Slain Gold Magnate's art sale may fetch SA record - South African ...
Slain Gold Magnate's art sale may fetch SA record - South African ...
Slain Gold Magnate's art sale may fetch SA record - South African ...
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Nicky Smith<br />
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- The <strong>sale</strong> of the <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong><br />
<strong>art</strong> collection of murdered gold mining magnate<br />
Brett Kebble <strong>may</strong> <strong>fetch</strong> the most ever paid for a<br />
collection of local works.<br />
The collection of 20th-century pieces <strong>may</strong> raise as<br />
much as 100 million rand ($11 million) when it goes<br />
under the hammer on May 7, Graham Britz, director<br />
of <strong>sale</strong>s of Graham’s Fine Art Gallery in Johannesburg,<br />
said in an interview today. The collection<br />
includes <strong>art</strong>ists such as Irma Stern, J.H. Pierneef and<br />
Walter Battiss.<br />
“People will still pay top dollar for top quality,” said<br />
Britz. “There is a lot at stake. We’re aiming for a<br />
<strong>record</strong> price paid for a <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> painting. It will<br />
also be a <strong>record</strong> for a collective body of works sold<br />
on <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> soil in a single session.”<br />
Kebble, died in his car in Johannesburg in September<br />
2005 at the age of 41 after being shot seven<br />
times in what the main suspect for his murder has<br />
said was an “assisted suicide.” Since his death,<br />
JCI Ltd. and Rand<strong>Gold</strong> & Exploration Co. Ltd. have<br />
lodged a claim seeking 2 billion rand from his estate,<br />
SOUTH AFRICAN<br />
BUSINESS ART<br />
saying he illegally sold assets during his tenure as<br />
Chief Executive Officer of both companies.<br />
During his 11-year gold mining career Kebble led<br />
companies that created two of <strong>South</strong> Africa’s top<br />
four gold producers, and began the development<br />
of <strong>South</strong> Deep, the world’s largest gold deposit. He<br />
also helped lead the 1997 acquisition of a 35 percent<br />
stake in JCI from Anglo American Plc for $650 million,<br />
at the time the biggest attempt after ap<strong>art</strong>heid to<br />
boost black ownership of <strong>South</strong> Africa’s economy.<br />
Top Prices<br />
The collection of 133 items includes Stern’s<br />
“Woman Sewing Karos” and “Mother and Child,”<br />
Alexis Preller’s “Christ Head” and Maria Magdalena<br />
Laubser’s “Portrait of an Old Woman with Head<br />
Scarf: Landscape in Background.” It also has pieces<br />
from Vladimir Tretchikoff, William Kentridge, J.E.A.<br />
Volschenk and Pieter Venning.<br />
The <strong>sale</strong>, for which a catalog will become available<br />
April 16, comes as the auction value increased for<br />
<strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong> this year.<br />
Strauss & Co. raised a <strong>record</strong> 38 million rand for<br />
Art Bank Joburg faces challenges<br />
Michael Coulson<br />
Halfway through the initial five-year period in which it<br />
was hoping to break even, the Jo’burg Metro’s struggling<br />
pioneer <strong>art</strong> bank is to adopt a new business<br />
plan and move to a new location.<br />
The Canadian <strong>art</strong> bank on which Art Bank Joburg is<br />
modeled took nine years to break even, and CEO<br />
Antoinette Murdoch admitted recently that this sort of<br />
time horizon is probably more realistic. The Joburg<br />
Metro Council invested R5m in Art Bank Joburg, of<br />
which R3.1m has been spent on <strong>art</strong> works. According<br />
to Joburg cultural supremo Steven Sack, a council<br />
report, which has not yet been publicly released,<br />
estimates that another R4.5m is needed to make the<br />
body self-sufficient.<br />
So far, the <strong>art</strong> bank has acquired 30 clients, of which<br />
60% are public-sector (mostly municipal) and the<br />
balance private-sector. It owns 1 090 <strong>art</strong> works by<br />
290 individual<br />
<strong>art</strong>ists with a total value<br />
of R3.1m. The average value of R2 830 reflects the<br />
bank’s remit to encourage developing <strong>art</strong>ists, and<br />
Sack points out that the maximum price the bank<br />
<strong>may</strong> pay for a work is R15 000.<br />
They are hired out at 20% of market value, and<br />
revalued every year, so this income should rise<br />
gradually, but clearly not at a rate which will make the<br />
venture economic in the foreseeable future.<br />
Sack in fact would like to spend another R7m on <strong>art</strong>,<br />
taking the stock to R10m, which should make the<br />
<strong>art</strong> bank profitable but, he admits, will take several<br />
years.<br />
He concedes that current tight economic conditions<br />
are unpropitious for raising funds from the corporate<br />
sector, but has several creative ideas for getting<br />
around this. For example, a client <strong>may</strong> be prepared<br />
to buy <strong>art</strong>, donate it to the bank and display it in its<br />
own premises, but only st<strong>art</strong> to pay “rent” some years<br />
later. He reminded me that the <strong>art</strong>s White Paper<br />
recommended that the Dep<strong>art</strong>ment of Arts & Culture<br />
April 2009 | Supplement to The <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> Art Times | To order and subscribe call 021 424 7733 | E-mail: subs@<strong>art</strong>times.co.za | P<strong>art</strong> of the Global Art Information Group<br />
Bidders do battle at Strauss & Co inaugural auction at The Johannesburg Country Club. Its March 9 maiden <strong>sale</strong> at the Jo’burg Country Club was about 87% sold, and grossed R37m, against the pre-<strong>sale</strong> estimate of between R30m-R40m.<br />
<strong>Slain</strong> <strong>Gold</strong> Magnate’s <strong>art</strong> <strong>sale</strong> <strong>may</strong> <strong>fetch</strong> <strong>SA</strong> <strong>record</strong><br />
<strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong> at an auction held March 8 in<br />
Johannesburg, including 7.15 million rand for Stern’s<br />
still life portrait “Magnolias in an E<strong>art</strong>henware Pot,”<br />
according to its Web site.<br />
“Brett knew his <strong>art</strong> and over the years he has collected<br />
quite valuable <strong>art</strong>,” Jack Rosewitz, deputy<br />
chairman of Johannesburg-based Stephan Welz<br />
& Co. in Association with Sotheby’s, said in an<br />
interview. “He had an enormous collection and <strong>South</strong><br />
<strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong> is quite hot on the local market.”<br />
Missing Items<br />
London-based Bonhams last month achieved<br />
<strong>record</strong> prices for 12 <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong>ists, including<br />
Laubser’s “Indian Girl With Poinsettias,” which sold<br />
for 276,000 pounds ($402,546), beating pre-<strong>sale</strong><br />
estimates of 100,000 pounds to 150,000 pounds,<br />
while a piece by Preller sold for more than double the<br />
highest predicted amount, according its Web Site.<br />
Kebble’s Stern painting of “Woman Sewing Karos,” a<br />
1929 oil on canvas has been “conservatively valued”<br />
at between 5 million rand and 7 million rand, Britz<br />
said. The most ever paid for a Stern work was 7.39<br />
million rand for her 1946 piece “Congolese Woman”<br />
set up a national <strong>art</strong> bank. It hasn’t done so (which<br />
will come as no surprise to cultural workers), which<br />
could make it possible for Art Bank Joburg to take<br />
over this role.<br />
It’s also possible that the Metro Council could be<br />
persuaded to supplement its original investment.<br />
And, finally, when it can produce three years’ audited<br />
accounts – which shouldn’t be that far away -- the<br />
<strong>art</strong> bank could apply for national lottery money.<br />
But the <strong>art</strong> bank is not sitting idly waiting for manna<br />
from heaven. As well as developing its existing activities,<br />
it’s co-ordinating the commissioning of a large<br />
tribute to Walter and Albertina Sisulu that the Metro<br />
Council plans to erect in Loveday St in Braamfontein.<br />
This will be a major piece of public sculpture, for<br />
which there’s a budget for labour and materials of<br />
up to R600 000 – though not all of this has yet been<br />
raised. The target date for completion is June this<br />
year, though this could be optimistic as it will require<br />
a tight time scale and such projects trend to lag<br />
behind schedule.<br />
at a December 2007 Christie’s International Plc<br />
auction, which included the “hammer price” and extra<br />
charges, Britz said. Preller’s “Christ Head” has been<br />
valued between 2 million rand and 3 million rand,<br />
Britz said.<br />
A team of forensic investigators is still trying to find<br />
as many as 15 items missing from the collection,<br />
Hans Klopper, the managing director of Independent<br />
Corporate Recovery Advisors, said in a phone<br />
interview from Stellenbosch, <strong>South</strong> Africa. Klopper<br />
is winding down Kebble’s estate, which includes<br />
10 million rand of Kebble’s personal debts, such as<br />
mortgages and car finance.<br />
Galleries will be put on alert for the missing items<br />
and rewards <strong>may</strong> be offered if pieces are returned,<br />
he said. Kebble in 2003 st<strong>art</strong>ed the Brett Kebble Art<br />
Awards, which his family stopped after his death.<br />
The administrators are also “chasing approximately<br />
35 million rand to 40 million rand” missing from the<br />
estate, Klopper said. “These were things such as<br />
donations and payments made at a time when his<br />
estate was hopelessly insolvent.”<br />
http://www.bloomberg.com<br />
The bank, which announced last year that it was<br />
to move from Newtown to the old premises of the<br />
Sandton Civic Gallery, is now to relocate to Spark,<br />
the old electricity sub-station in Norwood which has<br />
seen sporadic success as an <strong>art</strong> gallery and craft<br />
centre but has never really fulfilled the potential held<br />
out by its attractive space.<br />
So it’s clear that the institution faces major challenges.<br />
If the new business plan doesn’t bring it closer to<br />
break-even fairly soon,<br />
one must wonder for how long the Metro Council<br />
– which doesn’t attach a high priority to the visual<br />
<strong>art</strong>s, judging by how the Joburg Art Gallery is starved<br />
of resources – will be prepared to carry it.<br />
And there’s one last wild card in the pack. Murdoch<br />
is widely tipped as a front-runner to succeed Clive<br />
Kellner as curator of JAG. Should this happen,<br />
for all Sack’s commitment to the <strong>art</strong> bank, another<br />
unwelcome element of uncertainty would enter the<br />
equation.<br />
Michael Coulson<br />
LATEST SOUTH AFRICA ART AUCTION MARKET UPDATE<br />
After a spate of poor to mediocre results both in <strong>SA</strong><br />
and London, the latest two <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong> auctions held by<br />
long-established Stephan Welz/Sotheby’s (Swelco)<br />
and newcomer Strauss & Co and brought better<br />
results, in terms of the percentage of lots sold<br />
and prices compared to pre-<strong>sale</strong> estimates. Is this<br />
sustainable, or just a temporary rally in a bear market<br />
– a dead cat bounce, in stock market parlance?<br />
Both firms are guardedly optimistic. Strauss’s<br />
Stephan Welz says “My gut tells me that it can last,”<br />
while Swelco’s fine <strong>art</strong> expert in Cape Town, Phillippa<br />
Duncan, is even more positive. “Certainly it’s sustainable,”<br />
she says. “People want to protect their <strong>art</strong><br />
collections, which they see as a major asset. If they<br />
can’t get the price they want, they’ll simply hold on<br />
for a less rainy day.”<br />
But there are reservations.<br />
Welz warns that “There’ll be serious problems at the<br />
lower end of the market, which will have to reorientate<br />
itself. Some <strong>art</strong>ists’ work has been bought for<br />
social and political reasons more than <strong>art</strong>istic merit.<br />
“What you could call ‘calendar’ <strong>art</strong> <strong>may</strong> also face<br />
tough times. The market for [Johan] Oldert has<br />
virtually disappeared, while prices for, say, Gabriel de<br />
Jongh have barely moved in the past five years.”<br />
Duncan stresses that quality will be vital. Both clearly<br />
feel that the fact that Bonham’s was left with 20 of<br />
the 27 Irma Sterns in its pre-Christmas <strong>sale</strong> had as<br />
much to do with their quality as with any weakness<br />
in demand for the <strong>art</strong>ist, though Welz (basking in the<br />
near-<strong>record</strong> for Magnolias in his <strong>sale</strong>) does think that<br />
she <strong>may</strong> have peaked for now – as <strong>may</strong> Pierneef,<br />
and even Maggie Laubser.<br />
Peak prices <strong>may</strong> themselves give people pause, he<br />
says. “They <strong>may</strong> think, why I should I spend R4m or<br />
whatever on a Stern when I can buy a very pleasant<br />
Terrence McCaw for R60 000-R80 000? Or, higher<br />
up the scale, a Hugo Naude?”<br />
But if the market as a whole is sustainable, which<br />
second-liners or outsiders <strong>may</strong> narrow the gap with<br />
Stern and Pierneef in the months ahead?<br />
Duncan is reluctant to be drawn. “It’s dangerous<br />
to be a tipster. People must st<strong>art</strong> buying what they<br />
like again. And despite the collapse of the market<br />
for contemporary <strong>art</strong> internationally, it’s becoming<br />
stronger locally.<br />
“However, contemporary <strong>art</strong>ists must temper their<br />
often unrealistic expectations. It’s taken [William]<br />
Kentridge 20 years to reach his current status, and<br />
he has every right to command the prices he does.<br />
But it’s problematical when newcomers think they<br />
can expect the same.”<br />
Welz is more forthcoming – or foolhardy.<br />
“There’s a lot of room for Hugo Naude still. The<br />
market loves his cheerful floral landscapes. Alexis<br />
Preller could come in for a run, helped by the imminent<br />
publication of an authoritative book on him<br />
(sponsored by Gordon Schachat). And there’s always<br />
interest in Maud Sumner. Two with a lot of steam left<br />
in them are Freida Lock and Adolph Jentsch, though<br />
they’re held back by a lack of supply.”<br />
Supply is crucial. “I thought that after getting<br />
R1.4m for a Dorothy Kay [who many think is unduly<br />
neglected] we’d be inundated by her work, but we<br />
haven’t been offered a thing! The good people of<br />
Port Elizabeth [where she lived and worked] either<br />
don’t follow the market or are inseparably attached to<br />
their Kays.”<br />
I throw another PE name, a favourite of mine, at<br />
him: Fred Page. “He’s an amazing <strong>art</strong>ist, but not<br />
everyone’s idea of a pleasing picture. A book’s being<br />
put together on him, too, though I hear they <strong>may</strong> be<br />
looking for sponsorship.”<br />
Recent interest in Tretchikoff, driven by one “total<br />
aberration of a price”, he dismisses as speculative<br />
rather than from genuine collectors – though he<br />
insists that, despite neither of Strauss’s Tretchis being<br />
accorded a price in the post-<strong>sale</strong> list, he did sell<br />
one of them.<br />
Remarkably, neither Welz nor Duncan see the world<br />
economic crisis as a major threat. Duncan reckons<br />
that the rich will still be buying quality paintings; Welz<br />
adds that his firm’s clients – though he’s not specific,<br />
this means traditional middle- and upper-income<br />
whites and the emerging black elite – haven’t been<br />
hit by recession – yet. And he believes that, if Zimbabwe<br />
is to be reconstructed, the knock-on benefits<br />
for <strong>SA</strong> will be substantial.<br />
He’s also encouraged by the breadth of buying at the<br />
Strauss <strong>sale</strong>. “There weren’t just one or two buyers,<br />
but a healthy spread.”<br />
Next big test, both agree, will be the Brett Kebble<br />
<strong>sale</strong> in May – but again with reservations. As Duncan<br />
puts it, she fears that Kebble often bought by name<br />
rather than quality. Well, we’ll soon find out.
