… and change

The groan you can hear in the air is probably the tectonic plates of the art economy starting to shift. There’s Webb’s plucky experiment with the turnover model in Parnell, the fallout from the Bambury/Jensen settlement, Bowerbank/Ninow testing a dealer auction mash-up, My art offering collectors interest-free cash to buy stuff with, a corporate taking over the Auckland Art Fair and some very sharp words dissing auctions from the world of art dealers.

'If you are wanting to start an art collection, to go to an auction to buy the art is bad practice. You won’t get the best examples and you won’t learn anything: the work is a product, which is an anathema to us.

There are all sorts of pressures that go with auctions, let alone the competition. If you are bidding against one other maniac you will overpay – it’s too dangerous.' 
Dealers Tim Melville and Emma Fox reported in NZ Herald on Saturday
 
Ouch.

Finally there’s a cash and carry online model for art and collectibles being set up by the Fairfax Group of all people. And the media barons look as though they're going straight for the jugular with the simple proposition 'Get Stuff' riffing on the name of their eponymous website. In a sample Facebook page (you can see it here) for instance you could bid for a work by Rohan Wealleans starting with an opening bid of $800 or use the 'buy now' feature and get it directly off the shelf for $1,800. It's a technique that makes most art dealers go pale but in this case at least one (Ivan Anthony) is in on the game with his artists and contact details featuring as the art part in the launch offering. So, as far as art's concerned, even though the site is presented as an auction, the chances of getting a bargain look kind of remote. 

Image: Yvonne Todd. Buy now

Hot bidder

"I had someone on the phone bidding on a lot who told me 'I have to go now, my house is on fire.'"
Nicholas Lowry of the Swann Auction Galleries reported in Art News

Light headed

“If I want drama, I’ll go to Broadway.”

Art dealer Richard Feigen commenting on a New York consumer affairs commissioner’s view that auctioneers taking bids from the chandelier added a bit of theatre for the clients

Mr Art and Mr GST

This starts off as an art tattoo story and ends up all over the place. The tattoo belongs to Ken Fehily. He's an art collector and now chair of the Melbourne Art Foundation which runs the biennial Melbourne Art Fair. He was also a tax guy at PricewaterhouseCoopers and helped bring GST to Australia. All this is why he has a ‘Mr GST’ tat on one arm and ‘Mr Art’ on the other.

Fehily comes to the Melbourne Art Fair at a tough time. Fourteen offshore galleries exhibited in 2008 but only 11 fronted up this year with 70 percent of them from NZ, and that thanks to a baby-brother-discount from the Art Fair and Creative NZ grants.

Anyway, Fehily has now arranged for Tim Etchells (who started the popular Hong Kong Art Fair) to manage the MelbourneArt Fair for the next eight years. Etchells has also recently launched a SydneyArt Fair (…getting the picture?). Our own very successful Auckland Art Fair is no doubt keeping a nervous eye on all of this manoeuvring.

Mr Art was also involved in a big auction last week in which he and his wife (she runs the dealer gallery FehilyContemporary in Melbourne which includes a handful of NZ artists) put up 72 works from their own collection. It was a disappointment. Just 25 lots sold at an average price of $11,000 apparently putting the skids under their hopes for funding a charitable foundation and putting some money back into the gallery. You can read all this and other stuff about Mr Art in a more coherent form in the Financial Review.

Image: Top, Mr GST with his Mr Art tat on the right arm. Bottom Mr Art with his Mr GST tat on the left arm. (photo of Ken Fehily by Arsineh Houspian for the Financial Review). And thanks to tipster H for the tip off.

Warning to auction houses

On Trade me at the moment this waterfall entry into the fake McCahon stakes. Auction houses can put it on their have-you-seen-this-painting files for when it comes back one day complete with signature. (thanks P)