The_Art_Newspaper_-_November_2016

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RECENT INITIATIVES

Tefaf’s Digital Excellence Program, powered by Invaluable

In October, Tefaf announced that Invaluable, an online art marketplace for auction houses

and galleries, had become the “marquee sponsor” of its fairs in Maastricht and New

York. Aiming to ofer more than the average sponsor, Rob Weisberg, the chief executive

of Invaluable, said the combination will “help bring the highest quality ine art and

collectibles online and continue to raise the bar in this area”. This year, Invaluable also

formed a partnership with the artist-led Accessible Art Fair in Brussels and New York. M.G.

Arteby’s

Vineet Chauhan, an investment banker and art collector, founded

Arteby to address the issues of price disparity and authenticity,

initially in the Asian art arena (classic cars are next on the list).

Citing the eBay timed-auction model, Chauhan says his platform

creates a peer-to-peer market, something that fast-growing

players such as Catawiki (which came top of Deloitte’s latest

Technology Fast 500 rankings) and the auction aggregator Barneby’s

also emphasise. The irst timed auction was of Asian art as we went to

press (ending 27 October) and included a Kangxi-period (1662-1722) dish, valued at $389.

Frédéric de Senarclens,

the founder of ArtAndOnly

Kangxi-period dish, available at Arteby’s Asian Art auction last month

THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 284, November 2016

Why the ‘Uber effect’

is proving elusive for

online platforms

Business is growing but no one has truly disrupted the market—yet

Australia responds

to revival in interest

in Aboriginal art abroad

Market growth prompts rethink of export permits

UBER EFFECT: EPA/MARCEL VAN HOORN. DISH: COURTESY OF ARTEBY’S. JAGAMARA: COURTESY OF SOTHEBY’S

LAW

London. Interest in Australian Abo-
riginal art is growing. After a difficult
decade for the market, auction prices
are on the rise. Now, changes to Austral-
ia’s stringent export laws, which are due
to come into efect next year, look set to
give the market for works by indigenous
artists a further boost.
Under the current rules, it can take
up to two years to get an export permit
for a work, according to Tim Klingen-
der, a senior consultant on Australian
art for Sotheby’s, London. In its current
form, Australia’s Protection of Movable
Cultural Heritage Act requires indige-
nous works that are worth more than
A$10,000 (just over £6,200) and are
more than 20 years old to be cleared by
an expert panel before leaving Australia
permanently. By contrast, works by non-
indigenous Australians require a permit
if they are worth more than A$250,000
(just over £156,000) and are more than
30 years old.

The new legislation aims to bring

the export restrictions on Aboriginal

works in line with those for non-in-

digenous works, and to streamline the

examination process. This will, accord-

ing to Klingeder, “free up the market

dramatically”.

REFUSED DONATION

“The market was stymied by the introduc-

tion of the export legislation and collec-

tors lost interest in the field,” Klingender

says. One of the most outspoken critics

has been the US investment banker and

collector John Wilkerson, who in 2012

publicly decided against donating his

A$10m (£6.25m) collection to an Aus-

tralian museum after being refused an

export permit for a 1980s dot painting

by Tommy Lowry Tjapaltjarri, which he

bought at Sotheby’s, Australia, in 2007.

“The law completely turned Wilkerson

of collecting,” Klingender says.

Despite the current restrictions,

Sotheby’s annual sale of Aboriginal art

in London, on 21 September, achieved

six new records. Michael Nelson Jaga-

mara’s Five Stories (1984), which sold

to a private US collector for £401,000

(with fees, est £150,000-£200,000),

became the most expensive work

by any living Aboriginal artist. The

work—one of the most widely exhib-

ited and reproduced in the field—

came from the collection of Gabrielle

Pizzi, a pioneering dealer of Aboriginal

dot paintings. Klingender, who organ-

ises the annual auction at Sotheby’s,

London, says three of the major buyers

at the sale were all new to the field.