02 BUSINESS ART | APRIL 09 ART PROFILES<br />
Michael Coulson<br />
It’s ironic that one who worked so long to subvert<br />
ap<strong>art</strong>heid now operates from a building that was<br />
once the head office of that bastion of separate<br />
development, the Johannesburg Housing Dep<strong>art</strong>ment.<br />
On the ground floor, next to the lift that leads<br />
up to Stephen Sack’s office, is a 1980s plaque commemorating<br />
that use, replete with old-era names like<br />
Venter, Du Toit, Burger (a brace of them, in fact) and<br />
Du Toit. The building itself is somewhat older, and<br />
Johannesburg’s director of <strong>art</strong>s, culture and heritage<br />
occupies a pleasantly old-fashioned, 1950s-type<br />
spacious wood-panelled office.<br />
Not that spacious implies uncluttered. The room is<br />
stacked with objects of <strong>art</strong>, prominent being the proposed<br />
maquettes for the sculpture of legendary jazz<br />
muso Kippie Moeketsi it’s planned to erect outside a<br />
re-opened Kippie’s.<br />
Sack’s father is the well-known architect Monty<br />
Sack, so he grew up in a creative environment. He<br />
studied fine <strong>art</strong>, <strong>art</strong> history and <strong>art</strong> education at Wits<br />
and Unisa, and worked for a while as a teacher, but<br />
he made his name as curator of The Negelected<br />
Tradition.<br />
This revisionist historical survey of <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong>, which<br />
he says converted him from a political activist to a<br />
cultural activist, ran at the Jo’burg Art Gallery from<br />
November 1988 to January 1989. Together with<br />
Ricky Burnett’s Tributaries, it awakened white <strong>art</strong><br />
lovers to the realisation that alongside the Pierneefs,<br />
Wennings and Coetzers was a whole parallel world<br />
of black <strong>art</strong>ists, the Mohls, Pembas, Ngatanes and<br />
Sekotos, of which they knew nothing -- or, at any<br />
rate, next to nothing.<br />
Subsequently Sack curated a number of exhibitions,<br />
including the People’s Park Pace Building, seen<br />
in several <strong>SA</strong> museums and in Sweden, and The<br />
<strong>African</strong> Carousel, which he describes as a functional<br />
merry-go-round made by 10 <strong>art</strong>ists for the Oliewenhout<br />
museum in Bloemfontein, from 1994-1996. His<br />
initial five-year contract in Jo’burg expires at the end<br />
of this year, though it <strong>may</strong> be renewed by mutual<br />
consent.<br />
Sack says his directorate has been housed in a<br />
number of municipal dep<strong>art</strong>ments but seems to feel<br />
that its present home within the dep<strong>art</strong>ment of community<br />
development is appropriate. The dep<strong>art</strong>ment’s<br />
main mandate is to overcome social poverty, and the<br />
<strong>art</strong>s are a major tool in that effort.<br />
Sack points out that few cities in Africa, and indeed<br />
within <strong>SA</strong>, have a directorate like his.<br />
His brief naturally covers more than the visual <strong>art</strong>s.<br />
For instance, he says the city takes great pride in the<br />
achievements of the Jo’burg (previously Civic) Theatre,<br />
and recognises the importance of <strong>art</strong>s, culture<br />
and -- especially -- heritage -- more specifically, the<br />
heritage of the previously disadvantaged.<br />
But given the seemingly limitless demands on the<br />
public purse to provide far more basic services, how<br />
does a municipal authority justify spending money on<br />
what many see as luxuries, and what is its role in the<br />
process?<br />
He concedes that a municipality’s primary role is the<br />
provision of basic infrastructural services. In cultural<br />
services, it must be more of a catalyst, developing<br />
p<strong>art</strong>nerships with the community and private sector.<br />
The Jo’burg Theatre, for instance, receives a R15m<br />
annual grant and generates about R16m in box<br />
office revenue, so in effect is a 50:50 public:private<br />
p<strong>art</strong>nership.<br />
And the planned new R60m theatre in Soweto has<br />
been made possible by making building it a condition<br />
of granting the rights to a major new property<br />
development.<br />
In terms of the visual <strong>art</strong>s, he sees the role of the<br />
public sector as providing an enabling environment --<br />
buildings and staff. The institution must then develop<br />
its own resources -- as, he says, Clive Kellner did<br />
at the Jo’burg Art Gallery, presenting exhibitions like<br />
Africa Remix.<br />
In effect, though, this means that Sack is basically a<br />
fund-raiser -- as, he says, he was when he was working<br />
in national government.<br />
“The important thing is the project, whatever it <strong>may</strong><br />
be. But we’re never fully budgeted at the st<strong>art</strong> of the<br />
year. We always have to work on keeping existing<br />
p<strong>art</strong>nerships going and finding new ones.”<br />
Optimistically, Sack believes that, if you devise a<br />
viable project, sponsorship and funding generally<br />
fall into place. Last year’s Africa Day, for instance,<br />
st<strong>art</strong>ed with an R800 000 allocation but ended up<br />
with R13m.<br />
“It can be a harrowing process, but by the end of the<br />
day if it’s a good project that excites people, sponsors<br />
will generally emerge.”<br />
While this <strong>may</strong> have been true in more prosperous<br />
times, it will surely be a much bigger challenge in a<br />
recessionary phase. Companies are already cutting<br />
back on <strong>art</strong>s spending as a “soft” way of making<br />
economies.<br />
He points out that his is by no means the only directorate<br />
that has to find innovative sources of revenue,<br />
citing the public:private p<strong>art</strong>nership that’s redeveloping<br />
the old Paterson Park sports facility in Norwood,<br />
which is being extended to incorporate the old Spark!<br />
<strong>art</strong> space, new home of the Jo’burg Art Bank.<br />
There’s also potential to redeploy existing underused<br />
assets. Here, he mentions the old mobile library<br />
buses, which the Transport Museum’s chief curator<br />
Peter Hall (son of John Hall, founder of the museum)<br />
is converting into mobile museums that will be taken<br />
to poor communities all over the city.<br />
And a major achievement is the public <strong>art</strong> policy,<br />
whereby all infrastructure projects costing more than<br />
R10m must agree to spend p<strong>art</strong> of the budget -- ideally,<br />
1% -- on <strong>art</strong>. This will apply, for instance, to all<br />
the Bus Rapid Transit Stations, so will bring a lot of<br />
<strong>art</strong> to the old Townships.<br />
The Kippie Moeketsie statue is in fact p<strong>art</strong> of this<br />
initiative.<br />
“We’ve created more public <strong>art</strong> in the past three<br />
years than in the entire previous history of the city.<br />
And much of it commemorates political figures<br />
ignored or vilified by the previous regime, like the<br />
Sisulus.”<br />
To Sack, the <strong>art</strong> scene created space for a nonracial<br />
community under ap<strong>art</strong>heid, laying an important basis<br />
for the new <strong>SA</strong>. Old-era institutions like JAG have<br />
already st<strong>art</strong>ed to shift to embrace black <strong>art</strong>ists, black<br />
audiences and a progressive discourse. Whether he<br />
renews his contract or not, the pressure to use <strong>art</strong><br />
as a transformational influence in society will clearly<br />
continue.<br />
Antoinette Murdoch has had a long standing relationship<br />
with the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Recently<br />
appointed as the Chief Curator of JAG, Murdoch<br />
was smitten with the gallery when a maverick young<br />
school mate took her there for the first time on a date<br />
during her matric year.<br />
“I fell in love with JAG at that moment” says Murdoch.<br />
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for<br />
the hapless chap! She describes standing in front of<br />
Penny Siopis’s Melancholia as her “eureka” moment,<br />
which led to a career of studying, practicing and<br />
managing visual <strong>art</strong>. Now, a mere 18 years later, she<br />
has been appointed to the helm of the institution she<br />
revered.<br />
“This position does not come up very often,” states<br />
Murdoch.” With at least 5 year contracts, this sort<br />
of position is usually held for 8 years or more.” She<br />
explained about her decision to apply for the post at<br />
this relatively early point in her career.<br />
Murdoch’s contract is for 5 years.<br />
However at 36, Murdoch is certainly not one of the<br />
gallery’s youngest Chief Curators, as industry gossip<br />
seems to believe. She joins the esteemed company<br />
of late Pat Senior who took the helm at aged in 1977<br />
(age 33), Christopher Till who was appointed to the<br />
post in 1983 (age 32), Nel Erasmus (aged 36 at the<br />
st<strong>art</strong> of her tenure) and more recently, Clive Kelner,<br />
who was appointed at 36 in 2004..<br />
Undeterred by industry skepticism, Murdoch points<br />
out that the same critical analyses dogged her<br />
appointment as CEO of the Joburg Art Bank, an<br />
organization she has managed for 3 years, from its<br />
inception. It is significant to note that during this period,<br />
Murdoch had to navigate the institution through<br />
some very tough times, with operating funding cut<br />
off suddenly in year three due to factors beyond her<br />
control, despite the original business plan to the contrary.<br />
“It was either shut up shop or do other things to<br />
survive the period.” Says Murdoch.<br />
The Bank’s strategy of taking on projects and<br />
diversifying their core tasks, although much criticized<br />
and misunderstood by the industry, has seen the Art<br />
Bank generate operational budget that now ensures<br />
its return to its core function this year.<br />
It is this sort of challenging experience that will stand<br />
her in good stead for the task ahead of filling the<br />
shoes, with her six 5 feet, left by previous Chief<br />
Curator, Clive Kellner.<br />
“Clive did a great job. He has done so much to re-vitalise<br />
JAG, having inherited an organization that was<br />
fraught with challenges, both internal and external”<br />
she says.<br />
“When Clive took over, that p<strong>art</strong> of town was a no go<br />
area, which presents a real problem if you are in the<br />
business of attracting visitors to a public facility.”<br />
On a more personal note, Murdoch will surely<br />
encounter some real challenges balancing her career<br />
as a practicing visual <strong>art</strong>ist and that of Chief Curator<br />
of arguably the country’s foremost museum, and<br />
the biggest gallery on the sub-continent. She won’t<br />
be the first senior <strong>art</strong> manager to pursue a career<br />
as an <strong>art</strong>ist in tandem, but she will certainly be the<br />
most watched one, for the moment. Murdoch is<br />
unequivocal however, citing her foremost goal in life<br />
is to ultimately only make <strong>art</strong>. However like all <strong>art</strong>ists,<br />
“there are bills to pay and life to be lived until one can<br />
sustain oneself with <strong>art</strong> making alone.”<br />
“ I faced that choice early on” says Murdoch.” I could<br />
either work in an unrelated industry, or work where<br />
my knowledge and experience lies.”<br />
Murdoch, who does not take up the position until<br />
the 1 April is hesitant to give any specific plans she<br />
has, citing her desire to get to grips with the detail<br />
of the institution before committing herself publicly.<br />
She does however believe that the role of a museum<br />
goes beyond the local scope. “It has a significant<br />
role in terms of how the <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong> industry<br />
is viewed internationally and we should continue to<br />
engage in opportunities around leveraging JAG on<br />
an international platform”<br />
She expands on this by adding that while the role of<br />
the museum is to accumulate and safeguard <strong>South</strong><br />
<strong>African</strong> heritage through its acquisition policies, a<br />
less exploited role of the Museum should also be<br />
to showcase international <strong>art</strong>ists to a local audience,<br />
and hopes to consider bringing key <strong>art</strong>ist’s to<br />
exhibit in <strong>South</strong> Africa. (This is however said with the<br />
disclaimer that at present Murdoch is not in possession<br />
of the budget nor detailed existing policies of the<br />
Museum in this regard).<br />
In the meantime, <strong>South</strong> Africa’s <strong>art</strong> industry is watching<br />
with interest to see if Murdoch’s love affair with<br />
JAG will become a successful marriage.<br />
Additional: For public interest<br />
The Johannesburg Art Gallery operates in the following<br />
manner:<br />
Operational:<br />
It falls under the City of Johannesburg, with the<br />
director of Art Culture and Heritage Services as its<br />
Director. This position is currently held by Stephen<br />
Sack. Operating budgets are allocated by the city,<br />
and expenditure is approved by the COJ on the<br />
recommendation of the Chief Curator.<br />
Exhibitions:<br />
There is a Curatorial staff of 4<br />
Chief Curator, Curator: Contemporary Collections,<br />
Curator: Historical collections, Curator: <strong>South</strong>ern<br />
<strong>African</strong> Traditional <strong>African</strong> Art.<br />
Exhibitions are motivated by the Curator concerned<br />
and approved by the Chief Curator in consultation<br />
with the Curator concerned.<br />
Acquisitions:<br />
An acquisitions committee, made up of the Chief<br />
Curator, the three curators listed above, independent<br />
members of the public (from all walks of life, from <strong>art</strong><br />
professionals to others) and the gallery’s Registrar.<br />
The acquisitions committee is independent of the<br />
City and draws its main funds from the Angle American<br />
Centenary Trust Fund.<br />
Works bequeathed by individuals or organizations<br />
must also be approved by the acquisitions committee.<br />
Additional project funding generated by sponsorships<br />
and The Friends activities are handled on a case by<br />
case basis.<br />
Photo: Taryn Cohn Photo: Victor Dlamini<br />
Stephen Sack Antoinette Murdoch Monna Mokoena<br />
Director of The Momo Art Gallery, Johannesburg<br />
People are drawn to become gallerists in many<br />
strange ways. For Monna Mokoena, proprietor of<br />
Momo gallery in Johannesburg’s Parktown North, the<br />
early inspiration was the glamorous locations of the<br />
fashion shoots and the <strong>art</strong>icles on <strong>art</strong> in the fashion<br />
magazines bought by his father, an itinerant seller of<br />
clothing on the mines.<br />
However, it wasn’t a straight line from there – it<br />
seldom is. After matriculating, he wanted to become<br />
a lawyer specialising in musicians’ rights. There was<br />
no such specialist course available, so after doing a<br />
BJuris at Fort Hare, rather than join a general legal<br />
p<strong>art</strong>nership he went into a successful p<strong>art</strong>nership<br />
selling air time for cell phones.<br />
That collapsed while he was away on a prolonged<br />
overseas trip. On his return he sat down to make the<br />
hard decision on what he really wanted to be, and<br />
that proved to be the crucial moment.<br />
He’d often visited the Everard Read Gallery, which<br />
he considered a great institution in a great space. He<br />
persuaded Mark Read to take him on, in effect as an<br />
unpaid intern, and spent two years there.<br />
“It was the best education in the world. I hold the<br />
people there, but especially Mark, in the highest<br />
regard. No just for the quality of the business, but<br />
also for the gallery’s business ethic. I tried to model<br />
myself on how I saw Mark engaging with clients.<br />
They also educated me in the history of <strong>art</strong>.”<br />
After those two years it was time to move on, and<br />
Mokoena set up as a private and corporate <strong>art</strong><br />
consultant. But he found that the first question a<br />
consultant is asked is, “Do you have a gallery?” So<br />
this led to the idea of establishing a space, and in<br />
2003 Momo opened its doors.<br />
Every gallery has to establish its niche, and Mokoena’s<br />
USP was to concentrate on contemporary <strong>art</strong>.<br />
He felt that no other gallery was doing this; even<br />
the Goodman was then only handling established<br />
<strong>art</strong>ists (black and white), though it has become more<br />
adventurous.<br />
Mokoena is often seen as the purveyor of <strong>art</strong> to the<br />
black diamonds, but he stresses that his gallery<br />
does not specifically handle black <strong>art</strong>ists. Indeed,<br />
he wouldn’t want to be labeled like that. But it’s<br />
inevitable that the demographics of contemporary <strong>art</strong><br />
should correspond ever more closely to those of the<br />
population at large.<br />
And Mokoena concedes that, whatever hangs on<br />
his gallery’s walls, much of his business still consists<br />
Now available:<br />
of dealing in the <strong>SA</strong> “masters”. He’s still active as a<br />
consultant. At various times he’s advised the likes of<br />
the JSE, Nedcor, Vodacom, the IDC, Allan Gray and<br />
the Gauteng legislature; however much such bodies<br />
want to be seen to encourage new <strong>art</strong>ists, they can’t<br />
ignore the established names.<br />
And Mokoena the consultant has to wear a different<br />
hat from Mokoena the gallerist. A corporate collection<br />
has to have a policy and identity that <strong>may</strong> not be<br />
the same as the gallery’s. You must resist the urge<br />
to favour your own <strong>art</strong>ists and be true to the cause<br />
of building the collection, regardless of where you<br />
source works.<br />
Though he’s reluctant to give away trade secrets,<br />
Mokoena is confident that he’s built up a successful<br />
business with its own individual way of working that<br />
doesn’t just replicate what his competitors are doing.<br />
That it’s a risky business, especially when he st<strong>art</strong>ed,<br />
he doesn’t deny. All the more so, perhaps, in that<br />
he has no institutional backing or wealthy individual<br />
behind him. He <strong>may</strong> take all he profits, but he also<br />
bears any losses in full.<br />
He’s had approaches from potential investors, but so<br />
far that’s the way he wants it. “Of course, there <strong>may</strong><br />
come a time when I want to cash in my chips.”<br />
And he reckons the formula works. On the one side,<br />
young <strong>art</strong>ists approach him for shows. On the other,<br />
his approach is becoming more global: he brings<br />
foreign <strong>art</strong>ists, often one with <strong>African</strong> links, to <strong>SA</strong>.<br />
“That’s the next wave: <strong>art</strong> must be a two-way street,”<br />
he says, and hints that his ultimate dream is to have<br />
a string of galleries – or associates – elsewhere in<br />
the continent.<br />
But that <strong>may</strong> be some way away. He has no doubt<br />
that the <strong>art</strong> market, though holding up reasonably<br />
well, is suffering from the world economic crisis,<br />
and fears that the next six months will see casualties<br />
among some of the newer, less solidly established,<br />
local galleries.<br />
But Momo, he says, is fortunate in that it has already<br />
built an international image. It’s acting as curator for<br />
Culture France and its IFAS associate at the upcoming<br />
Johannesburg Art Fair, and also at Photo Beijing<br />
2009, in China.<br />
“For us,” he says firmly, “there’ll be no change in<br />
focus. The only change will be expansion.”<br />
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First published in The Mail and Guardian<br />
Ross Douglas<br />
The second Joburg Art Fair will have its private<br />
opening on April 2 for 1 500 invited guests. That<br />
same day the G20 summit meets in London to agree<br />
that the world is in a financial mess and to disagree<br />
on how to fix it.<br />
But what has this to do with the second Joburg Art<br />
Fair?<br />
After successfully producing William Kentridge’s<br />
version of Moz<strong>art</strong>’s Magic Flute in late 2007,<br />
Artlogic was able to secure sponsorship from FNB<br />
to produce the first <strong>art</strong> fair in Africa. The bank took<br />
a bold gamble on a big event to be executed by a<br />
small company that had never visited an <strong>art</strong> fair,<br />
let alone produced one. After visiting two of the big<br />
European fairs, Basel in Switzerland and Frieze in<br />
London, we st<strong>art</strong>ed “reverse engineering” our very<br />
own fair. Though the bank was bullish, much of the<br />
<strong>art</strong> community was not. Most galleries felt the local<br />
market was too small to warrant a fair and that the<br />
real action was in London and New York. Some local<br />
<strong>art</strong> journalists felt that an <strong>art</strong> fair was too commercial<br />
and we would be better off with another Johannesburg<br />
Biennale, even though this was never an option<br />
because of the massive costs.<br />
Not one of the world’s 300-odd <strong>art</strong> fairs focuses on<br />
contemporary <strong>art</strong> from Africa. Our intention with the<br />
first fair was to fill this gap. It’s not that easy. Without<br />
gallerists managing and promoting <strong>art</strong>, <strong>art</strong>ists don’t<br />
find the market they need to sustain their careers.<br />
As with so much talent from the continent, Europe<br />
and the United States provided the opportunities for<br />
<strong>African</strong> greats such as Owusu-Ankomah, El Anatsui<br />
and, more recently, Romuald Hazoume to exhibit.<br />
Our solution last year was to commission Simon<br />
Njami, who captured the world’s imagination with his<br />
Africa Remix show and to a lesser extent the Africa<br />
Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He chose<br />
work mainly from younger <strong>art</strong>ists st<strong>art</strong>ing to break<br />
into the international <strong>art</strong> scene. Njami’s selection of<br />
