoarded and rarely lent, for without a comprehensive stock of art reference tools it would be difficult for any serious art player to do their job. And I would strongly advise any art collector interested in tracking, identifying, searching for or comparing paintings to start building a library of auction and exhibition catalogues as soon as possible. Early Australian auctioneers such as Lawsons, which was founded in 1884 and is now named Lawson-Menzies, and Leonard Joel in Melbourne, which was founded in 1919, published catalogues that continue to hold valuable information. With the entry of the multinational auction houses into the Australian market— Christie’s in 1969, Sotheby’s in 1982—more heavily illustrated sale catalogues appeared. These have been a boon for art world players. It should come as no surprise that any number of paintings rotate from private hands back on to the market every generation or so—that is, every twenty years. As a rule of thumb, collectors start seriously buying in their mid- to late thirties. After the ‘strike at any time difficulties’, such as debt and divorce, the consistent realities of retirement, the coming of old age and eventual death all lock in to disburse art collections. Today in art auctions and major exhibitions there are inevitably more than the odd good painting last seen on the market a generation ago. And fresh is best. Collectors who have done their homework and perused their catalogues are prepared to pay a premium for artworks fresh to the market that haven’t been shopped around. Aside from generational rotation, in a strong, competitive market many artworks have the tendency to pop up all too regularly. Having a library of auction and exhibition catalogues helps the collector to isolate the paintings that have been up for sale just that once too often. Catalogues track artworks and raise important questions. A run of different auction house catalogues can afford the collector the opportunity to compare and contrast the same picture over time. In 1999 Leonard Joel in Melbourne sold Arthur Streeton’s masterwork, Coogee (1890), for $550 000. That painting


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was later re-offered with a low estimate of $850 000—newly researched and cleaned—as Blue Pacific (1890) at DeutscherMenzies in 2000 but was unsold. Examined side by side, you note the subtle benefits and difficulties with having the painting cleaned. Although the colour is much stronger the second time around, the ocean, rocks and boat appeared somewhat reduced. It takes the two catalogues to tell. Early sale catalogues, and the prices realised, forwarded to collectors following the auction, went on to list the buyers’ names! Ah, the good old days. Today this information is handy for astute art dealers, auction house specialists, or curators with research skills wanting to trace fresh stock for sale or for public galleries wishing to gather works for exhibition. The list of buyers, who then inevitably go on to become former owners, also provides today’s collectors with the ability to crosscheck information in relation to a painting’s name or provenance. This is a big deal, as over time a painting’s name and background can change—and, as a result, much is lost. I have noted a disturbing art gallery sales trend of late. It is far from secret that many art dealers source much of their stock direct from the auction houses. That isn’t a problem. Art dealers, naturally enough, place a mark-up on the cost of buying a painting. Art dealers as shopkeepers have business overheads, the cost of capital and so on. A reasonable percentage sales mark-up from auction is expected. But a number of art dealers are now buying works from auction and selling those paintings with a major mark-up and an all-new title. New painting name, new identity. By engaging in this sharp practice, the art dealer makes it very difficult for collectors to crosscheck the auction sales records and see how much and when that painting first came to the market. This appalling practice blocks research, in effect wiping out an artwork’s provenance, making it difficult in years to come to track and study a painting’s history.

Provenance Like every individual, every work of art has a history. Examination of the history of a work of art, or its provenance, will ideally provide an accurate account of the location of an artwork from the


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time and place of its production to the present day. The nearer collectors, dealers, auction house specialists and scholars are able to provide such an unbroken pedigree, the more secure the attribution of that work becomes. A strong proven provenance reduces the likelihood of buying a fake artwork. From a purely mercenary point of view, a good provenance— the fact that a painting has been in a good collection in the past— has the ability to substantially increase the artwork’s monetary value in the future. A distinguished provenance indicates quality. Whatever the artwork, whether humble or proud, the very wealthy and royalty have always had within their means the capacity to purchase the best objects of their day. A royal provenance on a humble comb, brush or, for that matter, an umbrella handle indicates its manufacturer to be the best of the best. Even today companies compete furiously to be awarded royal warrants. A royal provenance or, in this case, the standard associated with awarding royal warrants indicates to the collector the high quality of the art object or service, whether table silver or royal purveyors of pest control. Provenance can also act to reassure a collector that they aren’t alone in considering a particular work of art beautiful. After all, past connoisseurs have willingly attached their good name to the artwork, thereby endorsing the current collector’s purchase. However, provenance needs to be proven. It is not uncommon for fraudulent documents to be manufactured, thus creating a convincing, yet counterfeit provenance. Such documentation is often associated with fakes. Over the years, reputable art dealers and auction house specialists have noted a disproportionate number of dubious paintings carrying the sale and exhibition labels of the now defunct Anthony Hordern and David Jones art galleries. When galleries fold, it is not uncommon for sharp individuals wishing to add instant credibility or provenance to an ordinary painting to snap up these sale and exhibition labels. These provenance-awarding exhibition and gallery labels are often affixed to frames and not to the back of the painting, but not surprisingly, paintings can change frames. Through a change in frame, a painting or print can obtain a provenance that it may well not deserve. Records of ownership attached physically to a particular artwork should augment other references in the collector’s posses-


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sion. Provenance should always be tested; double-check what you are told. Unfortunately, the highly competitive nature of the current Australian art market has seen a significant decline in dealers and, particularly, auction houses providing detailed provenance on sale. Major paintings regularly appear at auction from known private collections without provenance. In some instances, those who consign paintings to sale may wish to remain anonymous. On other occasions, however, the dealer or auction house will deliberately neglect to add provenance in an attempt to head off competition from other auction houses for other artworks from the same collection. Either way, by deliberately neglecting provenance, art dealers and auction houses thwart future scholarship and the important unbroken pedigree of ownership. If a provenance isn’t supplied prior to purchase, then one should be requested on purchase. It has been my experience that quite often proud owners will attend an auction and readily identify themselves to the new buyer, thereby maintaining the unbroken provenance of a work.

Cataloguing terms The seemingly straightforward task of ascribing a painting to an artist can be tricky, as there are so many subjective shades of attribution. Several years ago, two quite similar views of the Sydney Opera House, one by William Dobell and the other painting later discovered to be in the ‘manner of William Dobell’, popped up on the art market at auction. The painting actually by Dobell achieved $74 000 against an estimate of $35 000 to $45 000. After much embarrassment, the painting ascribed as being in the ‘manner of William Dobell’ was withdrawn from sale. As they say, oils ain’t oils! Collectors are advised to understand the subtle differences employed by art cataloguers—that is, the people who describe paintings, sculpture and works on paper for publishing. It is important to understand the difference between a painting ‘by William Dobell’ and works ‘attributed to William Dobell’; the ‘circle of William Dobell’; ‘manner of William Dobell’ and ‘after William Dobell’. To appreciate these distinct, yet subtle, differences is to understand an indicative scale of values in the art world.


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Although primarily known for his portraiture, Dobell did on occasion throughout his life paint buildings and cityscapes. As an official war artist during the Second World War, Dobell depicted the toiling of the Civil Construction Corps. Following the controversy over the 1943 Archibald Prize winner, Dobell fled Australia to New Guinea, where in a series of smaller works the native thatchers working high up, roofing their huts, increasingly fascinated him. Go figure that one! In the aforementioned painting, appropriately catalogued as ‘William Dobell’ and entitled Opera House (1968), the artist captures Harry Seidler’s MLC Tower and Australia Square. Although Goldfields House at Circular Quay is included, there can be no doubt that the construction of the Opera House dominates the work. This signed and dated painting acquired directly from the artist has all the energy of Dobell at his finest. The greenish-blue sky reflected on the harbour provides a misty backdrop to both the frantic construction and the activity on the water. Hypothetically, however, should the image have been catalogued for sale as ‘attributed to William Dobell’, then in the opinion of the painting’s specialist it may have been in whole or in part the work of the artist. In other words, the painting’s specialist could not be absolutely sure, but in their opinion the artist had a significant hand in the work. The value of a good attributed Dobell image of the Opera House would be in the vicinity of $6000. Sliding down the slippery slope of fine art attribution, should Opera House have been catalogued as the ‘circle of William Dobell’, then in the opinion of the specialist the painting is of the period, closely related to the artist’s style and shows his influence. It is possibly a good contemporary copy of the Opera House heavily influenced by Dobell’s style and undertaken by an accomplished artist but is not by the artist himself. Good copies can achieve good money, maybe up to $3000. Towards the bottom of the fine art attribution scale, the painting ascribed as being in the ‘manner of William Dobell’ entitled Study for the Opera House (withdrawn from sale) was unsigned but inscribed. Someone had written on the painting: ‘To Ron Wilson, Merry Xmas William’ (an attempt at faking provenance, perhaps?). Whatever, there are millions of Williams out there and possibly hundreds who paint badly. After some sharp debate it was


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agreed by all that the work had been undertaken in the manner of William Dobell—that is, in the style of the artist—but of a later date, and not a contemporary copy but just a later copy. Value? Well, very little; almost off the price radar. Then we come to the last in a long line of fine art attribution: ‘after William Dobell’. This is a straight-out copy of Dobell’s style. This is an artwork not based on any particular painting, but is just what a Dobell painting may have looked like had Dobell actually tackled that particular image. Anything in the Australian art world that carries the label ‘after’ is generally not a good look and any such artwork is of very little value. Be advised that all of these terms of attribution do mean slightly different things between auction house and art dealers, so it is recommended that a collector become familiar with the specific descriptive terminology used by each seller.


Conserving

art Chapter 12

Conservation of paintings There is, unfortunately, no law of physics that dictates that all the layers of a painting should stay together under a variety of conditions—wherein lies the problem. The materials that come together to make up a painting shift and change over time, and it is advisable to make yourself aware of a painting’s construction. It is important to both understand how paintings are made and to record what materials were used, as any adverse change to the materials that make up a painting directly impacts on its latter resale value. A painting is a complex, three-dimensional, layered structure, the base of which may be of organic cloth such as cotton or linen on to which is applied a size such as animal glue. On top of that may be a lead-based primer followed by the surface, which may be oil paint, acrylic resin or a host of other materials. The more impoverished the artist, the more likely it is that they will have used poor-quality materials that were never designed to stand the test of time. The highly sought-after work of Queensland artist Ian Fairweather (1891–1974) is a case in point. In the early 1950s, after extensive international travels, Fairweather discovered Bribie Island, then an isolated rural retreat. He drank whisky, and lived and painted in a bark hut. Under semi-tropical


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conditions Fairweather worked on newspaper, cardboard, or anything he could get his hands on. He made his own paint, layering his works with up to 30 home-made coats. Fairweather’s works can be a tropical nightmare and his prices tend to fluctuate widely, due as much to the quality of materials used as to the period and subject itself—between $5000 and $255 000-plus for an important work. Collectors should obtain a detailed, preferably independent, condition report on any Fairweather painting prior to purchase. As a rule of thumb, poor condition devalues a painting from anywhere between 30 and 50 per cent of its possible market value. Pay a premium and buy works in good condition. Upon purchase, record and gain an understanding of the exact materials used by the artist in the construction of their particular artwork. You need to be aware if an artist has resorted to a combination of homemade paint, household paints and varnishes, and stuck-on photographs, in case the work requires conservation or restoration. In order to avoid restoration, a painting should be kept in a reasonably stable environment. Although winter in many regions of Australia is associated with open fires, and decorators rarely resist the dramatic statement of a work placed over a fireplace, please note that the smoke from an open fire will discolour a picture, and even indirect heat will cause fine crazing (or cracking) to the surface. Open fireplaces with paintings hanging over them are the biggest no-no. Take the picture over the mantelpiece down now and replace it with a gilt mirror. Cooking fumes, cigarette smoke and anything sprayed into the air will also cause trouble. Flies are a hazard, as their droppings have to be carefully removed one by one. A badly aired room will promote mould growth, as does glass over an oil painting—this traps the damp. Conversely, never put an oil painting in direct sunlight as it will dry out, advancing cracks. A collector should get no closer to cleaning a picture than the light touch of a feather duster. When it comes to conservation or restoration, always seek professional advice. Conservators and restorers of note include David Stein Conservation and Andersen Shaw & Associates in Sydney; Judy Dunlop Conservation in Melbourne; RSM Art Conservation in Brisbane; Erica Burgess Paintings Conservator in Hobart; and Artlab Australia in Adelaide (see the ‘Resources’ section at the end of the book for the contact details).


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When storing paintings, be extra careful using bubble-wrap to cover your artworks. Bubble-wrap is that wonderful all-purpose, air-filled, honeycombed-looking, clear plastic wrapper. You know the stuff; it makes a popping sound when you squash the little air bubbles between your fingers. It can be good and it can be not so good. If used properly, the stuff is magic for quick, short-term transport and storage. However, wrapped around a painting, bubblewrap on canvas is not such a good thing. The varnish on paintings, particularly contemporary art, tends to be soft. Many a painting has come out of storage, impressed with the patterns of the bubble-wrap itself. Leading conservator David Stein assures me that numerous paintings are totally destroyed through the inappropriate use of bubble-wrap. This isn’t the type of heart-starter a collector needs. As a general rule of thumb, if a painting’s surface is soft or sticky to the touch, don’t wrap it. Transport and store the painting with a specialist who will move the work, without any need to wrap it. For artworks with hard varnish, by all means use bubble-wrap, but only on the final outer layer. Initially wrap the painting in something like polyfoam, a soft, thin, flexible sheet of foam that doesn’t adhere to paintings. One company, Qualtape (see the ‘Resources’ section at the end of the book for contact details), has developed a polyfoam-cum-bubble-wrap called ‘bubble wrap foam laminated’ which combines the best of both products.

Conservation of works on paper Acquiring an original 1930s movie poster or inheriting the family’s colonial sketchbook may well be the spark that ignites a collector’s passion. However, the way in which a collector physically handles, displays and stores any works on paper will determine how long their posters, prints, drawings and watercolours last—and, just as importantly, how long they maintain their value. Collectors face a variety of challenges in preserving their posters, prints, drawings and watercolours, which are collectively known as works on paper. By using a little common sense, by understanding a few basic terms, and by following the recommendations of conservation professionals, even those who are new to collecting can ensure a long life for their collection.


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To begin with, there is a big difference between conservation and restoration (and this relates to both works on paper and paintings). To conserve is to stabilise. Conservation is the science of treating condition defects and thereby preventing further damage. Libraries, art museums and many educated collectors predominantly practise the art of conservation. Art institutions driven to maintain the integrity of an artwork have a tendency if at all possible to avoid reconstructing artworks beyond cleaning and minor repairs. Restoration, on the other hand, is renewal, or the art of returning an object to what it was originally meant to be. It involves full cleaning, total repair and the replacement of paper, paint and canvas. Commercial galleries, dealers and some collectors favour the brand-new look of intervention commonly associated with restoration. The collector must first decide whether their work on paper aesthetically and financially merits conservation or restoration, a subtle combination of the two or nothing at all. When deciding to what level a collector should conserve their work on paper, it pays to remember not to over-capitalise. There is no point buying a work on paper for $100, spending $300 on conservation and then trying to sell the artwork for $400. Generally, artists and their work have values determined by the broader art market, not the individual collector. A collector doesn’t financially improve the artwork of a poor artist by cleaning or conservation. A clean example of bad art is still bad art. Consult a works on paper professional such as International Conservation Services in Chatswood, Sydney, or seek recommendations from individuals likely to have frequent contact with conservators, such as good framers, art dealers, auction house personnel and museum curators. Many works on paper have been irreparably ruined by inexpert advice. Avoid working on any artwork that is reasonably sound and bears some resemblance to the artist’s original intention. Avoid over-restoration; works on paper are often made to look like a sheet of brand-new stationery. Over-cleaning has a tendency to strip not only the grime but also the ink from an artwork and, ultimately, almost all of its value. Over-cleaning leaves the paper white and the image forever pale.


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The best protection you can provide for your works on paper is to keep their environment constant. The worst enemies are wide fluctuations in temperature and humidity. Ideally, works on paper should be viewed or stored in a dust-free environment with the temperature under twenty degrees Celsius and relative humidity between 50 and 55 per cent—quite simply, not too sunny, not too hot and not too humid. Prolonged excessive humidity promotes mould, which is a fungus, and the annoying rust-brown, measleslike spots found on paper are known as foxing. Foxing is evidence that fungi have been at work. Foxing stains can only be removed by bleaching, which can easily damage the entire work on paper. Prevention is far better than cure. When handling works on paper, I would recommend the following: • Always wash your hands before handling any work on paper. Art museum curators go ape insisting that white cotton gloves should be worn. This is largely nonsense, perpetuated by the uncritically bureaucratic. All gloves, layering as they do over the hands, desensitise the fingers. Having worked with some of the most valuable and sought-after manuscripts and books humanity has yet produced—in the book department at Christie’s London—where they don’t use cotton gloves, it has been my experience that far more damage is done to books and works on paper by clumsy handling, than through soiled hands. Gloves make it very difficult to consistently handle fragile paper—just wash your hands and work gently with beautiful objects. • When lifting a mounted or unmounted print, always use two hands to prevent creasing or tearing. Unmounted works should never be stacked on top of one another, but should be separated by smooth, acid-free paper. • Never use pressure-sensitive tapes, rubber cement or synthetic glues in mounting your work on paper. A starch-based adhesive is best, as it is non-yellowing and easily reversed. • When storing unframed prints, lay them flat; never roll them. Avoid spray-on glass cleaner at all costs, as over time cleaning liquid may seep into the frame of the work on paper and cause moisture damage.


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• Never expose works on paper to light for extended periods of time. Buy a number of works on paper, rotate their wall display about every six months and you will, with little effort, have enjoyment of them for life.

Framing In the fifteenth century a picture frame was considered as valuable as a painting. The framer Giuliano da San Gallo was paid as much for the frame he put around The Madonna and Child with Two Saints (1485) as was the painter Botticelli for the picture! Over the centuries, however, with changes of taste and constant reframing, many original frames were simply thrown out. To right these wrongs, it is now considered a significant owning priority to match the right frame with the right picture. The availability in London of eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury picture frames in good condition and at affordable prices is becoming increasingly rare. Over the last century many paintings in both private and public collections have been inappropriately reframed. During the late nineteenth century, in particular, many collectors and museums followed slavishly the fashion trends of the day, often reframing a painting any number of times in an attempt to be seen as contemporary. Thankfully, today, collectors and museums are far more concerned with placing a painting in a frame that adequately reflects the era and style of the artist when the painting was actually executed. From the late 1980s, major overseas dealers, painting connoisseurs and art museums started to collect fine period frames in a big way. Collectors and museums are now looking to buy back period picture frames. Internationally, this is a growing market. A relatively standard French nineteenth-century carved and gilded frame can sell at auction in London for A$5000, with a fine seventeenth-century Florentine carved and gilded frame realising between $30 000 and $50 000. In order to meet this specialist, but quite lucrative, market there now exists regular specialist sales of fine period frames at London’s leading auction houses. Unfortunately, the Australian multinational auction houses neither hold specialist sales nor consign picture frames as a component of their regular Australian painting sales.