The Miami-based billionaire Dennis

Scholl, whose 500-strong collection is

the largest private holding of Aborig-

inal art in the US, says prices have

steadily risen since he started buying

ten years ago, when the market was

“less vibrant”. Other factors contrib-

uting to sluggish trade a decade ago

include the global economic crash, a

rise in value of the Australian dollar

and problems with authentication.

But now, Scholl says, Aboriginal art

is undergoing complete reassessment—

and the philanthropist is playing his

part. Works from his collection are cur-

rently on show in Marking the Infinite,

an exhibition of nine female Aborigi-

nal artists, which is touring various US

institutions, including the Phillips Col-

lection in Washington, DC. Meanwhile,

No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian

Contemporary Abstract Painting, a trav-

elling show also drawn from Scholl’s col-

lection, closed at the Johnson Museum

of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, New

York, in August.

“People are beginning to look at

contemporary Aboriginal Australian art

through the same lens as contemporary

art,” Scholl says. “It holds up within the

broader international market aestheti-

cally and it’s also extremely good value

right now.”

Anny Shaw

TRENDS

London. Barely a month goes by without
the launch of an online initiative that
aims to disrupt the art market and
bring the “Uber and Airbnb effect” to
art transactions. But witness the crowds
pacing the aisles at a big-league art fair,
or spilling out of the salesrooms during
the evening auctions, and the impact of
the internet on this object-and-people-
business seems minimal.
October saw the official launch of
two online art sales platforms: ArtAn-
dOnly, for works valued at typically up
to $500,000 and, at the other end of the
scale, Arteby’s, an online auction and
peer-to-peer marketplace, which has a
current minimum lot value of £100.
Meanwhile, ahead of its inaugural
New York edition, in late October, the
Tefaf art fair announced the launch of
a new Digital Excellence Program, sup-
ported by its new sponsor, Invaluable,
to help the fair’s dealers reach new
audiences online.
Invariably, most new online busi-
nesses cite data from the latest Hiscox
Online Art Trade Report, which found
that this market grew 24% to $3.3bn in
2015 and predicted it to reach $9.6bn
by 2020.
All this rather glosses over the fact
that the online market seems to have
hit a bit of a brick wall. Hiscox finds

there is “still resistance”, especially

from buyers who are 35 and younger.

The report says that Generation Y

(people born in the 1980s and 90s)

is put off by not being able to physi-

cally inspect a work and that there is

not enough information about quality

available online. While this can of

course also apply to physical busi-

nesses, perception counts for a lot in

the art market.

DEVELOPING OFFLINE

When Saatchi Art, an online gallery,

merged with The Other Art Fair, a Frieze

satellite fair, in September, Sean Mori-

arty, the chief executive of Saatchi Art’s

owner, Demand Media, emphasised

“the important role physical presence

plays in the art buying decision for

many consumers”. The strategy seems

less about giving the fair, which focuses

on unrepresented artists, a greater

online reach and more about growing

its oine presence: a new edition opens

in New York in 2017 with plans for more

in Europe and Asia.

The social and personalised aspects

of art events cannot be ignored. For this

year’s Lapada fair in London in Septem-

ber, its director Mieka Sywak sent out

nearly 500,000, thick-card invitations

to the VIP opening. “We recognise that

we are part of both the art and luxury

markets,” Sywak says. Validation is

key—in a market where value is largely

intangible, buyers find comfort in a

physical brand they can trust. Hiscox’s

online art sales platform ranking, based

on a survey of 672 buyers, is topped by

Christie’s Live, a company that has 250

years of bricks-and-mortar business

behind it.

ArtAndOnly

The Singapore- and Geneva-based dealer Frédéric

de Senarclens closed his gallery in 2015 and founded

the online sales platform ArtAndOnly, which oicially

launched in October as “a new and innovative

marketplace”. Costs were key to his decision: “I was

shipping works from the US to Singapore and then selling

them back to the US.” He is targeting the higher end of

the market: his site is currently ofering a work by Damien

Hirst, Skin Cancer (2007), for $700,000.

Michael Nelson

Jagamara’s Five

Stories (1984)

sold at Sotheby’s

in London in

September for

£401,000—more

than double its

estimate

Art Market