work, entitled As You Like It, attracted interest but<br />
did not sell. By contrast, local galleries sold beyond<br />
Joburg Art Fair 09<br />
Jo’burg’s <strong>art</strong> value-m<strong>art</strong><br />
our expectations. Between R25-million and R30-million<br />
passed hands, giving the local contemporary <strong>art</strong><br />
market a major cash injection.<br />
In May last year we sat to plan the 2009 fair. With<br />
the absence of a biennale or any other perennial<br />
contemporary <strong>art</strong> show in the country, there was<br />
an opportunity for our fair to play a bigger role than<br />
providing only a market for <strong>art</strong> from the continent. At<br />
the same time <strong>art</strong> NGOs, foreign cultural institutions<br />
and development organisations st<strong>art</strong>ed to approach<br />
us, as they were looking for an event that was well<br />
managed with high visitor numbers that they could<br />
contribute to.<br />
The result is that the 2009 fair has 26 galleries,<br />
much the same as last year, and 12 “special<br />
projects”, most of which are new. The Gordon<br />
Schachat collection will host <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> Jane<br />
Alexander’s Security, commissioned for the 27th<br />
Sao Paolo Biennale and never seen before in her<br />
home country.<br />
The Gauteng provincial government provided the<br />
budget to commission <strong>South</strong> Africa-born Tumelo<br />
Mosaka, who is now curator at the Krannert Art Museum<br />
in Illinois, to select video <strong>art</strong> from the Global<br />
<strong>South</strong> for a show, titled Here and Now. The BMW <strong>art</strong><br />
talks taking place inside the fair host local speakers,<br />
including <strong>art</strong>ists, curators and the Goethe Institute’s<br />
selected guests, Agnes Wegner and Thomas W Eller<br />
from Berlin’s Temporare Kunsthalle Museum.<br />
The fair has introduced design on a unique scale.<br />
Thirty-two of the country’s top designers have been<br />
commissioned to make unique and unusual pieces<br />
as p<strong>art</strong> of the <strong>South</strong>ern Guild initiative. Cultures-<br />
France is bringing out Encounters of Bamako, a<br />
selling photographic exhibition from the continent<br />
of Africa represented at the recent photographic<br />
Bamako Biennale.We raised money from Siemens<br />
for Funda, an <strong>art</strong> school in Soweto, to produce and<br />
sell its students’ work at the fair.<br />
Despite an impressive line-up for the second fair, we<br />
were still missing one vital ingredient -- an influential<br />
international audience. The world’s top fairs host the<br />
world’s top <strong>art</strong> personalities with all-expenses-paid<br />
packages. We will never have the budget to host<br />
Mikhael Subotzky, Michelle, Mallies household, Rustdene Township, 2008 (Goodman Gallery)<br />
Photo: (detail) John Hodgkiss<br />
this set and, positioned on the tip of Africa, we are<br />
slightly out the loop of who the “taste-makers” are.<br />
Shortly after Damien Hirst’s Inside My Head<br />
Forever exhibition at Sotheby’s sold $200-million in<br />
September, the contemporary <strong>art</strong> world went into<br />
freefall. It is no surprise that New York and London<br />
became the contemporary <strong>art</strong> centres of the world. A<br />
seemingly endless supply of easy-made cash fuelled<br />
an endless supply of ready-made <strong>art</strong>. When The<br />
Guardian broke the story that Hirst was not renewing<br />
the contracts of 17 of the 22 factory workers who<br />
make his work, it was clear the p<strong>art</strong>y was over.<br />
A seemingly impossible international <strong>art</strong> market has<br />
st<strong>art</strong>ed to work in our favour. The contemporary<br />
<strong>art</strong> world will not die. Buyers will go back to basics<br />
and look for quality and value once again and are<br />
prepared to travel to find it.<strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong>-born and<br />
educated Mark Coetzee, who headed the Miamibased<br />
Rubell collection, was recently appointed<br />
programme director for Puma Vision and chief<br />
curator of Puma Creative. Wanting traction in Africa,<br />
he approached us to assist with the fair. We quickly<br />
struck a deal whereby he flies and accommodates<br />
50 curators, collectors and writers from Africa and<br />
abroad to attend the fair, giving us the audience we<br />
have been sorely wanting.<br />
This year’s fair will showcase the work of more than<br />
400 <strong>art</strong>ists and 32 designers from the continent,<br />
with the majority coming from <strong>South</strong> Africa. As the<br />
<strong>art</strong> world focuses more sharply on value, <strong>art</strong> from<br />
Africa will become of greater interest. To capitalise<br />
on this opportunity we need to create <strong>art</strong> events that<br />
last long enough to become p<strong>art</strong> of the international<br />
<strong>art</strong> calendar. The st<strong>art</strong> and collapse of the Johannesburg<br />
Biennale and the stillbirth of Cape Africa<br />
Platform reinforce negative perceptions of Africa.<br />
The Joburg Art Fair has found an international audience<br />
in its second year. With the ongoing support of<br />
FNB and secondary sponsors the fair will become<br />
the single most important meeting place for collectors,<br />
curators and writers and those curious about<br />
contemporary <strong>art</strong> from the continent.<br />
Ross Douglas is the director of the Joburg Art Fair<br />
JOBURG ART FAIR 2009 APRIL 09 | BUSINESS ART 03<br />
PUMA brand experiments with the new, joining together creative spirits with major figures of the sports and fashion worlds – figures such as Usain Bolt and designer<br />
Hussein Chalayan, now the creative director of the PUMA Sport Fashion collections, says Jochen Zeitz, Chairman and CEO of Puma. “We aim to<br />
bring together individual <strong>art</strong>ists and cultural organizations, and provide them with a platform for creative exchange and international exposure. We are delighted to be<br />
able to express our PUMAVision through this collaboration with the Joburg Art Fair and Creative Africa Network. (Full press release to follow with details of the<br />
Creative Africa Network’s involvement in the Fair.)<br />
And here are some of the other highlights planned for this year:<br />
WHATS ON<br />
o The gordonschachatcollection will be presenting SECURITY, a unique installation by internationally acclaimed <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong>ist Jane Alexander, originally<br />
commissioned for the 27th São Paulo Biennale. Also shown in Göteborg, Sweden in 2007, Security makes reference to forced and voluntary migration, land resources<br />
and attendant security.<br />
o In a joint initiative with Artlogic, this year’s event will also boast a stand featuring a selection of the best of contemporary <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> furniture design speciallycurated<br />
by Trevyn and Julian McGowan of Source, a visionary local sourcing agent for the international retail market, including the Conran Shop in the UK and<br />
Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters and Terrain in the US. SOUTHERN GUILD is a the special collection of products being launched at the Art Fair that have been<br />
selected, from a wide variety of disciplines, as the finest, most original, exciting pieces from the most interesting local talents. The collection will comprise entirely<br />
new ‘one of a kind pieces’, limited editions as well as the launch of new lines.<br />
o Junior <strong>art</strong> fiends will have plenty to entertain them while their parents are perusing the <strong>art</strong> on display at the 26 gallery stands. ROOM 13 has a packed programme of<br />
creative activities planned for children, from tie-dye and block printing workshops to self-portraiture classes and poetry sessions. See the full programme of Room 13<br />
activities attched here to plan your children’s Joburg Art Fair workshop schedule. The workhop fee is R80. If a school books more than three spaces, a discount of<br />
R30 per booking will be granted. (Pre-booking essential. Please visit our website to book.)<br />
o blank projects, an independent, <strong>art</strong>ist-run exhibition space dedicated to new developments in contemporary <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> Art, will be presenting BAD FORM:<br />
THINGS AND STUFF, curated by Kathryn Smith and Christian Nerf, with Francis Burger. Bad Form is a multifaceted project, of which the second phase, Things And<br />
Stuff is presented as a special project for the Joburg Art Fair. Bad Form is motivated by the need to document and reassess experimental practices in <strong>South</strong><br />
Africa from the 1960s to the present. This neglected history offers critical ways of understanding our contemporary <strong>art</strong> in relation to radical practices here and<br />
elsewhere. ‘Bad form’ can be understood as referring to many things: in colloquial language, it refers to a fairly significant social faux pas. In aesthetic terms, it could<br />
refer to something that is badly constructed, or not sufficiently considered or resolved in formalist terms. But more than anything, ‘bad form’ is relative,<br />
relational; it is culturally, socially or even historically conditioned by whoever is declaring what constitutes the ‘good’, whether in taste or form. Bad Form<br />
approaches critical questions facing <strong>art</strong> from the perspective of <strong>art</strong> practice. Things and Stuff is about things revealing themselves incrementally, no big<br />
announcements. Shy <strong>art</strong>. Intractable <strong>art</strong>. Reticent things. Committed practice. blank projects was founded in Cape Town by Jonathan Garnham in 2005. Together with<br />
Liza Grobler and then Pierre Fouché, blank has hosted over sixty exhibitions to date by <strong>art</strong>ists including Bianca Baldi, Ralph Borland, Katherine Bull, Julia Rosa<br />
Clark, Barend de Wet, Gimberg Nerf, the Gugulective, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Gabi Ngcobo, Peter Regli, James Webb and Ed Young.<br />
o The ARTIST PROOF STUDIO, a quality Art Education Centre that specialises in printmaking through a variety of diverse p<strong>art</strong>nerships, will be marketing their high<br />
quality original prints, created by over 80 APS students, graduates and professional <strong>art</strong>ists. Their Pro Print Studio has one of the largest and finest<br />
Takach etching presses in the country which has enabled them to edition the work of important <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong>ists such as Wim Botha, Diane Victor, William<br />
Kentridge, Willem Boshoff and many others who enjoy the experience of working in an environment filled with passion, creativity, and professionalism. They hope<br />
to attract new collectors as well as established and emerging <strong>art</strong>ists to join the Studio and collaborate with their professional print technicians. Situated in the<br />
Newtown Cultural Precinct of inner city Johannesburg, the APS was established in response to a call by Nelson Mandela to all <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong>s to p<strong>art</strong>icipate in the<br />
building of a new, democratic society that would promote reconciliation, cultural diversity, equality, and above all, a culture that celebrates human rights. APS<br />
programmes embody a strong commitment to the use of <strong>art</strong> in promoting positive social change and development. Their project p<strong>art</strong>ners include NGOs such as<br />
Men as P<strong>art</strong>ners, Sonke Gender Justice Network, the Art Therapy Centre, Room 13, NOAH, Phumani Paper and others. The National Paper Prayers Campaign<br />
involves both rural and urban communities nationally in the promotion of AIDS awareness.<br />
o For the Screening Booth, Joburg-born Tumelo Mosaka has curated HERE AND NOW, a selection of moving image work from countries in the Global <strong>South</strong>.<br />
Mosaka was recently appointed Curator of Contemporary Art at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He was previously an<br />
associate curator at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, where he organised the exhibition Infinite Islands: Contemporary Caribbean Art, and was one of the<br />
coordinating curators of ©Murakami.<br />
o CULTURESFRANCE, in collaboration with Gallery MOMO and the French Institute of <strong>South</strong> Africa, will be presenting a selection of <strong>African</strong> photography, entitled<br />
ENCOUNTERS OF BAMAKO.<br />
o Siemens will be sponsoring a stand of selected <strong>art</strong> works by students at the legendary Sowetan <strong>art</strong>s and culture centre, FUNDA. There will be no shortage of opportunities<br />
for on-site networking action at this year’s Fair with the presence of:<br />
o A designer READING BAR, with the best <strong>art</strong> and visual culture publications on offer by Boekehuis, Biblioteq and Clarke’s. Alexander Opper and Amir Livneh of the<br />
young Johannesburg-based firm, Notion Architects (recently featured in Wallpaper magazine), have conceived of a city-inspired design for the reading bar that has at<br />
its core ‘the celebration of the book as an object of beauty’.<br />
o A VIDA E CAFFE and LOUNGE BAR with designer drinks by Grolsch, Meerlust, Tokara and Pommery, and K<strong>art</strong>ell furniture from Twiice International, in the he<strong>art</strong> of<br />
all the networking and social action. So, once you’ve got your entry ticket, there’ll be no need to desert the main event in search of refreshment or some time out.<br />
Make sure you’re p<strong>art</strong> of this year’s Joburg Art Fair, set to be the hippest cultural event unfolding in Jozi in 2009.<br />
For more information see www.joburg<strong>art</strong>fair.co.za or contact:Matthew McClure press@<strong>art</strong>logic.co.za or +27 (0)11 482-445<br />
JOBURG ART FAIR FLOOR PLAN
04 BUSINESS ART | APRIL 09 SOUTH AFRICAN ART AUCTIONS<br />
The great comeback<br />
Michael Coulson chats with Stefan Welz about Strauss & Co, <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong> auctions,<br />
as well as setting up shop in Cape Town and Johannesburg<br />
Veteran <strong>art</strong> auctioneer and farmer Stefan Welz is as<br />
happy as a boy with a new train set. The first <strong>sale</strong><br />
catalogue for his new firm, Strauss & Co, is going<br />
to bed with 165 lots and a gross estimated between<br />
R30m-R40m. The average low estimate of about<br />
R190 000 is the highest he’s ever known for an auction<br />
of <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong>.<br />
Values range the full spectrum, from R4 000-R6 000<br />
to R4m-R6m, the latter for an Irma Stern landscape,<br />
White House in Madeira.<br />
There’s also what Welz claims is internationally still<br />
the best-known, and most reproduced, <strong>SA</strong> painting.<br />
Frans Oerder’s still life<br />
Magnolias was bought by the New York Graphic<br />
Society (which bought the <strong>art</strong>ist’s Blossomtime at the<br />
same time) and published in 1939 as a print which<br />
for many years was the biggest selling reproduction<br />
of any still life painting in the world.<br />
It came back home, bought by an <strong>SA</strong> collector, in<br />
1956 and is now on offer with an estimate of R600<br />
000-R900 000.<br />
The gross <strong>may</strong> not be a <strong>record</strong>, but Welz no longer<br />
sees size as a virtue. “The old company just got too<br />
big, and we had to drive <strong>sale</strong>s regardless of quality<br />
just to pay the bills – the appetite was insatiable!<br />
Also, I got bogged down in finances and day-to-day<br />
management. Now I’m back to doing what I enjoy<br />
most: looking at pictures, finding them, and persuading<br />
people to buy them. It’s important for me to<br />
believe in what I’m selling.”<br />
While he denies that he wasn’t proud of everything<br />
he sold at Stephan Welz/Sotheby’s (now increasingly<br />
known for brevity and clarity, if not elegance, as<br />
Swelco), the subtext is that some work came dangerously<br />
close to the margin. He stresses that price<br />
and quality are not synonymous – though Tretchikoff<br />
does feature in Strauss’s first <strong>sale</strong>!<br />
Busy as they have been assembling their first<br />
Jo’burg fine <strong>art</strong> <strong>sale</strong>, Welz and his new colleagues<br />
have not been letting the grass grow under their feet<br />
in other areas. Welz confirms, with properly if barely<br />
disguised glee, market rumours that Strauss has<br />
poached three top people from the Cape branch of<br />
his old firm.<br />
As we spoke, Strauss chairman Conrad Strauss was<br />
actually in Cape Town looking for new premises,<br />
probably in the Claremont/Newlands area. “I know<br />
the trendy galleries are moving to Woodstock,” says<br />
Welz, “but it’s not ideal for us. We have a different,<br />
somewhat older, clientele – on both the buying and<br />
selling side. They come from the southern suburbs<br />
and, rightly or wrongly, they’re not so keen to go into<br />
what they see as less salubrious areas.”<br />
Strauss plans to differentiate the venues. “We’ll keep<br />
major <strong>art</strong> <strong>sale</strong>s in Johannesburg. We will include <strong>art</strong><br />
in Cape Town in the two <strong>sale</strong>s we plan each year,<br />
but it <strong>may</strong> be lesser, more decorative items. On the<br />
other hand, we’ll concentrate on things like furniture,<br />
silverware and ceramics in Cape Town, where they<br />
have a more developed market.<br />
“After all, the Cape is where most old Cape furniture<br />
comes from; it’s the natural place to sell it.”<br />
Strauss will also preview highlights of its first <strong>sale</strong> in<br />
Cape Town, on February 17/18, in the Dolphin Room<br />
at the Castle.<br />
Is Welz worried about re-entering the <strong>art</strong> market at<br />
a time when it’s coming under huge strain internationally?<br />
Major auction houses like Sotheby’s itself,<br />
Christie’s and Bonham’s are frantically laying off staff<br />
and slashing costs.<br />
“Lesser work, of what one <strong>may</strong> call decorative value,<br />
is what I believe will suffer most. Its buyers tended to<br />
be indiscriminate and occasional.<br />
“Also, people who bought in the mid to late 1980s,<br />
when the market was depressed, are becoming sellers<br />
as they reach an age where they’re scaling down<br />
and moving into smaller properties.<br />
“But the backbone of the market is the true collector,<br />
who’s not after a quick buck, knows what he wants,<br />
and is prepared to wait for it. That market <strong>may</strong> be<br />
affected, but I think it will remain, and it’s what we<br />
must focus on.<br />
“The market <strong>may</strong> hold up better in <strong>SA</strong>, but it can’t<br />
escape the trend. In p<strong>art</strong>icular, second-rate works<br />
from major <strong>art</strong>ists <strong>may</strong> be hit.”<br />
What concerns Welz more is that the market is not<br />
broadening. “The favoured names all appear in the<br />
first edition of Esme Berman’s book [Art & Artists<br />
of <strong>SA</strong>, published in 1970]. That’s a limited supply:<br />
where are the new names we need desperately?<br />
“And remember that the market for <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong> is still an<br />
<strong>SA</strong> market. The Russian oligarchs aren’t buying it!<br />
And it’s unattractive for an <strong>SA</strong> resident to buy abroad<br />
and repatriate <strong>art</strong>: the extra costs can add 40% to the<br />
hammer price.”<br />
Sage words potential buyers will do well to bear in<br />
mind.<br />
Oh, by the way: Welz has decided to resist a land<br />
claim on his farm (“It’s completely frivolous”) and<br />
Farmers Weekly chose one of his animals as Cow of<br />
the Year. So there’s no let-up in that side of his life,<br />
either.<br />
Mark Kretschmer<br />
Michael Coulson<br />
What makes somebody who admits he has no knowledge<br />
of either <strong>art</strong> or the auction business buy into<br />
arguably <strong>SA</strong>’s most respected <strong>art</strong> auction house? It’s<br />
simple, says Mark Kretschmer, chairman and major<br />
shareholder in Stephan Welz & Co in association<br />
with Sotheby’s (hereinafter referred to as Swelco).<br />
“My wife. Eight months after I retired from my<br />
previous business [for 36 years he’d dealt in medical<br />
supplies] she told me that while she’d married me for<br />
better or worse, she hadn’t married me for lunch.<br />
“So I had to find something to get me out of the<br />
house. It happened that my auditor was also<br />
Stephan Welz’s, and he knew Stephan wanted out.<br />
So I took a look at it, and we just went on from there.”<br />
Kretschmer says that while it’s been a steep learning<br />
curve, there’ve been no major shocks or surprises.<br />
“You have to come into a new business with an open<br />
mind. But we [he and his business p<strong>art</strong>ner, deputy<br />
chairman Jack Rosewitz] have seen areas where the<br />
business could be improved and modernised, and<br />
we’ve been trying to do that.”<br />
Despite rumours in the <strong>art</strong> world that that the sweeping<br />
of the new brooms upset many of the auction<br />
house’s long-established staff, Kretschmer claims<br />
that an area on which the new bosses have focussed<br />
is staff relations. “We’ve tried to be innovative and<br />
dynamic, looking for new products and other areas<br />
where we could expand. Heads of dep<strong>art</strong>ments have<br />
been incentivised and given more autonomy.<br />
“When we bought the business, we had two objectives:<br />
to ensure continuity, and ultimately to hand it<br />
over to the staff. After all, I’m 62, and Jack is 71, so<br />
we won’t be around for 20 years!”<br />
Kretschmer readily concedes that not all the new<br />
initiatives have been successful.<br />
“We tried to develop a contemporaray <strong>art</strong> <strong>sale</strong>, but<br />
it didn’t materialise. Unlike New York or London, <strong>SA</strong><br />
isn’t ready for a contemporary <strong>art</strong> <strong>sale</strong>. We couldn’t<br />
put a decent selection together and in any case we<br />
think the latest contemporary <strong>art</strong> <strong>sale</strong>s abroad show<br />