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In Australia, collecting period picture frames is by and large little understood outside the painting trade. Australian auction houses follow the international practice of not specifically detailing the frames on the paintings they sell. In fact, the cost of the picture frame is rarely, if ever, factored into the sale price of a painting at auction. Quite unlike the overseas trend, major Australian auction houses have long held the view that they only sell paintings and not frames. In the face of such ignorance, a real opportunity exists in Australia for an astute collector to buy period frames with the knowledge that the real value may well be in the frame and not the painting. Stock is readily available—after all, even the ugliest painting comes framed. Combined with this abundance of stock, the relative ease of shipping makes the option of an overseas resale of a good period frame quite feasible. An understanding of the values now associated with fine frames overseas offers an opportunity for the Australian collector to, in fact, arbitrage. It is possible to offset substantially the cost of purchasing a painting by selling on the associated period frame. You may well find that the frame on your recently purchased painting is, on closer analysis, somewhat inappropriate. Your painting may well be boarded by, say, a late nineteenth-century frame, while the artist and work in question is undoubtedly from the 1920s. In that case, why not sell your inappropriate frame? While nineteenth-century frames can be relatively expensive, 1920s frames may not. Trade in your inappropriate frame, make some money and sympathetically reframe your painting all in one go. Offset your debt, even if it means selling the picture frame in order to afford the work. It would surely be far more rewarding to hang a beautiful but unframed work than not to own a painting at all. Also, collect period picture frames independently of paintings altogether. After all, it will be only a matter of time until the international market influences the pricing structure of frames in the Australian market. Get in on the ground level. A collector interested in knowing more about this important market should consult the overseas catalogues of the major auction houses. Find out the names and details of the relevant overseas specialists and send photographs and measurements of your frames direct. A reputable framer or conservator may well prove to be


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invaluable in helping a collector to understand the age and direction that should be taken when deciding to change frames. When hunting for good or original frames amid a sea of gold ones, here are the sorting tips. There exists a big difference in value between hand-carved and moulded picture frames. Hand-carved frames are far more valuable, and at first glance most punters cannot tell the difference between the two. Hand-carved frames, as opposed to mass-produced composite moulded frames, are often lighter. Composite frames are denser and therefore colder to touch than wood and exhibit telltale cracks through the plaster. Avoid, where at all possible, gold-painted frames. The more valuable frames are inevitably hand gilded or, more specifically, burnished water gilded, matt water gilded or oil gilded. Most importantly, match the style of frame with the period of painting! If in doubt, all good bookshops should be able to order in Nicholas Penny’s Brief Pocket Guide to Frames (1997). It is very basic, but it’s a start. A good art dealer or superior framer should provide collectors with a selection of relevant period handmade frames from stock.

Lighting Glossy auction house art catalogues and art gallery interiors share much in common—they aim to present art at its absolutely highest level of appeal. The auction house sale catalogue is professionally photographed; paintings are bathed in a revealing bright, white light. While art gallery track lighting is perfectly focused, the walls behind the art are plain, the flooring simple. In most art galleries you see little, if any, competition from the surrounding environment. The slick nature of professional presentation is an important point to take into account when a collector is viewing art. For under these slick circumstances just about anything looks great— and I mean absolutely any old crap. The trick is for a collector to project the placement of that artwork, out of the catalogue or gallery and on to their walls. As an extra-special service, good art dealers will allow known, regular clients to take paintings home and live with them for a few days. If you are unable to project the hanging of an artwork out of a sale catalogue or gallery on to your living-room wall and you don’t have a good working relationship with the dealer, then may


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I suggest that you install professional lighting in the house? With professional home lighting, the collector’s presentation of their art will be to the same slick, high standard as the seller’s.

Displaying art—the easel Despite their having existed for centuries, I have only recently discovered the joy and convenience of using an artist’s easel. Not as such to paint with—for I am without talent in this area—but as a great way to display paintings in the house. I have several easels now: a number of small ones used in fixed positions—on a table or sideboard—to highlight a framed photograph or drawing; together with a full-height (180 cm) working artist’s easel, which I move around the house and change pictures on at whim. It’s very easy; no more getting up a ladder to change the hanging system over the dining-room table in order to fit in that new purchase. The large easel slides up and down to accommodate a great many differing sized paintings. From memory the cost was around $250 for a good pine job that quickly mellows with age. You can obtain any number of examples in differing materials from a good artist supply shop near you. To avoid easel mania, limit yourself to one purchase at a time and remember that it is the artwork, and not the easel, that is on display.


Lending

art Chapter 13

B

enevolent art collectors, as a service to the public, lend paintings to art museums for public exhibitions. In so doing, astute art collectors are giving service to their collection, realising that in lending artworks for public exhibition they not only improve and develop a painting’s exhibition history but they anoint the painting with the holy water of academic gravitas. The logic is that if the artwork was good enough to exhibit at an important art museum, then ipso facto the collector has on their hands a significant, highprofile and sought-after artwork. All in all, a commitment by private collectors to lending artworks for exhibition in public art museums equates on resale to more cash. Some years back, the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales held an extraordinary survey exhibition of Australian fine art entitled ‘A Century of Collecting 1901–2001’. This was a gem of an exhibition that celebrated the centenary of Federation by showcasing 146 paintings drawn from twelve significant private collections. Some of the generous and forward-thinking contributing collectors included James Agapitos and Ray Wilson, Ginny Green, Richard Hattersley, Colin and Liz Laverty, Ann Lewis, Virginia Milson and Geoffrey Hassall, Margaret Olley, John and Julie Schaeffer, Freddie and Caroline Storch, Michael Whitworth and Candice Bruce, and Fred and Elinor Wrobel.


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A Tom Roberts engraving of the opening of the first parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia commenced the centenary. Works by Cressida Campbell and Kim Westcott, both undertaken in 2000, brought it to the present. Every decade was well represented, as was Aboriginal art. Some of the artists included in the exhibition were Ralph Balson, Clarice Beckett, Charles Blackman, James Cant, Ian Fairweather, Adrian Feint, James Gleeson, Nora Heysen, Susan Norrie, Adelaide Perry, John Peter Russell, Rover Thomas and Blamire Young. Having made the exhibition cut, all 146 paintings will forever carry their appearance in that exhibition as a red badge of honour. All future documentation surrounding those paintings, including sale catalogues, will detail their star exhibition appearances. When a painting is offered for sale, aside from the basic catalogue information on the artist’s full name, date of birth and death, the title of the painting, medium on which the work was painted, its size and date, highly important information such as the artwork’s provenance and exhibition history is the next cab off the rank. A fat, prestigious exhibition history highlights the desirability of the painting. In a recent Sotheby’s Melbourne painting sale, a private collector consigned Russell Drysdale’s 1963 homage to domestic reconciliation, the sizeable oil Tom and Lilah. The artwork’s significant exhibition history, which was given clear prominence in the sale catalogue, began with a 1964 Friends of the National Gallery of Victoria loan exhibition, moved on to the 1969 ‘Collectors’ Collections’, Melbourne Church of England Grammar School viewing, and finished with ‘Great Australian Paintings from Melbourne Private Collections’, Deutscher Fine Art in 1997 and the ‘Russell Drysdale’ exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria in 1997. Directly under the exhibition history, prior to a full-page advertorial blurb rounding up the painting’s academic significance, came the pre-sale auction estimate of $600 000 to $800 000 (sold $1 048 250). In this, as in many other examples, the public demand to see this painting—as illustrated through the exhibition history— was a significant factor in establishing the painting’s worth. Aside from establishing a fat exhibition portfolio, other indirect benefits gained by a collector on lending artworks to public exhibitions include participating in the process of raising an artist’s


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profile. By lending Russell Drysdale’s Tom and Lilah to the 1997 National Gallery of Victoria retrospective, the private Melbourne collector helped to develop a groundswell of public attention surrounding the art of Drysdale. This attention ultimately flowed through to greater public appreciation of, and greater collector demand for, artworks by that artist. Also, in lending a painting to an art museum for an extended period a collector can reduce the cost of their home insurance premium. As an institutional thank you, the art museum should insure the collector’s painting, eliminating the private need to pay hefty premiums. Similarly, a longterm loan to an established art museum would greatly reduce the security risks and costs, not to mention the burden of appropriate storage. For these somewhat nuts-and-bolts reasons, long-term lending by collectors to art museums is not an uncommon practice. There can, however, be a downside to lending for a private collector. Many art museum exhibition programs traverse any number of states over many months—your beloved artwork can be away from home for a long time. Recently, in a very special win, Wally Caruana and I secured for a client an extraordinary Aboriginal bark painting by Gayluma Maymuru entitled Guwak. Purchased six weeks prior to the artwork’s inclusion in the 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, the Gayluma went on to win the bark painting art category. There can be no doubt that the award will add greatly to the painting’s value; however, as a precondition of the award, the bark will tour nationally until 2005! Our client, who, luckily, is very patient, was thrilled. If you have an artwork you think may be of interest to an art museum, subscribe to your local art museum’s magazine so that you can monitor forthcoming exhibitions. If you spy a scheduled exhibition that may accommodate your prized artwork, get straight on the blower and have a chat to the relevant curator about them seeing your artwork. In the alternative, take some happy snaps of the painting, and, together with details, send these in to the art museum for the curator to keep the identity and whereabouts of your work on file.


Exploring

qualityart

Chapter 14

The masterpiece Bear with me—this is one of my major art world bug-bears. Lounging around the art world as I do, you read of or overhear on an almost daily basis the gross misuse of the age-old expression ‘masterpiece’. Public relations juggernauts will attempt to convince you that such and such art auction catalogue or gallery exhibition contains literally dozens and dozens of masterpieces—daarrrrling. It is wrong to apply the term ‘masterpiece’ indiscriminately to any good example of an artist’s work. For centuries, beginning in around the fifteenth century, the label ‘masterpiece’ was only ever attached to one specific painting out of the artist’s entire body of work, one that elevated the apprentice painter to the ranks of a master painter. For hundreds of years, dozens of artisans worked—almost as a factory production line—in the studio of a major artist, turning out the significant behind-the-scenes work needed to make up a complex oil painting. In a portrait, for example, the master would undertake the preliminary sketch (called a cartoon), laying as it were the foundations and direction of the painting. Then skilled apprentices painted in the landscape behind the sitter, added on the clothes, the drapes and sometimes


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the hands. Over the top of all this work the master came back into the picture and painted the face. Aside from painting the face, anything else undertaken by the master was dependent on how much he was paid for the commission. Remember our friend Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477–1549)? It was said that ‘his brush danced according to the tune of money’. The apprentices then finished the painting and signed the work with the master’s mark or signature. Much early painting was collaborative in nature and highly automated. If, after many years of an apprenticeship, the master deemed the artisan ready, the apprentice was able to complete a painting (almost all by himself) and, God forbid, was able to sign that work with his own name. The apprentice had made the journey to become a master, and that specific painting, being proof of his ability and skill, was called his masterpiece. It was only ever one painting, and the painter was then often at liberty to start his own studio, or he may have continued on as he was, never again signing a work with his own name. Realising that language does change, and not wanting to appear crotchety before my time, may I suggest that those in public relations, art dealers, auction house specialists, collectors and curators make a distinction between the terms ‘masterpiece’ and ‘masterwork’. The term ‘masterpiece’ would continue, as it has for centuries, to indicate a one-off pearler of a painting; while the new term ‘masterwork’ could be used a lot more liberally to indicate a selection of paintings that represent the culmination of an artist’s best intentions and abilities. Let me give you an example. To accompany the release of a significant art reference book entitled Hilda Rix Nicholas: Her life and art, written by accomplished academic Dr John Pigot, and a tour from Lauraine Diggins Fine Art in Melbourne, Savill Galleries in Sydney several years ago showcased 55 Hilda Rix Nicholas paintings and drawings drawn from the family collection, private collectors and art dealer stock. A determined and accomplished artist, Rix Nicholas is well known for her depictions of the Australian bush and of the national landscape, a landscape that had hitherto been the stronghold of men such as Heysen, Roberts and Streeton. Hilda Rix Nicholas studied in Melbourne under Frederick McCubbin and later in London and Paris. Her work was greatly acclaimed by Parisian critics for its elegance and strength.


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Rix Nicholas’s masterpiece would undoubtedly be her homage to pastoral life entitled The Fair Musterer (circa 1935). A painting considered socially radical for its day, this artwork suggested to an overwhelmingly male Australia that women had been equal partners in the building of the nation. The Fair Musterer is held by the Queensland Art Gallery after being purchased from the Joseph Brown Gallery in Melbourne in 1971. Taking on board the central idea that there is only ever one masterpiece in an artist’s body of work and that work is absolutely pivotal, Rix Nicholas’s The Fair Musterer is the artist’s strongest visual statement, a work that resonates like no other. On the other hand, Rix Nicholas’s masterworks, of which there are a few, include such powerful images as Autumn Evening’s Glow (circa 1942). This robust later work is on the same theme as The Fair Musterer and was purchased at auction by corporate collector Wesfarmers in 1995 for $57 500. Another masterwork, then in family hands, could be considered to be the large biographical portrait entitled The Fleece (1944). A large iconic painting, it depicts the ‘Australian nation riding on the sheep’s back’ school of art, the central character being a portrait of Rix Nicholas’s husband inspecting a fine merino fleece. Due to the dwindling stock of Rix Nicholas’s masterworks, the family had The Fleece on first refusal to an art museum at $165 000—I’m not sure whether the painting was sold in the end. However, should the art institution have missed the purchasing boat, then may I suggest that some well-heeled collector swoop now on this masterwork or forever miss out.

Quality control of artistic output As professionals, artists owe a duty to their collectors to monitor and control the quality of their artistic output. Less can be more. There is, or should be, ample room in the creative process for the destruction of bad art. Without wishing to name names, a great number of contemporary artists would do well to consider a ‘let’s go through my stock and slash all the crap’ policy. In contrast, many of Australia’s better artists, past and present, have been fortunate enough to possess the presence of mind to regularly cull bad or inferior artworks. Let me say from the outset, destruction is a very difficult thing for any creative person to do.



Like a writer editing their own words, an artist jettisoning a painting is akin to euthanising your creative baby. Emotionally gruesome and tough as this editing process may be, the continual sifting and revaluation of an artist’s output will often instil some much-needed discipline and direction into their overall creative process. If an artist is unwilling or unable to make the quality control hard call, then it is incumbent on their art dealer to speak their mind and fearlessly earn their sale commissions. Giants of Australian art such as John Brack, Russell Drysdale, Rosalie Gascoigne, Tom Roberts, John Peter Russell, Rover Thomas (mostly) and Fred Williams practised strict quality control. These artists were conscious of the art market and of what they released on to that market. They were artists greatly concerned with the overall standard of the paintings they presented for sale. It is not surprising, then, that paintings by these artists are relatively rare, increasingly valuable, gem-like treasures. William Dobell would hold back in his studio stacks of unsigned drawings and paintings, all awaiting a good rework. Dobell only signed artworks prior to sale, when he was convinced they were fully resolved. Tragically, and most unfortunately in terms of his quality control, Dobell died suddenly of a heart attack. Artworks that had yet to be resolved and signed by Dobell were then dropped on to the market in some number, in effect clouding Dobell’s late reputation. The Dobell market took two decades to recover. Other artists falling into this post-death trap of having too many unsigned, unvetted paintings coming on to the art market include Godfrey Miller and Roland Wakelin. Let this be a lesson to all contemporary artists: don’t put off the process of destruction. Contemporary artists should destroy their bad art, not obliterate a reminder of earlier endeavours. Australia’s first surrealist painter, Eric Thake, practically wiped out his entire body of highly competent, academically significant 1930s surrealist work. In a bonfire of artistic self-doubt, Thake burnt all those paintings he could lay his hands on. This wasn’t a selective cull of inferior artworks; Thake attempted to burn up his past. Thake wasn’t alone in such matters. Almost as if he was degraded by his acceptance of commercial work, Albert Tucker attempted to obtain back and obliterate his 1940s and 1950s cartoons. What Thake and Tucker did was unfortunate. The wholesale burning of


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almost an entire body of work doesn’t constitute a rational editing process. There is no need to turn the process of quality control into a scorched earth policy. If in doubt, and many artists are forever in doubt, enlist the critical services of your art dealer. Contemporary artists such as Peter Booth, Fiona Hall, Bill Henson, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Nicholas Harding, William Robinson, Jeffrey Smart, Tim Storrier and Anne Wallace are all members of a select breed of artists that, for the benefit of all concerned, cast a somewhat critical and even destructive eye over their artwork. These artists don’t turn out bad art, although collectors may not like either their style or images. As practitioners of art, their body of production is invariably of a high standard, and it shows. Their quality shines through when their artworks are exhibited and is reflected in the steady escalation of the prices that they obtain for their art.

Signatures—a note to contemporary artists Dear Contemporary artist, Please sign your work legibly, as it really does help if others can read your signature. Signing your art is an important part of the creative process. No matter what your signature looks like, what form it takes or where you put it, no work of yours is complete without it. The moment you apply your name to a piece of your work, you declare that it is finished and ready to be exhibited. I remember my first brush with Brett Whiteley in early 1991. Whiteley was asked to attend Christie’s Sydney office and sign his large Central West landscape entitled Hill End (1985–90). There could be no doubt that the painting was by Whiteley; it was a bright, fluid, easy-on-the-eye landscape that was painted over a number of years. It was originally consigned by Whiteley with no signature and with an auction pre-sale estimate of $120 000. In the midst of an art market recession it was considered prudent by all concerned to, in essence, ‘finish’ the artwork with Whiteley’s signature, his mark of approval. From memory, Whiteley signed the front and back of the painting and it sold on the night for $132 000. If Hill End (1985–90) ever came back on the market it would, in my opinion, carry a resale estimate in the vicinity of a million dollars.



