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The Dealer is the Devil: An Insiders History of the Aboriginal Art Trade
Adrian Newstead’s explosive memoir lifts the lid on what Robert Hughes once described as “the last great art movement of the 20th century.” After thirty years sitting round campfires with Aboriginal artists all over Australia, Newstead has produced the definitive expose of “the first great art movement of the 21st century”. From remote indigenous communities with their dispossessed populations of tribal elders and troubled youth, to the gleaming white box galleries, high powered auction houses, and formidable art institutions of major cities all over the world. Newstead combines personal anecdotes with an insider’s grasp of the inter national art market. With vivid portraits of artists, dealers and scamsters, the book races from pre-contact and colonial days to the heady celebrations of the Sydney Olympics and the devastating impact of the global financial crisis. Newstead’s humour, love and respect for his subjects produces a story that reads at times like a thriller and also a lament for a lost world. WBN reviewers gave five stars to The Dealer is the Devil, Adrian Newstead’s ‘personal and encyclopaedic’ examination of the Indigenous art industry.
- GenresNonfiction
939 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 3, 2014
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August 1, 2014
An absorbing history of the Aboriginal art industry, written by a white dealer at its centre. The author bridges the political divide from activists to arch-capitalists, so both sides will no doubt find something to offend them. Surprisingly he is also somewhat self-critical. Here are some quotes that jumped out at me:
[Guboo Ted Thomas said:] The Earth is our Mother. When I die I'm going down there. When you die you're going there too. But what are you doing for the Earth?
What he [Guboo] cared about was the spiritual dimension of environmentalism without which, he argued, the Australian landscape was inevitably doomed.
Since the invention of electricity and its many technological manifestations, Westerners have been alienated from the natural rhythm of the sun and the moon.
What environmentalists label "deep ecology" an Aboriginal person calls the Dreaming.
Keeping the Dreaming intact is the primary motivation for the making of art.
It was Guboo who suggested to me that by putting art on people's walls I would achieve more to change white attitudes to Aboriginal people than by taking part in land rights marches. Protests, he believed, led to antipathy, while the road to reconciliation and the rejection of racism is paved with love.
The older people [in Wirrimanu, Balgo Hills] grew up during a period when the church, which I was told had been built from rocks dynamited out of a nearby sacred site, dominated just about every aspect of their lives.
I have always known that I'm an introduced species.
By 1995, Emily Kngwarreye had become the highest paid woman in Australia.
The truth is that the majority of non-specialist dealers and gallery owners rarely had deep friendships with Aboriginal artists in the field.
Though Aratjara was seen by a seriously art literate and enthusiastic public in Germany, numbering more than 250,000 people, it was largely ignored by the Australian media.
[V]arious people had been faking [Clifford] Possum's works for years.
Artists, traders, curators, academics and advocates all felt the industry was being 'murdered by Murdoch'.
Margo Neale, who was at that time acting as the Indigenous curator of the Queensland Art Gallery, stopped just short of saying that this debate over Aboriginal artistic collaborations was a form of covert racism. 'There are similar situations in non-Aboriginal art,' Neale observed, 'but they're not making the front page of newspapers!'
If Jeff Koons faxes directions from New York to a team of workers in Sydney building a giant floral puppy and this artwork is credited to him alone, why is that considered excitingly avant-garde and not a failure of attribution?
There are plenty of contemporary urban Aboriginal artists (like Rea, Tracey Moffatt and Gordon Bennett) who refuse to be categorised as 'Aboriginal'.
While the content of The Australian's stories about the Clifford Possum and Turkey Tolson scandals was fair, the way in which The Australian presented the stories traumatised the entire industry and adversely affected its international reputation.
Charlie Perkins felt strongly about the need for a Label Of Authenticity and it was an ideal platform for him to generate press exposure on the national stage.
From the moment we met in the mid 1980s I always felt I was at the stinging end of his [activist-artist Richard Bell's] sharp, pugnacious, wit... and always on the back foot.
I learned the art market is one of the least regulated and least transparent commercial activities in the world. It's basically trade gussied up as cultural exchange, in which success relies on a cunning mix of showmanship and snobbery.
[Tommy] Watson pocketed the tidy sum of $190,000 for a single work of art, surely the highest pay packet ever received by any Aboriginal person in Australia's history.
Despite the many years I've spent running a gallery, I have never felt completely comfortable with the notion of promoting art as an investment. My number one tip for any collector would be to buy it only if you love it... Most art actually decreases in value, in real terms, over time... Only those who are well advised, or extremely lucky, make money.
[A]n international megastar such as Damien Hirst could employ any number of unacknowledged assistants, white or black, male or female, to realise his own works. Hirst has admitted in interviews that he cannot paint and that a buyer would get an inferior painting if he did it... While Damien Hirst's factory-made 'dot' paintings sold for millions, they bickered over whether Emily actually painted every single dot on every one of her works.
So why can't Aboriginal artists also participate in making multiples, 'assisted' and factory-made works? Because the minute Aboriginal painters are seen to 'produce' art for money, rather than for art's sake, they are accused of selling out, and demeaning their culture in the process.
[W]hen Turkey Tolson or Clifford Possum turned their families into art factories, they were accused of passing off fakes.
With the increasing likelihood of dramatic climatic instability, the custodial voice of the world's most ancient culture can be interpreted as a complex response to their most prescient challenge, and coincidentally that facing all humankind: survival.
Today, the number of white people telling Aboriginal people how to live their lives constitutes an entire industry in itself.
The vast majority of art actually loses value, in real terms, over time. Only a tiny proportion of art is a 'good investment'. So in effect, the investor/seller often pays 5% on a painting that has lost value in real terms... Thus resale royalty benefits some artists, but others not at all. If it was designed to help Aboriginal artists, the royalty will benefit but a few.
