The value of art sold at auction in Australia took another slide last year, writes our special correspondent. But the slide was less pronounced as the year went on. Lacking anything like the previous year's Picasso "muse," it was a little less tragic than the final figures suggest.
Sales by Australian art auction houses were down from $114.68 million to $88.17 million in 2009. The dip took the 2009 sales total back to below the 2005 level of $93.5 million.
But for a year in which Sotheby's Australia returned to market leadership, and the business was paradoxically was sold off, the figures are not as uninspiring as they appear.
The 23 per cent fall in 2009 was much less than the previous year's 35 per cent.
The AASD figures include all art sold at auction within Australia, regardless of nationality of the artist.
The 2008 figures included the sale by Deutscher-Menzies of Picasso's Sylvia Muse for $6.9 million, and an Andy Warhol for $1.2 million.
Excluding sales of art by non-Australian artists, which in 2009 were a whopping $17.02 million, the value of Australian art sold at auction during the year was down from $86.09 million to $70.357 million - an 18.2 per cent fall.
But the shy vendors mostly kept their big ticket landscapes - both bleak and lush - off an unpredictable market.
An exception was the November re-offering by Bonhams and Goodman of Eugene von Guerard's painting of green rolling hills, The Great Lake, Tasmania 1875, and its treatment by buyers explains why.
The high profile work (it had hung in a National Trust of Victoria property for many years) cost the purchaser $1.86 million in 2007.
Bidding this time fell short of the $800,000 lower estimate, although the vendors had hoped for as much as $1.2 million.
The global financial crisis appears to have hit the upper end of the market hardest. Sales of lower priced art were exceptionally well attended and prices keenly bid.
Sotheby's sales total of $24.1 in the latest year just pipped the combined Menzies Art Brands' (Deutscher-Menzies plus Lawson-Menzies) total of $22.8 million. MAB had been in the ascendancy for the last three years.
Deutscher and Hackett came in third at $14.2 million, while Bonhams and Goodman turned over $11.2 million.
The paradox is that the smallest (by value of sales) of the big four major auction houses took over the largest.
Market share amongst the four major auction houses was lead by Sotheby's with 27% of the market; MAB 26%, Deutscher and Hackett 16% and B and G with 13%. Beyond the big four, the other auction houses accounted for 18% of the market.
Only two paintings and an auction house changed hands this year for over $1 million.
Tim Goodman and associates purchased the Sotheby's franchise in Australia for a reported $3 million, just before the year end sales were about to be held.
This will see the disappearance of one of the big four Australian auction houses from the auctioneering fraternity - Bonhams and Goodman - its operation being combined with of Sotheby's Australia.
The two lots selling for over $1 million, were the $1.38 million achieved for Evening Sky, Upway, 1965 at the Deutscher and Hackett sale on November 25 and the $1.32 million sale of Brett Whiteley's Sunrise, Japanese: Good Morning! 1988 at Deutscher-Menzies on September 23.
In the previous year seven paintings sold for over $1 million, including four at over $1.5 million.
Underlining the shift in confidence, to experience and tradition, seven of the top 10 works were by non-indigenous arts. Two of the three were by "seniors" Charles Blackman and Jeffrey Smart.
As the economy improved during the year, vendors became less reluctant to consign.
The improvement in the market was too late for Sotheby's to reconsider - even if it had vaguely wanted to - the deal with Mr Tim Goodman's First Eastern Auction group which saw the subsidiary nature of the Sotheby's Australia operation recast as a franchise agreement.
The merged group obviously may shed some vendors as they re-consider their contact base. The head of art at Sotheby's, Georgina Pemberton, has left while Tim Klingender, the Aboriginal art specialist, remains for a limited period in an overseer role.
The First Eastern Auction group's turnover is expected alternately to grow from the inclusion, by referral to other members - Leonard Joel in Melbourne and Bay East Auctions in Sydney - by the new Sotheby's operation, of works of a lesser value which Sotheby's had previously declined to accept, therefore affecting the "Other" listing of the AASD.
The Aboriginal market, anxious about voluminous and uneven contemporary production. appeared confident primarily with quality "blue chip" material and art with historical importance or a tribal leaning.
This was certainly how Sotheby's, a determined Deutscher and Hackett and Mossgreen Auctions designed their sales.
Aboriginal art sales were relatively steady at $11.4 million compared with 2008, but down from $23.8 million in 2007
Not entirely strangers to the top 10 list, none of the Aboriginal art works came close to $1 million in the latest period.
The top price was $528,000 for a Rover Thomas and the second highest price $508,000 for a work by William Barak, who in the late 19th century did stick figure Lowry-like observations of white settlement.
Two of Barak's work were among the top 10 priced Aboriginal art works in 2009 at Aboriginal auctions with slimmer catalogues featuring older material, especially barks.
However, although sold in Australia, the Barak price suggests two distinct markets may be developing for Aboriginal art.
It appeared to carry a premium because, consigned by a Paris vendor, it could be re-exported.
None of the top 10 Aboriginal works were contemporary, and all the works were by deceased artists.
A large number of Aboriginal sales have also fallen off the radar due to warehouse sales.
Overall, auctioneers appear to have been exercising more sway over vendors' unrealistic expectations, no longer pursuing the profitless prosperity of borderline lots.
The year saw a modest upturn in percentage of lots sold.
Of the 17,536 lots offered in 2008 11,497 or 66 per cent were reported sold in 2008.
This year, as the GFC began to bite, an only marginally improved 68 per cent or 11,175 of the 16,322 works offered in Australia sold.
This was on a big shift from a sellers to a buyers market, the latter still sustained marginally - according to anecdote - by a traditional switch from financial assets to real assets when the former fail.
Government tax incentives for corporate art purchases heavily promoted by the commercial gallery trade may have helped as gallery closures were rare and mostly small time over the period.
The New Zealand art market shrank from 4440 works sold for $NZ18.66 million ($A15.6 million) to 3490 works for $NZ15.33 million ($A12.17 million) again suggesting the economic scenario across the Tasman is not hugely different (worse) than Australia, as is widely reported.
In terms of the number of works traded for individual artists in Australia, little changed. The market continued in 2009 as before, with changes caused occasionally by the appearance of an estate, such as that of James Gleeson pouring many works onto the market.
The four top spots were once again occupied by Pro Hart 346 paintings against 350 in 2008); Charles Blackman (259 against 305) and Sidney Nolan (196 against 235) and Norman Lindsay 192 (216).
