Art market: SA outlook is sunny

The weather forecast for Africa’s busiest, buzziest and largest art fair, FNB Art Joburg, couldn’t be more perfect: Johannesburg will have one of those glorious clear spring weekends with no thunderstorms or last cold snaps as winter seems to have finally packed its bags.

The annual fair will have 28 galleries and project spaces exhibiting over 500 works from 100 artists in the Sandton Convention Centre until Sunday. These range from established blue-chip galleries representing Africa internationally as well as emerging, more experimental spaces.

“With such a large offering, mostly focused on African artists, now more than ever attending to the needs of the art economy from a local perspective that serves the curatorial and commercial integrity has become urgent and essential in ensuring that we as Africans own our art, our history and our futures,” FNB Art Joburg managing director Mandla Sibeko wrote in his foreword in this year’s catalogue.

When the fair was first established 16 years ago in 2008, there were a total of 55 contemporary art fairs in the world and only one on the African continent. Today, there are more than 350 global fairs every year.

It is expected that this year’s FNB Art Joburg sales may well exceed last year’s when most sold out and the selling points ranged from R5 000 to R20 million.

Asked to quantify the total asking prices for the works, the fair’s spokesperson said: “This isn’t something galleries are comfortable sharing.”

It is probably fair to say that none of the galleries will on Monday be packing up their stalls with empty pockets.

But, to use a weather metaphor, dark clouds have been gathering in the global art market in recent times. In the middle of last month the New York Times dramatically described it as a “sharp downturn” in the market.

This past weekend the Financial Times’ front page lead told us that “Sotheby’s sales slip as chill hits fine art market”. The piece said that the leading auctioneer has reported an 88% plunge in core earnings and a 25% decline in sales in the first half of the year, and that its arch-rival Christie’s was also “feeling the pain”. It had a 22% drop in auction sales in the same period.

“Weaker luxury spending in China is among the factors weighing on demand for fine art and affecting both Sotheby’s and historic rival Christie’s,” read the FT’s report. “One of Sotheby’s marquee auctions fell short of expectations in May, when the winning bid for a Francis Bacon portrait of his lover George Dyer missed the low end of its $30-50 million estimate.”

On Monday The Art Newspaper also reported about these declines in sales and sentiment, saying: “Pretty well everyone in the international art market agrees the trade is slumping. The most pressing question this autumn is whether the slump is a mere cyclical downturn or something more seismic.”

But one has to clarify that these slumps focus on the secondary part of the art market — the auctions selling second-hand art — and not the primary one, which is where the art fairs such as the FNB Art Joburg and galleries work.

As Marelize van Zyl, CEO and senior art specialist at Aspire Art — with Strauss & Co one of the two major art auctioneers in South Africa — explained: “The primary market is where the galleries operate. They represent artists and their careers. And that’s the first time a work comes to the market. That’s where careers are built.”

In the secondary market they work with “connectors”.

“So it’s the second time a work comes to market,” Van Zyl said. “It’s also when more valuable works come to market. More historical works, although we do very well in contemporary art as well.”

The art market can therefore be described as an inverse of the car market where the “used” art can sell for much more than new works.

“It is a cultural economy,” said Van Zyl. “We work with unique products.”

In March Aspire Art sold its fourth Marlene Dumas work for a spectacular R4 million. It was bought by a South African buyer — 60-70% of its buyers are local.

Perhaps apt for the state of the market, it is titled Existential Doubt. The painting is one of the celebrated artist’s earlier works, produced between 1972 and 1975. It was done before Dumas left South Africa for the Netherlands, where she now lives and works.

“We find it very interesting that she started a work and then would always revisit it, go back to it, add some elements and then take some elements away as well.

“It’s quite dark and gloomy,” Van Zyl explained. “But you see those stylistic elements of her much more recent work.”

But is that sale indicative of the health of the local market, as opposed to the global slump, as reported in recent weeks?

“We’ve certainly felt that this year was hard,” Van Zyl responded. “So we all had to work a little bit harder to keep on trading. I can only speak for our company. We’re much smaller and much more agile.”

Aspire Art adapted and changed its strategy. In its March live auction it brought the number of lots from the previous 300 down to 80 lots.

“And we’ve actually seen from last year that we had an increase in our sell-through value from 10-15%,” she said. “So if you bring less to the market, better quality, it’s good works … you will likely sell well.”

Macroeconomic and political factors, such as elections and instability, play a major role in the secondary market, because it is part of the luxury industry.

“I think when times are a bit uncertain, people will sit on their hands,” she explained.

And in these times, reputation is crucial, which is why Van Zyl is proud that Aspire managed to sell work as prestigious as Dumas’.

I asked her whether the downturn was cyclical and she agreed.

Van Zyl said they have seen “a lot of positivity” since June. “And with this positivity people are coming forward again. They are purchasing.”

She added: “I haven’t heard or seen of any doors closing, meaning that, you know, every entity that is still trading, they are still selling art. And that’s great. People are still making a living off this industry.”

Van Zyl said that while they are not thriving, they are surviving.

“Certainly for our business, our doors are open, we’re trading, and that is healthy.”