March/April 2010
A good ARI isn’t hard to find > NSW
Artist Run Initiative (ARI) Read More
Art Month Sydney > Precinct 1: Paddington/Woollahra > NSW
The first week of Art Month Sydney kicks off across
Paddington and Woollahra, collectively crowned ‘Precinct 1’ Read More
Art Month Sydney > Precinct 2: Surry Hills/Darlinghurst > NSW
In reality Sydney’s gallery scene is a broad and vibrant kaleidoscope. Read More
Art Month Sydney > Precinct 3: Waterloo > NSW
Precinct 3 takes in the suburb of Waterloo, home to the Danks Street Complex which includes ten of Sydney’s commercial galleries. Read More
Art Month Sydney > Precinct 4: Redfern/Chippendale/CBD > NSW
Serendipitously there are two galleries in Precinct 4 that
showcase Asian art, Read More
Discipline ain’t what it used to be
Donald Judd, one of the more influential founding fathers
of minimalism couldn’t hack New York’s claustrophobia. Read More
The legacy of two great artists > NSW
Two significant Indigenous exhibitions, staged as part of
Art Month Sydney, are East Kimberley Painting Revisited at
Michael Reid at Elizabeth Bay and Museum III at Utopia Art. Read More
Aboriginal Dreaming
By Andrew Mackenzie
When I picked up the book Dollar Dreaming: Inside the Aboriginal Art World, written by the former chief art critic for The Australian, now a New York Times critic, I rather relished an evening ahead of hard-hitting, excoriating opinion; a fresh feisty contribution to this perennial moral quagmire. It wouldn’t be the first nor would it likely be the last time that the abhorrent gap between the poverty of so much Aboriginal life and richness of the Aboriginal art market would charge a thousand new dinner time debates. But this expectation was not to be. Dollar Dreaming turns out to be more an outback travelogue that is largely lacking in analysis or serious cultural insight. For someone like Benjamin Genocchio, a seasoned journo who is more than capable of calling a spade a spade, it would seem New York has softened his pencil.
The book is easy to read, perhaps too easy. Through a series of well-composed vignettes, we follow Genocchio on trips down the dusty roads of outback Australia in search of aging Aboriginal masters. These encounters are dovetailed into baggy themes: ‘The ancient and the modern’, ‘Gateway to spirit country’, ‘Without the story the painting is nothing’.
It is at best a relatively engaging introduction to some of the key characters of the Aboriginal art world, from Geoff Bardon to Albert Namatjira, from Rover Thomas to Tim Johnson, and to a few of the better known gallerists and dealers. If you haven’t already read one of the many more authoritative works on these seminal Aboriginal art progatonists there will be some points of interest. But otherwise this unfolded story is really rather commonplace. As cultural analysis goes, it’s more George Nexus on the sofa than Germaine Greer in your face. And let’s be clear; the subject of the Aboriginal art market, in all its human achievement and tragedy, in its cultural empowerment and commercial opportunism, with the profound place it has within the nation’s psyche, and apart from all else, its challenge to modernity and western precepts of creative authorship, deserves more than this.
As Genocchio meets his subjects on this 4WD caper there are certainly moments of a writer’s keen observation and gentle humanity. The story of Judy Napangardi Watson painting on the ground, as an old dog wanders casually over her soon to be museum grade painting, leaving a trail of paw prints, speaks volumes of a life happily untransformed by the trappings of success. Or less happily, the story of Johnny Warangkula who rode a wave of success until cataracts impaired his work, leading to a gradual decline into alcohol, fights and an early death. This spoke of an oft-repeated cycle of celebrity and abandonment.
Beyond these stories, however, we wait for the binding analysis, for the broader cultural perspective. Indeed, I had my concerns by page 11, in the prologue. Defining the focus of the book Genoccio states that the work of urban Aboriginal artists, and their “social, cultural and economic situation, is outside the focus of this book”. In this short definitive demarcation, the writer narrowed his perspective and fundamentally weakened his case. The suggestion is that outback Aboriginal art represents a distinct area of study, disavowing the decades of migration in both directions: city to country to city. The story of Aboriginal art and its art market, dealers, artists, federal funding, mineral baron collectors, blue-chip auctioneers, outback art centres, visiting anthropologists and the occasional New York Times journalist, is one that cannot be meaningfully discussed without addressing the broad interdependence of old and new, colonial and indigenous, art and rights. He doesn’t explain why ‘urban’ Aboriginal art is outside his focus, but in making this unsupported cultural simplification the book substantially dodges the issue of influence, exchange and of course that dreaded word; assimilation.