Your signature identifies your art for all time. When a collector wants to know who created your art, your signature tells them. When someone sees your art for the first time and wants to see more, your signature helps them to find you. My work takes me across the country, and one of the most time-efficient ways I have found to search out interesting regional, contemporary artists is to drop into the local art museum. If a local artist is good enough to hang in an art museum, then they are certainly good enough for a second look from me. The signature on the painting and wall panels of the art museum provides me with all the information I need to track down the artist’s local art dealer. This ‘read the signature on the painting and head to the art dealer’ technique was introduced to me many years ago by Dick Bett Gallery in Hobart. When you are not around to identify your art, your signature will identify it for you. For a variety of reasons, many contemporary artists continue to sign their names illegibly. Some artists practise a kind of ‘form over function’ identification, signing with a scrawl, a mark or chop that they think looks attractive. Signatures are for identification, not decoration. A number of contemporary artists believe (rather egotistically) that they will always be identifiable as the creator whether or not anyone can read their names. Oh, please, get over it! Not even artworks by the most famous artists in the world are identifiable to everyone. Lost works of art by famous artists are rediscovered all the time, and do you know the main reason why? Do you honestly think it is because some high-profile art scholar—wandering rather foppishly through a maze of ancient buildings—looks up at a precise moment to immediately recognise the style of an important artist through centuries of grit and discoloured varnish? Get real— most works of art are rediscovered because someone could read the signature! However, should you, as a contemporary artist, not want to interrupt the surface of your work by adding a legible signature, that’s fine by me! Please sign, stencil and title your identification on the reverse—many of the greats did. Thank you. In the art market for more traditional artworks—that is, colonial, pastoral and landscape pictures from white settlement to around


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the 1960s—there exist two schools of thought as to the merits of purchasing an unsigned artwork: no and perhaps. The conservative general rule of thumb is for novice collectors to avoid buying unsigned traditional artworks altogether. Far too many fledgling collectors spend a disproportionate amount of their time playing art world super sleuths, undertaking research in order to elevate an unsigned, obviously B-grade artwork to that of an obviously bad, unsigned A-grade artwork. When initially building a collection, try to know what you are buying in the first instance; be cautious with your money. I know of one prodigious experienced collector of immense intellect who sometimes goes into an obsessive brain frenzy, purchasing unsigned sketch after unsigned sketch. He then spends much of his time building up the provenance of those unsigned sketches and establishing the works’ academic credentials. In the end, after much, much effort, an $800 sketch may be worth $1200. His purchases are an assemblage of minor, unsigned works. The man has thousands of artworks of this nature, and the irony is that he could well afford to concentrate his efforts on buying hundreds of signed major works capable of forming a collection and escalating in some significant manner. If it made him happy to play the art world super-sleuth, well and good, but he is unhappy that, after all this time and effort, he doesn’t own an interesting art collection— and he never will, if he is unable to break the habit of buying unsigned artworks. Although unsigned works attract a discount on buying, invariably they also tend to attract the same discount on selling! Unsigned artworks were quite often left unsigned for a very good reason—that is, the artist was unhappy with its overall standard. If the artist was unconcerned with putting his or her name to a more traditional painting, drawing or watercolour, why then should a collector fall head over heels to attach their good name to the artwork’s future provenance? As we know, it is far from uncommon for the entire contents of an artist’s studio to be unloaded on the art market shortly after death—often hundreds of unsigned drawings, watercolours and paintings. It is quite possible the artist never intended this work to enter the marketplace. Many drawings are done as preliminary sketches, their worth being that of an aide-mémoire to the artist.



Such sketches were never meant to stand alone and weren’t intended for sale. The second school of thought, which I dabble in, offers a slightly more liberal approach to purchasing an unsigned traditional artwork: we would argue that collectors should only purchase artworks they really like, irrespective of whether they are signed or not. Collectors are advised to have a degree of confidence in their own taste; if you really like a painting by an established artist, either signed or unsigned, chances are that so may someone else. Yes, unsigned artworks often sell at a discount; and precisely for that reason, the entry level may be far more suited to your budget. Few collectors have the financial wherewithal to buy the best of the best all the time. Finances and scarcity often dictate that owning an unsigned good example of a sought-after artist is far more rewarding than not owning an artwork at all. In my opinion, when contemplating the purchase of an unsigned artwork, you should let the quality of the artwork, your taste and some sensible specialist advice be your guides.


Fake

art Chapter 15

S

ome years ago, confronted with the spectre of art fraud, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art of Melbourne undertook unprecedented remedial action to publicly acknowledge their sale of a number of fake paintings. The gallery’s 1998 Australian Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts catalogue included two alleged fake paintings as the work of Sir Arthur Streeton. Banksias Bend over the Bay, on offer at $115 000, was withdrawn before sale, while Garden Island and the Harbour sold for around $85 000—the sale was rescinded. Cheek by jowl with the purportedly phoney Streetons was an alleged fake Tom Roberts, Track to the Harbour (1899), a work that had sold for $245 000, and a so-called bogus Girolamo Nerli, Shipping at Melbourne Wharf, on offer at around $80 000. (It was withdrawn before sale.) Two of the four works were believed to have sold, sight unseen, to a Canadian collector. Although not mentioned in the art gallery letter bravely announcing the alleged art fraud, two further exhibition paintings, notably an Ethel Carrick Fox and a Jeffrey Smart, were consigned from the same source—so they allegedly had to be considered a touch suspect. However, as is often the case with concealing the alleged fakes, the dubious source peppers their consignments with both good and bad paintings—all the better to hide the bad. The alleged fake paintings all bore the signature of the artist whose work they


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purported to be. The alleged fake paintings also bore the exhibition labels of Anthony Hordern. Lauraine Diggins Fine Art contacted its clients, all sale monies were immediately refunded and the Victorian Police were alerted. In a letter to 3000 clients, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art candidly admitted the inclusion of a number of alleged fake paintings in one major sale exhibition. It was fooled by an alleged elaborate scam involving quality art production and detailed supporting documentation. Art fraud is all too common, although frank and open discussion surrounding art fraud outside the art trade is highly uncommon. Lauraine Diggins Fine Art is to be congratulated for its open stance on such matters. In the client letter, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art went further than frank admission; it requested that clients mark the exhibition catalogue in question with the white stickers provided. The stickers were included to clearly highlight the alleged fake entries, in a responsible effort to prohibit the later use of that exhibition catalogue to showcase the allegedly fraudulent works. No other industry player, when confronted by an alleged art fraud, has undertaken such a move. To further combat any future possibility of the sale of fake paintings, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art went on to make a donation to the University of Melbourne/Ian Potter Conservation Centre to establish research into art forgeries, a donation that the University of Melbourne matched. Work carried out by these institutions on the gallery’s behalf formed the basis of a ‘Forgery in Australian Art’ listing, a long overdue registry of fakes. Aside from frank admissions, clear identification and monies for research, in a controversial departure from conventional legal wisdom Diggins named her source in print and on radio. Such a move, although emotionally understandable, is without doubt controversial. In the midst of a police investigation, the named art dealer source of the alleged fake paintings fled the country. On a brighter note, the art dealer has since returned and the criminal statute of limitations has yet to expire, so the police could, as is their wont, reopen the case any time in the near future. As can be imagined, this experience hasn’t been one that Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, which was established in 1974, has enjoyed. After all, Diggins is one of Australia’s leading art dealers,


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and is an expert examiner to the National Cultural Heritage Committee. In 1996 she became the first commercial art dealer to be appointed to the Cultural Gifts Program (formerly the Taxation Incentive for the Arts Scheme). A situation such as this, which will undoubtedly be by no means the last alleged fake painting scandal on the Australian art market, throws up a multitude of questions. Who fakes paintings? Where? Why do so many fakes get past even the best eyes? And how does the collector even begin to spot the rot?

To begin with: Why is everyone so upset about fake art? In the Western world, out-and-out art fraud has been taking place for thousands of years. The Romans shamelessly copied the Greek sculptors. (Spookily enough, what we know of early Greek sculpture has been more often gained through our study of a known Roman copy of the original.) So, why the sudden surge of negative interest in copying great art? The answer is the ever-increasing commodification of art practice. Art is now firmly equated with cash, academic status and social prestige. Today there are just too many vested interests in the art industry to see the issue swept under the carpet, or the internationally multi-billion-dollar industry undermined or devalued through fraudulent behaviour.

Types of fakes Imitation is a most dangerous form of art world flattery. Honest, and not so honest, replicas are sold every day as fakes. Collectors should be aware of the three predominant breeds of fine art fakers: 1 The faker who knowingly makes a fraudulent work of art. 2 The faker who deliberately claims a work to be something far more exalted than it really is—selling the untruth for profit. This is by far the most common form of art fraud and is best illustrated in the Australian context with the Margaret Olley to David Strachan theft and reattribution scam, which I will touch on in a moment. 3 The collector who buys an artwork only to learn that it is a fake, and then turns around and re-sells the fake as genuine. The


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rationalisation here is that few collectors want to be embarrassed in front of their collecting peers. Who, after all, can afford not to recoup their outlay? This is a very dangerous reality.

The Margaret Olley to David Strachan theft Everyone was happy. David Edgar Strachan’s Still Life with Daisies (Lot 222), estimated at $5000 to $7500, was sold for $30 800 by Leonard Joel in early November 1999. It was a record price for the artist at auction. Selling way above estimate, the vendor was to obtain buckets of money. The auction house was to receive an unexpected windfall commission. And the buyer, who fought long and hard, obtained the Still Life with Daisies she had always wanted. However, there was one not so small problem: the work was an unfinished Margaret Olley painting that had been signed ‘David Strachan’—not a David Strachan painting. It was another art fraud. Most people would be familiar with the notion of the faker who out and out manufactures a bogus painting for fraudulent sale. However, lesser appreciated but just as cancerous is the faker who ‘finds’ some artwork and deliberately claims it to be something other than what it really is—selling the untruth for profit. The depths of the art world are indeed murky—and this saga has it all. However, let us start at the beginning. During the early 1970s an unknown number of unfinished Margaret Olley paintings were stolen from the balcony of David Strachan’s former house in Paddington, Sydney. Olley and Strachan were close friends who had painted together. Being unfinished, the paintings had been relegated to Strachan’s balcony and were not at first missed—but not for long. Up bubbled the first misattributed work in November 1988 at Leonard Joel’s in Melbourne. David Strachan’s Callyopsis (Lot 82) sold for $10 500 to Melbourne art dealer Tom Silver. Philip Bacon Galleries in Brisbane subsequently included the work in a major Strachan exhibition. Some weeks later, at a glance, Margaret Olley recognised her own work with a fake Strachan signature. This recognition was subsequently supported by David Strachan’s


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executor (and sister) Mrs Veronica Rowan, who confirmed the signature to be a fake. Silver returned Callyopsis to Leonard Joel. In August 1992 as Lot 454, Leonard Joel re-offered Callyopsis as an ‘Australian School’ painting. The painting sold for $375 to a private Melbourne collector. Down, but not out, the fake signature on an unfinished Olley painting popped up with a brand-new name in November of the same year at Christie’s, being Lot 231 catalogued as a David Strachan Still Life estimated at $5000 to $7000. That same November, another misattributed Olley to Strachan turned up at Joel’s, being Lot 136, David Strachan’s Bush Lemons— Still Life. Faced with a flood of misattributed, unfinished Olley paintings to the market, a triumvirate of scholarly knowledge—namely, Lou Klepac, art historian Daniel Thomas, and Barry Pearce, the then senior curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales—took the unprecedented step of penning individual letters to the auction houses, alerting them to the fakes. Pearce wrote: ‘In my opinion the two works listed in the auction catalogues as above are not by David Strachan. They bear no relationship to his style of painting, and the signatures that have been placed on them are apocryphal. In fact I am certain that the two paintings in question are by Margaret Olley, with false Strachan signatures added to them.’ Once again, both paintings were withdrawn before sale. Initially through Philip Bacon Gallery, and then finally through solicitors, Olley unsuccessfully attempted to reclaim ownership of Callyopsis. Solicitors’ letters shot back and forth in a process that was, for all concerned, ultimately fruitless and expensive. Christie’s returned Callyopsis to its Melbourne vendor—its current whereabouts remain unknown. Changing tack, Philip Bacon, on behalf of Margaret Olley, wrote to Joel’s offering that Olley both finish Bush Lemons—Still Life and correctly sign the work. Warm fuzzy feeling to one side, this astute offer was designed to appropriately correct an art fraud. Although Bacon and Olley received no response from Joel’s, it is believed that, at a latter date, the painting’s Queensland owners did in fact take Olley up on the offer. A respected Sydney restorer, who naturally enough wishes to remain anonymous, does remember ‘a few years back’ removing a fake Strachan signature from what was obviously an Olley painting of bush lemons. Olley faintly remembers re-signing such a work. Let’s hope so.


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The third known Olley-to-Strachan swap appeared in April 1996 at Sotheby’s, being Lot 185, a David Strachan Still Life carrying an estimate of $10 000 to $15 000. Alerted to the painting’s fake signature and misattribution, Sotheby’s withdrew the work from sale and, by arrangement, Olley signed this work as her own. As to the more recent and fourth fiasco of November 1999, the Queensland record-setting bidder on Still Life with Daisies naturally enough refused to pay. The painting remained for some time with Joel’s. As to the record ‘Strachan’ price of $30 800? The underbidder was—surprise, surprise—Philip Bacon on the telephone attempting to buy back the work, so that Olley could finish what she had started and correctly sign the painting. Post-sale, the mortified owner of Still Life with Daisies, having only just been informed of the saga, was more than willing to rectify the matter to please all parties. At the time, Leonard Joel’s then painting specialist, Treena Joel, said: ‘The owner is devastated. The painting was inherited on the death of a close family member, the work having originally been purchased in Queensland many, many years ago. Nothing would give the owner more pleasure than Margaret Olley signing the work.’ So, with the help of all concerned, one less fake signature may well be expunged from the market. And why were the stolen Olley paintings signed ‘Strachan’ in the first place? At the time the paintings were stolen, in the 1970s, Strachan’s work was more valuable than Olley’s. In the early 1970s at auction, a Strachan Still Life could make $2000—an Olley around $500. My, how times have changed. It is now safe to say that Margaret Olley’s paintings are generally far more valuable than David Strachan’s. Around the time this particular debacle took place, from 1989 to 1998, 41 Strachan paintings were offered at auction, 22 of which sold at an average of $7031. In the same period, 110 Olleys were offered to the market, with 79 selling at an average of $10 468. The highest price then paid for an Olley at auction stood at $48 300 for Basket of Oranges and Jug at Christie’s April 1998 auction. Excluding the latest fraud, the then highest price for a Strachan stood at $19 000 for Old Wall, Bricherasio at Christie’s November 1996 auction. As an update, the record price for an Olley now stands at $64 625 for Proteas and Fruit in 2001, and a David Strachan achieved $30 550 for Still Life with Oranges in the same year.


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But what now? Given that Olley’s paintings are more expensive than Strachan’s, will we see the misattributed works changed back from Strachan to an Olley? Most likely, yes, correctly reattributed as an Olley but with a fake Olley signature. Ah, the swings and roundabouts of it all.

The law Copying the work of an artist who is alive or has been dead for less than 50 years would, if the work was transmitted by an image, constitute a breach of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and could render the copyist liable for substantial damages. However, if a copy was made and not transmitted in any way—by printing, photograph, email, and so on—to anyone, then no breach of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 has occurred. So, no problem. Therefore, it isn’t a crime to copy a painting—if it isn’t transmitted; it’s only a crime to transmit the copy without authority or to knowingly pass off the copy-cum-fake as the genuine article. So, in order not to break the law, good fakers, without a word of comment or, alternatively, playing really dumb, merely present the painting for sale and leave it to the so-called experts to authenticate the fake. I have seen this perfectly legal sleight of hand in action. A known faker and former capable art dealer—I call him Darth Vader, because once a talent, he was seduced by the dark side—used to regularly bring in for sale, to the auction house where I worked, say 30 paintings as a consignment package. This happened three times a year. The artworks ranged from minor watercolours to good oils, from a dozen or so artists. The trick was that each batch contained around three fakes nestled in among the otherwise real, but mediocre, bunch. I can still remember a small, relatively good fake Drysdale portrait of an Aboriginal youth—Darth Vader wanted $70 000 for it, as I recall. Close, but no prize. All the art specialists knew that this was Darth Vader’s modus operandi, and the game among us was, without a word of criticism, to sift politely through the bunch, turning down the fakes and accepting the real paintings. Darth Vader never questioned our non-selection. In terms of dealing with dark forces (being young at the time), business was, after all, business and occasionally Darth Vader did turn


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up a real and good picture for sale. At that time, the forces of light and good still had some form of grip on Darth—however, I think not anymore. From memory, Darth Vader never said: ‘This is a Drysdale’, or ‘That is a Streeton’. In saying that, he would have knowingly passed off fake paintings as originals. Darth left statements of attribution to the inexperienced, unsuspecting art specialists to make. Our dark knight merely presented the work for possible sale— good old Darth Vader just went along for the ride.

Where do many fakes come from? There are a number of Australian ‘artists’ who regularly fake other artists’ work—but they are generally of no great quality; they are more of a media event than a real problem to the art market. However, a tsunami of better-quality fakes has flooded the Australian market from the commercial studios in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The Vietnamese, colonised as they were for so long by the French, developed along the way a number of good Western-based art schools. These students, classically taught in the Western manner, can turn out amazingly strong work. And unscrupulous art dealers can easily send over a couple of books, on an Australian artist of interest, to any number of studios and the painters there will knock up a replica—no trouble. Apparently, you can also send a photograph of yourself and they will add you to your favourite painting. I have heard of collectors, their friends and family populating Monet’s waterlilies with somewhat abandon. Secretly, I have always seen my face in a portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici. However, back to Australian art, prominent artists targeted by the fakers include Charles Blackman, Sidney Nolan, Sidney Long, Arthur Streeton, Brett Whiteley, Lloyd Rees, Emily Kngwarreye and Russell Drysdale. However, the list goes on and on. Alternatively, just to add greater depth to the problem, there are a number of legitimate art galleries out there who openly sell copies. I have seen, for example, a replica Picasso Girl with Dove on offer at under $1000. That is a saving of around $70 million on the original. Slightly more sinister, however, is one gallery that openly trades in copies and has gone on record as being only too happy to


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arrange for reproductions of Australian paintings, works that clients have seen at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. You could apparently order, straight off the art museum wall, your very own whatever you like, purchased for a couple of hundred dollars. That may in itself be fine, but I do hope that the second or third owners of these little pearlers realise that they are buying a copy.

