Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 10 : Record of press coverage, March 1982 - May 1984

leisured a society becomes, the more it seems to become necessary to seek after excellence and beau– ty. Intellectual pursuit, too. It in· volves all those things. It can also be a good investment. Are there fashions in art? Oh, absolutely. Well-defined -ones. What would you say are the cur• rent ones? There's a return now to very well painted, umm . . . romantically– inclined pictures. The 60s, with all those huge can• vasses with hard edges and things - you can't give those paintings away now .. . The trend in England and Europe is towards really beautifully-painted pictures . David Hockney for instance, in England ... In early work, there's a big sw- .. I are ,:e111.1· being painted and being sought after. Are Australian tastes and fBBhions intrinsically different to overseas? Not really. We have so little history that what we have is very sought after. The Australian Myth. The Outbackery . . . red landscapes, with a couple of stockmen. Overseas they 've gone beyond that. In America, there's this great fashion for Remington and Russell, of the covered wagon days, and now the only people that can afford them are the great museums because they're half a million dollar., each. I guess one day that will happen here, too. Pro Harts and so on fet– ching a half million because they are unobtainable. · How necessary is the gallery to the artist's success? Philip Bacon Gallery: The largest !)pace in town ing back to the salon painters of the 1890&. Ten years ago, auction prices for those were in the hun– dreds of pounds, now they're thousands and thousands. It's a return to a romantic sort of period, that's what's happening now. Any predictions about where the IBBhions go from here? People wal)t better things, and they want them better made. A lot of pictures in the 60s, par· ticularly in Australia, were very badly made. Canvasses were badly stretched and paint tends to fall off. People won't accept that now, so maybe things will just be more refined. Photo-realism, for example, was in for a while, but on a huge, ex– pansive scale; and I think that will be ininiaturised down so that there ARTS NEWS I think it's intrinsic. There's a movement now with the Art Workers' Union to downgrade the role of the commercial gallery, but historically there have always been dealers. They provide the necessary buf• fer between the artist and the public. They direct clients towards artists. They provide a brokerage service. They provide a buying and selling arena that otherwise would only exist through the auction houses. A gallery acts also as an artist's friend, banker and critic. How much does advertising, promotions contribute? To an artist's success? Oh, it's part of the whole charisma that surrounds art. I guess there has to be a certain public knowledge of a painter for him to be sought after. People read stories in the magazines about artists at home and what they're doing suc– cess abroad, that's always a good thing. Like ballet dancers, and film stars. It's all part of the recogni· tion factor that's so important. In today's economy, how would art rate as an investment, corn• pared to, say gold? Art has always been a relatively good investment. It's like anything else, it's easier to buy than it is to sell, and it's a long term thing. But provided people buy pictures at reasonable prices from reputable people, they can't in the long run, ever go wrong. For one thing, a reputable gallery will, in the event of anything tragic happening, buy it back from you for at least what you paid for it, no matter what else happens. At least we will. So there's that sort of built-in safeguard. Generally, one can count on a rise in the value of pie· tures greater than inflation in the long run, and in some cases infinte– ly greater. The early Australian paintings, for example, over the last five years have gone up four or five times in value, sometimes more. They 're not painting any more Robert's or Streeton's, not real ones anyway. If you could be another dealer, who would you be? I'd like to have been Lord Du– veen. He was a great British dealer who supplied (and that was the wordl all of the old masters to the American multi-millionaires at the tum of the century, to collections like the Frick. He was fantastic, I mean, he wouldn't sell any paintings to Henry Ford, because Ford, he said, wasn't ready for him yet. He looted Europe. He absolutely looted Europe of all the great old masters, practically all the private collections, and just sent them across to America; and that's where they are now. Do you covet anybody else's gallery, or clientele? No. If you could be any artist, who would you be? No, I wouldn't want to be an ar• tist. I think they have too tempestuous an existence. You have to please the critics - maybe the people won't buy them . .. Oh, it'd be a terrible life. ELEVEN •