The galleries are just not accustomed to asking the vast sums of money for works that American, Swiss, British and increasingly Chinese galleries can. They do not have that kind of stock.
The lack of extremes of wealth increasingly seen in other developed and emerging countries have accustomed our galleries to dealing in lower priced works to suit Australian pockets.
Even comparable territories like Canada, with its lumber and hydro tycoons and South Africa with its admittedly expatriated gold magnates have been able to muster clients for works well beyond our average price of say $US50,000 a piece.
Sadly for well meaning people everywhere, this appears to be changing as the dealers, like all business down under, go global - and Australia's wealth structure begins to approximate other economies around the globe. That is, highly unequal.
The new rich want trophy art to put alongside the high priced luxury items being promoted with the fair
The first clues as to what is happening arise within minutes of a Basel visitor setting off from Basel Airport into town.
The first poster one sees by the roadside is for an exhibition of the work of the South African artist, Marlene Dumas.
The exhibition is at Basel's Fondation Beyeler, established by Switzerland's greatest dealer. So is the second, a major show of the Paul Gauguin which features a reproduction of a work which recently sold for a reported $US300 million.
This private sale, some say to the Qataris, lifted the record for any art work from $US200 million which was the price reportedly paid by the same buyer for one of The Card Players by Cezanne.
Click your heels and you know you are not in Oz Kansas any more - but in another rainbow Oz-land very far away.
Running concurrently, art fairs called Fairs Volta, Scope, Liste and parts of Art Basel in the main Basel exhibition halls, show the work of very lowly priced artists which Australians can afford to buy and may increasingly decide to do so.
The powerful Swiss franc is no real hindrance given Australia's history of highly priced local art. The work can represent good buying and a refreshing change from much of what is produced in Australia's highly protected (by geography and tradition at least) market.
A couple of lesser known Australian artists have works on the thousand or so stands that are in operation.
Nicholas Mangan for instance is on Mexico City gallery Labor's stand at Liste, something which might only be picked up readily because a photograph of an old Australian one dollar note is illustrated in the catalogue.
Given Australia's best known artist (to the wider public) is behind bars (Rolf Harris) some humility is called for!
Australia's international reputation for humanism has been taking a dive and its historical output taken a knock with the muted reaction to the Australia show at the Royal Academy two years ago, and Australians no longer display the braggadocio they are renown for.
Australian dealers are now more quietly getting on with their business. While there are no galleries here (except Ros Oxley with a special devotion to one of its artists in a church) they have sent their spies.
This they have to do, for overseas galleries are not averse to poaching their artists.
Galleries rarely of course have a choice of exhibiting or not. In Basel 46 only 300 galleries can exhibit and the latest year the list of serious would be exhibitors is understood to have been around 900.
Exhibiting galleries cannot rest on their laurels as long term exhibitor Ros Oxley found out years ago when it lost its slot owing to what has been argued as art world politics.
It is not just that Australian galleries have decided to concentrate on other versions of the same event nearer to home and administered by the same organization in Hong Kong in particular.
None of the well over a thousand or so stands at the fairs identify themselves as Australian whereas there at least half a dozen exhibitors from another former colonial outpost Canada at all levels, including the veteran dealer in European modernists, the Landau Gallery of Montreal.
But dig deeper and there is a bit more to the bravura with which the Australian art bureaucracy, in particular, likes to present itself overseas.
The Queensland grazier Major Rubin set an auction record for a Picasso in the 1960s when he bought it bidding against himself for the Queensland Art Gallery – by repute, so that he could get a good tax break when gifts in kind to public galleries were not allowed.
Times have changed, and people are asking why Australians are NOT paying silly prices for art, rather than why they are.
The Gauguin deal is ultra ironic insofar as Gauguin came to Australia at least twice before the Swiss had heard of him. He may not even have gone to Basel himself and having died a pauper rebelling against his membership of the stock broking and banking professions would be horrified to hear of the deal.
The Australian flag may not been raised at Basel but Australian expats are making ground here.
An exhibitor for eight years, Mayfair based Australian Richard Nagy this year achieved the best spot in the fair right next to an astonishing, powerful display of tribal art and the work of Basquiat put on by the Beyeler Foundation, a non dealing exhibit although Beyeler, a major world dealership sold works to the Art Gallery of NSW during the directorship of Edmund Capon.
The big sales this year included works by the expatriate sculptor Ron Mueck.
With William Kentridge, the South African Marlene Dumas – despite her Dutch residency, has established a national identity for the Republic which no two currently active Australian artists have for Australia.
Visitors to the fair include stalwarts Roger McIlroy and Vivienne Sharp with Tim McCormick in tow, the two at the opposite ends of a civil court action recently, Vivienne looking a little brighter which she conceded had a lot to do with a more favourable apportionment of costs by the judge made this last week.
The director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Tony Ellwood, is leading a party of 30 or so Australian art lovers to the fair.
Although his stand has been continuously busy, Nagy had not sealed any sales of the Austrian secessionism in which he deals after the three days of the fair. He did not expect to, and seldom did at this fair, he added.
He was happy to go along with the fair management's reinforcement this year of the 20th century historical base which had begun to lag.
Even dealers in modernism had been bringing along minimalist art because that was what sold.
Too many white canvasses helps no one even if they roll out through the doors as fast as they come in. With works by American artist Agnes Martin being priced at $US7 million plus, the tills at David Zwirner Gallery were going a constant ker-ching ker-ching.
By the second day of Art Basel, leading galleries reported exceptionally strong sales: Skarstedt Gallery (New York, London) sold the steel sculpture by Thomas Schütte Grosser Geist Nr. 6, 1998 for about $US5 million
White Cube (London, Hong Kong, Sào Paulo) sold David Hammons Traveling, 2002 earth on paper, with black cloth suitcase for $US2.35 million.
Hauser & Wirth (Zurich, New York, London) sold several Louise Bourgeois sculptures, for prices above $US2million.
Woman with Shopping, 2013 was sold for £600,000 to a private foundation.
Long March Space (Beijing) sold Zhan Wang's Artificial Rock No. 135, 2011 for $US150,000 to "a new Western collector" and likewise Xu Zhen's Under Heaven – 2832QM01520 for $US140,000.
Cheim & Read (New York) sold a Joan Mitchell Untitled, 1957 for $US6,000,000
Dealers in young and emerging artists at the fair had some very slow days though a few others had very bright ones - reflecting the unpredictable Basel weather.