that the bubble has burst for contemporary <strong>art</strong>.<br />
“And contemporary <strong>art</strong> needs branding, as <strong>art</strong>ists<br />
like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons or collectors like<br />
Charles Saatchi have shown. With traditional <strong>art</strong>, the<br />
branding is already there, and it’s much more a ques-<br />
ART AT AUCTION<br />
Chairman and major shareholder in Stephan Welz & Co<br />
in association with Sotheby’s (Swelco).<br />
The results of <strong>art</strong> sold at auction are always regarded as important indicators of current market values as well as trends in<br />
the <strong>art</strong> market. This can be misleading in many ways, as <strong>record</strong> prices are often the result of a ‘battle of egos’ and prices for<br />
p<strong>art</strong>icular <strong>art</strong>ist’s works are generally not always comparable because of the difference in quality, condition, period or subject<br />
matter. It is, however, a very important and supposedly transparent p<strong>art</strong> of the <strong>art</strong> market and therefore deserves closer<br />
scrutiny.<br />
Secrets of the auction room<br />
By Georgina Adam - Editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper.<br />
Published: 2 January 2009 by the Financial Times at<br />
http://www.ft.com/<strong>art</strong>s/collecting<br />
The <strong>art</strong> market is often described as the last unregulated<br />
financial market in the world. It has remained<br />
stubbornly resistant to almost all efforts to bring<br />
transparency to its operations, which still mainly function<br />
on the basis of highly personal relations and often<br />
secretive transactions. The problem is that these<br />
transactions can today be worth tens of millions, and<br />
that <strong>art</strong> was – at least until the recent global financial<br />
crisis – increasingly touted as a “safe” alternative asset<br />
class and was even put into investment funds.<br />
The advantage to auctions is that they have a certain<br />
democratic, or rather meritocratic, element: for new<br />
collectors, buying at auction is easier than braving<br />
the haughty froideur of some top <strong>art</strong> galleries. At<br />
auction, if you have the money you can simply bid for<br />
a work, thereby avoiding the machinations of dealers<br />
who have waiting lists for some <strong>art</strong>ists and select<br />
those to whom they will sell. The auction room is also<br />
often seen as the only place where “hard” figures can<br />
be obtained, with <strong>record</strong>ed transactions visible and<br />
available to all. But even this apparently transparent<br />
process is not all that it appears. Much of what is<br />
going on is secret, one way or another.<br />
Let’s st<strong>art</strong> with the <strong>sale</strong>s catalogue. The first secret<br />
is the reserve for each work, the price below which<br />
it cannot be sold. Disclosing this, argue the auction<br />
houses, would disadvantage the seller by letting<br />
bidders know what is the lowest possible price, and<br />
discouraging them from bidding any higher. What<br />
is open is the printed estimate, the price range that<br />
most newcomers would imagine represents the<br />
auction house specialists’ considered valuation of the<br />
work. Buy it for less than the low estimate, and you’re<br />
getting a bargain; above the high estimate, you’ve<br />
overpaid, right?<br />
Actually, no. Estimates can be meaningless. Vendors’<br />
expectations can be too high; the auction house <strong>may</strong><br />
have agreed to an inflated estimate on one work in<br />
order to bag others. Alternatively, the estimate can be<br />
unrealistically low, to attract potential buyers. Proving<br />
the point, Christie’s buries this disclaimer in its conditions<br />
of <strong>sale</strong>: “Estimates of the selling price should<br />
not be relied on as a statement of the price at which<br />
the item will sell or its value for any other purpose.”<br />
The <strong>sale</strong>rooms’ conditions of <strong>sale</strong> also detail the<br />
commission they take from buyers and sellers on<br />
each <strong>sale</strong>. The buyer’s premium is on a sliding scale<br />
tion of supply and demand.<br />
“Another new product we tried was vintage and<br />
veteran motor cars. We had a very [as he spoke, the<br />
last word was heavily underlined] success but we<br />
didn’t see a future in it and decided not to proceed.<br />
Still, we did sell a Merc for R8m.”<br />
Swelco’s relationship with its old principal, the eponymous<br />
Stephan Welz, and his new firm Strauss & Co<br />
is obviously a sore point.<br />
“W bought the business with two provisos: that<br />
Sotheby’s was happy, and that the main directors<br />
would stay for five years. But if someone doesn’t<br />
want to stay, there’s no point in forcing them.”<br />
And he’s dismissive of the suggestion that that<br />
the loss of three staff in the Cape Town branch,<br />
presented by Strauss as a coup, was a major blow.<br />
“Only one of them was in fact on the staff, the other<br />
two were consultants, and only one of them was a<br />
specialist, the other two were in PR and admin. In<br />
fact, we’ve benefited from their dep<strong>art</strong>ure, because<br />
with the money we saved, we’ve been able to<br />
employ more specialists in Cape Town.”<br />
And though this is the sort of statement people<br />
automatically make for public consumption, there’s<br />
no reason to doubt his assertion that the arrival of<br />
Strauss is positive. “It can only broaden the market,<br />
and I’m always in favour of competition.”<br />
While there <strong>may</strong> have been early setbacks, Swelco’s<br />
latest Cape Town <strong>sale</strong>, if falling short of Strauss’s<br />
recent bonanza, was one of the more successful<br />
recent <strong>sale</strong>s of <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong>.<br />
The firm has just released details of its next Jo’burg<br />
<strong>sale</strong>, on April 20 and 21, brought forward a day to<br />
avoid clashing with the general election. It includes<br />
250 works of <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong>, the highlight being an Irma<br />
Stern portrait of a girl with her only known painting of<br />
her father on the verso, valued at R800 000-R1.2m.<br />
There are also major works by familiar names like<br />
William Kentridge, Adriaan Boshoff, Francois Krige,<br />
Walter Battiss, Gerald Bhengu, George Pemba,<br />
Maud Sumner, Pierneef, Pieter Wenning and Gregoire<br />
Boonzaaier.<br />
The <strong>sale</strong> also includes furniture, silver, ceramics<br />
and jewellery. The estimate for the <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong> section<br />
is R8.6m-R12.7m, and the take will need to be well<br />
above the low figure if Swelco is not to lose ground to<br />
Strauss & Co in public perception.<br />
from 25 per cent to 12 per cent, but here again,<br />
there is a backstory going on. Until this autumn,<br />
competition between the two main auction houses<br />
was so intense to get the best property for <strong>sale</strong>, that<br />
in some cases there was virtually an auction before<br />
the auction, each firm vying to outbid the other with<br />
more generous inducements for sellers. In some<br />
cases the whole of the buyer’s premium was given<br />
to the seller, as well as the vendor’s premium being<br />
waived entirely. This is believed to be the arrangement<br />
David Rockefeller made with Sotheby’s when<br />
he sold Mark Rothko’s 1950 “White Center (Yellow,<br />
Pink and Lavender on Rose)” for $72.8m (£36.7m) in<br />
May last year.<br />
Further secret financial arrangements are flagged<br />
up in <strong>sale</strong>room catalogues with a series of tiny<br />
symbols. Some of these symbols indicate that the<br />
work in question <strong>may</strong> have been guaranteed for an<br />
undisclosed sum, meaning that the auction house<br />
has promised this to the vendor, even if the work<br />
doesn’t sell. A “third-p<strong>art</strong>y guarantee” is when the<br />
<strong>sale</strong>room farms out the risk to an outsider, who<br />
agrees to underwrite the risk if the work doesn’t sell<br />
– and benefits financially if it does. Another symbol<br />
indicates that the firm itself owns or p<strong>art</strong>-owns the<br />
work – again, there is no detail as to what percentage<br />
it owns.<br />
Much head-scratching has resulted from Sotheby’s<br />
newly introduced symbol, the “irrevocable bid”, by<br />
which someone agrees to leave a – yes – secret bid<br />
on a work. This was first used in November’s New<br />
York <strong>sale</strong>s for Kasimir Malevich’s “Suprematist Composition”<br />
(1916), which sold for $60m, to whomever<br />
had agreed to leave the irrevocable bid. If another<br />
person had come in over that sum, then the irrevocable<br />
bidder would have taken a cut in the difference<br />
between his price and the price actually made.<br />
Another newcomer – the “interested p<strong>art</strong>y symbol”<br />
– indicates that someone who has a financial interest<br />
in the lot <strong>may</strong> bid, and sometimes even “<strong>may</strong> have<br />
knowledge of the reserve”.<br />
All these arrangements were just dandy when the<br />
market was rising, but guarantees have come back<br />
to haunt the auction rooms in the financial meltdown<br />
of the last few months. Sotheby’s has admitted it lost<br />
$42m in guarantees in its third-qu<strong>art</strong>er SEC filing;<br />
Christie’s as a private company does not have to<br />
disclose them, but certainly has taken a hit: a dozen<br />
guaranteed works failed to sell in its November 12<br />
<strong>sale</strong> of contemporary <strong>art</strong> in New York. Sotheby’s<br />
CEO Bill Ruprecht has stated that for the foreseeable<br />
future the firm is “sitting on the sidelines” as far as<br />
guarantees are concerned.<br />
So let’s actually watch the <strong>sale</strong> get under way. The<br />
auctioneer st<strong>art</strong>s off each lot a few increments<br />
under the low estimate (each increment is usually<br />
a rise of about 10 per cent). It’s a treat watching<br />
him orchestrate the bids, arms waving, nodding to<br />
someone here, picking up a bid there … except that<br />
he <strong>may</strong> have no bids at all. He is doing what is called<br />
“taking them off the chandelier”, inventing bids up to<br />
the reserve, after which he has to find a real bidder. If<br />
he hasn’t got one, then the giveaway is the omission<br />
of the word “selling” before the hammer comes down,<br />
and a quick “passed” or “unsold” blurred into “next<br />
lot!” Chandelier bidding is not illegal; it would only be<br />
so if the auctioneer continued to take fictitious bids<br />
over the reserve. It adds to the theatre of the event,<br />
but it is hardly transparent.<br />
As for the real bidders, they too can be shrouded<br />
in secrecy. At the major <strong>sale</strong>s, the most important<br />
potential buyers are hidden in windowed “sky boxes”<br />
above the room, where they can observe the action<br />
and bid by telephone. In the room, auction house<br />
staffers pass on bids from the banks of telephones;<br />
sometimes, to retain anonymity, a staffer holding an<br />
unconnected telephone will be relaying bids from<br />
someone who is actually in the room.<br />
This anonymity – which is justifiable in many ways,<br />
including for reasons of security – is carefully protected.<br />
To this day we don’t know who bought many<br />
of the world’s most expensive works at auction, even<br />
though they were sold openly.<br />
Until a few years ago, auctioneers generally knew<br />
in advance who would be bidding on the most<br />
expensive <strong>art</strong>, and where they would be sitting. So<br />
scratching your nose is unlikely to land you with a<br />
Picasso. But with the arrival of many new buyers<br />
from countries such as Russia or China, the<br />
<strong>sale</strong>rooms have had some big surprises. The best<br />
known is the 2006 <strong>sale</strong> of Picasso’s 1941 “Dora Maar<br />
au Chat”, for which a buyer buried half way down<br />
Sotheby’s <strong>sale</strong>room put in an unexpected and winning<br />
bid of $95.2m. The painting’s owner is believed<br />
to be Russian or Ukrainian, but nobody, even most<br />
of the people at Sotheby’s, knows for sure. Which<br />
just shows that, in the smoke-and-mirrors world of<br />
the <strong>sale</strong>room, even the auctioneers themselves don’t<br />
always know what’s going on.<br />
Get the The <strong>SA</strong> Art Times for R 180, - for 11 editions to your door<br />
See www.<strong>art</strong>times.co.za or e-mail Bastienne at subs@<strong>art</strong>times.co.za for more details<br />
Erik Laubscher sets <strong>record</strong><br />
auction price for <strong>SA</strong> living <strong>art</strong>ist<br />
Steve Kretzmann<br />
Erik Laubscher’s “Still Life with Mandolin, Music Score and Fruit” selling for R1 120 000<br />
The price paid for an <strong>art</strong>work by Erik Laubscher which<br />
went up on auction at the summer decorative and fine<br />
<strong>art</strong>s auction in Kirstenbosch on February 24, has set a<br />
new <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>record</strong> for a living <strong>art</strong>ist.<br />
Laubscher’s painting from the 1950’s, ‘Still Life with<br />
Mandolin, Music Score and Fruit’, sold for R1.14<br />
million, five times the pre-<strong>sale</strong> estimate posted in the<br />
catalogue by Stephan Welz & Co. in association with<br />
Sotheby’s. Up until recently, work by Laubscher, who<br />
is a master of virtually all genres of the abstract, has<br />
sold in the region of R50 000 – R70 000. 82-year-old<br />
Laubscher, who lives in Cape Town and continues to<br />
paint, said he was eating his “humble breakfast, barefoot,<br />
wearing old shorts”, when he was given the news.<br />
“I am dazed,” he said. He said he could not imagine<br />
the “incredible honour or the impact” the <strong>sale</strong> would<br />
have on works he has kept for almost 60 years.<br />
But he said he was being “quite cool” about it and “not<br />
shouting yippee! You’ve got to wait for the next one<br />
(<strong>sale</strong>).” It just makes drawing up my will a lot more<br />
complicated.”<br />
Erik Laubscher’s “Still Life with Mandolin, Music Score<br />
and Fruit” selling for R1 120 000
Michael Coulson<br />
Irma Stern’s Still Life with Magnolias went for R 7.15m<br />
REVIEW<br />
Strauss’s first maiden <strong>sale</strong>, Jhb<br />
If new auction house Strauss & Co wanted to st<strong>art</strong><br />
with a bang, it certainly succeeded. Its March 9<br />
maiden <strong>sale</strong> at the Jo’burg Country Club was about<br />
87% sold, and grossed R37m, against the pre-<strong>sale</strong><br />
estimate of between R30m-R40m. This was a <strong>record</strong><br />
for an auction of <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong> in <strong>South</strong> Africa, though it falls<br />
well short of the GBP7.1m Bonhams grossed last<br />
September.<br />
The average price per lot sold was R270 000.<br />
Top price was R7.15m for Irma Stern’s Still Life with<br />
Magnolias. Auctioneer Stephan Welz asked the<br />
buyer if he’d like to pay an extra R100 000, so as<br />
to match the highest price ever <strong>record</strong>ed for an <strong>SA</strong><br />
painting, but the suggestion was declined. Second<br />
highest price was reached by Stern’s White Houses,<br />
Madeira, at R5.72m (all prices include the buyer’s<br />
premium, of 10%).<br />
However, even Sterns weren’t guaranteed to sell,<br />
showing that while Strauss itself was selective in its<br />
choice of work, buyers were even more discerning.<br />
Two of the biggest casualties were her White Sands,<br />
bid up to only R2.2m, against the estimate of R2.5m-<br />
R3m, and Still Life with Mask, where the best bid was<br />
R1.3m, against the R1.6m-R2.2m estimate.<br />
Several other <strong>art</strong>ists also set new auction <strong>record</strong>s,<br />
led by Frans Oerder’s Magnolias, at R1.76m (est<br />
R600 000-R900 00). This was bought by the New<br />
York Graphic Society in 1939, which reproduced it<br />
as a print that for years was the world’s best-selling<br />
print ever, and is also said to be the best known <strong>SA</strong><br />
picture in the world – Tretchikoff prints notwithstanding!<br />
It was repatriated to <strong>SA</strong> in 1956.<br />
The seldom-seen Dorothy Kay’s Old Oyster Woman<br />
was a <strong>record</strong> R1.4m (est R700 000-R1m). A Jean<br />
Welz still life <strong>fetch</strong>ed R1.21m (est R700 000-R900<br />
000). Other <strong>record</strong>s close to the R1m-mark were<br />
Pieter Wenning’s Cottage, Nelspruit (R990 000, est<br />
R400 000-R600 000) and Anton van Wouw’s Noitjie<br />
van die Onderveld (R935 000, est R200 000-R300<br />
000), while a Freida Lock Interior reached R660 000<br />
(est R200 000-R300 000).<br />
The R616 000 <strong>record</strong> for a Skotnes wood panel set<br />
at the Sotheby/Stephan Welz (Swelco) <strong>sale</strong> in Cape<br />
Town only a few weeks before was just beaten, at<br />
R668 400 for Mythical Figures (est R600 000-R900<br />
000).<br />
While nine Pierneefs were the most works by any<br />
one <strong>art</strong>ist on offer, they were not major, the top price<br />
being R445 600 for Rainclouds & Sunshine, SWA<br />
(est R300 000-R500 000).<br />
Hugo Naude’s Walker Bay got R557 000 (est R500<br />
000-R700 000) and there was good interest in<br />
Ephraim Ngatane and George Pemba. The former’s<br />
Going on Leave went for R501 300 (est R500 000-<br />
R700 00) and Carlton Centre Under Construction<br />
for R423 320 (est R300 000-R580 000), the latter’s<br />
Guitar Player for R401 040 (est R300 000-R500 00)<br />
and Dice Players for R311 920 (est R280 000-R350<br />
000).<br />
Two of the most notable failures came right at the<br />
end. Welz didn’t even sound as if he expected to<br />
sell the two Tretchikoffs and bidding petered out way<br />
short of the low estimates: at R210 000 for Gladioli<br />
(est R250 000-R350 000) and R400 000 for Flower<br />
Seller (est R450 000-R550 000).<br />
Coming on top of Swelco’s successful Cape Town<br />
<strong>sale</strong> and disappointing results in London, this confirms<br />
that the market for <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong> is in <strong>SA</strong>.<br />
This will be further tested in Bonhams’ 93-lot April<br />
<strong>sale</strong> in London of contemporary <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong>, in which<br />
<strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong>ists are well represented, headed by Dumile<br />
Feni and William Kentridge. Bonhams’ next <strong>sale</strong><br />
devoted entirely to <strong>SA</strong> will be only in November, while<br />
Christie’s calendar to August contains no date for an<br />
<strong>SA</strong> <strong>sale</strong>.<br />
At home, Swelco’s next Jo’burg <strong>sale</strong> is in late April,<br />
with Graham Britz’s auction of the Brett Kebble collection<br />
a fortnight later. Strauss & Co’s next dates are<br />
September 14 in Jo’burg and October 8 for its first<br />
Cape Town <strong>sale</strong>.<br />
AUCTION BUZZ<br />
INAUGURAL STRAUSS AUCTION JOHANNESBURG COUNTRY CLUB<br />
Sam Nhlengethwa, Julia Charleton, Fiona Rankin-Smith and Maureen Nhlengethwa<br />
STRAUSS PRIVATE VIEWING, THE DOLPHIN ROOM, CASTLE, CAPE<br />
Countess Sylvia Labia, Christopher Peter<br />
and Count Natale Labia<br />
Alberto Capri, Bina Genovese, Deon Viljoen<br />
and Jan du Toit<br />
Francis Antoni, Mavis Shill and Louis Shill<br />
Ian Lomberg, Countess de Quelen, Juliette Lomberg<br />
and Count de Quelen<br />
Stephan Welz and Co. In Association with Sotheby’s<br />
Decorative and Fine Art auction in Cape Town last<br />
month was far the best of the recent season in both<br />
volume and prices. In the major section devoted to<br />
<strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong>, 78% of 104 lots sold; an R8.47m gross was<br />
well ahead of the minimum estimate of R6.97m. In<br />
the absence of major Irma Sterns, other <strong>art</strong>ists set<br />
auction <strong>record</strong>s.<br />
Top price was a <strong>record</strong> R1.14m for an Erik<br />
Laubscher Still Life (estimate R200 000-R300 000).<br />
Other <strong>record</strong>s were set by Cecil Skotnes’ wood panel<br />
“Birds” (R616 000, est R350 000-R450 000) and<br />
a Van Essche genre scene (R728 000, est R275<br />
000-R320 000). The <strong>art</strong>ist’s “In The Twilight” <strong>fetch</strong>ed<br />
R616 000 (est R200 000-R300 000).<br />
William Kentridge did well, two drawings going for<br />
R537 600 (est R350 000-R450 000) and R268 800<br />
(est R150 000-R200 000). Maggie Laubser’s Barge<br />
on Canal reached R358 400 (est R180 000-R240<br />
000) and two minor Pierneef landscapes went for<br />
R313 600 each (est R250 000-R350 000 and R200<br />
000-R300 000), one being a casein work on paper.<br />
The earlier session of 82 minor works was 85%<br />
sold and grossed almost R850 000, against the low<br />
estimate of R607 000. Features were R56 000 for a<br />
Tretchikoff portrait drawing (est R7 000-R10 000) and<br />
R44 800 for a Kenneth Baker landscape (est R16<br />
000-R20 000).<br />
This was a big improvement on the firm’s November<br />
<strong>sale</strong> in Johannesburg in November, when a gross<br />
of almost R11m over three sessions fell short of the<br />
minimum estimate of R15.6m, and about 47% of lots<br />
sold. Among early casualties were a Pierneef Bushveld<br />
landscape, estimated at R1.2m-R1.6m.<br />
Of the six lots with the highest estimates in the second<br />
session, four didn’t sell: a Willie Bester sculpture,<br />
two Kentridge graphics and a set of five lithographs<br />
by Marlene Dumas. Another Kentridge graphic,<br />
Sleeper & Ubu, <strong>fetch</strong>ed the top price in this section,<br />
at R145 600 (estimate: R120 000-R160 000), followed<br />
by Robert Hodgins’ oil, Clubmen of America, at<br />
R95 200, well below the estimate of R100 000-R150<br />
000.<br />
The third and final session contained all the major<br />
works: 57 of 116 lots were sold, for R8.3m, against<br />
the R10.5m estimate. Top price was R896 000 for<br />
an Adriaan Boshoff oil, August Winds (est R800<br />
000-R1.2m). However, four other Boshoffs, with<br />