Why do even knowledgeable collectors and experienced curators get fooled? Three words tell the whole story: need, greed and speed. You have been waiting for that Sidney Nolan painting, the one from a particular period of his work, to come up for sale for many years; it’s the picture that will flesh out your fine art collection. The auction catalogue is out only two or three weeks before the auction; or, in the alternative, that friendly art dealer has given you a twoday window of opportunity to make up your mind or possibly lose the painting forever. Tantalisingly, the painting is on offer at below your price expectations. You believe and are told by all the experts that you simply must have it—right now. You have the lethal combination of need, greed and speed.

Spotting fakes In order not to fall into the need, greed and speed trap, collectors should consider the following: • Fake paintings are always signed. The fake painting is always branded with the hallmark of respectability. Why would anyone bother faking a painting in the first place, if it wasn’t clear for all to see and know? Never automatically trust a signature; all the fake paintings I have ever seen were signed. • Fakes follow the fashion of the marketplace. Watch the market for a sudden imbalance between supply and demand. An overheated market creates an environment for faking. Fakes are made to sell during periods of increased collector demand. Fakes emerge on the market to conveniently slot in alongside the opening of major retrospective exhibitions. Fakes pop up in time for historic celebrations, such as the centenary of an


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artist’s birth or death. The lavish publication of an artist’s monograph may stimulate collector demand for a particular artist, in turn stimulating the production of fakes—watch out for these danger periods. • Look for mirror-image fakes. As mentioned, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art’s 1998 Australian Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts catalogue contained two alleged fake paintings attributed to Sir Arthur Streeton, Banksias Bend over the Bay and Garden Island and the Harbour. Both paintings were allegedly reverse mirror-image reproductions of artworks illustrated in art reference books. Remember: the fakers send art reference books to Vietnam, so in essence the fake paintings tend to look a lot like other real paintings previously illustrated in books. The spill of fakes on to the market often follows the publication of art reference books. • Appreciate the complexity of cultural clash and understand danger areas. Significant cultural clashes have and can exist between the contemporary Western understanding of art production and an Asian aesthetic and/or the collaborative execution of some Aboriginal art. In Asia it is seen as culturally legitimate for an otherwise accomplished artist to emulate—as a career— the work of an earlier master painter. If, after all, perfection has been achieved in an earlier work, who should be so arrogant as to improve upon perfection? In an Indigenous context, it wasn’t widely known or understood until quite recently that Aboriginal artists often work in a collaborative manner—one that is many thousands of years old. In both cases art can, and often is, legitimately reproduced or produced as a group. With such practices naturally leading to a cultural clash between the Asian and Aboriginal production of art and the entrenched Western ideal of the artist as individual genius, collectors need to appreciate that the concepts of reproduction and copy have differing meanings in different cultures. • Assemble all the documentary information. Don’t take anyone’s word as fact. Test all published references to the artwork’s history, double-check exhibition details and the collections that the artwork has passed through. Take time to use library archives and art reference books. However, having said that, remember that documentation establishing provenance or


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authenticity is one of the most frequent and easily faked steps in passing off fake work. In an all-too-recent overseas case of breathtaking art fraud, the actions of previously respected English art dealer John Drew sent waves of panic through Britain’s multi-billion-pound annual art market. In court facing charges of forgery and theft, evidence spewed forth as to the extremely elaborate steps undertaken by Drew in order to provide a seemingly airtight provenance for a fake painting. Knowing that auction houses, dealers and collectors are impressed with a solid provenance, proven by documents held in an august institution, Drew applied for a reader’s ticket to the Tate Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. (Even his references to obtain permission to use these libraries were faked!) Drew then either inserted totally new information in the archives, or stole old art catalogues and reprinted them after placing his fake paintings in them. The new fake catalogues contained detailed descriptions of his faked paintings. Drew went to great lengths to obtain paper of the right year and watermark, so for all intents and purposes the documentation detailing provenance was impeccable. Drew is believed to have sold 200 forgeries of artists such as Chagall, Giacometti and Ben Nicholson. Drew was found guilty and received a prison sentence of six years. Australian libraries should be conscious of the following: • It’s relatively easy for fakers to obtain old materials—don’t be overly impressed by age. My first job at Christie’s in London was to stand on view at an antiquarian book auction viewing and monitoring the movements of a suspected print thief. I stood at a menacing distance and watched him like a hawk. I was assured that, as an Australian, it was culturally acceptable for me to be so visually blunt. No other English employee could, I was told, have been so forward. From memory the books remained intact. However, this age-old form of art theft is on the increase and no public or private library can be too careful. It takes just seconds for a skilled thief to whip out a razor and cut a valuable map or print out of a book. And maps and prints aren’t the only targets. Many a stupid faker has been


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•

•

•

•

caught taking a drawing from, say, a 1950s artist on paper, watermarked late 1980s—oops! However, even IQ-challenged lawbreakers learn, and now large sheets of old or appropriately watermarked paper are prized for presenting fake drawings or watercolours. Fakers can readily obtain anything from cedar panels to old scraped-back canvas and nineteenth-century paints. Earlier exhibition labels on the reverse of a painting are a snap to fake and mean nothing unless they can be proved. As mentioned, over the years tens of dozens of dubious paintings have carried the sale and exhibition labels of Anthony Horden and David Jones. When galleries fold, it isn’t uncommon for their sale and exhibition labels to be snapped up by sharp individuals wishing to add instant credibility to a fake painting. Be mindful of the manner in which a painting is presented for sale. As a rule of thumb, the weaker the painting the more impressive and grander the picture frame—a fake, or for that matter a weak painting, needs all the help it can get. The best art scams are always beautifully presented: crap art in monumental gold frames, often lit by a ray of mesmerising light. The art world leaks like a colander, so take full advantage of the free flow of information—assess the art market ‘street talk’. An open art trade discussion or general rumours surrounding a painting can often alert even the most experienced collector to the possibility of a dodgy artwork or source. If possible, check to see if the artist is still alive—most artists are only too happy to double-check their work. Make a deliberately detailed, almost pedantic, description of what you see. This is intended to help you look at every millimetre of the painting. A careful second and third critical look may alert you to a clumsy painting. Do not be rushed. Above all, remember: caveat emptor.



Superannuation, tax and

insurance Part 4



Superannuation, tax and

insurance Chapter 16

Grey power: The new growth engine of the art market Irrespective of the financial shroud that from time to time surrounds business confidence—say, the introduction of the GST, the prospect of higher fuel prices, inflationary pressure, the rising dollar and a general battering of business confidence in the short term—demographic trends, coupled with bequest statistics, reveal that the structural medium-term growth prospects for the Australian art market have never looked so good. Collectors need not be nervous, for over the next 25 years the Australian art market can look forward to a boost from the ageing baby boomers and their inheritances. Australia’s baby boomers—the 4.1 million people born between 1946 and1962—are currently starting to celebrate their 55th birthdays, take their superannuation and consider retirement. More significantly, however, the boomers are about to inherit from the generation that, hardened by the experiences of war, has since the mid-1990s produced the most extended run of economic prosperity Australia has ever seen. A recent Monash University survey


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demonstrated that within the next ten years, $600 billion in Australian family business assets will be handed down to younger generations as we begin to witness the passing of the builders of our post-war fortunes. This will alter the lifestyle and spending habits of a large group of people. For some it will mean inheriting a portion of a house; but, given the increase in wealth, others will receive that and much more. And let us not forget that in 1990 Australia had about 70 000 millionaires; currently, there are about 250 000-plus millionaires. Australia’s wealth is already shifting heavily towards seniors. The Australian Bureau of Statistics notes that the population aged 65 years and over could triple in size by 2050 to make up 25 per cent of the population, compared with 12 per cent in 1999. As the baby boomers themselves had far fewer children than did their parents, the demands of the younger generation on the older will possibly be much smaller than expected. Seniors will be able to spend their money on themselves and leave it to their children. What of the collective impact on the Australian art market? Whereas an earlier generation of Australians was nurtured in the shadow of war deprivation and hallmarked by heavy saving, the boomers, born into a lucky country, are big spenders. And I mean really big spenders. On a micro level it was the tastes and extravagances of the global baby boomers that enabled marketers to perfect the high-end mass consumption of clothing; think of the pioneer labels, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, DKNY and so on—all baby boomer-oriented branding. These consumers are coming into some big money. As the art market floats on a tide of discretionary income, the projected waves of inherited cash expected over the next quarter-century—both in bequests and superannuation— should continue to float a strong Australian art market. This strong art market has been driven by boomers’ money and their taste for late modern art—that is, Australian art from around the1950s to the late 1970s, the art of the boomers’ nostalgic youth, the art of Blackman, Boyd, Brack, Coburn, Daws, Fairweather, Grey-Smith, Nolan, Olsen, Perceval, Smart, Tucker, Whiteley and Williams, to name but a few. As a result of an improvement in the economy, since the mid-1990s prices paid for this baby boom band of artists have doubled, with some doing much better than this. Prices for the group as a whole have trebled. As astonishing as this


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is, demographic statistics and their subsequent impact on taste lead me to believe that there is still plenty of room for a further growth in the value for quality modern art—particularly late modern art. It is forecasted that spending by the over-fifty-fives in the next decade will increase by 60 per cent compared with a national average of just 30 per cent. When growth is combined with wealth, the ageing market becomes very economically powerful. Overfifty-fives account for one-fifth of the population, but they control two-fifths of the nation’s household wealth. Over-sixty-fives have almost half of all deposits in Australia’s financial institutions. This money has to be channelled somewhere, and it won’t have to be channelled to support the young. Professor Dowrick of the Australian National University stated that empirical studies indicate that any reduced financial output from the ageing population would be offset by decreased needs caused by declining birth rates. With younger generations requiring far less than their baby boomer parents, excess wealth should trickle on through to the art market. So, hang on to your hats while the ageing boomers and their retired parents start to exercise the most significant new impetus to the Australian art market in living memory.

Art as an asset With Wall Street on a roller-coaster, the astute investor would do well to think outside the investment box and cast a discerning eye over a performing, alternative asset class: art. Markets go up, and markets go down; that isn’t the problem. The difficulty with much contemporary investment behaviour is that nearly all markets go up and down in tandem. The information super-highway has in effect flattened the ability of many investors to diversify risk. Investors from Hamburg to Sydney and from Johannesburg to Lima monitor efficient financial markets every second of the day. A sea of worldwide investors can move across traditional asset classes, all together and almost instantly, uniformly swamping one market and abandoning another. This technologically enhanced, ‘looking over your shoulder at the next guy’ investment stampede causes massive troughs and peaks. Investors small and large need to look towards assets that swing counter-cyclically—that is, they don’t all peak and trough


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with the mainstream, which is where the stored, inherent value in quality art can help. The art market is one of the few markets that rises and falls to a different investment drum. But don’t take my word for it; data supplied by Access Economics demonstrates that the correlation between shares and art (the Sotheby’s index) is 0.45, which is low. By comparison, the correlation between shares and bonds is 0.89, which is high. The simplistic conclusion to be drawn from this is that when stock values decline, so too will bond values. However, when stock prices fall, art values don’t fall by the same degree as bonds. Therefore, if the collector investor has investments in shares and art, their investment risk would be diversified. During a recession, an art collector investor’s portfolio would be more resilient than an investor whose funds are invested only in stocks and bonds. While the stock market is experiencing its ups and downs, the art market has never been stronger. Christie’s Australian Art Market Movements Handbook 2003, edited by Roger Dedman, ever so gently screams this point from the financial rooftops. The underlying premise of the book is that prices of artworks can be charted in a way comparable to that used for tracking changes in the prices of shares, the yields on bonds and other financial measures. The Art Market Index (AMI), which is produced by combining the results of 60 artists, offers the most comprehensive outline of available trends in the market as a whole for the period 1975 to 2002. As the Christie’s handbook points out, the art market is doing well. Dedman states: ‘The percentage increases in the AMI over the last four years have averaged 12 per cent per annum compounded. Over a period when inflation has averaged less than 3 per cent (even allowing for GST) and the ASX200 Index has averaged increases under 5 per cent, this represents excellent, sustained growth.’ The handbook can be obtained through any Christie’s Australian office. Putting my money where my art asset diversification mouth is, the super fund of my life partner (I can hear her dry-retching already) Nellie Dawes and myself contains cash on high-interest deposit and share thingamajigs. We also have a number of important paintings in our DIY super fund. Last year we purchased a high key colour assault on your senses, a large women’s dreaming acrylic by Yuendumu artist Judy Watson, and a large, punchy



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Adam Cullen portrait. Earlier this year we bought Angus McDonald’s 184 × 111 cm black-and-white chalk drawing of an Angus bull entitled Totaliser. And last but far from least, we have a huge Davida Allen oil entitled Sarah at Softball No. 2 (1988). It is a major work and one that I have no doubt will end up in an art museum. Because it measures 194 × 120 cm and weighs almost a literal tonne, we are unable to hang this painting at home—even though we have a state-of-the-art hanging and security system. The painting, much to our visual disappointment, is in climatically controlled storage with Woollahra Fine Art Removals in Sydney. In a little over twelve months since buying this work its value has gone up threefold. For a collector investor wanting to diversify risk through acquiring art, my immediate advice is to be very conservative and pay for quality. Before purchasing a painting, ask a number of basic questions. Is the artist of national standing? Do state galleries or other important collections purchase the artist? Has the artist regularly shown his or her work in major commercial galleries across several states? Is the work representative of the artist? Is the work of a manageable size from the point of view of hanging and transporting? (though I break this rule myself and often). Is the work in good condition? This is by no means a definitive list, but it is a good start.

Art banking Picture the specialist team’s Monday morning meeting at a prestigious investment bank. They are discussing the financing options for a new instalment warrant they are about to introduce. They are seeking an appropriate beta to apply to this emerging asset class. You’d be surprised to know that this isn’t a meeting of the equity derivatives group, but a meeting of the highly successful art banking division. In Australia, this scenario is still far from reality—although we are getting there. However, given the nature of local art trading, it is inevitable that the art market will come to be taken more seriously by the investment world as well as the financial institutions that serve it. The basic business model for the acceptance of art as a fundamental asset class is sound. Art is a large, high-growth


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market characterised by transparency, liquidity and strong information flows. Many of the major financial institutions such as NAB, ANZ, Westpac, JP Morgan and the Macquarie Bank bask in the prestige associated with the art market. All the significant players own sizeable quality art collections that are well researched and managed. Art-based corporate entertaining has become deservedly popular. In a series of programs that I have pioneered over the last three years, I host (generally the private banking clients) a series of select art viewings. At these evenings, prized clients are duchessed within the intimate confines of a gallery or auction house while high-profile members of the art world talk about the art and mingle informally with guests. The institutions also sponsor high-calibre exhibitions. Congratulations to the Citigroup Private Bank for their sponsorship of The Citigroup Private Bank Australian Photographic Portrait Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Astutely, Citigroup Private Bank has taken an art marketing opportunity—through sponsorship—to provide their key clients with privileged-access viewings and parties centred on the bank’s commitment to the arts. Be that as it may, despite the lure of the art market, many but not all of the major financial institutions have failed to recognise art as an important asset class and have not to date developed any products or services based upon it. This must change. The Australian art market turnover is in excess of $400 million per annum, with the total value of all art assets exceeding $4 billion. The auction houses turn over nearly $100 million in painting sales alone, offering many thousands of artworks for sale every year. The number of firmly established Australian artists with long trading records is in the hundreds. It should only be a matter of time before we see major financial institutions release sophisticated art financing products and art funds to the market. There can be no doubt that the art market has a number of structural issues that need ironing out. The top end of the art market is dominated by a relatively small number of art dealers selling to a growing number of collectors, a ‘clubby’ structure that presents several hazards for potential investors. Some dealers have privileged access to certain artists and are able to control supply and prices. For the uninitiated investor, this can result in an



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information asymmetry between dealers and insiders that works against individuals new to the game. Financial institutions are trusted managers of the wealth of individuals. For a fee, they provide financial and transaction-based advice and products and services that cover a broad range of assets, including equities, bonds, properties and all manner of derivatives of the above. They also gladly finance transactions in these markets, taking a spread on the interest they charge. They have a team of analysts to assess risk and determine how assets are likely to perform over time. They improve information flows, reduce transaction costs and help to manage the risk of owning these assets. These skills can and soon will be applied to the art market. Large financial institutions also have access to a broad base of wealthy investors, with whom they have established a privileged position of trust and authority. It is natural, then, that financial institutions should look to broaden the range of products they provide to this core client base. Art is a natural, safe and highperforming investment option for these customers. Art also provides a lifestyle-based investment, much sought after by wealthy individuals looking to diversify their asset base. With their large customer bases and unique financial advisory position, the financial institutions are ideally placed to become an intermediary in the art market. This would improve the market’s efficiency and overcome the information asymmetries, thus greatly reducing the risks associated with investment. It would dramatically increase the size of the market and improve its already robust liquidity. It would also reduce transaction costs on the individual works (sometimes up to 30–40 per cent of the trading value of the artwork) and dramatically lower the marketing costs of the dealers and private sellers. It may not then be unrealistic to see a more sophisticated market in art. Art financing products, art funds, unit trusts, margin-based investment options, forward contracts and swaps would be as natural a part of trading art as they are for trading shares. In the meantime, we will have to be satisfied with seeing art on the walls of our local financial institutions and not in their product portfolios. However, as they watch international developments, particularly the growing trend towards art advisory units by overseas private banks such as Citigroup Private Bank,


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Deutsche Bank, Barclay’s Private Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse and Coutts, the Australian market will broadly follow. That is not to say the Australian market is bereft of art banking. A leading force, Macquarie Bank Private Bank has initiated the first stage of a private client art advisory service. Part of a holistic commitment to client service, Macquarie Bank Private Bank is capable of responding across a broad range of markets to service clients’ needs—and one of those needs is client access to objective, independent art asset advice. In kicking off the art advisory service in 2003 we undertook a program to up-skill the private bank team with an intensive six-month series of rolling seminars—looking at the many differing aspects of Australian art and its market. This seminar series was telephone-linked across all states and consultants. Such was the success of this in-house training, we may consider rolling out a similar seminar series to private clients. With art market team knowledge on board, and with my close support, the Macquarie Bank Private Bank consultants now work with their clients in tackling all manner of art collecting needs. The private banking service includes: • Art advisory: We provide an advisory service for new and existing collectors. Advice would include general collecting strategies, including how to collect to ensure strong secondary market values, information, value estimates and relative price performance of established as well as up-and-coming artists. It would also examine values for individual paintings or artworks. • Buying and selling art: We act as buyer/seller for clients, leveraging an economics of scale/bulk discount with major auction houses/art dealers to obtain the best value • Insurance, sales and superannuation valuation: We provide an objective perspective on the value of the asset for better financial and risk management. • Conservation and collection management: We provide professional advice on administration and conservation of collections, and create documentation and research. • Research: We undertake objective-specific research, pre-sale and on purchase.