I remember talking once to a dealer in the works of Dorothy Napangardi. He was gently disparaging the artist’s early work as kitsch, as opposed to her later work such as her terrific Salt Water series exhibited at the MCA in 2002. Though Napangardi has lived most of her life in the outback, her time spent living and working in Sydney, not long before her Dancing up country exhibition, does suggest an
influence in the development of her work. Clearly sometimes this kind of influence has a good effect on the work, sometimes not so good. My point here however, is to simply propose that so much of what we whities invoke as a kind of purity in ‘non-urban’ Aboriginal art, in this case from the Tanami Desert region of Central Australia, is
peppered with western influence. This is of course, absolutely not to impute a lack of integrity in the indigenous voice.
It is merely to say that this voice is, to some degree, in dialogue
with that of the rest of Australia. Thank goodness.
Richard Bell, Kamilaroi/Kooma/Jiman Gurang peoples, Australian Art It's an Aboriginal thing, 2006,synthetic polymer paint on canvas, overall 240.0 (h) x 360.0 (w) cm. Acquired 2006. TarraWarra Museum of Art collection. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery.Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial is at the Art Gallery of Western Australia until 23 November.
Similarly there are technical artistic points of western influence. For example, traditional natural ochres have been replaced by many Aboriginal artists with acrylic paints. Acrylic paint dries faster, smears less, and their fancy modern plasticisers allow canvas to be rolled up for easier transport without cracking. Incidentally, acrylic is also characterised by an utterly different, bold, vibrant brightness that
transforms the tonal range and mood of the painting. The story of Aboriginal art, for all its unquestionable beauty, power and cultural integrity contains many of these small but significant stories of hybrid technique and cross-fertilisation. Yet Genocchio insists on downplaying this constructed nature of not just the market, but the work itself. It’s connected. Instead his demarcation of ‘outback’ and ‘urban’ serves to shore up a myth of untouched ways. Thus he sets up a good scene for the dollars (urban dealers) to enter stage right and the villainy to begin.
Were only it that simple. I thought this book was going
to challenge some of the myths surrounding the Aboriginal art market, instead it rather shored them up.
In one respect the book does deliver on its title’s expectation, it mentions money a lot. Thus we are treated to many stories of spectacular speculation. Top of them all is the story of Hank Ebes, who bought a Clifford Possum for $36,000 and sold it a decade later for $2.4M. Anyone with a calculator can work out the stupendous triple digit
percent increase that represents. But despite many examples such as this, of Aboriginal art hyper-inflation, Genocchio offers no thesis and no ethical compass. Ebes, by the way, is allowed to get away with a line “sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down”, citing a “an old bugger who died owing me $5000 for a painting I’d paid him for”. Sometimes Hank, you’re up a dump truck of cash, then occasionally you’re down a plastic bag full. Ebes, who once sold second-hand cars and furniture, is simply a businessman selling product, but Genocchio refuses to push him on the ethics of the deal. There is a major distinction between Ebes way of doing business and that of the outback art centres, which Genocchio does describe, and in some detail. The means by which money enters the artist’s social fabric carries massive impact. Yet Genocchio time and again refuses to robustly engage his subjects. Presumably he would defend this as remaining objective, but the effect is to simply evade the tough questions, and in the process fails to fully distinguish those galleries that try to do the right thing by those artists and communities, and those who don’t.
Again, there are those who have debated and lobbied for Droite de suite (‘rights to follow’ where royalties are paid to artists from future transactions of their work). It is by far unclear if this measure would provide part of a solution (though it is employed in much of Europe and
parts of America), however some kind of financial instrument like this surely deserves serious attention when writing a book on the Aboriginal art market. In Genocchio’s 232 pages, it commands less than 2 pages. About 400 words. I counted.
In all, this subject is an important one for Australia. It deserves a thoughtful, brave engagement in its cultural, social, economic, political and personal dimensions. It doesn’t need loud-mouthed whistle-blower. It needs an agile book with a big ambition that can bring together its layers intelligibly. Dollar Dreaming is neither.
Andrew Mackenzie is an art critic and Editor-in-Chief (Inside) Australian Design Review and (AR) Architectural Review Australia.