estimates ranging from R180 000 minimum to R800<br />
000 maximum, failed to sell. Just one of three Maggie<br />
Laubser’s sold, an atypical Rural scene, for R560<br />
000 (est: R300 000-R500 000).<br />
Of other popular <strong>art</strong>ists, an Alexis Preller painting on<br />
fibreglass, Angel King, was bid up to R336 000 (est<br />
R250 000-R300 000). George Pemba’s Initiation Ceremony<br />
went for R157 000 (est R150 000-R200 000).<br />
Gerald Sekoto’s Walking Down the Road (1961)<br />
just made the R300 000-R500 000 estimate, at<br />
R302 000, but his Water Carriers did much better, at<br />
R157 000 (est R100 000-R150 000). Two works by<br />
Ephraim Ngatane, both estimated at R300 000-R500<br />
000, went for R302 000 and R538 000. Tretchikoff’s<br />
Proteas in a Silver Vase reached R224 000 (est:<br />
R200 000-R300 000), though his Arum Lilies (est:<br />
R150 000-R200 000) was passed.<br />
SOUTH AFRICAN ART AUCTIONS APRIL 09 | BUSINESS ART 05<br />
Cecil Skotnes’ wood panel “Birds” (R616 000, est R350 000-R450 000)<br />
REVIEW<br />
Stephan Welz and Co.<br />
In Association with Sotheby’s (SWELCO)<br />
Bonham’s auction in London last month gave much<br />
cause for thought. Especially to “investors” in Irma<br />
Stern: no less than 20 of the 27 Sterns offered didn’t<br />
sell, including the five with the highest estimates.<br />
These comprised three still lifes, with estimates of<br />
GBP100 000-GBP150 000 and (twice) GBP150 000-<br />
GBP200 000, plus Malay Girl (GBP70 000-GBP90<br />
000) and Gathering Firewood (GBP125 000-GBP175<br />
000). Many of these works are indeed reoffers from<br />
previous <strong>sale</strong>s.<br />
This left the way open for Maggie Laubser to head<br />
the value list, her Indian Girl with Poinsettias reaching<br />
GBP276 000, against the estimate of GBP100<br />
000-GBP150 000.<br />
The main section of Bonham’s <strong>sale</strong> saw 68 of 135<br />
lots sell, as near as doesn’t matter to 50%. The<br />
gross was about GP1.5m, against the low estimate<br />
of GBP2.4m.<br />
Of other leading <strong>art</strong>ists, eight of 12 Sekotos sold,<br />
five of eight Van Essches, five of seven Gregoire<br />
Boonzaaiers and three of four Pierneeefs; but only<br />
two of seven Prellers, three of eight Francois Kriges<br />
and none of the three Tretchikoffs<br />
Only one other work topped GBP100 000: GBP132<br />
000 for Preller’s Still Life with Crocodile (estimate<br />
GBP40 000-GBP60 000). But there were a few<br />
notable and <strong>record</strong> prices. Like GBP52 800 for Anton<br />
Van Wouw’s bronze Shangaan, estimated at only<br />
GBP7 000-GBP10 000, and GBP60 000 for a Battiss<br />
semiabstract (GBP12 000-GBP18 000).<br />
The only other works to top GBP40 000 were a Hugo<br />
Naude landscape (GBP40 800, est GBP35 000-<br />
GBP55 00), a Sekoto interior scene (GBP48 000, est<br />
GBP40 000-GBP46 000), and two Pierneefs: <strong>Gold</strong>en<br />
Gate (GBP72 000, est GBP60 000-GBP90 000) and<br />
Acacia Trees (GBP43 200, est GBP40 000-GBP60<br />
000).<br />
At Bonham’s <strong>sale</strong> of minor works the previous day,<br />
88 of 147 lots sold for a gross of GBP1.45m, against<br />
the low estimate of GBP1.7m. Top price of GBP9<br />
000 was shared by William Syme’s 19th-century<br />
view of Table Bay (est GBP1 000-GBP1 500) and a<br />
J K Moehl At Johannesburg Station (est GBP2 000-<br />
GBP3 000), closely followed by a Terrence McCaw<br />
view of Hout Bay (GBP7 800, est GBP3 000-GBP5<br />
000).<br />
This was, however, a much better result than Christie’s<br />
<strong>sale</strong> of Australian and <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong> in December, which<br />
was 60% unsold. Only seven of the 16 <strong>SA</strong> works<br />
sold, grossing GBP392 000 against a low estimate of<br />
GBP827 000, the only notable price being GBP301<br />
250 for an Irma Stern portrait (est GBP250 000-<br />
GBP300 000).<br />
Neither Pierneef, only one of three Francois Kriges<br />
and one of five Dylan Lewises sold.<br />
All prices quoted above include the buyer’s premium,<br />
of 12%-20%.<br />
The next couple of months will see the first <strong>sale</strong><br />
by the new auction house, Strauss & Co, plus a<br />
Stephan Welz and Co. In Association with Sotheby’s<br />
<strong>sale</strong> in Johannesburg and Graham Britz’s disposal<br />
of the late Brett Kebble’s collection. These will test<br />
whether the Stephan Welz and Co. In Association<br />
with Sotheby’s Cape <strong>sale</strong> marks a genuine market<br />
recovery, or was just a flash in the pan.<br />
UPCOMMING AUCTIONS<br />
William Joseph Kentridge (1955-) THE HIGHVELD STYLE MASKED BALL signed and dated ‘88.<br />
R 500 000 - R 700 000 Lot 329, SWELCO Sale<br />
8 April 2009<br />
Bonham’s London<br />
Africa Now<br />
An auction of contemporary <strong>African</strong> Art<br />
Enquiries: Giles Peppiatt + 44 (0) 20 7468 8355 giles.peppiatt@bonhams.com<br />
Hannah O’Leary + 44 (0) 20 7468 8213 hannah.oleary@bonhams.com<br />
Or log onto: www.bonhams.com<br />
20 & 21 April 2009<br />
Viewing 17-19 April 09<br />
SWELCO<br />
Stephan Welz and Company, in association with Sotheby’s<br />
Fine & Decorative Arts, Furniture, Silver, Ceramics and Jewellery<br />
Johannesburg<br />
Venue: 13 Biermann Ave, Rosebank Johannesburg<br />
Venue: The Great Cellar, Alphen Hotel, Alphen Hotel, Constantia<br />
See www.swelco.co.za for further details<br />
Viewing at: Graham’s Fine Art Gallery : 16th April – 1 May 2009<br />
Summerplace: 4th – 6th May 2009<br />
Auction: Summerplace: 7th May 2009<br />
Grahams Art Gallery<br />
Brett Kebble Art Viewing<br />
Contact the following for auction catalogue www.brettkebble<strong>art</strong>collection.co.za<br />
www.grahamsfine<strong>art</strong>gallery.co.za<br />
Call Grahams Art Gallery 011 27 11 4659192<br />
14 September 2009 at 8 p.m<br />
Strauss & Co Fine Art Auctioneers<br />
89 Central Street, Houghton, Gauteng 2198<br />
Important <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> Paintings, Watercolours and Sculpture<br />
(Entries open till 10 July 2009)<br />
The Johannesburg Country Club 8pm<br />
Tel. 011 728 8246<br />
www.strauss<strong>art</strong>.co.za, jhb@strauss<strong>art</strong>.co.za<br />
Cape Town Office, 078 044 8185<br />
ct@strauss<strong>art</strong>.co.za
06 BUSINESS ART | APRIL 09 ART AND INVESTMENT<br />
Johans Borman<br />
With Damien Hirst recently making headlines with his<br />
£111m mould-breaking auction <strong>sale</strong> at Sotheby’s, a<br />
quote attributed to him came to mind;<br />
“Art is about life and the <strong>art</strong> market is about money”.<br />
As gallerist I am continuously questioned about<br />
the investment potential of <strong>art</strong> and have by now<br />
formulated a response that usually covers most of<br />
the relevant aspects:<br />
I do not see <strong>art</strong> as a typical financial investment<br />
instrument, as it is not created to be that in the first<br />
place. Artists usually set out to capture a mood, emo-<br />
tion or underlying message and communicate this<br />
to the viewer using their p<strong>art</strong>icular approach, style<br />
and medium. Unlike financial investments <strong>art</strong> does<br />
not pay dividends, interest or rent – the ‘return on<br />
investment’ or the result of the interaction with a work<br />
of <strong>art</strong> lies in the emotional stimulation and ‘cerebral<br />
gymnastics’ experienced during this appreciation<br />
process.<br />
In my opinion, the concept of ‘investment <strong>art</strong>’<br />
distracts from the real purpose of <strong>art</strong> and is being<br />
emphasized to motivate non <strong>art</strong> lovers to spend<br />
more money in the ‘<strong>art</strong> industry’ – trusting that they<br />
will realise a healthy profit. This concept is largely<br />
promoted by auction houses and profit driven dealers<br />
who do not feel any responsibility towards maintain-<br />
ing a healthy and stable market. This approach is<br />
also not beneficial to living <strong>art</strong>ists - whose livelihood<br />
depends on a stable market for their work, or the<br />
Masters market where a lot of hype around a par-<br />
ticular collection or <strong>art</strong>ist can result in unsustainable<br />
high prices. One has to realise that the objective of<br />
any auction house is only to earn the most possible<br />
commission from every lot on every <strong>sale</strong>, where they<br />
have about 60 seconds to sell that p<strong>art</strong>icular lot. The<br />
actual price realised is less important to them as they<br />
rarely have to accept any responsibility for the result.<br />
Art must, however, be the cheapest pleasure avail-<br />
able to anybody who does appreciate it. For the price<br />
of an overseas holiday or one year’s depreciation on<br />
a luxury car, you can acquire a valuable and unique<br />
work of <strong>art</strong> that will provide you with unlimited hours<br />
of pleasure for the rest of your life and that of who-<br />
ever you pass it on to. The holding cost is minimal,<br />
no maintenance is required and should you ever<br />
decide to sell it, the capital gain is not taxable when<br />
privately owned in <strong>South</strong> Africa.<br />
The real investment value of <strong>art</strong> therefore lies in the<br />
quality it adds to our lives and the very accessible<br />
pleasure it affords us without any inhibiting owner-<br />
ship costs.<br />
Like any good asset acquired with the necessary<br />
care, thought and professional advice, <strong>art</strong> can also<br />
be an extraordinary investment and store of wealth<br />
in financial terms. This aspect should however not<br />
be the motivating factor to buy <strong>art</strong>, as it does not<br />
apply to every single work of <strong>art</strong> and requires a lot of<br />
research, knowledge and patience – characteristics<br />
usually found with most successful collectors.<br />
Market stability<br />
In comparison to other asset classes like shares and<br />
property, the monetary value of <strong>art</strong> is the most stable<br />
– as illustrated in the current performance of stock<br />
markets and property prices versus the <strong>art</strong> market<br />
worldwide. The reasons for this are a combination of<br />
the following:<br />
1. Unlike other assets, ‘the he<strong>art</strong> wills the mind’<br />
when buying a work of <strong>art</strong> as there is a well defined<br />
passion involved – it is not just another ‘investment’<br />
where an unemotional rational decision based purely<br />
on financial principles is concerned.<br />
2. Art purchases are usually not financed – works are<br />
bought for cash by <strong>art</strong> lovers who can afford them.<br />
This inevitably means that it is highly unlikely that<br />
owners would come under pressure to sell, as there<br />
is no debt to service and we are dealing with people<br />
who know how to generate wealth (which enabled<br />
them to purchase it in the first instance). When <strong>art</strong><br />
lovers do experience financial pressure, it is most<br />
likely that they will sell financed assets such as<br />
sports cars and holiday homes, but not the painting<br />
adorning their bedroom wall that they are so passion-<br />
ate and/or sentimental about.<br />
3. The stability of the <strong>art</strong> market can also be at-<br />
tributed to the fact that it is a relatively small market<br />
with a very small percentage of the general popula-<br />
tion p<strong>art</strong>icipating in it. At any given time a hand full<br />
of able buyers/collectors can ensure that it stays<br />
healthy and that prices are stable – in stark contrast<br />
to stock markets where panic selling can result in<br />
an investment’s value being halved (or devalued to<br />
even lower percentages as is currently the case) in a<br />
matter of weeks.<br />
International value<br />
From a <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> perspective, where we have<br />
exchange control regulations in place regulating and<br />
limiting overseas investments, another factor has<br />
now st<strong>art</strong>ed to influence the <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong> market – the es-<br />
tablishment of a proven market in London, pioneered<br />
by Bonhams auctioneers over the last 3 years. The<br />
international value of top <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong> works has not yet<br />
been fully digested by the market and should prove<br />
to be a very useful stimulant in these uncertain times.<br />
Not only is this aspect a comforting idea, but it is also<br />
broadening the collector base for <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong>works which<br />
could lead to some very exciting developments as<br />
important museums and collectors get involved.<br />
Pitfalls<br />
In light of the above, there are a number of obvious<br />
pitfalls to watch out for when exchanging your hard<br />
earned cash for a work of <strong>art</strong>:<br />
1. Run a mile when the ‘<strong>sale</strong>sperson’ is focussing<br />
on the ‘investment’ potential of the work and not on<br />
its <strong>art</strong>istic merit and its success as a work of <strong>art</strong> by a<br />
reputable <strong>art</strong>ist.<br />
2. When st<strong>art</strong>ing out, with relatively little experience<br />
or knowledge, do not buy from mobile auctioneers<br />
who typically have their <strong>sale</strong>s in warehouses and ho-<br />
tels. They are usually selling their own stock and you<br />
will be bidding against the cupboard in the corner,<br />
the driver and the auctioneer’s girlfriend in the back<br />
row until the price they are prepared to sell it at is<br />
reached. When you experience a problem with condi-<br />
tion or authenticity afterwards, they <strong>may</strong> also prove<br />
very difficult to get hold of and the ‘fine print’ on the<br />
back of the registration card will most certainly make<br />
sure all the risk (and loss) will be for your account.<br />
3. Do not buy paintings by the square cm – all <strong>art</strong>ists<br />
have more, or less, desirable periods or subject mat-<br />
ter and produced experimental works. Values <strong>may</strong><br />
therefore differ dramatically for similar sized works by<br />
the same <strong>art</strong>ist.<br />
4. Rarity <strong>may</strong> often count against the value of an<br />
<strong>art</strong>ist’s work as it <strong>may</strong> be an uncharacteristic style<br />
or subject matter that would generally not be sought<br />
after by buyers of that <strong>art</strong>ist’s work. Unique or experi-<br />
mental works are usually only of interest to collectors<br />
who like to cover a broader spectrum of a p<strong>art</strong>icular<br />
<strong>art</strong>ist’s oeuvre.<br />
5. Do not buy to ‘just get into the market’, as you<br />
<strong>may</strong> find it difficult to re-sell a mediocre work and<br />
the transactional costs can be punishing. Be patient<br />
– there will always be an opportunity to purchase the<br />
right quality at the right price.<br />
6. Beware of fakes. With the current values of most<br />
well known <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong>ists works, fakes have become a<br />
real problem. Most criminals rely on uninformed or<br />
ignorant dealers and auctioneers to sell fakes, which<br />
in many cases are old paintings bought at household<br />
<strong>sale</strong>s which have simply been altered with the sig-<br />
nature of a desirable <strong>art</strong>ist. <strong>SA</strong> legislation regarding<br />
fakes is not well defined and trying to get your money<br />
back <strong>may</strong> prove to be very difficult.<br />
Guidelines<br />
1. Allow yourself enough time to educate yourself<br />
about the p<strong>art</strong>icular section of the <strong>art</strong> market you are<br />
interested in before you decide what you like and do<br />
not like. Nobody can judge caviar if they have only<br />
tasted hake before.<br />
2. Frequent as many galleries, exhibitions and auc-<br />
tions as you can - without buying anything, until you<br />
feel comfortable about your ability to judge quality<br />
and value. This will mean that you are able to make<br />
an informed decision when considering a purchase.<br />
3. Build up relationships with reputable galleries<br />
– professional gallerists are always willing to help<br />
educate serious <strong>art</strong> lovers and can always be ap-<br />
proached for an opinion and advice. Be, however,<br />
aware that every gallery has a p<strong>art</strong>icular focus and<br />
stable of <strong>art</strong>ists that it promotes and <strong>may</strong> therefore<br />
be biased towards those <strong>art</strong>ists.<br />
4. Buy the very best work you can afford. This simple<br />
rule will mean that should you ever become a seller<br />
you won’t have any difficulty finding a buyer and will<br />
realise a better price because you own a desirable<br />
work which buyers will compete for.<br />
5. Do not buy to speculate. In most mature markets<br />
you <strong>may</strong> be blacklisted by galleries if you merely buy<br />
work to sell for a quick profit at auction. The idea is<br />
to live with works of <strong>art</strong> that you find stimulating and<br />
enjoy and not to compete with galleries who put a<br />
lot of time, energy and money in promoting <strong>art</strong>ist’s<br />
careers.<br />
6. Educate yourself about the conservational aspects<br />
of the different <strong>art</strong> mediums and how they should be<br />
framed. Realise that moisture and the ultra violet in<br />
sunlight have the most damaging effects on any work<br />
of <strong>art</strong>. Make sure you use framers who understand<br />
and practice conservation framing – there are many<br />
horror stories of the values of wonderful works<br />
having been destroyed by ignorant framers. Inspect<br />
works on paper or any work framed behind glass out<br />
of the frame before purchasing it – staples, glue or<br />
double-sided tape <strong>may</strong> already have damaged the<br />
work and halved the value!<br />
7. Enjoy the journey – collecting <strong>art</strong> is not a race!<br />
The fun lies in the search for that special piece that<br />
will take your breath away and make you shiver with<br />
excitement. You will encounter many interesting and<br />
some tempting works along the way, but buy with<br />
your he<strong>art</strong> and not your head.<br />
Johans Borman is the Director of<br />
Johans Borman Fine Art Gallery, Cape Town<br />
ART INVESTMENT AND COLLECTING<br />
By Jo-Marie Rabe<br />
This <strong>art</strong>icle was first published in Personal Finance<br />
magazine, 2nd Qu<strong>art</strong>er 2008. February 17, 2009<br />
The ability to spot a bankable <strong>art</strong>ist or piece of <strong>art</strong><br />
is a gift very few possess. As for the majority of<br />
would-be collectors and investors, We consider what<br />
history and contemporary trends can teach us about<br />
the tricky relationship between aesthetic value and<br />
investment potential.<br />
For centuries, collecting <strong>art</strong> was the domain of<br />
institutions and wealthy individuals in search of<br />
rewards beyond the purely financial. The church<br />
was the single most important patron of the <strong>art</strong>s. For<br />
more than a thousand years, <strong>art</strong> had one purpose: to<br />
explain and glorify the invisible and immaterial realm<br />
of God. Artists were anonymous; they were <strong>art</strong>isans<br />
in the service of this greater ideal.<br />
By 1500 <strong>art</strong> had st<strong>art</strong>ed to liberate itself, and the<br />
<strong>art</strong>ist had found a name. Universal men such as Le-<br />
onardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Titian and Raphael<br />
realised their own talent and demanded recognition.<br />
And the world was ready for them.<br />
But even during that time, the church was still the<br />
main patron of the <strong>art</strong>s, and although laymen st<strong>art</strong>ed<br />
to play a more dynamic role as collectors, <strong>art</strong>ists still<br />
worked to commissions only. The idea of acquiring<br />
canvas, brush and paint, and creating <strong>art</strong> without the<br />
slightest idea for whom you were doing it, or for the<br />
sole purpose of your own <strong>art</strong>istic expression, had not<br />
entered the Renaissance mind.<br />
During the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, the<br />
<strong>art</strong>ist became the visual biographer of his time. A<br />
perfect rendering of reality was the challenge. By the<br />
last decades of the 19th century, all of this changed<br />
dramatically. Two of the factors responsible were the<br />
development of low-cost photographic equipment<br />
and the appearance of the commercial <strong>art</strong> dealer.<br />
George Eastman’s box camera, “Kodak”, was offered<br />
for <strong>sale</strong> for the first time in 1888. By 1900, he had<br />
reached the mass market with his “Brownie”. Sud-<br />
denly, the <strong>art</strong>ist as renderer of reality had become<br />
redundant – anyone could do it with the click of a<br />
button. One of the traditional functions of <strong>art</strong> had<br />
become obsolete. This caused immense unrest.<br />
Artists had to st<strong>art</strong> looking within rather than without<br />
for inspiration. It heralded the birth of modernism<br />
in <strong>art</strong>. “Art is the expression of imagination, not the<br />
duplication of reality,” sculptor Henry Moore would<br />
exclaim later.<br />
At the same time, the commercial <strong>art</strong> dealer st<strong>art</strong>ed<br />
to play a more important role in the world of <strong>art</strong><br />
(which at that time meant Paris). The power of the<br />
state-sponsored salon system, which had for more<br />
that two centuries regulated exhibitions and the <strong>sale</strong><br />
of <strong>art</strong> with an iron fist, was in decline. In the wake of<br />
this, many small <strong>art</strong> enterprises made their appear-<br />
ance along the streets and boulevards of Paris. This<br />
was a key moment in the history of painting, because<br />
in order to sell their <strong>art</strong>, the young entrepreneurs<br />
offered prospective buyers a new incentive: a return<br />
on their investment.<br />
An idea is born<br />
Selling <strong>art</strong> as an investment has an ironic early<br />
proponent. In 1903, the struggling French <strong>art</strong>ist Henri<br />