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In the Australian context, Macquarie Bank Private Bank is on their art advisory way and many financial institutions can be expected to follow.

Superannuation Self-managed or do-it-yourself funds are currently the fastest growing sector in the Australian superannuation market. According to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the overwhelming majority of superannuation funds—some 246 670, or over 99 per cent of all funds—are small funds that contain fewer than five members. Overall, small self-managed funds represent a total of 430 000 members. The reasons for investing in self-managed superannuation funds are well known and they are mainly tax driven. There are tax deductions on contributions, and tax breaks on earnings within the fund and when the money is taken out. Further reasons for the growth in these funds relate mainly to the poor performance of professionally managed funds over the past two years and the high fees charged by the managers. The majority of Australia’s largest, rather orthodox fund managers suffered a negative return in 2002, cancelling out most of the previous two years’ gains. The other major pluses for self-managed funds are flexibility and, well, fun. It is much more entertaining to decide what shares, bonds, property, wine, vintage cars, furniture or paintings one wants as part of a super fund, than it is to hand the decision over to a huge corporate super fund. Most advisers agree, however, that a self-managed fund begins to make sense when you have $50 000 to invest. A word of caution, though: David Evers, a director of Robson Consulting Group, points out that in 1999 legislative changes transferred the regulation of self-managed funds from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). ‘You have to be careful when operating a self-managed super fund. In formulating your fund’s investment strategy you need to consider such factors as growth, risk, liquidity, return and diversity. In terms of diversifying risk and asset growth, quality artworks can hold their own in a balanced super fund, but it must be balanced. A number of my clients purchase artworks for their self-managed super funds, but those that are


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successful all do their homework and seek professional art market advice.’ According to Evers, there are a number of foundation rules any self-managed fund must adhere to when considering an art investment. The first requirement is to make sure that the artwork fits within the declared investment strategy of the fund. The artwork should not only be a good piece, but the return from the investment must be a ‘good fit’ with the fund’s other investments and cash flows. As long as the principles of growth, risk, liquidity, return and diversity are adopted in a balanced and prudent manner, then the art asset held by your super fund may be of great or modest value. There are no superannuation regulations that dictate what percentage the fund should hold of any particular asset class—it’s all about balance. Second, ‘The primary purpose of the investment must be to provide benefits for members on their retirement. If this is not the sole purpose of the investment, a super fund would lose 47 per cent of its asset base to the Australian Tax Office.’ The sole purpose test is most important. If the artwork is purchased in keeping with your super fund’s investment strategy, if the work is by an in-demand artist with a proven track record, if the fund has obtained professional art market advice, then under these stringent conditions it could be said that the prime purpose of the artwork is to achieve capital growth. Having satisfied the prime purpose test, then hanging and viewing the paintings is of secondary consideration. It is an arguable case that hanging a painting in a house with an alarm system provides better and less expensive protection than leaving the work in general storage or keeping it for long periods under appropriate bubble wrap.

Superannuation: A rebuttal My article (‘Super that’s smooth on the palette’, The Australian, 11 June 2003) has, it would seem, stimulated guiding comment by the ATO—in print and on radio—to somewhat hose down the notion of placing alternative assets in DIY super funds. Apparently, we can place art, wine, vintage cars and so forth in our super fund—if these assets fit within the super fund’s investment strategy—but we are unable to enjoy them. ATO assistant com-



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missioner Lesley East said that while taxpayers should be careful, such assets could be part of an investment strategy for a super fund, ‘provided they don’t use it’. ‘They wouldn’t be able to have it [art] hanging on their living room wall,’ she said (Australian Financial Review, 20 June 2003). Having another point of view, let me first look at the ‘do not use’ rule: in terms of building a market, not physically enjoying or using a painting would be intrinsically counterproductive to the future value of the asset. Artworks gain in value when they are widely seen; an artwork’s exhibition history counts. Popular, appreciated art sells for a great deal more than unseen work. In order to distance themselves from asset enjoyment, should collectors be foolish enough to purchase a painting they dislike on resale, the chances are that other collectors would also dislike the work, and this cycle of dislike would reduce the potential resale market. That is a rather blunt statement, but most would agree that on an abstract level enjoyment of the artwork counts for much. For the value of an art asset to head north it must be thoroughly enjoyed. Valuable vintage cars need to be maintained and run. Fine wine needs to be stored in appropriate conditions and on occasion a bottle must be opened and tasted. Only on inspection does a wine collector know whether or not it is the right time to sell or keep. But let us extend the ATO’s ‘do not enjoy the asset’ argument even further. Does this mean that we shouldn’t fly Qantas if we hold these shares in our super fund? Or are we precluded from shopping at Woolworths if we own those shares in our fund? Is this practical and sensible? The answer is ‘no’. What we should do is smile when those company share prices go up in our super fund portfolio, because we have defied the ‘do not enjoy the asset’ rule. It is my contention that enjoyment and asset appreciation and maintenance are not mutually exclusive. Let us turn our attention to the idea that you shouldn’t hang a super fund’s painting on a member’s wall. I am at a loss to see how hanging a painting in a super fund member’s sitting room changes the primary purpose of the asset. The primary purpose of the investment must be to provide benefits for members on their retirement. If this were not the sole purpose of the investment, a super fund would lose 47 per cent of its asset base to the ATO. In


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my opinion it is irrelevant whether or not the super fund member hangs the painting on their wall. The real point is the investment intention and the strategic basis on which that investment was made. There can be no doubt that people shouldn’t be able to use super monies to buy paintings solely to decorate their homes with pre-tax dollars. This is a big nono and wasn’t the intention of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act or the tax concessions. However, the trustees of a super fund should have discretion to make the investments that they judge best for the purposes of accumulating assets to generate income in retirement. If a painting was acquired as an investment for the fund in accordance with the investment strategy of the fund, and if the painting was professionally purchased at arm’s length with a view to generating capital gains, then I don’t think the ATO should presume that the trustees of the fund have breached the sole purpose test simply by hanging the art. Art in superannuation is an interesting and growing segment of the art market, one that would benefit from greater discussion and reflection.

New Australian Tax Office guidelines As this book was going to print, the Australian Tax Office released new guidelines providing clarification for DIY funds wishing to invest in art—praise the Lord. These guidelines should come as no surprise to those who have taken a more conservative approach towards including art in a superannuation fund. As ongoing and rather ad hoc as Australian tax law may be, these new guidelines will be useful for the new investor cum collector attracted to art as an asset, and or those looking to review an existing portfolio to ensure their strategy would survive an audit by the regulator The ATO guidelines have identified a number of new boundaries under which an art investment can be permitted for a DIY fund: • That investing in art should be approached in a prudent manner—ho hum. • That the sole purpose of the investment is to generate retirement benefits for the super fund—double ho hum. • The new ATO guidelines, however, now require trustees to



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understand the risks and costs associated with investing in art. In particular, it is suggested that trustees obtain expert art advice concerning the potential income or capital growth likely to be generated from the art investment, as well as the ease with which the art asset can be sold. All good, no-nonsense stuff. Essentially the ATO now requires the trustee to obtain documented, independent and competent art market advice with regards to buying the artwork, and in regards to the costs associated with appropriate storage and insurance of an artwork, prior to the trustee placing art in their DIY super fund. • More importantly the ATO now requires any arrangement where artwork is displayed in the home or workplace of a fund member to be a commercial one. If you wish to hang the art in your home or office, you must have a lease agreement—no ifs, no buts. That lease arrangements between a fund and fund member must comply with the in-house assets rules. These rules limit the value of any investment that can be enjoyed by a related party, even under a commercial arrangement, to no more than 5 per cent of the total asset value of the fund. As tax law changes all too regularly, all collectors are advised to consult their account, the ATO website www.ato.gov.au and a reputable art dealer or consultant—preferably one with a law degree.

Some tax issues Buying at charity art auctions Collectors are advised to consult their accountant and investigate those provisions within Australian taxation law that may allow them the opportunity to partly offset the cost of their charitable purchases against income or profits—in effect, reducing the individual’s taxable income. Taxation determination 92/110 looks into the question of whether the cost of attending a fundraising function is tax deductible as a gift. And the answer is, not surprisingly, both ‘no’ and ‘yes’. The cost of attending a fundraising function isn’t deductible under section 78 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 if


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a material benefit is received. An amount is only deductible if the money donated amounts to a gift. Thus, if a person attends a $100-a-plate dinner, whether or not the subscription exceeds the cost of the meal, the person has received a material benefit—a dinner—in exchange for the purchase price of the ticket. However, if the fundraising dinner ticket should clearly state, ‘dinner $30, gift $70’, then $70 of the $100 would be a tax deduction. And if at that charity function you throw in an additional $20 as the hat passes around, then that $20 is also tax deductible as a gift because, again, you have obtained no material benefit. Dinners and donations are all well and truly good, but to what degree does all this affect purchasing a painting at a charity auction? The answer is, ‘enormously’. There is no doubt that the acquisition of a painting through outright donation would constitute material advantage, but if a painting is acquired through donation with a gift on top, then the gift component of the transaction would be tax deductible. This is how it works. At a charity auction, if the legitimate $100 value of a painting is either printed in the charity auction sale catalogue or announced by a qualified valuer from the rostrum prior to sale, then any amount donated as a purchase price up to the value of the $100 painting isn’t tax deductible as a material advantage has been received. But any amount paid above the $100 value of the painting, and therefore in excess of the painting’s stated material value, is a gift! The ‘cost’ of the artwork is the key, and it should be readily identifiable and clearly enunciated to those bidding. If a painting is valued at $100 and sold at $150, then the first $100 is material advantage but the other $50 is a possible tax-deductible gift. David Evers, director, Robson Chartered Accountants of Gosford, rightly points out: ‘The painting must be worth owning in the first instance. And a qualified valuer, prior to the painting being offered for auction, must have printed or announced the legitimate market value of the painting.’ Why, then, should a collector purchase a painting above its market value? ‘In that case the collector will be comforted to know that they purchased a beautiful painting at a fair market value, while the money that was paid in excess of the painting’s market value is in essence a gift to a worthy charity. The cost of this can be legitimately recouped through the tax system,’ says David Evers. This is a win–win situation, although it is important to



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remember that, as with all tax matters, collectors should keep either a copy of the charity catalogue with printed estimates or diarise any comments made by a valuer as to the painting’s worth.

Donations as a tax deduction The Cultural Gifts Program is a Commonwealth government initiative designed to encourage the donation of items of significant cultural heritage from private collections to approved public art galleries, museums, libraries or the Australiana Fund. In exchange for the gift the donor receives a tax deduction equivalent to the market value of the work of art, book or item of Australiana. Since the inception of this program in 1978, approximately $270 million worth of tax-deductible gifts have moved from private hands into public institutions. The donor’s tax is minimised through a philanthropic act, the institution’s collection is enhanced, the country’s heritage is made more accessible to the community and the government, in forgoing tax, has been instrumental in gaining private-sector support for the arts. A win–win situation? Well, almost. The Income Tax Assessment Act imposes certain limitations on tax deductions under the program. The commissioner of taxation has the power to vary, limit or disallow the deductible amount. This may be done if, in the commissioner’s opinion, the amount claimed isn’t representative of the fair market value of the gift. To avoid this snag, collectors must obtain two independent valuations from art dealers specialising in the field. Collectors are well advised to stand at arm’s length to the valuation procedure. The institution receiving the gift should help to arrange, and may even pay for, the necessary market valuations. If the donor receives any material advantage in return for the gift, the commissioner may disallow the deduction. If the valuations of the gift are not undertaken within 90 days either side of the donation, it is at the discretion of the commissioner either to accept or disallow the deduction. The gift should be unconditional. Conditions that don’t grant immediate custody or control of the property to the public institution may cause the commissioner to reduce the deductible amount according to the effect such conditions may have on the gift. The


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program excludes gifts made by executors of deceased estates, which is covered under the Cultural Bequests Program. Collectors should be aware that the Cultural Gifts Program has recently undergone some significant changes. These changes are: • Gifts under the Cultural Gifts Program are exempt from capital gains tax; this constitutes a major enhancement to the program. • Donors are able to apportion their deductions for gifts under the program over a period of up to five years. Aside from the impact on collectors, further specific considerations affect donations from art dealers and artists. When a dealer donates work that could be viewed as their trading stock, the deductible amount isn’t, as usual, the market value of the work but what the artwork actually cost the dealer to buy, often a big difference. In order to obtain a current market valuation, art dealers are advised not to donate artworks from trading stock; instead, donate artworks from your personal collection. If an artist donates his or her own work, the deductible amount is limited to the cost of the artwork’s production. Although many donations made under this program are done so anonymously, there have been a number of high-profile benefactors over the years. Beginning in 1991 with a Jacob van Ruisdael painting, A View of Castle Bentheim, the Art Gallery of New South Wales received some $30 million worth of Old Master paintings from James Fairfax. These works were installed in the newly named James Fairfax Gallery. Among Australia’s leading philanthropists, around the same time James Fairfax gifted a collection of Australian paintings to the Australian National Gallery. In recent years Fairfax has gifted artworks or money to the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the State Library of New South Wales, to name just a few. Fairfax donates somewhere between $2 and $5 million worth of art a year. In 1998 John and Julie Schaeffer, then ranked among the world’s top fine art collectors, proprietors of the Tempo Services and prominent collectors of pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist works, generously donated to the Art Gallery of New South Wales Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s important oil entitled A Juggler (1870). This work last came to the market in November 1997 at Christie’s



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London, where it sold after the auction on the low estimate for £250 000 (approximately $700 000). In exchange for the gifted painting the Schaeffers received a tax deduction for the painting’s 1998 market value—a value, due to a worldwide economy recovery, most possibly substantially higher than the purchase price.

Taxation laws regarding furniture and art As far as I understand, there are no provisions within Australian law compelling individuals or corporations to furnish their offices with insipid, mass-produced, a this-goes-with-that style of office furniture, so obviously constructed using a diagram designed by NASA and explained in an obscure foreign language. Although, from what I have seen over the years, you would never know. Equally as bewildering, such brand-new plastic, chrome and wood veneer office furniture is more often than not mighty expensive. And the moment much new office furniture walks off the showroom floor, its trade-in value is drastically slashed. So, I say avoid the evil of bland-new office furniture; buck the trend and make your office an art gallery. Collectors are advised to consult their accountant and investigate those provisions within Australian taxation law that allow individuals and companies to furnish and decorate their home office or workplace with quality antiques and artworks. The use of appropriate antique furniture as office equipment, alongside purchasing good art, inordinately improves the office décor; also, this office furniture will over the long term be more likely to hold its value. Just as importantly, you can depreciate the value of your antique office furniture and art. The cost associated with purchasing quality antiques and art for the office is offset against income or profits—in effect, reducing the individual or company’s taxable income. And that says ‘yes’ to me. Under the old, rather inflexible, tax regime, various depreciation schedules came into play when determining the exact number of years individuals or businesses were required to write down their office furniture and fittings (art). In some cases it was five years, in other cases up to fifteen years. Not surprisingly, the longer the depreciation time frame the more financially prohibitive it was to offset the purchase of quality office furniture and fittings.


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But not any more, as Director David Evers for accountants and arts industry specialists Robson Chartered Accountants of Gosford points out: ‘As of September 1999 the ATO requires individuals and companies to implement a “useful life” test when determining the depreciation time frame for office furniture and fittings. For example, as everyone would agree, many computers have a short “useful life” of around two to three years, while office furniture can now in most cases be depreciated over four years.’ Evers sees the new tax provisions as a bonus to those collectors who wish to depreciate their quality office antique furniture and art. ‘No one doubts that the cost of buying quality does cause financial pain, however, that hurt can now be alleviated much more quickly. Collectors can purchase quality antique furniture and art, and depreciate the cost over a relatively short space of time with a hitherto unimaginable ease,’ he said. This is how it works. As you could well imagine, after some eight years writing for a national newspaper and confronted as I am with an inundation of exhibition flyers, art catalogues and media releases on an almost daily basis, my office storage had reached the end of the line. I needed another bookcase, and pronto. Sotheby’s Australia’s 2000 auction of colonial furniture, decorative arts and paintings listed eight cedar bookcases ranging in low auction estimates from $3000 to $15 000; most were valued at under $5000 on the low estimate. I had my eye on Lot 39, described as a cedar elevated bookcase, Australia, circa 1880 and estimated at $3000 to $5000. Essentially, my prospective office bookcase comprised a bookshelf at the top with two glazed doors and a cabinet underneath. The bookcase was a substantial 120 cm wide, 46 cm deep and 218 cm high, so I could fit catalogues up the top and files beneath. Say I purchased that bookcase for $4000 on the hammer plus 15 per cent auctioneer’s commission, making the total purchase price $4266. As second-hand goods don’t attract GST on the sale price, my GST exposure is limited to the auction house’s commission of $26—which came to a grand total of $4292. Because I am legitimately buying this bookcase for my office, the GST I have paid immediately becomes a tax credit of $26.60. The remaining cost of the bookcase, $4266, is depreciated over four years (by which time I will need another bookcase) at a rate of $1066.50 a year. At this rate the cost of the antique bookcase is offset against



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my income, thereby reducing my tax exposure. Remember, should I ever wish to sell my proposed cedar bookcase, its significance as a quality slice of Australia’s heritage should see its value hold, unlike kit furniture. To prove all this, in most cases individuals and businesses are required to keep records for five years. One final tip: Buy from auction houses and those fine and decorative art dealers that are in the business of sale and resale. If a collector is unable to sell back to the art dealer they purchased from, then it is more than obvious that the dealer has little or no faith in the artworks they originally sell.

