History of Australia’s art market under the microscope

Inside the Australian Art Market tells the story of the emergence of the modern commercial gallery in this country.

Australian artist Albert Tucker learned to use the commercial approach to art to his advantage.

Markets are as old as social life and older than civilisation itself: tribal groups no larger than extended families bartered goods of which one had a surplus and the other a need.

Later, early civilisations such as the Neolithic peoples of the Mediterranean traded precious materials like flint or obsidian; in the Bronze Age and with advances in seafaring, copper and tin became essential commodities.

Manufactured goods in turn were important exports, and the Etruscans bought so many Attic vases that when they were first excavated from graves in the 18th century they were thought to be Etruscan wares.

Luxuries too became important items of trade: spices were carried around the world at enormous cost and risk and for correspondingly large profits. And art has been bought and sold for thousands of years, valued not only for its cultural usefulness in the expression of shared beliefs and values, but for its qualities of craftsmanship, refinement of execution and intangible qualities of beauty. The very fact art is valued for something other than its practical utility allows it to become, at a secondary level, a signifier of social status.

There have long been attempts to regulate markets and to rationalise their functioning, from corn laws for staples to sumptuary laws for luxuries. Today there are international trade agreements and conventions, and in securities markets there are rules designed to prevent the corruption of insider trading. But here too art both mirrors the wider economy and evades its rules, for the art market is inherently permeated by manipulation and insider trading, especially at the upper levels of the contemporary art market and the auctions where record prices underpin continuing asset speculation.

At the grassroots of the art business, we take for granted the practice of showing new work in regular temporary exhibitions, mostly by individual artists, at dealers’ galleries. The gallery organises an opening reception and produces printed invitations or even a publication; dealers manage sales and charge the artist a percentage of the proceeds as well as a share of expenses. But this is a system that became the norm only in the course of last century, and as far as Australia is concerned, mostly in the postwar period.

The story of the emergence of the modern commercial gallery in Australia is told in Inside the Australian Art Market by Christopher Heathcote, who is well-equipped for the task. He has been a distinguished art critic, historian and curator for many years, and more recently has contributed a series of longer essays to Quadrant magazine, often about connections between art and cinema. Last year he wrote a fascinating piece deconstructing some recent ideological interpretations of Arthur Boyd’s Bride series, exposing the disturbing intellectual dishonesty and sheer incompetence so common among those who place moral indignation ahead of intellectual rigour.

Heathcote’s account of the emergence of the gallery system in Australia is equally fascinating, ultimately because it is so deeply informed. The book is based not only on wide reading but on long personal experience of the art market in this country, as well as a series of detailed interviews, conducted over the past 25 years, with the most important people involved, many of whom are now deceased.

All this material, however, would be of little interest if it yielded no more than arid statistics about the growth of sales or the number of galleries in various cities at various times. What is more important is to understand the change in the culture of artmaking and selling that took place from a time when pictures were mostly purchased from the group shows of art societies to one that increasingly promoted individuals, building the reputations of star artists and deliberately ratcheting prices higher.

Heathcote reveals this process with the flair and even the literary devices of a storyteller, setting the scene with precise and memorable details, sketching the personalities of the main characters and considering their motivations.

He begins with the establishment of Australian Galleries in 1956 by Anne and Tam Purves, vividly evoking the novelty and risks of a way of selling art that has become standard. We see the new system from the point of view of the artists too, some of whom were initially reticent about what they saw as an excessively commercial approach, while others, such as Albert Tucker, learned to exploit its economic benefits.

The story of Australian Galleries, to whose archives Heathcote had exceptional access, provides a line of continuity in the narrative; but many other dealers and galleries emerged in the ensuing years, varying their commercial and marketing styles according to the kind of art they handled and the clientele they were pursuing. And while some dealers showed artists for a commission on sales, others bought and sold work on their own account. These had a particular interest in ramping up the prices of pictures they already owned, and Heathcote offers some spectacular examples of manipulating the auction system to establish new price benchmarks.

The period covered by this book is still too close to be assessed objectively by art history, in part because some of its important figures are, or were until recently, still alive. It was a turbulent time of competing art fashions and overheated rhetoric, and much of the art produced, bought and sold during those years has not aged well.

Heathcote makes an invaluable contribution to the history of these years by largely deferring critical assessment and seeking primarily to understand the culture of the art market and its principal actors. It is a tribute to his historical imagination as well as to his research that the book brings us so close to worlds as different as those of Macquarie Galleries and Central Street, or that individuals as antithetical as Rudy Komon and John Reed are brought to life with such insight and conviction, like characters in an unexpectedly gripping novel.

Christopher Allen is The Australian’s national art critic.

Inside the Australian Art Market — Australia’s Galleries: A History 1956-1976

By Christopher Heathcote

Thames and Hudson, 368pp, $49.99 (HB)