Matisse informed a friend that he had come up with<br />
an idea to generate an alternative income from his<br />
paintings. His plan was to find 12 investors, who<br />
would each pay him 200 francs a year. In exchange<br />
for this, he would furnish them with two paintings<br />
a month. In itself, this proposal was not unique or<br />
p<strong>art</strong>icularly special. The history of <strong>art</strong> is littered with<br />
examples of <strong>art</strong>ists engaged in complex, symbiotic,<br />
often even abusive relationships with a patron or<br />
patrons who took responsibility for their day-to-day<br />
expenses in exchange for works of <strong>art</strong>.<br />
Matisse’s idea, however, had an interesting new<br />
twist to it. He intended to offer his <strong>art</strong> to this group<br />
on the grounds of its investment potential. He had<br />
envisaged that the 24 paintings would be exhibited<br />
and sold some years later (for what he hoped would<br />
be a profit).<br />
For Matisse, nothing came of this dream, but an idea<br />
was born, one that would change the way <strong>art</strong> was<br />
assessed and appreciated forever. Only one year<br />
later (1904), André Level, an astute French financier<br />
and a client of Matisse, persuaded 12 investors to<br />
contribute 212 francs each to an investment fund that<br />
would target an unusual new market: contemporary<br />
<strong>art</strong>.<br />
With ironic flair, Level called it La Peau de l’Ours<br />
(“The skin of the bear”), from the French expression<br />
il ne faut pas vendre la peau d’ours avant de l’avoir<br />
tué. Roughly translated, it has the same meaning as<br />
“don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”.<br />
Between 1904 and 1914, the syndicate bought <strong>art</strong><br />
by a group of relatively unknown <strong>art</strong>ists that was<br />
shunned, neglected or ignored by the <strong>art</strong> establish-<br />
ment in Paris. They focused on paintings by Matisse,<br />
Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.<br />
While Level made the purchases, members of the<br />
syndicate were encouraged to display these modern<br />
works of <strong>art</strong> in their homes.<br />
In 1914 the entire collection was auctioned off at the<br />
Hôtel Drouot in Paris. The <strong>sale</strong> was an enormous<br />
success. Prices of up to 10 times the purchase price<br />
were achieved. The initial investment had quadru-<br />
pled. The news travelled fast. Art as an alternative<br />
asset class, a commodity to trade, had arrived.<br />
At the same time that Level was acquiring paint-<br />
ings for his syndicate, a group of <strong>art</strong> collectors was<br />
building private collections of incredible importance.<br />
Among those who focused their attention on the<br />
same <strong>art</strong>ists were the Americans Leo and Gertrude<br />
Stein, Albert C Barnes, and Claribel and Etta Cone,<br />
the Germans Count Harry Kessler and Karl-Ernst<br />
Osthaus, and the Russian billionaires Ivan Mozorov<br />
and Sergei Shchukin.<br />
They often bought works from the <strong>art</strong>ists themselves,<br />
but a key figure – someone they trusted to identify,<br />
exhibit and sell to them “the next big name” – had<br />
appeared on the Paris <strong>art</strong> scene. He was a young <strong>art</strong><br />
dealer called Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939).<br />
Talent-spotter extraordinaire<br />
Vollard would play a pivotal p<strong>art</strong> in the aesthetic and<br />
commercial upheaval of the first decades of the 20th<br />
century. His brilliant career has been chronicled in a<br />
recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New<br />
York and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The accom-<br />
panying book, called, like the exhibition, Cézanne to<br />
Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, patron of the avant-garde,<br />
is a constant testament to his uncanny ability for tal-<br />
ent-spotting – an astute skill that cannot be taught.<br />
Vollard arrived in Paris in 1887. As the eldest son of<br />
a prominent Reunion family, it was fitting for him to<br />
go to the motherland to study law. He was an unin-<br />
terested student, preferring rather to wander though<br />
the book stalls on the banks of the Seine looking for<br />
prints and drawings.<br />
According to his biographers, Vollard had a preco-<br />
cious visual sense and a collector’s instinct, even<br />
as a small boy living happily on his island paradise.<br />
He also was, as an outsider, free from the regulated,<br />
controlled, conservative and incredibly stifling influ-<br />
ence of the powerful <strong>art</strong> salons.<br />
Vollard abandoned his studies in 1888, thereby for-<br />
feiting the allowance his father sent him. He wanted<br />
to be an <strong>art</strong> dealer, nothing else. Despite financial<br />
hardship, his business grew. Unable to buy the works<br />
of the established Impressionists, Vollard had to find<br />
other ways to facilitate his dream.<br />
Vollard’s inventiveness and famously persuasive<br />
persona helped him to convince Madame Manet,<br />
Édouard Manet’s widow, to sell him the <strong>art</strong>ist’s<br />
unfinished paintings and drawings. These he<br />
exhibited in his first gallery, situated at 37 rue Lafitte,<br />
in November 1894. The gallery was no more that a<br />
hole in a wall.<br />
The exhibition was a huge success for more than the<br />
obvious reasons. Vollard sold well, yes, but he also<br />
sold to the right people. Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)<br />
and Edgar Degas (1834-1917) came to the exhibi-<br />
tion. Renoir became a life-long friend and mentor,<br />
and Degas a life-long client and supplier. In the early<br />
days of Vollard’s career, they also acted as advisers.<br />
It was probably at their suggestion that Vollard of-<br />
fered Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) his first one-man<br />
show in 1895. Cézanne, already an old man by the<br />
time he met Vollard, had retreated to his native Aix-<br />
en-Provence after repeated rebuffs by the estab-<br />
lished Parisian <strong>art</strong> world.<br />
Vollard later said about his initial meeting with Cé-<br />
zanne: “An innovator like Cézanne was considered a<br />
madman or an impostor ... On the spot ... I managed<br />
to buy 150 canvasses from him, almost his entire<br />
output ... I risked a great deal of money by doing that<br />
– everything I owned, my entire fortune, went into<br />
it. And I anxiously wondered whether my audacity<br />
might not turn out to be the ruin of me. I did not even<br />
have enough money left over to frame Cézanne’s<br />
canvasses decently.” This quote chronicles the<br />
development of a mad passion, but also points to the<br />
danger and chances that Vollard was willing to take<br />
in the course of his illustrious career.<br />
He loved to challenge the establishment.<br />
Indeed, it would become Vollard’s calling-card:<br />
identifying and promoting avant-garde talents who<br />
were misunderstood, disregarded and even despised<br />
by the establishment. “One goes to Vollard’s gallery<br />
to be shocked,” a contemporary commented.<br />
Besides Renoir, Degas and Cézanne, Vollard hosted<br />
one-man exhibitions for and represented the work of<br />
<strong>art</strong>ists such as Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and<br />
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). Many of these <strong>art</strong>ists are<br />
today considered to be the most important <strong>art</strong>ists of<br />
their time and are even counted among the all-time<br />
great masters of <strong>art</strong>.<br />
For Vollard, Level and the collectors who bought<br />
these <strong>art</strong>ists’ work, time has been their great cor-<br />
roborator: it turned out that they had made the right<br />
choices. Their experience with <strong>art</strong> proved enormous-<br />
ly satisfying, but the “returns” on their “investment”<br />
differed. The speculators made a huge profit from<br />
selling their <strong>art</strong>, while the collectors benefited from<br />
keeping it.<br />
What we can learn<br />
Looking at the relationship between <strong>art</strong> and com-<br />
merce in recent history might be interesting, but<br />
it does not help us to decide what <strong>art</strong> to invest in<br />
today. Or does it? Can we take some lessons from<br />
the past? I believe that it does, that despite the<br />
semblance of change, things often are the same<br />
below the surface. People are still people and <strong>art</strong> will<br />
always be <strong>art</strong>.<br />
As it happens, Level’s La Peau de l’Ours was not<br />
only the first <strong>art</strong> investment fund, it was also the last<br />
one to work well. Despite numerous international<br />
attempts to cash in on the <strong>art</strong> market boom, <strong>art</strong><br />
investment funds have not lived up to their potential;<br />
they have more media appeal than real practition-<br />
ers. Remember the recent Van Gogh advert for<br />
one of our premier fund management companies?<br />
The question is, does <strong>art</strong> form p<strong>art</strong> of its portfolio of<br />
assets?<br />
According to gallery owner and <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> mas-<br />
ters specialist Johans Borman, the reason there is so<br />
little real interest in <strong>art</strong> investment funds is obvious:<br />
people who spend their money on <strong>art</strong> want to live<br />
with it. “The local <strong>art</strong> market is driven by individual<br />
collectors, not corporate p<strong>art</strong>icipation,” he asserts. As<br />
was the case centuries ago, <strong>art</strong> has indeed become<br />
one of the most recognisable trophies of success for<br />
the world’s wealthiest people.<br />
But there are other reasons why <strong>art</strong> investment funds<br />
are not performing to potential. To st<strong>art</strong> with, it is<br />
almost impossible to forecast <strong>art</strong> prices, an exercise<br />
once described by American economist William<br />
Baumol as a “floating crap game”.<br />
Despite academic attempts at <strong>art</strong> market analysis<br />
by heavyweights such as the Belgian economists<br />
Nathalie Buelens and Victor Ginsburgh, who looked<br />
at the prices of paintings between 1700 and 1961,<br />
and Jiangping Mei and Michael Moses, economists<br />
at New York University who developed the Mei Mo-<br />
ses Fine Art index (based on the <strong>record</strong>s of paintings<br />
with a previous auction history that Christie’s and<br />
Sotheby’s had sold since 1950), the truth is that it is<br />
impossible to predict the <strong>art</strong> market.<br />
First of all, it is extremely difficult to put an intrinsic<br />
value on <strong>art</strong>, and, in addition, the market is unregu-<br />
lated, it is fraught with variables and it is almost<br />
exclusively driven by emotion. Besides ego (which<br />
can be an exquisitely expensive indulgence at times),<br />
personal preference, taste and fashion play deciding<br />
roles in what will become the “next big thing” in the<br />
world of high <strong>art</strong>.<br />
For love or money<br />
Popular <strong>art</strong>icles on the subject of <strong>art</strong> as an invest-<br />
ment are plagued by platitudes.<br />
“Don’t buy <strong>art</strong> as an investment, rather buy what you<br />
like” is one that almost always comes up. The idea is<br />
that, should your investment turn out to be a dud, at<br />
least you have the pleasure of living with something<br />
that you like. I often wonder to whom this piece of<br />
advice is addressed.<br />
Here is a scenario: the investor is offered two pieces<br />
of <strong>art</strong>. One is dark, abstract, dense and difficult to<br />
understand, and our speculator does not really like it<br />
(he thinks). The other he finds a pleasant, beautiful<br />
and accessible painting – he feels this will be easy<br />
“to live with”. However, he is assured by the vendor<br />
that the first could yield 10 times the return on invest-<br />
ment that the second painting could. Which one will<br />
he choose? He will choose the dense work that he<br />
did not understand or like initially, and then st<strong>art</strong><br />
believing in it (even passionately loving it) as soon<br />
as it is his. Because that is our nature. The investor<br />
did not buy with his eyes; he bought with his ears. He<br />
has successfully acquired a name by square-centi-<br />
metre investment, not a piece of <strong>art</strong>.<br />
Second scenario: <strong>art</strong> lover, same paintings, same<br />
reaction (displeased by one but loves the other),<br />
same prediction (high predicted growth on the unap-<br />
preciated work). The <strong>art</strong> lover will buy the one he<br />
likes, because that is his nature – he buys only what<br />
he loves in any case. So telling the <strong>art</strong> lover to buy<br />
<strong>art</strong> he loves is superfluous.<br />
To the investor, <strong>art</strong> is a commodity. For you, as a<br />
potential investor, a too-definite idea about what you<br />
“love” could literally stand in the way of your making<br />
a good profit. Of course, buying <strong>art</strong> you love and then<br />
having it grow in value is the ideal, but giving yourself<br />
a mandate that reflects your true objective will clear<br />
some of the fuzziness of the “buying what you love”<br />
sentiment. It is a case of “<strong>art</strong>-buyer, know thyself”.<br />
So, the point to remember about Level and the<br />
success of his syndicate is their clear mandate to<br />
themselves: buy to sell. Personal preference aside,<br />
they focused on the profitability aspect of their ac-<br />
quisitions. In short, they did not necessarily buy what<br />
they liked. That was not the point of the purchase!<br />
The point was making money. The success of this<br />
venture was based on business acumen and sound<br />
advice, not the impassioned fervour of the die-hard<br />
collector.<br />
“Buy the best you can afford” is another of those<br />
fuzzy “truths”. Like all other sectors of the investment<br />
market, the <strong>art</strong> world has its blue chips. Currently,<br />
almost any of the Zanzibar paintings by Irma Stern<br />
is sure to yield a high return. But for these works the<br />
entry level is prohibitively high.<br />
So, to those with a bit of “spare cash”, what to do?<br />
What is “the best you can afford”? Do you buy a bad<br />
work by a high-yielding <strong>art</strong>ist (too many of those<br />
around) or a brilliant work by someone who has yet<br />
to prove his or her worth on an auction floor?<br />
Even for those investors/collectors who are in the<br />
privileged position to be able to buy at the very<br />
top end, there are still many things to consider. To<br />
those who intend to sell again, buying at the top<br />
would probably mean that you will have to wait a<br />
while before putting it on the market again. Art as an<br />
investment should in any case be seen as a medium-<br />
to long-term investment.<br />
Another factor to consider is that a paper-trail makes<br />
for good returns. Pieces with a known history or<br />
those that have previously belonged to famous<br />
collectors always have a better chance of surviving<br />
market trends than those without.<br />
An example of how important provenance is can be<br />
found in the auction results achieved by a collection<br />
of <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong> that was sold by Stephan Welz &<br />
Company in association with Sotheby’s a year ago.<br />
Jack and Helene Kahn had put together their collec-<br />
tion over a period of 50 years. The Kahns were true<br />
<strong>art</strong> lovers and could not bear to p<strong>art</strong> with these pre-<br />
cious works. The collection was sold posthumously.<br />
All the lots were sold, nine new <strong>art</strong>ists’ <strong>record</strong>s were<br />
established, five works sold for over R1 million each<br />
and the highest price ever paid for a <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong><br />
painting was achieved: The Indian woman sold for<br />
R7.26 million.<br />
“The final total was a spectacular R23 945 300, three<br />
times the pre-<strong>sale</strong> estimate,” I read on the post-<strong>sale</strong><br />
press release.<br />
If the <strong>art</strong> world is under the influence of emotion,<br />
single-owner <strong>sale</strong>s are the drunken brawls of the<br />
industry. All the rules are broken and all hell breaks<br />
loose. This is a pattern that is repeated over time,<br />
genres and continents. We love that which has a<br />
proven <strong>record</strong> of having been loved before.<br />
The Kahn collection has set new benchmarks, but<br />
some of those have already been surpassed.<br />
After the Kahn <strong>sale</strong> the questions on everyone’s<br />
minds were the same: is the <strong>art</strong> market in a bub-<br />
ble? Can these prices be sustained? Is there more<br />
growth potential? Well, like all good answers there<br />
is a yes and no to consider. As far as the blue-chip<br />
items (those iconic pieces that represent the best<br />
of a genre or the oeuvre of an individual <strong>art</strong>ist) are<br />
concerned, many feel the market has not reached a<br />
pinnacle at all. “In terms of international prices, our<br />
best <strong>art</strong> is still undervalued,” Borman says.<br />
It is the middle market that seems to be precarious.<br />
“Bad” works by “good” <strong>art</strong>ists are unsold, and medio-<br />
cre <strong>art</strong>ists <strong>fetch</strong> mediocre prices. So if there is some<br />
sort of bubble, this middle of the market is probably<br />
the area that will be affected should it burst.<br />
But rather than a bubble, the <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong> world<br />
seems to be caught in a frenetic feeding frenzy.<br />
Specialist advice essential<br />
It’s auction night. I am on my way to my car. A guy I<br />
have never seen or met shows me a work of <strong>art</strong> he<br />
has just bought. “Do you like my painting?” he asks<br />
me before he puts it in his car boot. He is desperate<br />
for me to say yes. He has just paid R180 000 for it.<br />
“The market kept running away from me and I had to<br />
get in, I just had to ...”<br />
So, is <strong>art</strong> a good investment? Yes it is, provided you<br />
buy right. Art is a high-risk niche investment sector<br />
and should form p<strong>art</strong> of a larger, more comprehen-<br />
sive portfolio. Take some advice from the biggest <strong>art</strong><br />
buyer currently active in Europe, His Serene High-<br />
ness Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, Europe’s<br />
fourth-smallest country: it is good business policy<br />
to invest surplus cash in <strong>art</strong>. Not your salary, but “sur-<br />
plus cash” – an interesting notion to most of us.<br />
To buy “well”, information and good advice are<br />
paramount for success. Investing in <strong>art</strong> means<br />
investing in your own aesthetic, but there is more to<br />
it than that. Getting to know the market is incredibly<br />
important. Study, look, learn and get an adviser.<br />
Nobody in their right mind decides on a blue Monday<br />
to invest their money on the stock market and then<br />
phones the JSE, books a telephone line and st<strong>art</strong>s<br />
bidding ferociously! But this is exactly what people<br />
do with <strong>art</strong>.<br />
Like the world of shares, stocks and bonds, the <strong>art</strong><br />
world is a minefield that has to be negotiated with<br />
great care. If financial return is the aim, do what you<br />
would do if you decided to play the stock exchange:<br />
find a broker. Having an <strong>art</strong> dealer, a curator or an<br />
<strong>art</strong> consultant at your disposal means that you can<br />
rely on someone who knows the <strong>art</strong> and <strong>art</strong>ists, can<br />
read the trends, assess the nuances and can give<br />
informed advice on what to look out for or avoid.<br />
The role of the specialist <strong>art</strong> adviser has been<br />
important since the time of Vollard and his contempo-<br />
raries. In today’s <strong>art</strong> market, it is an imperative. The<br />
<strong>art</strong> adviser has become indispensable. Even Prince<br />
Hans-Adam acknowledges this: “Sometimes I do<br />
not like the piece or I think the price is too high, and<br />
sometimes I like the piece and I would pay a very<br />
high price, but I am not an <strong>art</strong> expert myself. There-<br />
fore I am very glad to have an excellent advisory<br />
board, which usually succeeds in convincing me to<br />
take the right decision.”<br />
And why exactly is it ironic that the idea of <strong>art</strong> as<br />
an investment was thought up by an <strong>art</strong>ist? Well,<br />
because <strong>art</strong>ists do not create <strong>art</strong> for the sake of<br />
investment; they create it to communicate emotion.<br />
And <strong>art</strong>ists are rarely the ones who benefit when <strong>art</strong><br />
prices go through the roof. The “droit de suite” is a<br />
movement that intends to rectify this: the scheme<br />
aims to secure a share of the revenue from <strong>sale</strong>s<br />
after the initial <strong>sale</strong> for the creator of the work. It is<br />
controversial, but they argue that if most other <strong>art</strong><br />
forms benefit from royalties earned, why can the<br />
creators of visual <strong>art</strong> not benefit from subsequent<br />
<strong>sale</strong>s of their work. I say Hear! Hear!<br />
And on this note: as to the question of what to buy<br />
– the old masters or young, living, contemporary<br />
<strong>art</strong>ists? Buy the old masters by all means, but also<br />
invest some of your time and money on the living.<br />
Because by buying the work of a young <strong>art</strong>ist you<br />
give him or her a mandate to keep creating. Most<br />
<strong>art</strong>ists can work only if they sell their <strong>art</strong>. With your<br />
financial support, you might be nurturing the next<br />
Cézanne, Pollock, Stern or Dumas.<br />
Jo-Marie Rabe is a cultural historian and<br />
co-owns Piér Rabe Antiques in Stellenbosch.<br />
Value judgments<br />
Art – Pleasure or Investment?