Hire purchase and art In spite of the loose and fast art hire purchase mayhem that was all too prevalent in the late 1980s, there still exist some real incentives for businesses to finance art acquisitions through hire purchase financing. The current low interest rate environment, stable art market and favourable taxation benefits have seen a number of corporate collectors return to this type of financing. Hire purchase is used predominantly to manage cash flow. It allows the borrower to pay the artwork off over a period of time from one to five years, while retaining ownership at the end. ‘Hire purchase is an excellent way to enter the art market without a huge capital outlay,’ says Patricia Knapp of Axia Modern Art, Sydney. It has many advantages over leasing and bank loans. Peter Hoban of Credit Line Australia says: ‘Approximately $50 million of art is financed every year in Australia, mainly through hire purchase.’ The usual customers include public companies, large private companies and professional firms. Hoban says that his current clients include a law firm in South Melbourne, an accounting firm in central Melbourne, a large private hospital and an engineering firm. To obtain current commercial interest rates of 7.5 per cent per annum, the client would need to sign a declaration that they were using the art for business purposes, such as a corporate collection housed in the boardroom, offices and reception. Magda Lupcevic of Sanwa Finance observes: ‘Financing art is no different from any other commercial financings. We wouldn’t do it for the personal collector.’ Matt Stafford agrees: ‘We’re not interested in dealing with the mums and dads,’ he says. Lupcevic


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insists that: ‘To secure art financing the client would need to be financially strong. Any financier would require access to financial statements. Financiers usually look at the reputation of the gallery or art dealer selling the art and usually require an independent valuation from a reputable valuer.’ Sydney art dealer Sue Hewitt says: ‘This type of financing is not available for just anybody.’ Hewitt provides the arm’s length autonomy, art market valuation and authenticity that increase the comfort of a financier. She has relationships with a number of financiers and has been involved in about twenty hire purchases over 2003. The advantages of hire purchase flow primarily from the tax department’s different treatment of different financing methods. If a work of art is acquired through hire purchase, the interest is totally tax deductible. Further, depreciation of the work can currently be claimed at 1.5 per cent fixed for one- to five-year terms. Meanwhile, residual values are available from 50 per cent to nil. While the ATO treats bank loans in the same way, most banks will only lend if the loan is fully secured. The residual value of the hire purchase agreement chosen can significantly affect the repayments and therefore the tax benefit. Peter Hoban provides an example of purchasing a work over a four-year period. With a residual value of nil, payments would be $2517 per month, while with a residual value of 50 per cent repayments would only be $1620 per month. ‘The choice of residual value depends on the purchaser’s cash flow,’ says Hoban. ‘At the end of the period, the purchaser can pay the residual in full or refinance.’ In contrast to the booming hire purchase market, things aren’t so rosy for leasing artworks. The ATO treats leasing and hire purchase in different ways. Once popular, leasing art is becoming less attractive as the residual value guidelines set by the ATO require a depreciation schedule that reflects the market value of the artwork—as opposed to a prior agreed value, which is the case with hire purchase. ‘Leasing is becoming obsolete,’ says Peter Hoban. As much art usually appreciates in value, a residual (which is not tax deductible) would be 90 to 95 per cent of cost over a four-year lease term. The depreciation rate for leased artworks is only 1.5 per cent per annum, compared with 33 per cent for, say, computers. Further, leasing payments are only tax deductible



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where the goods are used for business purposes—for example, when the art adorns a boardroom or reception area. In the 1980s, leasing deals were being written over four-year periods with a 30 per cent residual. However, the ATO tightened these arrangements. Sue Hewitt, head of Christie’s Australia from the 1970s until the mid-1990s, says: ‘There were an awful lot of people who got their fingers burnt in the 1980s.’ Peter Hoban confirms this. Apart from the tax benefits, another advantage of hire purchase is that the acquirer owns the work at the end of the term and therefore is able to reap the benefit of any value appreciation. However, the acquirer is exposed if the work declines in value. Conversely, a leased work of art must usually be returned to the financier at the end of the term. A work by a painter who is very popular at the time is a prime candidate for a hire purchase agreement. ‘We usually allow our clients to purchase the work at its value at the time of the arrangement. This is particularly beneficial for the buyer of a very popular artist such as Robert Klippel,’ says Victor Stafford from Australian Art Resources.

Insurance issues Insurance valuations The art world is awash with any number of different categories of art appraisal: art valuations for sale, insurance, family division and probate, to list but a few. These categories of valuation are distinct, undertaken as they are for highly specific situations. It isn’t surprising, then, that the valuation formula used to determine an artwork’s worth under each category can be significantly different and often have a different outcome. Collectors are advised to understand the two most commonly requested forms of written valuations—those for sale and those for insurance—to know their differences and pitfalls. Don’t confuse an insurance valuation with a sale valuation, which, unfortunately, happens all the time. I all too regularly receive emails to the effect of: ‘I have been considering selling a piece of jewellery . . . I have a valuation certificate.’ My heart sinks. What and whose valuation certificate? When I pass on as


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requested the names and details of various jewellery specialists for a second opinion, I just know the owners will most likely be crushed as to the real, quite modest value of their treasured jewellery. What my reader most likely possessed was a ‘valuation certificate’ loosely provided by the seller for insurance purposes, and not a sale valuation. As a rule of thumb, the market value or sale value of jewellery is one-third of the insurance value, hence the likely disappointment. Most general valuation certificates are nothing more than worthless sales props. This is hardly surprising when you consider that most general valuation certificates purporting to state an art object’s worth are supplied by the retailer or art dealer who sold the object. When it comes to a market valuation for sale, collectors should obtain current sale valuations from specialist appraisers or, at the very least, those jewellers, art dealers or auction houses that are in the business of re-selling, not exclusively retailing, artworks. When in doubt, obtain sale valuations independently of the seller. Insurance valuations are a different beast altogether. To begin with, most run-of-the-mill domestic insurance polices only require a specific art object to be listed on the insurance policy if it is worth over $10 000. If you believe your artwork to be valued in excess of $10 000, you would be well advised to obtain a current and specific insurance valuation expressly for that artwork. A general valuation certificate, such as a ‘to whom it may concern’ letter, carries little weight. A good art insurance valuation should provide a detailed physical description of the art object accompanied, where possible, by a clear colour photograph, all necessary research and finally a value. For insurance purposes an art object’s worth is determined under the formula of replacement value, not sale value—that is, the cost involved in replacing the stolen, lost or damaged artwork with another example or one very similar to it. In order to do this the insurance valuation should take into account the art dealer’s or jeweller’s profit on the wholesale purchase and subsequent resale, the cost of inflation and the costs of the actual search. Collectors are advised to keep insurance valuations in a safe place. The number of hands a written insurance valuation passes through, as well as its eventual storage, entail quite significant security considerations. Most if not all art theft is an inside job.



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There are numerous instances of highly specific or unusual artworks being nicked from confidential locations within the collector’s homes, locations that were mentioned in the written insurance valuation! As insurance valuations pass through many hands, check that your reputable valuer and insurance company stores your valuation and policy under coded lock and key. There should be no names on the file, but a series of numbers or colours that must be cross-referenced to obtain the owner’s identity. Obtain insurance valuations from art appraisers, art dealers or auction house specialists that are registered with the Auctioneers and Valuers Association of Australia, from valuers registered with the Fine Arts Division of the Jewellery Council, or from appraisers named as approved valuers under the Commonwealth Government Cultural Gifts Program. It must be stressed that not all the best valuers are registered, but as a rough guide it is a good starting point. Under the Cultural Gifts Program art appraisers are accredited with specific fields of knowledge. Accreditation prevents any old art dealer purporting to know absolutely everything there is to know about the very broad field that is fine and decorative arts. Finally, shop around to get a good price on insurance valuations, as this service isn’t set in stone and deals can be done.

Art insurance products The sustained surge in the Australian art market—a financial wave that has witnessed three record-breaking art market years over the last four—has inadvertently created an art insurance affordability crisis. The value of many art collections has increased by 50-plus per cent in only a handful of years. Many collectors faced with ever-rising and significant car, household and art insurance premiums (which all seem to come due at the same time) are seriously weighing up their risk management alternatives. In broad terms, the art collector is faced with a limited number of art insurance options. The first, rather gutsy, take-fullresponsibility-and-self-insure position is the reality for many. I know of at least one major art collector—whose collection would be worth well in the vicinity of $4 million—who self-insures. Naturally, the security and fire prevention systems are mindbogglingly state-of-the-art.


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That well-heeled and rather fatalist collector takes the view that nearly all art loss is either through fire or an inside job. The risk of fire is alleviated with a coordinated flame- and heat-repressing system. The risk of inside art theft is reduced through the art collection’s discreet existence and the absence of an art insurance policy altogether. In regards to the inside job, the number of hands a written insurance valuation passes through, as well as its eventual storage, entail quite significant security considerations. There are numerous instances of highly specific or unusual artworks being nicked from confidential locations within houses, the exact locations of which were mentioned in the written insurance valuation! As insurance valuations pass through many hands, all collectors are advised—should they go down the art insurance avenue—to double-check that your reputable valuer and insurance company store your valuation and policy under coded lock and key. There should be no names on the file, but a series of numbers or colours that must be cross-referenced to obtain the owner’s identity. A rational self-insurance strategy requires the collector to have the financial discipline to put aside each year a dedicated sum of money earning high interest, to act as a risk backstop in case of art misfortune. On one hand, the money that you would need to put aside to implement a self-insure strategy could well equal the yearly cost of an insurance policy. On the other, you do get access to all that cash, should you ever sell your art collection and have no art mishap money-call in the interim. In the final analysis, selfinsurance is a strategy suitable for either the wealthy and disciplined collector, or the financially challenged and frugal collector. Placing to one side the rare instance of art theft, let us now turn to the age-old Australian predicament—fire. As most of us cannot afford a sophisticated and coordinated flame- and heat-repressing system, and we all remember the 500-plus houses wiped out in a moment of terror during the Canberra fires of January 2003, many collectors take the mainstream option of arranging a good general house and contents insurance policy. Or if the art collection is of greater than modest value, they may consider a more tailored art insurance product. In terms of household insurance, most run-of-the-mill policies aren’t designed for a collector with substantial art. Nor does the



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general household segment of the insurance market generally want your art business—they want bread-and-butter volume business, not possible art risk complications. As a flow on from this ‘couldn’t be bothered’ general household insurance attitude, by now many collectors will have noticed that during the process of obtaining household insurance—over the telephone or the Internet—their art insurance request was bumped as a matter of course. The process of obtaining art insurance, within a household package, often comes to a screaming halt when the collector requires art insurance above the rather low, strictly adheredto value-cum-risk thresholds set by general insurance companies. Should, however, your general household insurance policy take art on board, inevitably the policy will require specific artworks to be listed on the insurance policy if they are worth over, say, $10 000 (and a great deal less on many insurance contracts). If you believe your artwork to be valued in excess of the need-to-itemise value threshold, you would be well advised to obtain a current and specific insurance valuation expressly for that artwork. Make sure your schedule of artworks is up to date, fully documented and photographed—all records of which should be kept off-site. The final alternative in the art risk management conundrum is for the collector to take out a tailored art insurance policy. There are two such policies known to me: Chubb’s Masterpiece and Australian Unity Group’s Mansions of Australia policies. For brevity let us concentrate on Chubb’s Masterpiece policy. This tailored policy offers collectors benefits most standard household insurers won’t even touch. These include: • Itemised cover: The market value of each artwork in your collection is determined up-front, so that if and when you make a claim, the policy ensures that you will receive 100 per cent of the predetermined amount agreed to cover total loss. There is no depreciation. • The option is to take cash: If the artwork is damaged beyond repair, under the Masterpiece plan the collector has the option to take cash for the cost of the repairs instead of having the artwork repaired. Similarly, if the artwork is damaged beyond repair the collector will receive cash for the full insured value of the artwork.


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• Your choice of repairer: If the collector chooses to have their artwork repaired after any loss, they are able to use their preferred restorer. This is a big deal, as there are ‘restorers’ and restorers, and for the collector to make their own restoration decision is a positive step. • Loss in market value: If the artwork is damaged but not totally destroyed, the Masterpiece policy will repair the work and pay the collector for any loss in value that was incurred up to the artwork’s insured sum. • Worldwide cover: The artwork is covered for the agreed value, while on the move. In weighing up the self-insurance, household and tailored art insurance options, the tailored art insurance strategy would seem most appropriate for an art collector. But then again, it all hinges on the cost of the policy.

Conclusion There is a significant financial tail wind behind art in Australia. It has been whipped up by the boom in self-managed superannuation funds; by a market driven by the intergenerational transfer of wealth from a conservative, saving pre-war generation to their inheritors, the freewheeling baby boomers; by a relatively strong domestic economy, one that has outperformed so many of our trade partners over the last few years; and, finally, by what I call ‘smart money’: those collector investors who have foreseen that the returns on orthodox financial assets are going to be substantially less in the next ten years than they have been over the last fifteen. The smart money has already figured this one out early and is finding its merry little way into hard assets. It is my belief that art has appreciated to a point where it should now be looked at from a portfolio standpoint. I can feel the artsy types out there rolling their eyes within their heavy-framed face furniture. And no, for their information, I haven’t forgotten the age-old way of viewing art from an art historical and theory standpoint—that is taken as a given. But the market has come to a point when art as an asset class—and the tools by which we understand that asset—demand greater consideration. This book was intended



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to be (and hopefully is) part of that greater ongoing art-money consideration. Running alongside this important avenue of investigation, however, I hope that the window of understanding afforded by this book—into the nuts and bolts of buying and selling art— will empower all collectors to get down and amongst it. After all, beauty demands possession.



Glossary abstract Any art that does not represent recognisable objects. after-sale offer Even after the strongest art auction a substantial percentage of artworks on offer fail to make reserve and remain unsold. Collectors can sift through the unsold works post auction and go on to make a purchase offer. art consultant Not to be confused with that species known to take vast amounts of money out of their client’s wallet and is referred to as an interior decorator. The interior decorator being the one who throws a three-colour rug on the floor and then matches the room to its palette, a rather expensive trick. An art consultant professionally provides skilled, independent and objective advice to clients on the purchasing and sale of original artworks. art dealer A professional who buys and sells artworks in the secondary (or resale sale) market. The terms art dealer and drug dealer have much in common. Artbank Formed in 1980, Artbank is an innovative Australian Government initiative established to acquire a collection of contemporary Australian art for rent to corporations, government organisations and the public. auction A public sale at which art is sold to the highest bidder. bark painting To prepare a bark for painting, two shallow slits or rings some distance apart are cut around the trunk of the


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eucalyptus tree. This is usually done at the end of the wet season—November to March—as the running sap makes it easier to pry off the bark. The bark is then placed for a few minutes on a blazing fire where the outer fibre is burnt or later stripped away, leaving a flexible sheet. The bark is then weighted down with stones on the ground in the sun for several days. The bark surfaced is then scraped clean and an ‘undercoat’ of pigment is applied to seal the bark before ochre (paint) is applied. buyer’s premium A fee levied by an auction house, to be paid by the purchaser, in addition to the hammer price value of the artwork. carpetbagger Not to be confused with a thick piece of steak stuffed with raw oysters (a carpetbag steak), in the Australian art world a carpetbagger is a behind the scenes art wheeler-dealer, who unscrupulously takes advantage of Aboriginal artists for significant personal gain. catalogue raisonné A scholarly, ordered, detailed and complete as humanly possible listing of all an artist’s known works in a particular field of endeavour, i.e. a catalogue raisonné of Michael Reid’s drawings, or his watercolours, oils and so on. If a possible major artwork by an important artist is not to be found in their catalogue raisonné, then questions of authenticity are often raised. community-based art centre In order to improve quality control and combat commercial exploitation many Indigenous communities have over the years set up their own Indigenous-run art associations. The community-based art centres provide their artists with quality art materials. The local art centres ensure the artists are paid properly for their work. Most importantly, however, the community-based art centres allow Indigenous artists to work in their own time, an act conducive to quality art. condition report Unlike a catalogue entry, which is designed to describe an artwork, a condition report goes beyond the surface and details faults and material difficulties inherent within the artwork that a novice may not necessarily see. conservation Conservation is the science and art of treating condition defects thereby preventing further damage. Libraries, art museums and many educated collectors predominantly practise


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the art of conservation. Art institutions driven to maintain the integrity of an artwork have a tendency, if at all possible, to avoid re-constructing artworks beyond cleaning and minor repairs. contemporary art The art of today, stretching back around twenty years. cubism An early twentieth-century art movement, driven by the absinth-fuelled young guns Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Georges Braque (1882–1963). The lads abandoned any idea that art should imitate nature, painting instead subjects as they believed and wanted them to be, rather than how they appeared to the eye. Cubism was the birth of modern art. curator An art professional who creates, researches and organises an exhibition for the public benefit. Some have a tendency to put themselves in the spotlight before the art or the artists. daguerreotype An early variety of photograph, in which the image was produced on a silvered copper plate sensitised by iodine. Each image was unique, as it was made directly onto the plate without an intervening negative. The process was invented by a French artist, Louis Daguerre (1789–1851). dealer ring A ring in the art world is a pod, gaggle or den of dealers getting together around the time of an art auction to anti-competitively work out amongst themselves who will bid on what and up to what price. dummy bidder For the record, a dummy bidder is not an intellectually challenged purchaser of a late run-of-the-mill painting at auction. That is absolutely incorrect. A dummy bidder is a sale stooge, planted by the owner of the artwork and requested to bid up the value of the artwork in an attempt to artificially inflate the final sale price. This is an illegal practice. editioning Is the process by which an artist numbers and thereby limits the printing run of his or her works of art (usually works on paper or photographs). For example 6/25 indicates that this is the sixth photograph printed off the negative in a run of 25 photographs in total. estimate on request or price on application (POA) These are enigmatic little valuation phrases designed by auction house specialists and art dealers to politely avoid the sometimes thorny issue of actually informing the public as to the value of


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an artwork. Estimate or request or price on application can mean, I haven’t got a clue how much this painting is worth. More commonly however, it screams I am way too embarrassed as to this sale price and I will need to break it to you slowly, in private, whilst you are firmly enfolded into the loving arms of a pharmaceutical straightjacket. etching A plate of polished metal, usually copper, is coated with a dark acid resistant film known as the ground. The etcher then draws a design upon the plate with a steel etching needle, which is held like a pen, cutting through the dark ground to expose the bright metal. The plate is then dipped in acid. The acid bites into the metal wherever the etcher’s needle has pierced the dark ground. The ground is then cleaned off. Ink is rubbed over the metal plate. Ink runs into the etched and acid-cut grooves. Excess ink on the surface of the plate is then rubbed off, leaving the ink in the grooves from which to print. figurative Art in which recognisable figures or objects are portrayed. foxing Discoloured or stained paper having brownish-yellow spots. gallerist A person who has a shop (a gallery), that sells art. gouache To paraphrase the words of the great actor Sir John Gielgud, ‘should someone mention the word gouache after dinner then you know that they have truly lost their mind.’ It is a method of painting in which clear watercolours are mixed with gum, to give the media a bit more guts, and making it easier to handle than working with pure watercolour. insurance valuation A valuation undertaken by an objective art professional in regards to the likely replacement cost of the same or similar artwork stolen, lost or damaged. Larrikitj An eastern Arnhem Land (Aboriginal) word for a painted hollow log, used in the second funeral or bone burial ceremony. market valuation for sale A valuation undertaken by an objective art professional in regards to how much an artwork would sell for now. masterpiece Proclaiming an artwork a masterpiece is more often than not an art publicist’s triumph of hope over reality. The term masterpiece is a much touted and flouted one. There is but


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one masterpiece in the output of any great painter and that is their transitional painting marking their passage from a novice to a professional artist. masterwork A good and important painting from a significant painter undertaken in their prime of their career. mixed media Reading the newspaper, while listening to the radio and sitting in front of the television, it is not. In the art world mixed media means lots of different types of art media, on the one work, i.e. a painting constructed of oil paint, paper, pencil and, say, found bits of twig and a mirror. modernism The period in art history beginning just before the First World War that extended roughly until the late 1970s early 1980s. Modernism in Australian art is, broadly speaking, represented in one of two opposing ideas. The first is an expression of pessimism or despair at urbanisation and industrialisation, change that has imprisoned the human soul and desecrated the natural world. The artist Albert Tucker’s 1940s ‘images of modern evil’ are classic examples of urban despair. In opposition, modernism can also reflect the exhilaration of industrialisation, the beauty in construction and the importance of scientific and technological development. Almost technical in their nature, Ralph Balson’s mid-1940s series of Constructive Paintings represent images of good industry. mural A painting affixed to a wall. oeuvre An artist’s entire output, viewed as a single unit. A general body of art from which a particular artwork is removed, considered and contrasted. For example, this painting is by far the best work undertaken by the artist from their oeuvre (or that series or body of art). passed-in or brought-in An unsold artwork at auction. postmodernism From the early 1980s computers began to dominate our everyday life. Since then, an enormous, almost unfettered access to information and images has been made possible. Postmodernism is a coming together on the information super highway, of ideas and images. Having this information at their fingertips, artists working in the postmodern world can pick through and hoard images and ideas from other times and cultures, appropriating and re-working the old in an entirely new manner.


