The collectors who spoke to The Australian Financial Review are upbeat about the future of Aboriginal art in the northern hemisphere now that more institutions are providing a reference point.
International collectors accounted for more than half the sales at Sotheby's Aboriginal art auction last week. Susan Owens discovers what motivates people from overseas to collect art from Australia's outback.
When American Will Owen called his airline to use points for a holiday in 1990, his requests for London, Paris or Rome were turned down. "I was exasperated so I asked, 'Where can I go?' and the answer was Australia." Owen, an art collector, included a leg to Alice Springs.
Sixteen years later he owns works by all eight contemporary indigenous artists represented in Paris's new museum of ethnic art, the Musee du Quai Branly. Among the barks in his collection is the painting by John Mawurndjul that the artist used as the inspiration for the ceiling he painted in the museum's bookshop.
Fate also had a hand in Margaret Levi's introduction to Aboriginal art. Levi, a political scientist who is listed with her husband Robert Kaplan by Art and Antiques magazine as among America's top 100 collectors, first went to Australia in 1984 as a guest researcher at Canberra's Australian National University.
In Sydney the following year, a car struck her. The accident required several operations to rebuild her knee, and seven years later she received an out of court settlement.
Levi and Kaplan decided they would spend the money on a collection of Aboriginal art. It includes works by Mawurndjul, Kathleen Petyarre, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas and Dorothy Napangardi.
International collectors typically account for half the sales at Sotheby's Aboriginal art auctions, and last week nine of them accounted for 58 per cent of its $3.9 million takings. But they don't just buy at auction; many make the majority of their purchases during personal trips to the outback.
There are a number of attributes that link the international world of indigenous art collectors. They tend to take a scholarly approach, acquiring a deep knowledge of indigenous culture and politics, and have often secured works long before the artists became known. Most believe the art is generally undervalued.
France's largest indigenous art collector, 37-year-old Arnaud Serval, is reminiscent of a young Alistair McAlpine, who famously bought a house in Broome when he caught the Aboriginal art bug.
After 25 trips to Australia, Serval says he now has a house in Alice Springs. Since his marriage last year, he and his wife Berengere jet between Alice and her home in Geneva, up to three times a year.
Serval has been travelling the outback since he was 20 and has more than 2000 works. He started to collect them on his first trip, when he took a four-wheel drive from France to Australia and went to Utopia, Papunya and Yuendumu.
Levi and Kaplan travel to Australia each year to buy and commission work. Like most foreign collectors, they first seek the cultural experience, then to share it. Several of Levi and Kaplan's works are on show in Washington's National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Owen, who travels to Australia every three years and has a collection he will only say includes "some hundreds of pieces", describes the impact of his first trip.
"Aesthetically, the art appealed for its abstraction, colour field and the minimalist painting," he says. "Unlocking the puzzle only served to make me eager to understand more."
Each year it becomes easier for international collectors to acquire knowledge. Owen says he had unfettered access to dealers and community advisers when he started collecting, and that around 1999 their information became available on the internet.
Occasionally, dealers such as Rebecca Hossack in London will help build a collection when the sale of one painting ignites an interest and a client turns collector. Hossack, who has sold Aboriginal art in London for 19 years, describes how she met American Donald Kahn in her gallery, when he was searching for a Johnny Warrangula Tjupurrula painting.
Their relationship developed over more than a decade, during which time Kahn flew Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri to London in 1994.
Kahn's collection includes more than 100 works, largely from Papunya, Lajamanu, Balgo and Yuendumu. It has been shown publicly several times, and is now installed at the Salzburg Festival.
He and fellow American collectors Richard Kelton and John Kluge are often referred to as the "Three Ks". The Kelton Foundation was founded in California in 1983 to promote Aboriginal art. John Kluge (who sold his Metromedia interests to Rupert Murdoch in the mid-1980s for more than $US2 billion) united his own world-class collection with Edward Ruhe's.
This formed the Kluge-Ruhe collection, which Kluge donated to the University of Virginia.
The collectors who spoke to The Australian Financial Review are upbeat about the future of Aboriginal art in the northern hemisphere now that more institutions are providing a reference point.
"Finally, after 15 years of lobbying, the Victoria and Albert [Museum is showing a collection of prints until December], the British Museum and the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery are acquiring contemporary [indigenous] art," Hossack says.
Serval showed works for several years in the 1990s in his own gallery in Paris. ("It was a cultural centre, the art didn't sell then.") He says French buyers were scared off in the 1990s, when dealers came to Europe with highly priced, rolled-up canvases that all looked the same.
"In those days you kept the best for yourself and attempted to sell the leftovers to the international market," he says. "But international collectors have a natural confidence, they don't follow trends, and buy differently to Australians.
"I find it curious that so few galleries in Australia sell older works. They sell what has just come out. It's like the approach to wine.
"If they bought the early works at auction of the artists they exhibit, it would help the artists. I have found jewels buying older barks that nobody wanted. Now the bark market is becoming more interesting, but it's undervalued."
Diversity is the hallmark of these international collections. Paintings aside, Owen has sculptures, hollow log coffins, Tiwi Pukumani poles, woven mats, dilly bags and fish traps, and photography.
Owen has bought more than 100 works over the web.
"My experiences are consistently positive," he says. "Almost always, expectations were exceeded when the painting arrived."
But Hossack, who spent $255,550 on seven paintings at Sotheby's July 2005 sale, pulled out of plans to buy several works at last week's sale.
Some 12 months after she bought two barks, Uta Uta's Women's dreaming and Old Walter's Water Dreaming, on behalf of a London collector, she was refused export permits under the Moveable Cultural Heritage Act.
Hossack says there is no clear formal process, no time frame, and no options for foreign buyers.
"At the very least, if there is an export problem, buyers should be alerted and offered a progress report," she says.
Serval, who occasionally buys by phone at auction also commissions from artists, a subject he knows is riddled with controversy.
"I have invited senior men from Papunya to my house," he says. "Some are the early painters responsible for starting the movement. The art centres tell them they are too old, not as prolific, not as neat. They pressure me for canvas because the art centres have stopped their supply. I am loyal, so I'd give them canvas."