The Avant Car Guard (ACG) collective are not ideal<br />
candidates for an interview. For st<strong>art</strong>ers Zander<br />
Blom, Michael McGarry and Jan-Henri Booyens,<br />
the trio that constitute this irreverent group, are on<br />
a quest to undermine and interrogate the mechanics<br />
that drive the <strong>art</strong> world and interviewing is, after<br />
all, p<strong>art</strong> of the machinery that elevates the <strong>art</strong>ist,<br />
promulgating the status of the <strong>art</strong>ist-genius. But it’s<br />
not just that ACG eschew the <strong>art</strong>ist-genius tag and<br />
culture but they have already satirised the ubiquitous<br />
press interview in their work – long before they found<br />
themselves at the centre of attention. Titled Avant<br />
Car Guard at Home 1996 the trio are photographed<br />
seated at a table in front of microphones.<br />
Of course, a number of elements disrupt this miseen-scène;<br />
the suburban garden in the background<br />
and the date in the title; in 1996 the trio were<br />
presumably still students. It’s not that they foretold<br />
their future but rather were representing the typical<br />
<strong>art</strong>ist-genius narrative in which the <strong>art</strong>ist is cast as<br />
a genius in retrospect. Our interview will no doubt<br />
cement their status too but it plays out under different<br />
conditions. Held up in Pretoria Booyens is absent<br />
and taking place at an outdoor café in Joburg it<br />
doesn’t resemble the constructed or <strong>art</strong>ificial process<br />
their <strong>art</strong> work references.<br />
Blom and McGarry are here to promote ACG’s up<br />
and coming solo at Whatiftheworld gallery in Cape<br />
Town but they also seem to relish the opportunity to<br />
expand on ACG’s ethos, which they say is so often<br />
adumbrated by the unruly nature of their <strong>art</strong>.<br />
“We have kind of wanted to resist becoming the <strong>art</strong><br />
world’s entertainment. We are always referred to as<br />
quirky, rabble-rousers; very few people engage with<br />
what we are saying,” notes McGarry.<br />
The <strong>art</strong> of ACG has been compelled by a number<br />
of different ideas since they launched Volume I at<br />
Bell Roberts in December 2006. Though they found<br />
notoriety quickly with their derisive attacks on the<br />
<strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong> world, a period Blom terms their<br />
“bitchy phase”, their initial impetus was driven by a<br />
desire to destabilise notions of authorship. It wasn’t<br />
just a clichéd postmodern/Foucaultian compulsion;<br />
they genuinely couldn’t see themselves following<br />
the archetypal <strong>art</strong>ist career path that would involve<br />
producing serious solo exhibitions every two years.<br />
“You kind of feel like you are being cheated when you<br />
get caught in that cycle. There is no space to have<br />
fun. You make a whole bunch of shit and then you<br />
have product, it gets shown and then you make more<br />
shit. There is little fun in that,” observes Blom.<br />
Experimenting in the context of a residency didn’t<br />
appeal to the trio either.<br />
“That form of <strong>art</strong> making is also really lame because<br />
it doesn’t really deliver anything. Even in a residency<br />
where you put a whole lot of people together, you will<br />
find that everyone still want to put their own stamp<br />
on what you produce. It is cool to develop one thing,”<br />
asserts Blom.<br />
ACG is like the product of an advertising or brand<br />
campaign, in which a team of people develop a<br />
powerful identity that is distinct from their own, they<br />
suggest.<br />
“There is a branding and a concept that we work<br />
towards it’s an independent thing,” says Blom.<br />
Nevertheless Blom and McGarry are quick to assert<br />
that while ACG’s identity is independent of them,<br />
its essence is tied to them; in other words if one of<br />
them had to leave the collective, ACG would cease<br />
to exist.<br />
Being p<strong>art</strong> of ACG has freed them from the conven-<br />
ARTIST PROFILE SOUTH AFRICAN ART GALLERY LISTINGS APRIL 09 | BUSINESS ART 07<br />
Avant Car Guard<br />
Avant Car Guard are putting up a new exhibition. Mary Corrigall meets with the irreverent group and discovers<br />
that they prize freedom over convention<br />
tions that their individual expression is unable to<br />
afford them.<br />
“We can say stuff with Avant Car Guard that we can’t<br />
and don’t necessarily want to say with our own stuff<br />
and because there are three of us the blame or the<br />
authorship is diluted. It’s also a bit lame to do that<br />
stuff by yourself,” says McGarry.<br />
Working as a collective has had an impact not only<br />
on ACG’s aesthetic but their process too.<br />
“It is a fast way of working; an idea happens quickly<br />
or goes away quickly, whereas if you are working by<br />
yourself you get stuck. You learn not to be precious.<br />
And you learn to take the piss out of yourself,”<br />
observes Blom.<br />
The immediacy of their conceptual process obviously<br />
made photography an automatic choice as their<br />
primary mode of expression. Using a timer they take<br />
all their own pictures.<br />
“It makes it more difficult but it makes our <strong>art</strong> more<br />
peformative in a way,” suggests McGarry.<br />
“We prefer it to do it ourselves because we have<br />
grown used to being comfortable with just the three<br />
of us, the space between sitting and running has also<br />
created an effect,” proposes Blom.<br />
Volume III, the title of their up-and-coming Whatiftheworld<br />
exhibition, will see the trio expand their<br />
distinctive idiom into the realm of painting.<br />
“With the photographs we were always acting out<br />
some scenario, we would mimic an idea. In the<br />
painting we are not mimicking some situation we are<br />
working directly (with the subject),” says Blom.<br />
“The process is totally different; we are perhaps<br />
acting out what a normal <strong>art</strong>ist does,” comments<br />
McGarry<br />
He also suggests that painting has developed the<br />
ACG aesthetic into a less figurative and one dimensional<br />
form of expression.<br />
“Volume II was very much like looking at the <strong>art</strong> world<br />
and doing one liner cell based c<strong>art</strong>oon things that<br />
are activated by the title. We only directly attacked<br />
anyone with the “Berni Seal” (in reference to Berni<br />
Searle) photograph, but this show is very much about<br />
attacking the icons, its bigger and more fun. Not as<br />
one dimensional, the paintings are more lyrical and<br />
abstract,” says McGarry.<br />
Despite their overt attempts at challenging the <strong>art</strong><br />
world they have no desire to transform it; Blom and<br />
McGarry say they derive pleasure simply from creating<br />
satirical work.<br />
“In a micro way in terms of how we are read as<br />
individuals or what young contemporary practice is, I<br />
think that we have changed the way we see it. If we<br />
did our solo work without Avant Car Guard it would<br />
be death,” observes McGarry.<br />
Nevertheless, they don’t deny they have had an<br />
impact.<br />
“It is difficult to imagine the <strong>art</strong> world without us,”<br />
says McGarry. But it’s not a comment born from<br />
arrogance; he suggests that “anybody could have<br />
been us we ended up being us, it’s healthy and it’s a<br />
sign that the hegemony that was around has relaxed.<br />
There are a lot more younger galleries and that<br />
power dynamic that was in place is no longer there<br />
anymore and you can shit on big names and nothing<br />
really happens anymore.”<br />
• Volume III opens at Whatiftheworld Gallery in<br />
Cape Town on March 26<br />
EASTERN CAPE<br />
East London<br />
Ann Bryant Art Gallery<br />
Until 3 Apr, AB<strong>SA</strong> L’Atelier Awards Regional Exhibition; 25 Apr-<br />
9 May, Anything but painting, East London Fine Art Society<br />
exhibition.<br />
9 St Marks Road, <strong>South</strong>ernwood, East London<br />
T. 043 722 4044, annbryant@intekom.co.za<br />
Port Elizabeth<br />
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum<br />
Until 5 Apr, Beyond the Documentary Photograph, Contemporary<br />
<strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> Photography, curated by Heidi Erdmann &<br />
Jacob Lebeko<br />
1 Park Drive, Port Elizabeth, Tel. (041) 506 2000<br />
www.<strong>art</strong>museum.co.za<br />
FREE STATE<br />
Bloemfontein<br />
Oliewenhuis Art Museum<br />
Until 08 April,Transitions, Travelling Exhibition and film, by<br />
Paul Emmanuel.<br />
22 Apr-24 May, Decade,Highlights from 10 years of collecting<br />
from the Sanlam Art Collection.<br />
16 Harry Smith Street, Bloemfontein T. 051 447 9609<br />
GAUTENG<br />
Artspace - JHB<br />
1-25 Apr, Justice, Just Us, Just Icing: print and mixed media<br />
solo exhibition by Philippa Levitt.<br />
Chester Court, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood,<br />
Johannesburg. T. 011 880 8802 www.<strong>art</strong>space-jhb.co.za<br />
Brodie/Stevenson<br />
Until 25 Apr, Self/Not Self, a two-p<strong>art</strong> curated exhibition that<br />
explores modes of self-representation across a range of<br />
contemporary <strong>art</strong> practices. Pieter Hugo, Lunga Kama, Anton<br />
Kannemeyer, Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Serge Alain<br />
Nitegeka,Tracy Payne, Berni Searle and Lerato Shadi.<br />
373 Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg T. 011 326 0034,<br />
www.<strong>art</strong>extra.co.za<br />
David Brown Fine Art<br />
Until 18 Apr, recent abstract paintings by Aurora Wolpe.<br />
39 Keyes Ave,off Jellicoe, Rosebank, Johannesburg.<br />
T. 011 788 4435 www.davidbrownfine<strong>art</strong>.co.za<br />
David Krut Projects<br />
Until 4 Apr, Hidden noise, curated by Phil Sandres, Master<br />
printer at the Robert Blackburn Workshop, and includes work<br />
by Glen Baldridge, Alex Dodge, Joseph H<strong>art</strong>, Jason Jagel, Phil<br />
Sanders and Tatiana Simonova.<br />
Until 25 Apr, Collaborations, etchings by Deborah Bell.<br />
142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg<br />
T. 011 447 0627 www.davidkrutpublishing.com<br />
Everard Read Gallery Jhb<br />
Until 19 Apr, The Great <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> Nude, paintings and<br />
sculptures by various Everard Read Artists,<br />
6 Jellicoe Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg<br />
T. 011 788 4805 www.everard.co.za<br />
Gallery AOP<br />
Until 15 Apr, New etchings, monotypes and watercolours by<br />
Robert Hodgins.<br />
18 Apr-16 May, Drawings by Walter Battis.<br />
44 Stanley Ave, Braamfontein Werf (Milpark),<br />
Tel. (011) 726 2234 www.<strong>art</strong>onpaper.co.za<br />
Gallery MOMO<br />
Until 14 Apr, The return of the man behind, Multi-disciplinary<br />
work by Rodney Place;Ransome Stanley, In touch, Solo<br />
exhibition of paintings. 26-30 Apr, Art Beijing 2009, in collaboration<br />
with IFAS and CULTURESFRANCE: The Encounters of<br />
Bamako. 16 Apr-11 May, group show.<br />
52 7th Avenue, Parktown North, Johannesburg<br />
T.011 327 3247 www.gallerymomo.com<br />
Gallery on the Square<br />
1-14 April, group show, including (mis)adventure <strong>art</strong> collective,<br />
Mapula embroidery project.<br />
32 Maude Street, Nelson Mandela Square at Sandton City,<br />
Sandton, Johanesburg. T.(011) 784 2847<br />
www.galleryonthesquare.co.za<br />
Alliance Francaise, Johannesburg<br />
Until 2 Apr, The Gautrain Constructivism & Urbanism, exhibition<br />
by Patric de Mervelec.<br />
17 Lower Park Drive (corner of Kerry Road),Parkview,<br />
Johannesburg. T. 011 646 1169 www.alliance.org.za<br />
Goethe Institute<br />
For Apr, Shebeen Blues, photography by Ananias Léki Dago.<br />
119 Jan Smuts Ave, Entrance on New Port Road, Parkwood.<br />
T. 011 4423232 www.goethe.de/ins/za<br />
Goodman Gallery<br />
Until 25 Apr, Jeremy Wafer; 30 Apr - 23 May, Peter Friedl.<br />
163 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg,<br />
T. 011 788 1113 www.goodman-gallery.com<br />
Kliptown Art Project<br />
From 28 Mar, Guard on Shift, Open Air Installation by Sue<br />
Pam-Grant & Xoli Norman.<br />
Battery Centre, Kliptown, Soweto. www.jozi-<strong>art</strong>lab.co.za<br />
Nirox Foundation and Goodman Gallery<br />
Until 5 Jun, Contemporary Sculpture in the Landscape, various<br />
<strong>art</strong>ists, at the Cradle of Humankind. Contact the Goodman<br />
Gallery for viewing and walkabouts, by appointment only.<br />
T. 011 788 1113 www.goodman-gallery.com<br />
GordArt Gallery<br />
GordArt Gallery (main Space)<br />
Until 04 Apr, sculptural works and Found objects, Sarel Petrus<br />
and Edzard Du Plessis; 18 Apr-9 May, Debbie Cloete.<br />
GordArt Project Room (Upstairs) Until 04 Apr, Kirsten Watson,<br />
works in mixed media. 18 Apr-9 May, Stompie Selebi.<br />
Shop 1 Parkwood Mansions, 144 Jan Smuts Ave, Parkwood,<br />
TF 011 880 5928 gordon@gord<strong>art</strong>gallery.com<br />
Graham Fine Art Gallery<br />
<strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> Investment Art, From the permanent collection;<br />
Auction of the Brett Kebble <strong>art</strong> collection: viewing: 16 Apr - 1<br />
May.<br />
Shop 31, Broadacres Lifestyle Centre, Cnr. Valley & Cedar<br />
Roads Fourways, Johannesburg. T.011 465 9192<br />
www.grahamsgallery.co.za<br />
Johannesburg Art Gallery<br />
Until 7 Jun, For Tshepo, Ten Years Later, Mphapho “Ra”<br />
Hlasane, Artist at the Nando’s Project Room #4.<br />
King George Street, Joubert Park, Johannesburg<br />
T. 011 725 3180 www.joburg.org.za<br />
Obert Contemporary at Melrosearch<br />
1-15 Apr, Off the reservation, John Vlismas.<br />
14 The High Street, Melrose Arch, T. 011 684 1214<br />
www.obertcontemporary.com<br />
Rabbi Cyril Harris Community Centre<br />
Until 5 Apr, Pieter Van der Westhuizen, exhibition of works.<br />
Cnr. Glenhove Rd & 4th Street Houghton, East of the M1.<br />
T. 011 728 8088<br />
Resolution<br />
Until 7 Apr, Small Worlds: Rail technology, nostalgia and <strong>South</strong><br />
<strong>African</strong> landscape, by Wits School of the Arts Head of Digital<br />
Arts Christo Doherty.<br />
142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg<br />
T. 011 880 4054 www.resolutiongallery.com<br />
Rooke Gallery<br />
Until 01 May, The Travels of Bad, Major Solo Exhibition and<br />
publication by Zander Blom. By Appointment, The Newtown,<br />
37 Quinn Street Newtown Johannesburg. T. 072 658 0762<br />
www.rookegallery.co.za<br />
Standard Bank Gallery<br />
Main Gallery, 14 Apr - 23 May, Past/Present, Andrew Verster.<br />
Art & Artifact Gallery, 14 Apr - 23 May, Eduardo Villa<br />
Miniatures.<br />
Cnr. Simmonds & Frederick Streets, Johannesburg, 2001<br />
Tel: 011 631 1889 www.standardbankgallery.co.za<br />
Seippel Gallery<br />
Mbongeni Richman Buthelezi, Cedric Nunn, Bonile Bam,<br />
Jurgen Schadeberg, Pierre Crocquet, Andrew Tshabangu.<br />
August House, 76-82 End Street, Doornfontein.<br />
T. 011 401 1421 www.seippel-gallery.com<br />
The Art Place, Gallery & Art Centre<br />
4 Apr–2 May, All Things Bright & Beautiful, features all media<br />
by leading floral <strong>art</strong>ists & painted ceramics.<br />
144 Milner Ave,Roosevelt Park, T 011 888-9120<br />
University of Johannesburg Arts Centre Gallery<br />
Until 15 Apr, Cities of the World, solo exibition of drawings by<br />
Titus Matiyane.<br />
University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park Kingsway campus<br />
cnr Kingsway and Universiteits Rd, Auckland Park<br />
T. 011 559 2099/2556<br />
Warren Siebrits Modern & Contemporary Art<br />
Until 8 May, Main Gallery Joburg Art Fair exhibition.<br />
140 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg,<br />
T. 011 327 0000 www.warrensiebrits.co.za<br />
The <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> Art Information Directory 09<br />
is now available at wwww.saaid.co.za at R 169,-<br />
Pretoria<br />
Alette Wessels Kunskamer<br />
Exhibition of Old Masters and<br />
selected leading contemporary <strong>art</strong>ists.<br />
Maroelana Centre, Maroelana.<br />
GPS : S25º 46.748 EO28º 15.615<br />
T. 012 346 0728 C. 084 589 0711<br />
www.<strong>art</strong>wessels.co.za<br />
Centurion Art Gallery<br />
Art Gallery collection of works.<br />
T. 012 358 3477<br />
www.pretoria<strong>art</strong>museum.co.za<br />
Fried Contemporary Art Gallery<br />
Until 11 Apr, He<strong>art</strong>, Lianna Loubser, Tshepo Setshwidi, Marli<br />
de Weerdt, Sybran Wiechers. 18 Apr-16 May, Four women<br />
and a man, Ruhan Janse van Vuuren, Anna Gous, Jackie<br />
Schoombie, Marina Aucamp, Esme Kruger.<br />
430 Charles Str, Brooklyn, Pretoria T. 012 346 0158<br />
www.friedcontemporary.com<br />
Naude Modern<br />
Until 22 Apr, 180 Degrees, inaugural exhibition by Andre<br />
Naude<br />
254a St Patrick’s Road, Muckleneuk Ridge, Pretoria,<br />
T. 012 440 2201 www.<strong>art</strong>.co.za/andrenaude<br />
Pretoria Art Museum<br />
PAM - North Gallery<br />
PAM - Henry Preiss Hall, until 19 Apr, Kilimanjaro in relation<br />
to global warming: origins of the Rift – ordered chaos to a<br />
disordered present<br />
PAM - Albert Werth Hall, until 19 Apr, Africa Rifting/ Bloodlines<br />
PAM - East Gallery, until 22 Jun, from the Museum’s Permanent<br />
Collection,Artists<br />
from Polly Street and Rorke’s Drift T.012 344 1807/8<br />
www.<strong>art</strong>.museum@tshwane.gov.za<br />