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Working as a bridge between words and images, Rosalie Gascoigne’s cut up and reconfigured reflective road sign creations are suspended somewhere between decorative patterning and coded meaning. Few artists are able to bring these two distinct ways of knowing together effectively. private treaty sale The confidential behind-the-scenes sale of artworks by auction houses, outside the public auction process itself. Essentially the auction house, not auctioning art but acting as a dealer. provenance Ideally provenance provides an accurate account of the location of an artwork from the time and place of its production to the present day. The nearer collectors, dealers, auction house specialists and scholars are able to provide such an unbroken pedigree, the more secure the attribution of that work becomes. A strong proven provenance reduces the likelihood of buying a fake artwork. ramping Occurs when of a gallery consigns an artwork to an auction and then publicly buys back the work, for a record price. The gallery, having created this new artificial sale-price benchmark, then adjusts its retail values of the artist’s work up. This is an illegal and all too common contemporary art at auction sales practice. relining We all deteriorate and eventually fade to physical nothing—get over it and move on. As canvas weakens with time, many paintings from an earlier age are relined in an attempt to dramatically slow the process of decay. Relining occurs when a new canvas is affixed to the back of an old canvas, thus strengthening the earlier worn fabric. For many hundreds of years, the earlier and new canvases were stuck together using animal glue—not a particularly stable adhesive, but the best available on the day. A relined canvas is not necessarily a problem, as we commonly forgive any number of quirks with old age, though relining could never be considered a great sales strength. reserve (price) That set and agreed price floor, previously negotiated between the vendor and the auction house, under which the auction house will not sell an artwork at auction. restoration The practice of returning an artwork to what it was originally. Full cleaning, total repair, replacement of paper, paint


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and canvas—basically filling the gaps back in. Commercial galleries and dealers favour this more robust style of intervention. runner A person in the art trade without a gallery of their own, who makes a living running around, sourcing stock from numerous weekly auctions and/or from other dealers for resale within the trade: a kind of low level art broker cum wholesaler. seller’s premium A fee levied by an auction house, to be paid by the seller based on a percentage of the hammer price value of the artwork. specialist A hard working, often educated, relatively young and invariably poorly paid paintings valuer (of generally less than ten years’ experience), employed by an auction house to gather artworks for forthcoming auctions. Good painting specialists will never refer to themselves as an expert—if they do, run a kilometre. telephone bidding Not as sticky as telephone sex, although to some possibly as rewarding. Bidding via a telephonic apparatus is a convenient way to participate in an art auction should the bidder be unable to attend, and/or should they wish to retain some shred of anonymity. ‘town’ painting Those artworks commissioned by carpetbaggers, undertaken by Aboriginal artists while they are away from their communities and in town. Essentially the carpetbagger holds up an image of a quality much sought after painting and demands ten of these by lunch time. Town paintings are, more often than not, noted for their volume to the market and not quality. under-bidder The second last bidder at auction (the last being the buyer) or the first loser: it is a bit like ‘is the glass half full or half empty’ kind of thing. vintage print (in photography) In early and modern photography vintage prints are those printed within five to ten years of the date of the developed negative. In contemporary photography the time scale in relation to a vintage print, between taking the photograph and printing the image, would be much less than five years. woodblock A block of wood with a design cut into it; used to make a work on paper. work on paper A print.


Resources Fine art auctioneers Australian Art Auctions 333/27 Park Street Sydney NSW 2000 Phone: 02 9267 7363 Fax: 02 9267 7363 Bonhams & Goodman, Sydney Head Office 7 Anderson Street Double Bay NSW 2028 Phone: 02 9327 7311 Fax: 02 9327 2917 Email: [email protected] Website: www.bonhamsand goodman.com.au Bruce’s Auctions Pty Ltd 444–446 Pulteney Street Adelaide SA 5000 Phone: 08 8232 2860 Fax: 08 8232 6506

Email: [email protected] Website: www.bruces.com.au Christie’s, Melbourne Head Office 1 Darling Street South Yarra Melbourne VIC 3141 Phone: 03 9820 4311 Fax: 03 9820 4876 Email: infoAustralia@christies. com Website: www.christies.com Deutscher-Menzies, Melbourne Head Office 1140 Malvern Road Malvern VIC 3144 Phone: 03 9822 1911 Fax: 03 9822 1322 Email: artauctions@deutscher menzies.com Website: www.deutschermenzies. com


Resources

Dunbar Sloane Ltd PO Box 224 Wellington, New Zealand Phone: 04 472 1367 Fax: 04 475 7389 Email: [email protected] Website: www.dunbarsloane.com GFL Fine Art 159 Stirling Highway Nedlands WA 6009 Phone: 08 9386 8577 Fax: 08 9386 8755 Email: www.gflfineart.com Website: www.gflfineart.com International Art Centre 272 Parnell Road Auckland, New Zealand Phone: 09 379 4010 Fax: 09 307 3421 Email: [email protected] Website: www.internationalart centre.co.nz

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Email: info@lawsonmenzies. com.au Website: www.lawsonmenzies. com.au Leonard Joel Pty Ltd 333 Malvern Road Prahran VIC 3181 Phone: 03 9826 4333 Fax: 03 9826 4544 Email: [email protected] Website: www.ljoel.com.au Shapiro Auctioneers, Sydney Head Office 162 Queen Street Woollahra NSW 2025 Phone: 02 9326 1588 Fax: 02 9326 1305 Email: info@shapiroauctioneers. com.au Website: www.shapiroauctioneers. com.au

John Williams Antique & Fine Art Auctioneers 6 Ralph Street Alexandria Sydney NSW 2015 Phone: 02 9700 9855 Fax: 02 8338 1165 Email: [email protected]

Sotheby’s Australia Pty Ltd, Melbourne Head Office 926 High Street Armadale VIC 3143 Phone: 03 9509 2900 Fax: 03 9563 5067 Email: [email protected] Website: www.sothebys.com

Lawson-Menzies, Sydney Head Office 212 Cumberland Street Sydney NSW 2000 Phone: 02 9241 3411 Fax: 02 9251 5869

Stanley & Co Fine Art Valuers & Auctioneers 11–15 Alberta Street Sydney NSW 2000 Phone: 02 9283 3838 Fax: 02 9283 3939


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Email: fineart@dalia-stanley. com.au Website: www.dalia-stanley. com.au

Email: wallycaruana@optusnet. com.au and michaelreid@ ozemail.com.au Website: www.michaelreid.com.au

Webb’s 18 Manukau Road Epsom, Auckland, New Zealand Phone: 09 524 6804 Fax: 09 524 7048 Email: [email protected] Website: www.webbs.co.nz

Hogarth Galleries Aboriginal Art Centre 7 Walker Lane (opposite 6a Liverpool Street) Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9360 6839 Fax: 02 9360 7069 Email: info@hogarthgalleries. com.au Website: www.aboriginalart centres.com

Art Galleries selling Aboriginal Art / known to buy art through Indigenous Communities New South Wales Aboriginal and Pacific Arts Level 8, Dymocks Building 428 George Street Sydney 2000 Phone: 02 9223 5900 Fax: 02 9223 5959 Annandale Galleries 110 Trafalgar Street Annandale NSW 2038 Phone: 02 9552 1699 Fax: 02 9552 1689 Email: [email protected] Website: www.annandalegalleries. com.au Caruana and Reid Fine Art 57 William Street Redfern NSW 2016 Phone: 02 9699 3204 Mobile Wally: 0412 153 080 Mobile Michael: 0439 776 655

Utopia Art Sydney 2 Danks Street Waterloo NSW 2017 Phone: 02 9699 2900 Fax: 02 9699 2988 Email: utopiaartsydney@ozemail. com.au Victoria Alcaston Gallery 11 Brunswick Street Fitzroy VIC 3065 Phone: 03 9418 6444 Fax: 03 9418 6499 Email: [email protected] Website: www.alcastongallery. com.au Alison Kelly Gallery 845 High Street Armadale VIC 3143 Phone: 03 9500 9214


Resources

Fax: 03 9500 9724 Email: [email protected] Website: www.alisonkellygallery. com Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi 141 Flinders Lane Melbourne VIC 3000 Phone: 03 9654 3944 Fax: 03 9650 7087 Email: gallery@gabriellepizzi. com.au Website: www.gabriellepizzi.com.au Lauraine Diggins Fine Art 5 Malakoff Street North Caulfield VIC 3161 Phone: 03 9509 9855 Fax: 03 9509 4549 Email: [email protected] Website: www.diggins.com.au Niagara Galleries 245 Punt Rd Richmond VIC 3121 Phone: 03 9429 3666 Fax: 03 9428 3571 Email: mail@niagara-galleries. com.au Website: www.niagara-galleries. com.au Scott Livesey Art Dealer 1120 High Street Armadale VIC 3143 Phone: 03 9509 4722 Fax: 03 9509 8722 Email: info@scottliveseygalleries. com

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Website: www.scottliveseygalleries. com Vivien Anderson Gallery 470 Dandenong Road Caulfield North VIC 3161 Phone: 03 9509 0255 Fax: 03 9509 3138 Email: vivienanderson@ vivienandersongallery.com Website: www.vivienanderson gallery.com William Mora Galleries 60 Tanner Street Richmond VIC 3121 Phone: 03 9429 1199 Fax: 03 9429 6833 Email: mora@moragalleries. com.au Website: www.moragalleries. com.au Adelaide Gallerie Australis Lower Floor, Court Plaza, Hyatt Regency Adelaide SA 5000 Phone: 08 8231 4111 Fax: 08 8231 6616 Email: [email protected] Website: www.gallerieaustralis. com Tasmania Art Mob 17 Castray Esplanade Battery Point TAS 7004 Phone: 03 6224 0003


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Fax: 03 6223 4134 Email: [email protected] Website: www.artmob.com.au Queensland Andrew Baker Art Dealer 26 Brookes Street Bowen Hills QLD 4006 Australia Phone: 07 3252 2292 Mobile: 0412 990 356 Email: [email protected] Website: www.andrew-baker.com Philip Bacon Galleries 2 Arthur Street PO Box 2265 Fortitude Valley QLD 4006 Phone: 07 3358 3555 Fax: 07 3254 1412 Email: artenquiries@philipbacon galleries.com.au Website: www.philipbacon galleries.com.au Fire-Works Gallery 11 Stratton Street Newstead QLD 4006 Phone: 07 3216 1250 Fax: 07 3216 1251 Email: fireworks@fireworks. com.au Website: www.fireworksgallery. com.au Jan Murphy Gallery 486 Brunswick Street PO Box 2251 Fortitude Valley QLD 4006

Phone: 07 3254 1855 Fax: 07 3254 1745 Email: jan@janmurphygallery. com.au Website: www.janmurphygallery. com.au Australian Capital Territory Caruana and Reid Fine Art PO Box 5160 Kingston ACT 2604 Mobile: 0412 153 080 Chapman Gallery 31 Captain Cook Crescent Manuka ACT 2603 Phone/Fax: 02 6295 2550 Helen Maxwell Gallery Level 1, 42 Mort Street Braddon ACT 2612 PO Box 909 Dickson ACT 2602 Phone: 02 6257 8422 Fax: 02 6257 8424 Email: gallery@helenmaxwell. com Website: www.helenmaxwell. com Western Australia Artplace 24 Church Street Perth WA 6000 Phone: 08 9228 3566 Fax: 08 9228 3577 Email: [email protected] Website: www.artplace.com.au


Resources

Indigenart, The Mossenson Galleries 115 Hay Street Subiaco WA 6008 Phone: 08 9388 2899 Fax: 08 9381 1708 Email: [email protected] Website: www.indigenart.com.au Red Rock Art Acacia House 50 Coolibah Drive Kununurra WA 6743 Phone: 08 9169 3000 Fax: 08 9168 2607 Email: sales@redrockgallery. com Website: www.redrockgallery. com Short Street Gallery 7 Short Street Chinatown, Broome WA 6075 PO Box 1550 Broome WA 6075 Phone/Fax: 08 9192 2658 Mobile: 0419 945 212 Email: enquiries@shortstgallery. com Website: www.shortstgallery.com Short Street Gallery—The Bungalow By appointment only 3 Hopton Street Broome WA 6075 Phone: 08 9192 6118 Mobile: 0419 945 212

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Email: enquiries@shortstgallery. com Website: www.shortstgallery.com Northern Territory Framed—The Darwin Gallery 55 Stuart Highway Stuart Park GPO Box 585 Darwin NT 0801 Phone: 08 8981 2994 Fax: 08 8941 0883 Email: [email protected] Website: www.framed.com.au Gallery Gondwana 43 Todd Mall Alice Springs NT 0870 PO Box 3770 Alice Springs 0871 Phone: 08 8953 7577 Fax: 08 8953 2441 Email: fineart@gallerygondwana. com.au Website: www.gallerygondwana. com.au Karen Brown Gallery N.T. House 1/22 Mitchell St Darwin NT 0810 Phone: 08 8981 9985 Fax: 08 8981 9649 Email: info@karenbrowngallery. com Website: www.karenbrowngallery. com


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Raft Artspace 2/8 Parap Place (upstairs Gregory St. entrance) Parap NT 0804 Phone/Fax: 08 8941 0810 Mobile: 0428 410 811 Email: art@raftartspace. com.au Website: www.raftartspace. com.au Raintree Aboriginal Fine Art Gallery 5/20 Knuckey Street GPO Box 4866 Darwin NT 0801 Phone (office): 08 8981 2732 Phone (gallery): 08 8941 9933 Fax: 08 8981 1072 Email: info@aboriginalartshop. com.au Website: www.aboriginalartshop. com.au

Galleries selling primarily non-Indigenous art New South Wales Australian Galleries 15 Roylston Street Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9360 5177 Fax: 02 9360 2361 Email: enquiries@australian galleries.com.au Website: www.australiangalleries. com.au

Axia Modern Art 124 Jersey Street Woollahra NSW 2025 Phone: 02 9363 3063 Fax: 02 9363 3158 Email: enquiries@axiamodernart. com.au Website: www.axiamodernart. com.au Brian Moore Gallery 294 Glenmore Road Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9380 7100 Fax: 02 9380 7161 Email: info@brianmooregallery. com.au Website: www.brianmooregallery. com.au Christopher Day Gallery Cnr. Elizabeth Street and Windsor Street Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9326 1952 Fax: 02 9327 5826 Mobile: 0418 403 928 Email: cdaygallery@bigpond. com.au Website: www.cdaygallery. com.au Darren Knight Gallery Top floor, 840 Elizabeth Street Waterloo NSW 2017 Phone: 02 9699 5353 Fax: 02 9699 5254 Email: info@darrenknightgallery. com


Resources

Website: www.darrenknight gallery.com Eva Breuer Art Dealer 83 Moncur Street Woollahra NSW 2025 PO Box 719 Woollahra NSW 1350 Phone: 02 9362 0297 Fax: 02 9362 0318 Email: art@evabreuerartdealer. com.au Website: www.evabreuerartdealer. com.au Grantpirrie 86 George Street Redfern NSW 2016 Phone: 02 9699 9033 Fax: 02 9698 8943 Email: [email protected] Website: www.grantpirrie.com Gitte Weise Gallery/Room 35 56 Southerland Street Paddington NSW 2021 Phone/Fax: 02 9360 2659 Email: [email protected] Website: www.gitteweisegallery. com Gould Galleries 110 Queen Street Woollahra NSW 2025 Phone: 02 9328 9222 Fax: 02 9328 9200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.gouldgalleries. com

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Josef Lebovic Gallery (photography, works on paper) 34 Paddington Street Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9332 1840 Fax: 02 9331 7431 Email: [email protected] Kaliman Gallery 10 Cecil Street Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9357 2273 Fax: 9357 1545 Email: [email protected] Website: www.kalimangallery.com King Street Gallery on Burton 102 Burton Street Darlinghurst NSW 2010 Phone/Fax: 02 9360 9727 Email: [email protected] Website: www.kingstreetgallery. com.au Liverpool Street Gallery 243a Liverpool Street East Sydney NSW 2010 Phone: 02 8353 7799 Fax: 02 8353 7798 Email: info@liverpoolstgallery. com.au Website: www.liverpoolstgallery. com.au Martin Browne Fine Art At 22 Macleay Street 22 Macleay Street Potts Point NSW 2011 Phone: 02 9331 0100


