Contemporary art, much of it by women, was placed at the beginning of the catalogue and the older stuff moved to the end. Only Aboriginal art, with which Deutscher also had an early romance, let the joint venture auction operation with Damian Hackett down to any degree.
The well attended sale grossed $4.3 million including 22 per cent buyer's premium including GST. The sale was 87 per cent sold by value and 68 percent by volume.
Back in the early 1990s, auction houses were only toying with even established contemporary work because it worried buyers. It lacked a lengthy track record. D and H's catalogue had a Brett Whiteley on the cover but lead with the women – and good gracious! – some overseas art. Indeed one of the lots once ticked all the wrong boxes. It was by an overseas contemporary woman artist, Yayoi Kusama. But here is the really good news.
Kusama's Infinity Dots (HRT) 2001, a 1.6 by 1.3 metre polymer painted play around with polka dots stayed in Australia, going to a local private collector on the telephone for $410,000 (hammer) after a battle from the upper estimate of $300,000 with an overseas bidder on the telephone.
This kind of work usually goes straight back overseas. The Japanese artist evidently has been the subject of commitment by a Trumper Park gallery in Sydney over three decades.
The second half of the sale consisting of Indigenous art, to which female artists and dealers have made such a contribution, perversely trailed off on a poor showing for its most eminent artist, Emily Kngwarreye, and on wind of the closure to a gallery which had made such a big contribution to its early growth, the Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi.
A room of around 200 accounted for many of the successful bids, the telephone playing a lesser role than it had elsewhere of late. This suggested that even in these once again financially uncertain times collectors are in the market for more challenging work.
A room presence always helps and was in stark contrast to the crowd at Bonhams Australia's small in lot numbers auction in Sydney two days earlier in Sydney where a small section of the round house Byron Kennedy Hall at Fox Studios was boxed off to compact the small audience of mostly art professionals within it.
It was also better than Sotheby's Australia's gathering at the Ritz-Carlton in Sydney on November 25 where an also smaller sale of more valuable lots were on offer, the value and the numbers also having narrow buyer following.
As the crowd trickled in to D and H from the one sale that had a booze up in the reception area, the frenetic nature of the always tricky end-of-year sales eased. At this time of year buyers are anxious to pack up shop and head off to do their Christmas shopping and would-be buyers do not signal their discretionary intentions.
Women's art had made a big mark at Bonhams but in the modern department, with an auction record for a painting by Grace Cossington Smith. (women dealers also making an impression as it went to Annette Larkin).
Only a week before at Sotheby;s in New York a world auction record of $US44 million was paid for Georgia O'Keefe's Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1 – around three times its estimate and easily exceeding the former record held by Joan Mitchell at $US11.9 million.
D and H pulled in the crowd with the Whiteley and left women to carry the first six lots of the sale which they did with aplomb. The lots by Bronwyn Oliver (2), Narelle Jubelin (1) del Kathryn Barton (2) and Cressida Campbell (1) grossed $768,000.
Del Barton's work has sold for up to $192,000 at auction so her wicked fairy like Satellite Fade-Out 2 (Lot 2 ) at $204,000 IBP was a new record. The estimate was $80,000 to $120,000.
The seventh lot, an industrial scene by Howard Arkley, made mid-estimate at $130,000 (est. $100,000 to $150,000) or $168,000 IBP despite reports of fakes which could affect this market.
Air-brushed copies surely would be easy to knock off but the work Shadow Factories, was well provenanced. Continuing the twist on fire in the latest round of sales, it was not one of his suburban homes but belching smoke stacks.
Bronwyn Oliver's sculptures and Del Kathryn Barton's work is wiry and prickly – even provoking itching – and all found ready buyers.
A certainly great transformation on the pretty little paintings that used to start off sales, Oliver's creative take on botany, a copper 130 cm diameter Bloom (Lot 1 ) sold for $192,000.($160,000 hammer against $150,000 to $200,000 estimate). Subject to a tragic early death, the artist produced works which have sold for up to $360,000 at auction.
While the same artist's Inscription (Lot 3 ) a serpentine and at the same time brooch-like 245 cm long copper work 2000 was hammered at $10,000 less than the $140,000 lower estimate, this translated into $156,000 IBP.
When the Kusama, lot 9, was sold the turnover from women's art for the sale including a Narelle Jubelin and a Cressida Campbell was an impressive $1.26 million IBP.
As unusual contemporary media, Narelle Jubelin's Domain Road and Environs took the cake. It was her familiar petit point embroidery - something closer to what girls might be expected to do but done this time with a twist. The theme is subversive. It sold for the lower estimate $50,000 hammer or $60,000 with premium.
Later two phones chased another Oliver, Reel (Lot 38 ) to $60,000 ($72,000 IBP) against $40,000 to $60,000.