Pretoria Association of Arts<br />
Main Gallery, Until 9 Apr, St Sebastian. Until 9 Apr, Rina<br />
Stutzer. 19 Apr-7 May, Jaco Benade & M J Lourens.<br />
24 April to 13 May, Galerie Chaton / Black Box, Mimi van der<br />
Merwe.<br />
173 Mackie Street, New Muckleneuk, Pretoria, Gauteng,<br />
0181, Tel. (012) 346 3100 www.<strong>art</strong>sassociationpta.co.za<br />
UNI<strong>SA</strong> Art Gallery<br />
Until 08 May, Then and now, Images by 8 <strong>SA</strong> Photographers:<br />
Graeme Williams, Gisele Wulfsohn, Paul Weinberg, Eric Miller,<br />
George Hallett, David <strong>Gold</strong>blatt, Guy Tillim and Cedric Nunn.<br />
Theo van Wijk Building, <strong>Gold</strong>fields entrance, 5th floor. Unisa<br />
Campus, Pretoria. T.012 429 6823 www.unisa.ac.za/gallery<br />
KWAZULU-NATAL<br />
Durban<br />
Artisan Contemporary<br />
Until 4 Apr, Lost Girl, an exhibition of works on canvas by<br />
Victoria Verbaan<br />
344 Florida Rd, Morningside,<br />
T. 031 312 4364 sue@<strong>art</strong>isan.co.za<br />
Art Space - DBN<br />
April: AB<strong>SA</strong> L’Atelier Regional Competition entries.<br />
Until 18 Apr, YEStoDAY, Sculpture by Gerald Baise in the<br />
Main Gallery. Shadow Dance, paintings by Greg Bauermeister<br />
in the Middle Gallery.<br />
20 Apr-9 May, Nic Crooks<br />
3 Millar Road, Durban. T.031 312 0793<br />
www.<strong>art</strong>spacedurban.co.za<br />
Bank Gallery and Durban Art Gallery<br />
Imaging <strong>South</strong> Africa, Durban Art Gallery,<br />
Until 26 Apr, Stamps & Newspapers, collection projects by<br />
Siemon Allen.<br />
23 Apr- 28 May, Situation, works by Vaughn Sadie at the Bank<br />
Gallery.<br />
Bank Gallery, Morningside, Durban T. 031 312 6911, www.<br />
bankgallery.co.za<br />
Durban Art Gallery, Second Floor, City Hall, Smith Street,<br />
Durban T. 031 300 6238<br />
Durban Art Gallery<br />
Until 17 May, Not Alone, an international project of Make<br />
Art-Stop Aids, curated by Carol Brown and David Gere. Until<br />
Dec 2009, Pic(k) Of The DAG, <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> works from the<br />
gallery’s Permanent Collection.<br />
Second Floor, City Hall, Anton Lembede Street, Durban<br />
T. 031 311 2268<br />
Kizo<br />
Until 26 Apr, An exhibition of mixed media works by<br />
Lara Mellon, Maggie Strachan, Joan M<strong>art</strong>in, Lesley Magwood-<br />
Fraser and Rene Leslie.<br />
Shop G350 Palm Boulevard Gateway Theatre of Shopping<br />
Umhlanga T. 031 566 4322 www.kizo.co.za<br />
KZN<strong>SA</strong> Gallery<br />
Until 19 Apr, Harbour, group show by various <strong>art</strong>ists, curated<br />
by Brenton Ma<strong>art</strong>: the expression of containment in contemporary<br />
<strong>SA</strong> Art. Until 19 Apr, All eyes in<br />
<strong>African</strong>, new works by Mbhekeni Mbili.<br />
21 Apr-10 May, KZN<strong>SA</strong> Members professional practice course<br />
exhibition, Liam Lynch.<br />
Until 20 May, ‘Not Alone - An international project of Make<br />
Art/Stop Aids’ includes works by <strong>art</strong>ists from Brazil, the U<strong>SA</strong>,<br />
India and <strong>South</strong> Africa in a variety of media including painting,<br />
sculpture, photography and embroidery.<br />
166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, T. 031 2023686,<br />
www.kznsagallery.co.za<br />
Tatham Art Gallery<br />
Schreiner Gallery: Until 3 May, Zotha Shange, Rolling Ball<br />
Sculpture exhibition; Ceramics Room: Curriculum Curricula<br />
exhibition - Ceramics and Applied <strong>art</strong>s, exhibition extended.<br />
Until 10 May, Main Exhibition Room, KZN Matric Art<br />
Exhibition.<br />
Cnr. Of Chief Albert Luthuli (Commercial) Rd. and Church<br />
Street, Pietermaritzburg. T. 033 342 1804 www.tatham.org.za<br />
Shongweni Studio, Andrew Walford, Potter<br />
10-13 Apr, Hot Pots and Hot Cross buns, Easter Exhibition by<br />
potter Andrew Walford at the Shongweni Studio, Shongweni<br />
Valley.<br />
B9, Zig Zag Farm, Shongweni T. 031 769 1363/082 794 7796<br />
andrewwalford@telkomsa.net<br />
MPUMALANGA<br />
Casterbridge<br />
White River Gallery<br />
Until 10 Apr, Wilma Cruise.<br />
CASTERBRIDGE Lifestyle Centre, Cnr. Numbi + R40<br />
Hazyview White River T. 082 553 8919.<br />
NORTHERN CAPE<br />
Kimberley<br />
William Humphreys Art Gallery<br />
Permanent Collection Exhibition - Includes works of a variety<br />
of contemporary <strong>SA</strong> <strong>art</strong>ists<br />
Civic Centre, Cullinan Crescent, Kimberley, T. 053 831 1724,<br />
www.museumsnc.co.za<br />
WESTERN CAPE<br />
Baardskeerdersbos<br />
02-03 May, Autumn Art Route, The <strong>art</strong>ists of this quirky,<br />
creative Overberg hamlet throw open their rural studios to<br />
the public for the weekend. Visitors are invited to meander<br />
between the very individual spaces, 10am -5pm, enjoying <strong>art</strong>,<br />
craft, pastoral bliss and refreshing country hospitality.<br />
028 3819636/083 4442613<br />
www.baardskeerdersbos<strong>art</strong>route.comCape Town<br />
Cape Town<br />
34 Long<br />
Until 11 April, Tears and Castles, mixed media, Motel 7, debut<br />
solo exhibition. Until 16 May, Prehistoric idols, works by<br />
Paul du Toit.<br />
34 Long Street, Cape Town T. 021 426 4594,<br />
www.34long.com<br />
3RD i Gallery<br />
Until 24 Apr, Liquid Swords: Slices of Lemon, Solo painting<br />
exhibition by Leon Botha.<br />
95 Waterkant Street, De Waterkant. T. 021 425 2266<br />
Alliance Française<br />
Until 20 Apr, Lomographic Itineraries, photography exhibition<br />
by Aurelie Bieswesch<br />
155 Loop Street, Cape Town. T. 021 4235699<br />
www.alliance.org.za<br />
Alex Hamiltion Art Studio<br />
8 Apr-8 May, Afrotize, is a new series of pop <strong>art</strong>, stenciled<br />
works by Cape Town <strong>art</strong>ist, Alex Hamilton.<br />
Unit B203, 2nd floor, Woodstock Industrial Centre, 66-68<br />
Albert Road Woodstock, T. 021 447 2396<br />
www.alexhamilton.co.za<br />
Art B Gallery<br />
Until 14 Apr, AB<strong>SA</strong> L’Atelier Regional Competition entries.<br />
Library Centre, Carel van Aswegen Street, Bellville<br />
T. 021 918 2301, www.<strong>art</strong>b.co.za<br />
Artist’s Gallery<br />
Until 4 Apr, solo exhibition of recent photographic images<br />
captured in the Western Cape by Michel le Sueur.<br />
36 St George’s Street, Simonstown, T. 021 786 5952<br />
Association for Visual Arts (AVA)<br />
Until 30 Apr, Social Pattern,<br />
Lynette Bester, Kevin Brand, Paul Cooper, Paul Edmunds,<br />
Justin Fiske, Carol-Anne Gainer, Bronwyn Lace, Fritha<br />
Langerman, Kim Lieberman, Vaughn Sadie, Fabain Saptou,<br />
Rowan Smith, Greg Streak, Cobus van Bosch Curated by<br />
Kirsty Cockerill.<br />
35 Church Street, Cape Town, T. 021 424 7436,<br />
www.ava.co.za<br />
Atlantic Art Gallery<br />
A permanent display showcasing leading contemporary<br />
<strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong>ists.<br />
25 Wale Street Cape Town, T. 021 423 5775<br />
Bell-Roberts Contemporary Art Gallery<br />
Until 11 Apr, Coming from Where I’m From, Paintings by<br />
Fahamu Pecou;<br />
176 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock,<br />
T. 021 465 9108 www.bell-roberts.com<br />
Cape Gallery<br />
Until 4 Apr, Shadow Boxes, an exhibition of new paintings,<br />
etchings and constructions by Judy Woodborne and ceramics<br />
by Wiebke von Bismarck. 26 Apr-16 May, New paintings in<br />
oil and etchings by Diane Johnson-Ackerman and Marilyn<br />
<strong>South</strong>ey.<br />
60 Church Street, Cape Town, T. 021 423 5309<br />
www.capegallery.co.za<br />
Cape Town School of Photography<br />
From 1 Apr, Nostalgia - the passing of time, Exhibition of<br />
Student work.<br />
4th Floor, 62 Roeland Street, Cape Town, T. 021 4652152<br />
www.ctsp.co.za<br />
Christopher MǾller Art<br />
Until 8 Apr, Three Perspectives, Group exhibition featuring<br />
Geoff Burr, Alan McKerron and David Porter.<br />
82 Church Street, Cape Town, T. 021 439 3517<br />
www.christophermoller<strong>art</strong>.co.za<br />
Curious, Whetstone & Frankley<br />
01-18 Apr,Kelp, children, women and growing up: mixed<br />
media illustrations,by Colwyn Thomas<br />
87 Station Road, Observatory<br />
www.curiouswhetstoneandfrankley.com<br />
Erdmann Contemporary /Photographers Gallery<br />
Until 18 Apr, The World Needs Me, new paintings, sculpture<br />
and photography by Norman O’Flynn.<br />
63 Shortmarket Street, Cape Town T. 021 422 2762<br />
www.erdmanncontemporary.co.za<br />
Everard Read Gallery - Cape Town<br />
1-14 April, One Summer in Cape Town, recent paintings by<br />
Nick Botting.<br />
Until 1 May, New painings by Ed hodgkinson.<br />
Portswood Rd, V&A Waterfront T. 021 418 4527<br />
www.everard-read-capetown.co.za<br />
Exposure Gallery<br />
For April, You are here, photography by Tom Buchanan.<br />
The Old Biscuit Mill, 373 Albert Road, Woodstock.<br />
T. 021 447 4124 www.exposuregallery.co.za<br />
Focus Contemporary, Fine Young Art<br />
Until 25 Apr, Cold Sweat, works by Christiaan Diedericks.<br />
2 Long Street Cape Town, T. 021 419 8888,<br />
www.focuscontemporary.co.za<br />
Gallery F<br />
Until 30 Apr, Exhibita - New Landscapes (Photography) by<br />
Jonathan Taylor<br />
May-June, The spirit of District 6 collection, photography by<br />
Cloete Breytenbach.<br />
221 Long Street, Cape Town, T. 021 422 5246<br />
www.galleryf.co.za<br />
Gallery Odes<br />
For April, The Unbearable likeness of seeing; by Gordon Clark<br />
The Old Biscuit Mill, 357 Albert Road, Woodstock, Cape Town<br />
T. 021 423 4687 www.gordonclark.co.za<br />
Gill Allderman Gallery<br />
Until 15 Apr, Art Sale, established and emerging fine <strong>art</strong>ists.<br />
278 Main Road, Kenilworth, Cape Town T. 083 556 2540<br />
www.gillalldermangallery.co.za<br />
Goodman Gallery, Cape<br />
Until 25 Apr, Nation State, curated by<br />
Storm Janse van Rensburg.<br />
3rd Floor, Fairweather House, 176 Sir Lowry Road<br />
Woodstock, Cape Town T. 021 462 7573/4,<br />
www.goodmangallerycape.com<br />
Hello Again<br />
1-30 Apr, In No P<strong>art</strong>icular Order, group show featuring<br />
Michaela Jansen, Dylan Jones, Bruce Mackay, Jess Olivier,<br />
Johan Truter and Michael Tymbios.<br />
44 Bloem Street, Cape Town, T. 021 426 0242<br />
Irma Stern Museum<br />
22 Apr-9 May, Exodus, works by Roxandra Dardagan Britz.<br />
Cecil Road, Rosebank, Cape Town T. 021 685 5686<br />
www.irmastern.co.za<br />
Iziko - <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> National Gallery<br />
1 Apr-14 Jun, The Tropics, Views from the middle of the globe;<br />
Until Jul 09, Scratches on the Face. Until 10 May, Wonderland:<br />
Nontsikelelo Veleko, Standard Bank Young Artist 2008;<br />
Until end May, What We See. Voice, Image and Versioning, at<br />
the Iziko Slave Lodge; 6 Apr - 28 Jun, ‘Dis-ease’, a collection<br />
of recent video <strong>art</strong> drawn from the Rijksakademie archives,<br />
Curated by Greg Streak.<br />
Government Avenue, Company’s Garden T. The 021 467<br />
4660, www.iziko.org.za<br />
João Ferreira Gallery<br />
8 Apr-1 May, works by David Brown.<br />
70 Loop Street,Cape Town, T. 021 423 5403<br />
www.joaoferreiragallery.com<br />
Kalk Bay Modern<br />
15 Apr-15 May,Paintings and Prints by Nicolaas Maritz.<br />
1st Floor, Olympia Buildings, 136 Main Road Kalk Bay.<br />
T.021 788 6571 kbmodern@iafrica.com<br />
Lindy van Niekerk Art Gallery<br />
Exhibition of <strong>SA</strong>’s leading <strong>art</strong>ists.<br />
31 Kommandeur Road, Welgemoed, Belville<br />
T. 021 913 7204/5 www.<strong>art</strong>pro.co.za<br />
Kunst House<br />
Until 18 Apr, Edges - an exploration of meeting points, works<br />
by Fiona Ewan Rowett.<br />
62 Kloof Street, Gardens, T. 021 422 1255<br />
www.kunsthouse.co.za<br />
Michael Stevenson Contemporary<br />
Until 9 Apr, In Boksburg, David <strong>Gold</strong>blatt; Recent Prints by<br />
Claudette Schreuders. 16 Apr-30 May, Works by Penny Siopis<br />
and Nandipha Mntambo.<br />
Ground Floor, Buchanan Building, 160 Sir Lowry Road,<br />
Cape Town, T. 021 462 1500 www.michaelstevenson.com<br />
Muti Gallery<br />
3 Vredehoek Avenue, Oranjezicht, T. 021 465 3551<br />
mutigalery@mutifilms.co.za<br />
Rust-en-Vrede<br />
Until 30 Apr, Landscapes in oil by Brahm van Zyl.<br />
10 Wellington Road, Durbanville. T. 021 976 4691<br />
www.rust-en-vrede.com<br />
Salon91 Contemporary<br />
Until 20 April, Lovecity, A collection of drawings, prints and<br />
wallpaper designs by Lorenzo Nassimbeni; 22 Apr-10 May,<br />
Through the looking glass, Mixed Media paintings by Dagmar<br />
Sissolak.<br />
91 Kloof Street, Gardens, Cape Town 021 424 6930<br />
www.salon91<strong>art</strong>.co.za<br />
<strong>South</strong> Gallery<br />
showcasing creativity from Kwazulu-Natal;<br />
For April, Ardmore Ceramic Art.<br />
Fairweather House, 176 Sir Lowry Road Woodstock,<br />
Ground Floor. T. 021 465 4672 info@southgallery.co.za<br />
Urban Contemporary Art<br />
Until 02 May, The exploits of the incomparable Shamila, works<br />
by Christopher Slack.<br />
46 Lower Main Road, Observatory, Cape Town<br />
T. 021 447 4132, www.urbancontemporary<strong>art</strong>.co.za<br />
The <strong>South</strong> <strong>African</strong> Print Gallery<br />
From 26 Apr, , Prints by Sam Nhlengethwa and Friends.<br />
107 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, Cape Town, T. 021 462 6851<br />
www.printgallery.co.za<br />
What if the World…<br />
Until 25 Apr, Volume III, Large-scale paintings, editioned works<br />
and a limited edition publication, by Avant Car Guard.<br />
First floor, 208 Albert Road Woodstock T. 021 448 1438<br />
www.whatiftheworld.com<br />
Franschoek<br />
Gallery Grande Provence<br />
Until 15 Apr, Viewpoints, Paintings and Drawings by<br />
Louis Van Heerden.<br />
Main Road Franschoek, T. 021 876 8600<br />
www.grandeprovence.co.za<br />
Galerie L’ Art<br />
Until 11 Apr, Diversity, Solo Art Exhibition by<br />
Johannes du Plessis.<br />
Shop no 3, The Ivy, Krugerstreet, Franschoek T. 021 876 2497<br />
www.gal<strong>art</strong>.co.za<br />
Tulbagh<br />
Kismet Kamal Gallery<br />
Until end April, 4 Women, works by Rochelle Beresford, Thea<br />
Smith, Petro Shingalala, Annette Du Plessis.<br />
Epicentre, Van der Stel/Church Street, Tulbagh, T. 023 232<br />
0822<br />
Knysna<br />
Knysna Art Gallery<br />
Until 17 Apr, The Knysna River Red Bridge Exhibition, oils,<br />
watercolours & mixed media, solo exhibition by Sally Bekker.<br />
The Old Gaol, Cnr. Queen & Main Str.’s, Knysna, 6570,T. 044<br />
382 7124<br />
www.knysnafine<strong>art</strong>s.co.za<br />
Knysna Fine Art<br />
Until Apr 10, Exhibition of works by Keith Joubert; 01-08 May,<br />
The Tattoo Show.<br />
8 Grey Street Knysna, T.044 382 5107<br />
www.fine<strong>art</strong>s.co.za<br />
Plettenberg Bay<br />
Upper Deck Gallery<br />
From 8 Apr, exhibition featuring the work of Raymond<br />
Andrews, Sibley McAdam, Claire Denarie Soffieti, Marieke<br />
Prinsloo and local <strong>art</strong>ist David Butler.<br />
The Upper Deck lifestyle centre, 3 Strand Street, Plettenberg<br />
bay. T. 044 533 6914 www.upperdeckgallery.co.za<br />
George<br />
Strydom Gallery<br />
5-3 Apr, Nothing new: <strong>art</strong>works on <strong>art</strong>; A Selection of <strong>South</strong><br />
<strong>African</strong> <strong>art</strong>ists, inclduing Hennie Meyer,Christina Bryer, Annette<br />
Pretorius, Jacobus Kloppers, Lien Botha, Hardy Botha,<br />
Nel Erasmus, Andries Botha , Anton Karstel, Johann Louw,<br />
Leon Vermeulen, Guy du Toit, Santu Mofokeng, Norman<br />
Catherine, William Kentridge, Robert Hodgins, Mary-Rose<br />
Hendrikse, Louise Linder, David Brown, Carl Roberts, Simon<br />
Stone Francine Greenblatt, Gert Sw<strong>art</strong>, Kate Gottgens and<br />
Diane Victor.<br />
Marklaan Centre, 79 Market Street, George, T. 044 874 4027.<br />
www.<strong>art</strong>affair.co.za<br />
Stellenbosch<br />
Dorp Straat Gallery<br />
Until Apr 23, Stillewe, an exhibition by Varenka Paschke and<br />
book launch by singer/writer Stef Bos.<br />
144 Dorp Street, Stellenbosch T. 021 887 2256<br />
www.dorpstraatgalery.co.za<br />
Red Black and White<br />
Until 09 Apr, Half-Mens/Heel-Mens, Shany Van Den Berg<br />
18 Apr - 09 May, Brotherhood 2009<br />
curated by Johann du Plessis.<br />
5a Distillery Road, Bosman’s Crossing, Stellenbosch.<br />
T. 021 886 6281 www.redblackandwhite.co.za<br />
University of Stellenbosch Art Gallery<br />
Until 16 Apr, works from the film Agenda, by Marinda Du Toit.<br />
Stellenbosch University, cnr of Bird and Dorp Streets,<br />
Stellenbosch T. 021 808 3489 www.sun.ac.za/<strong>art</strong>gallery<br />
SMAC Art Gallery<br />
Until 10 May, Locations, works by Jonathan Guaitamacchi;<br />
Until 10 May, Echoes, paintings by Jake Aikman.<br />
De Wet Centre, Church Street, Stellenbosch T. 021 887 3607<br />
www.smacgallery.com<br />
Stellenbosch Art Gallery<br />
Permanent exhibition of Conrad Theys, John Kramer,<br />
Gregoire Boonzaier, Adriaan Boshoff and other <strong>art</strong>ists.<br />
34 Ryneveld Street, Stellenbosch<br />
T. 021-8878343 www.stellenbosch<strong>art</strong>gallery.co.za<br />
World<strong>art</strong><br />
2-30 Apr, SOAK, works by Marlise Keith.<br />
54 Church Street Cape Town CBD, T. 021 423 3075<br />
www.world<strong>art</strong>.co.za<br />
Hermanus<br />
Abalone Gallery<br />
Until 6 Apr, Works by Walter Battis, Joan Clare, Christo Coetsee,<br />
Hannes Harrs, Elzaby Laubscher, Cecil Skotnes, Pippa<br />
Skotnes, Fred Schimmel, Edoardo Villa.<br />
8 Apr-8 May, Anthology, Lien Botha.<br />
2 Harbour Rd, The Courtyard, Hermanus. T. 028 313 2935<br />
www.abalonegallery.co.za