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Fax: 02 8356 9511 Email: mdbrowne@ozemail. com.au Website: www.martinbrownefine art.com Martin Browne Fine Art At The Yellow House 57–59 Macleay Street Potts Point NSW 2011 Phone: 02 9331 7997 Fax: 02 9331 7050 Email: mbfayellowhouse@ ozemail.com.au Website: www.martinbrownefine art.com Maunsell Wickes Gallery 98 Holdsworth Street Woollahra NSW 2025 Phone: 02 9327 6525 Fax: 02 9380 8485 Email: [email protected] Website: www.barrysterngalleries. com.au Maunsell Wickes at Barry Stern Galleries 19 Glenmore Rd Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9331 4676 Fax: 02 9380 8485 Email: [email protected] Website: www.barrysterngalleries. com.au Mori Gallery 168 Day Street Sydney NSW 2000

Phone: 02 9283 2903 Fax: 02 9283 2909 Email: [email protected] Website: www.morigallery.com.au Ray Hughes Gallery 270 Devonshire Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 Phone: 02 9698 3200 Fax: 02 9699 2716 Email: email@rayhughesgallery. com Website: www.rayhughesgallery. com Rex Irwin Art Dealer 1st Floor, 38 Queen Street Woollahra NSW 2025 Phone: 02 9363 3212 Fax: 02 9363 0556 Email: [email protected] Website: www.rexirwin.com Robin Gibson Gallery 278 Liverpool St Darlinghurst NSW 2010 Phone: 02 9331 6692 Fax: 02 9331 1114 Email: [email protected] Website: www.robingibson.net Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery Soudan Lane (off 27 Hampden St) Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9331 1919 Fax: 02 9331 5609 Email: oxley9@roslynoxley9. com.au


Resources

Website: www.roslynoxley9. com.au Savill Galleries 156 Hargrave Street Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9327 8311 Fax: 02 9327 7981 Email: [email protected] Website: www.savill.com.au Sherman Galleries 16–20 Goodhope Street Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9331 1112 Fax: 02 9331 1051 Email: info@shermangalleries. com.au Website: www.shermangalleries. com.au Stella Downer Fine Art 2 Danks Street Waterloo NSW 2017 Phone: 02 9319 1006 Fax: 02 9319 1086 Email: [email protected] Website: www.stelladowner. com Stills Gallery (Photography) 36 Gosbell Street Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9331 7775 Fax: 02 9331 1648 Email: photoart@stillsgallery. com.au Website: www.stillsgallery. com.au

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Tim Olsen Gallery 76 Paddington Street Paddington NSW 2011 Phone: 02 9360 9854 Fax: 02 9360 9672 Email: [email protected] Website: www.timolsengallery. com Tim Olsen Gallery Annex 72a Windsor Street Paddington NSW 2021 Phone: 02 9360 9854 Fax: 02 9360 9672 Email: [email protected] Website: www.timolsengallery. com Watters Gallery 109 Riley Street East Sydney NSW 2010 Phone: 02 9331 2556 Fax: 02 9361 6871 Email: info@wattersgallery. com Website: www.wattersgallery. com Victoria Anna Schwartz Gallery 185 Flinders Lane Melbourne VIC 3000 Phone: 03 9654 6131 Fax: 03 9650 5418 Email: mail@annaschwartz gallery.com Website: www.annaschwartz gallery.com


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Australian Galleries Works on Paper 50 Smith Street Collingwood VIC 3066 Phone: 03 9417 0800 Fax: 03 9417 0699 Email: enquiries@australian galleries.com.au Website: www.australiangalleries. com.au

Christine Abrahams Gallery 27 Gipps Street Richmond VIC 3121 Phone: 03 9428 6099 Fax: 03 9428 0809 Email: art@christineabrahams gallery.com.au Website: www.christineabrahams gallery.com.au

Axia Modern Art 1010 High Street Armadale VIC 3143 Phone: 03 9500 1144 Fax: 03 9500 1404 Email: [email protected] Website: www.axiamodernart. com.au

Dickerson Gallery 2a Waltham Street Richmond VIC 3121 Phone: 03 9429 1569 Fax: 03 9429 9415 Email: dickersongallery@bigpond. com.au Website: www.dickersongallery. com.au

Bridget McDonnell Gallery 130 Faraday Street Carlton VIC 3053 Phone: 03 9347 1700 Mobile: 0419 306 593 Fax: 03 9347 3314 Email: [email protected] Website: www.bridgetmcdonnell gallery.com.au

Gould Galleries 270 Toorak Road South Yarra VIC 3141 Phone: 03 9827 8482 Fax: 03 9824 0860 Email: [email protected] Website: www.gouldgalleries. com

Charles Nodrum Gallery 267 Church Street Richmond VIC 3121 Phone: 03 9427 0140 Fax: 03 9428 7350 Email: gallery@charlesnodrum gallery.com.au Website: www.charlesnodrum gallery.com.au

John Buckley 114 Bendigo Street Prahran VIC 3181 Phone: 03 9529 5445 Fax: 03 9529 5440 Email: buckleyj@ocean. com.au Website: www.johnbuckley. com.au


Resources

Joshua McClelland Print Room 2nd Floor, 15 Collins Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Phone/Fax: 03 9654 5835 Email: joshmcclelland@bigpond. com.au Karen Woodbury Gallery 4 Albert Street Richmond VIC 3121 Phone: 03 9421 2500 Fax: 03 9421 2044 Email: [email protected] Website: www.kwgallery.com Lauraine Diggins Fine Art 5 Malakoff Street North Caulfield VIC 3161 Phone: 03 9509 9855 Fax: 03 9509 4549 Email: [email protected] Website: www.diggins.com.au Metro 5 Gallery 1214 High Street Armadale VIC 3143 Phone: 03 9500 8511 Fax: 03 9500 8599 Email: [email protected] Website: www.metro5gallery. com.au Niagara Galleries 245 Punt Rd Richmond VIC 3121 Phone: 03 9429 3666 Fax: 03 9428 3571 Email: mail@niagara-galleries. com.au

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Website: www.niagara-galleries. com.au Nellie Castan Gallery Level 1, 12 River Street South Yarra VIC 3141 Phone: 03 9804 7366 Fax: 03 9804 7367 Email: info@nelliecastangallery. com Website: www.nelliecastangallery. com Savill Galleries 262 Toorak Road South Yarra VIC 3141 Phone: 03 9827 8366 Fax: 03 9827 7454 Email: [email protected] Website: www.savill.com.au Scott Livesey Art Dealer 1120 High Street Armadale VIC 3143 Phone: 03 9509 4722 Fax: 03 9509 8722 Email: info@scottliveseygalleries. com Website: www.scottlivesey galleries.com Sutton Gallery 254 Brunswick Street Fitzroy VIC 3065 Phone: 03 9416 0727 Fax: 03 9416 0731 Email: [email protected] Website: www.suttongallery. com.au


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Tolarno Galleries Level 4, 289 Flinders Lane Melbourne VIC 3000 Phone: 03 9654 6000 Fax: 03 9654 7000 Email: tolarnogalleries@ bigpond.com

Fax: 08 8227 0678 Email: gallery@hillsmithfineart. com.au Website: www.hillsmithfineart. com.au

William Mora Galleries 60 Tanner Street Richmond VIC 3121 Phone: 03 9429 1199 Fax: 03 9429 6833 Email: mora@moragalleries. com.au Website: www.moragalleries. com.au

Peter R. Walker Gallery 101 Walkerville Terrace Adelaide SA PO Box 3160 Norwood SA 5067 Phone: 08 8344 4607 Mobile: 0418 552 548 Fax: 08 8364 5817 Email: [email protected] Website: www.peterwalker. com.au

South Australia BMGART 31–33 North Street, West End Adelaide SA 5000 Phone: 08 8231 4440 Fax: 08 8231 4494 Email: [email protected] Website: www.bmgart.com.au

Tasmania Bett Gallery Hobart 369 Elizabeth Street North Hobart TAS 7000 Phone: 03 6231 6511 Fax: 03 6231 6521 Email: [email protected] Website: www.bettgallery.com.au

Greenaway Art Gallery 39 Rundle Street Kent Town SA 5067 Phone: 08 8362 6354 Fax: 08 8362 0890 Email: [email protected] Website: www.greenaway.com.au

Masterpiece Fine Art Gallery 63 Sandy Bay Road, Hobart TAS 7000 Phone: 03 6223 2020 Fax: 03 6223 6870 Email: [email protected] Website: www.masterpiece. com.au

Hill-Smith Fine Art Gallery 113 Pirie Street Adelaide SA 5000 Phone: 08 8223 6558

The Salamanca Collection 91 Salamanca Place Hobart TAS 7004


Resources

Phone: 03 6224 1341 Fax: 03 6223 6800 Email: [email protected] Website: www.salamanca collection.com.au Queensland Art Galleries Schubert Marina Mirage Seaworld Drive Main Beach QLD 4217 Phone: 07 5571 0077 Fax: 07 5526 4260 Email: [email protected] Website: www.art-galleriesschubert.com.au Bellas Milani Gallery 54 Logan Road Woolloongabba QLD 4102 Phone: 07 3391 0455 Fax: 07 3391 0644 Email: bbellasg@bigpond. net.au Philip Bacon Galleries 2 Arthur Street PO Box 2265 Fortitude Valley QLD 4006 Phone: 07 3358 3555 Fax: 07 3254 1412 Email: artenquiries@philipbacon galleries.com.au Website: www.philipbacon galleries.com.au Andrew Baker Art Dealer 26 Brookes Street Bowen Hills QLD 4006

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Phone: 07 3252 2292 Mobile: 0412 990 356 Email: [email protected] Website: www.andrew-baker.com Jan Murphy Gallery 486 Brunswick Street PO Box 2251 Fortitude Valley QLD 4006 Phone: 07 3254 1855 Fax: 07 3254 1745 Email: jan@janmurphygallery. com.au Website: www.janmurphygallery. com.au Australian Capital Territory Beaver Galleries 81 Denison Street Deakin ACT 2600 Phone: 02 6282 5294 Fax: 02 6281 1315 Email: mail@beavergalleries. com.au Chapman Gallery 31 Captain Cook Crescent Manuka ACT 2603 Phone/Fax: 02 6295 2550 Solander Gallery 10 Schlich Street Yarralumla ACT 2600 Phone: 02 6285 2218 Fax: 02 6282 5145 Email: sales@solander. com.au Website: www.solander. com.au


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Stephanie Burns Fine Art 107 Strickland Crescent Deakin ACT 2600 Phone/Fax: 02 6161 9138 Email: info@stephanieburns. com.au Website: www.stephanieburns. com.au Western Australia Greenhill Galleries 37 King Street Perth WA 6000 Phone: 08 9321 2369 Fax: 08 9321 2360 Email: info@greenhillgalleries. com Website: www.greenhillgalleries. com Lister Calder Gallery 316 Rokeby Road Subiaco WA 6008 Phone: 08 9382 8188 Fax: 08 9382 8199 Email: gallery@listercalder. com Website: www.listercalder. com Perth Galleries 61 Forrest Street Subiaco WA 6008 Phone: 08 9380 9595 Fax: 08 9380 9596 Email: admin@perthgalleries. com.au Website: www.perthgalleries. com.au

Northern Territory Framed—The Darwin Gallery 55 Stuart Highway Stuart Park GPO Box 585 Darwin NT 0801 Phone: 08 8981 2994 Fax: 08 8941 0883 Email: [email protected] Website: www.framed.com.au Raft Artspace 2/8 Parap Place (upstairs Gregory St. entrance) Parap NT 0804 Phone/Fax: 08 8941 0810 Mobile: 0428 410 811 Email: [email protected] Website: www.raftartspace. com.au Miscellaneous AASD Australian Art Sales Digest A Historical Record of Sales of Art at Auction in Australia and New Zealand Acorn Antiques 885–889 High Street Armadale VIC 3143 Phone: 03 9500 0522 Fax: 03 9509 6245 Email: [email protected] Website: www.aasd.com.au The Association of Northern Kimberley and Arnhem Aboriginal Artists (ANKAAA)


Resources

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Frog Hollow Centre for the Arts 56 Wood St Darwin NT 0801 Phone: 08 8981 6134 Fax: 08 8981 6048 Email: [email protected] Website: www.ankaaa.org.au

Melbourne Art Fair PO Box 1251 North Fitzroy VIC 3068 Phone: 03 9416 2050 Fax: 03 9416 2020 Email: [email protected] Wesbite: www.artfair.com.au

Artbank 50c Rosebery Avenue Rosebery NSW 2018 Phone: 02 9662 8011 Email: enquiries@artbank. gov.au Website: www.artbank.gov.au

Qualtape Australia Pty Ltd (packing materials) 2/150 Toongabbie Road Girraween NSW 2145 Phone: 02 9896 1633 Fax: 02 9896 1747 Email: [email protected] Website: www.qualtape.com.au

Australian Antiquarian Book Fair The Australian & New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers (ANZAAB) PO Box 3087 Prahran VIC 3181 Phone: 03 9525 1649 Fax: 03 9529 1298 Email: [email protected] Website: www.anzaab.com Desart Shop 4, Colacag Plaza 76 Todd Street Alice Springs NT 0871 PO Box 9219 Alice Springs NT 0871 Phone: 08 8953 4736 Fax: 08 8953 4517 Email: [email protected] Website: www.desart.com.au

Sculpture by the Sea Art Services PO Box 560 Potts Point NSW 1335 Phone: 02 9357 1457 Fax: 02 9357 2335 Email: sales@sculpturebythesea. com Website: www.sculpturebythesea. com

Collecting Associations Australiana Society C/- 1151 Barrenjoey Rd Palm Beach NSW 2108 Phone: 02 9389 4404 Mobile: 0408 212 242 Email: [email protected] Website: www.australiana.org


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The Contemporary Collection Benefactors (CCB) at Art Gallery of NSW Art Gallery of NSW Art Gallery Road, The Domain Sydney NSW 2000 Phone: 02 9225 1601 Fax: 02 9221 6226 Email: [email protected] Website: www.artgallery.nsw.gov. au/supportus/collection_ benefactors/contemporary

Email: d.stein@artrestoration. com.au Website: www.artrestoration. com.au International Conservation Services 53 Victoria Avenue Chatswood NSW 2067 Phone: 02 9417 3311 Fax: 02 9417 3102 Email: [email protected] Website: www.icssydney.com

Conservators and restorers New South Wales Art & Archival Paper Conservation 28 John Bull Street Queanbeyan NSW 2620 PO Box 75 Ainslie ACT 2602 Phone: 02 6297 7670 ASA Andersen Shaw & Associates Suite 1, Lower Ground 220A Norton Street Leichhardt NSW 2040 Phone: 02 9564 5576 Fax: 02 9564 5578 Email: [email protected] Website: www.asaframers.com.au David Stein Restoration 32B Burton Street East Sydney NSW 2010 Phone: 02 9360 2201 Fax: 02 9360 2261

Victoria The Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation The University of Melbourne Melbourne VIC 3010 Phone: 03 8344 7989 Fax: 03 8344 4484 Email: conserve@art-museum. unimelb.edu.au Website: www.cultural conservation.unimelb.edu.au Judy Dunlop Conservation Judy Dunlop Paintings Conservator Phone/Fax: 03 9482 6536 Email: jadunlop@optusnet. com.au Website: www.jadunlop.websyte. com.au RSM Art Conservation 482 Brunswick Street Fortitude Valley QLD 4006 Phone: 07 3254 0822


Resources

Fax: 07 3254 0922 Email: [email protected] South Australia Artlab Australia 70 Kintore Avenue Adelaide SA 5000 Phone: 08 8207 7520 Fax: 08 8207 7529 Websites: www.artlab.sa.gov.au and www.artlabaustralia.com.au Major Aboriginal Arts Associations Buku Larrnggay Mulka Centre Yirrkala NT 0881 Phone: 08 8987 1701 Fax: 08 8987 2701 Email: [email protected] and [email protected] Website: www.yirrkala-arts.com Bula’bula Arts PMB 161 Ramingining via Winnellie NT 0822 Phone: 08 8979 7911 Fax: 08 8979 7919 Email: bulabulaarts@bigpond. com.au Website: www.bulabula-arts.com Injalak Arts and Crafts PMB 131 Oenpelli NT 0822 Phone: 08 8979 0190 Fax: 08 8979 0119 Email: [email protected] Website: www.injalak.com

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Jilamara Arts and Crafts PMB 258 Winnellie NT 0822 Phone: 08 8978 3901 Fax: 08 8978 3903 Email: [email protected] Website: www.tiwiart.com/ jilamara/jilamara.htm Mangkaja Arts PO Box 117 Fitzroy Crossing WA 6765 Phone: 08 9191 5272 Fax: 08 9191 5279 Email: Mangkaja_Arts@bigpond. com.au and Mangkaja_ [email protected] Website: www.users.bigpond. com/Mangkaja_Arts/webpage Maningrida Arts and Culture via Winnellie NT 0822 Phone: 08 8979 5946 Fax: 08 8979 5996 Email: [email protected] Website: www.maningrida.com Munupi Arts and Crafts Pularumpi via Winnellie NT 0822 Phone: 08 8978 3975 Fax: 08 8978 3907 Email: [email protected] Website: www.tiwiart.com/ Munupi/munupi.htm Papunya Tula Artists 78 Todd Street PO Box 1620 Alice Springs NT 0871 Phone: 08 8952 4731


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Fax: 08 8953 2509 Email: [email protected] Website: www.papunyatula. com.au Tiwi Design PMB 59 Nguiu via Winnellie NT 0822 Phone: 08 8978 3982 Fax: 08 8978 3828 Email: [email protected] Website: www.tiwiart.com/tiwi/ tiwi.htm Warlayirti Artists PMB 20 Balgo Hills via Halls Creek WA 6770 Phone: 08 9168 8960

Fax: 08 9168 8889 Email: [email protected] Website: www.balgoart.org.au Warlukurlangu Artists Yuendumu LPO via Alice Springs NT 0872 Phone: 08 8956 4133 Fax: 08 8956 4003 Email: [email protected] Website: www.warlu.com Warmun Art Centre PMB Turkey Creek Kununurra WA 6743 Phone: 08 9168 7496 Fax: 08 9168 7444 Email: [email protected] Website: www.warmunart.com

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