Wieneke Archive Book 4h : Art Sales Presscuttings

WEDNESDAY MAI 14, atA,:14, 12t. THE ART MARKET TODAY PAMELA HUDSON continues her series on the art boom in Australia. Today we take a look at the people who buy paintings and sculpture; and the influence of women on this newly thriving market It's a new angle for investment WHO hasn't notice, that where the pro tests are loudest against the pace of modern liv- ing, you usually find the very people who are giv- ing a good share of their time to the pursuit of leisure and pleasure? so it is that as the rhythm o our daily round quickens, more and more of us find time to bring art into our homes. Or so it seems. Australians today are certain- ly buying paintings. drawings, ceramics, and eve i sculpture at a rate which would have been regarded as inconceivable only a few years ago. Last year, It has been estimated, some 700 art ex- hibitions were shown through- out Australia, mostly .it private commercial galleries. This is at once an exciting and a sobering figure. Who then are the patrons who have brought about this happy and healthy state of affairs? While there evidently is, broadly speaking, a pattern among patrons, It Is as well to remember that art galleries are as strongly individual in opening, it is as likely to signal an occasion of keen interest is one for joyously cavorting In witty glad rags. Most galleries stage an official opening for each exhibition. The best -patronised ones average a response of some 200-300 people. Some galleries show a distinct aversion to the opening, and pave instead a preview. There is a difference. It means less launching, less fuss and leathers. At least one gallery favoring previews has several times attracted as many as 600 people to them. This speaks rather for the exhibition and the vinery direction than for any kind of system. Put one gallery in Melbourne has recently dis- pensed with any form of opening whatsoever. The buyers However the galleries set about it, word does get round. The bigger and better-known ones record an easy average of 1000 people coming to see any single exhibition. But looking is one thing. Buying is another. Who are the biggest buyers? Doctors! Now, who would have are sometimes frustrated owing to the smallness of funds allotted by big companies to buying "the icing on the cake" as one gallery man put it, Amusingly, though not sur- prisingly, I learnt that a simi- lar situation applies in art galleries as in the world of fashion. Among husbands and wives, one partner may well pass off lightly an important purchase, suggest it cost less than It actually did. How many husbands know exactly how much their wives have paid for a particular gown, suit or hat? But around the art galleries this mild little marital game of "what the eye doesn't see . . .," when brought Into play, is as likely to be practised by husbands as well as wives! Nearly all the galleries I asked told me the actual deci- sion to buy fell pretty evenly 50/50 among husbands an wives. Although at one import- ant private gallery, the director estimates that 75 per cent of the buying there is done by men. With buying active and fre- quent, exhibitions changing every two weeks, and the con- tinuing proliferation of galleries w' ii about the artiRts' Can