Dale Frank's lengthily titled (involving a chihuahua) purple blotch (Lot 8 ) was the first unsold work, despite the thinning out of this productive artist's studio by a big gift from the artist to the National Gallery of Australia, but it sold afterwards.
Three overseas works were included in the first 11 lots in what would previously been considered a courageous move but now added a note of relief from the tedium of the same familiar and repetitive Australian masters.
Not until lot 13 was the Australian attachment to a seriously priced big name modern Australians tested with Whiteley's Sydney Harbour in the Rain of 1976 (Lot 13 ). Perhaps it was because the painting was not orange or ultramarine with which buyers identify that it fired although there is has been enough greyness around in the mood in the saleroom lately.
It made $420,000 hammer($504,000 IBP), just in the upper reaches of the $350,000 to $450,000 estimate.
The major Fred Williams One Tree Hill (Lot 15 ) estimated at $350,000 to $450,000 which had cost the buyer $360,000 in the same rooms in April 2011 catalogued as a “mature work” did not sell. It may have been a rare departure from brown and ochre but the dull green was not much of a concession to colour.
The forthright cataloguing of the sale, when a couple of works on which the principals presumably had thoroughly satisfied themselves although they came from a now troubling source (Peter Gant and his Gallery Irascible)was only to be expected and very welcome.
Brighter colour did not help Weaver Hawkins (ex Irascible) Domestic Interior (Lot 20 ). It may have helped Eric Thake's surreal Self Portrait in a Broken Mirror painted in 1935 but the interest was also in keeping with a stronger appreciation of self portraits. It made $60,000 to Deutscher on the telephone
One of the few bouts of runaway bidding in the sale was Cressida Campbell's Self Portrait of 1988 (Lot 42 ) which was hammered for $38,000. An auction record had already been established for her earlier in the sale when Berry Island, an usual medium, a hand painted wood block, sold for $65,000 plus BP taking it to $78,000.
Euan Macleod obviously does not have such a pretty face as Cressida's as his Self Portrait, (Lot 41 ) a gift from the artist to the respected art consultant Tony Palmer, made only $5760 but still more than its top estimate.
One hot market, that in skulls, fell apart when five miniature cast resin sculptures by Ricky Swallow, Evolution in Order of Appearance failed to find a buyer at $8000 to $12,000. Did not Cate Blanchett confide during the height of his Venice Bienale popularity that she wanted and had been unable to secure one of Swallow's works, the artist being a slow producer?
These miniatures however would not have been big enough stand ins for Yorick.
The tragedy of great current proportions than Hamlet has been unfolding- the collapse - of the Aboriginal art market. This may be less sustained if the second half of the sale devoted to non-Indigenous art is anything to go by.
Apart from the expected continuing strength of the tribal and the six figure sale of a Rover Thomas, the secondary market continued to wobble.
However, D and H say that the result from this section was 51 per cent by value and 62 per cent by volume.
The Thomas (Lot 38 ) Gulabal – Snake made $144,000 to a well dressed couple in the room against an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. It was disappointing to see a Kaapa Untitled (Goana Story) (Lot 77 ) unsold at an estimate of $30,000 to $40,000. He is one of the culture's true greats. Colourful works by much hyped Sali Gabori sold for between $3800 and $6500 hammer.
The weakness in Aboriginal contemporary was mostly in lesser priced lots.
Director Damian Hackett said that about a quarter of the Aboriginal material went overseas with some feed-back coming from global buyers attending to lot alerts for European and Asian artists. More would have gone if applications for export of possible heritage items were not so long winded, he said.
Back in the non-Indigenous section, the sale of the Olivers and sculptures by Clement Meadmore, Lyndon Dadswell and Robert Owen were an achievement given the recent sales stickers on so many lots at Sydney's Sculpture by the Sea.
Curiously, the local discovery of sculpture appears to have carried on across the Tasman where nearly 100 cars must have been parked at Gibbs Farm on one of its rare (long) pre-booked opening up of the New Zealand financier and amphibian vehicle manufacturer, Alan Gibbs' collection north of Auckland.
The latest round of sales produced one extraordinary flare – quite exceptional in the traditionals for fire related material. This surprise was given heightened topicality when a fire alarm went off at the Sotheby's sale and kept coming back on again. Auctioneer Martin Gallon looked gobsmacked but regained his composure, with most of the crowd taking a breather when auctioning was resumed.
The fire paintings that fired were two men smoking (Tom Roberts lot 1 Bonhams); a gypsy with a cigarette (lot 41 Bonhams); two swaggies in the bush walking down a track by Henry Rielly (Sothebys lot 27) which set the alarm off, and a bushfire by Hans Heysen (lot 26 Sotheby's), all finding ready buyers. Given the anti social nature of the habit, and the unpopularity of bush fires, often started as pranks, this was a surprise.
One wonders if this might be time to dump the “ethically incorrect” for it is still being collected.