'Black deaths in custody' have been a stain on Australia's national consciousness for at least a century, yet Aboriginal inmates still continue to die either by their own hand or as a result of injuries, to this day. Because no-one wanted to risk another 14-year-old hanging himself in jail, these boys probably wouldn't be punished for their crimes until they were much further down the track.
He wanted to lead the way by showing Aboriginal people that they could succeed in business, too. Even today we could do with more Joe Crofts.
[My editor] Ruth and I worked together to to weave more of my own story into my account of Aboriginal art history. This may appear to some 'insiders' to have been overly self-indulgent on my part - yet, on the other hand, if it makes the content more accessible and helps 'outsiders' to appreciate Aboriginal culture more deeply, then it will have been more than worthwhile.
[Guboo Ted Thomas said:] The Earth is our Mother. When I die I'm going down there. When you die you're going there too. But what are you doing for the Earth?
What he [Guboo] cared about was the spiritual dimension of environmentalism without which, he argued, the Australian landscape was inevitably doomed.
Since the invention of electricity and its many technological manifestations, Westerners have been alienated from the natural rhythm of the sun and the moon.
What environmentalists label "deep ecology" an Aboriginal person calls the Dreaming.
Keeping the Dreaming intact is the primary motivation for the making of art.
It was Guboo who suggested to me that by putting art on people's walls I would achieve more to change white attitudes to Aboriginal people than by taking part in land rights marches. Protests, he believed, led to antipathy, while the road to reconciliation and the rejection of racism is paved with love.
The older people [in Wirrimanu, Balgo Hills] grew up during a period when the church, which I was told had been built from rocks dynamited out of a nearby sacred site, dominated just about every aspect of their lives.
I have always known that I'm an introduced species.
By 1995, Emily Kngwarreye had become the highest paid woman in Australia.
The truth is that the majority of non-specialist dealers and gallery owners rarely had deep friendships with Aboriginal artists in the field.
Though Aratjara was seen by a seriously art literate and enthusiastic public in Germany, numbering more than 250,000 people, it was largely ignored by the Australian media.
[V]arious people had been faking [Clifford] Possum's works for years.
Artists, traders, curators, academics and advocates all felt the industry was being 'murdered by Murdoch'.
Margo Neale, who was at that time acting as the Indigenous curator of the Queensland Art Gallery, stopped just short of saying that this debate over Aboriginal artistic collaborations was a form of covert racism. 'There are similar situations in non-Aboriginal art,' Neale observed, 'but they're not making the front page of newspapers!'
If Jeff Koons faxes directions from New York to a team of workers in Sydney building a giant floral puppy and this artwork is credited to him alone, why is that considered excitingly avant-garde and not a failure of attribution?
There are plenty of contemporary urban Aboriginal artists (like Rea, Tracey Moffatt and Gordon Bennett) who refuse to be categorised as 'Aboriginal'.
While the content of The Australian's stories about the Clifford Possum and Turkey Tolson scandals was fair, the way in which The Australian presented the stories traumatised the entire industry and adversely affected its international reputation.
Charlie Perkins felt strongly about the need for a Label Of Authenticity and it was an ideal platform for him to generate press exposure on the national stage.
From the moment we met in the mid 1980s I always felt I was at the stinging end of his [activist-artist Richard Bell's] sharp, pugnacious, wit... and always on the back foot.
I learned the art market is one of the least regulated and least transparent commercial activities in the world. It's basically trade gussied up as cultural exchange, in which success relies on a cunning mix of showmanship and snobbery.
[Tommy] Watson pocketed the tidy sum of $190,000 for a single work of art, surely the highest pay packet ever received by any Aboriginal person in Australia's history.
Despite the many years I've spent running a gallery, I have never felt completely comfortable with the notion of promoting art as an investment. My number one tip for any collector would be to buy it only if you love it... Most art actually decreases in value, in real terms, over time... Only those who are well advised, or extremely lucky, make money.
[A]n international megastar such as Damien Hirst could employ any number of unacknowledged assistants, white or black, male or female, to realise his own works. Hirst has admitted in interviews that he cannot paint and that a buyer would get an inferior painting if he did it... While Damien Hirst's factory-made 'dot' paintings sold for millions, they bickered over whether Emily actually painted every single dot on every one of her works.
So why can't Aboriginal artists also participate in making multiples, 'assisted' and factory-made works? Because the minute Aboriginal painters are seen to 'produce' art for money, rather than for art's sake, they are accused of selling out, and demeaning their culture in the process.
[W]hen Turkey Tolson or Clifford Possum turned their families into art factories, they were accused of passing off fakes.
With the increasing likelihood of dramatic climatic instability, the custodial voice of the world's most ancient culture can be interpreted as a complex response to their most prescient challenge, and coincidentally that facing all humankind: survival.
Today, the number of white people telling Aboriginal people how to live their lives constitutes an entire industry in itself.
The vast majority of art actually loses value, in real terms, over time. Only a tiny proportion of art is a 'good investment'. So in effect, the investor/seller often pays 5% on a painting that has lost value in real terms... Thus resale royalty benefits some artists, but others not at all. If it was designed to help Aboriginal artists, the royalty will benefit but a few.
'Black deaths in custody' have been a stain on Australia's national consciousness for at least a century, yet Aboriginal inmates still continue to die either by their own hand or as a result of injuries, to this day. Because no-one wanted to risk another 14-year-old hanging himself in jail, these boys probably wouldn't be punished for their crimes until they were much further down the track.
He wanted to lead the way by showing Aboriginal people that they could succeed in business, too. Even today we could do with more Joe Crofts.
[My editor] Ruth and I worked together to to weave more of my own story into my account of Aboriginal art history. This may appear to some 'insiders' to have been overly self-indulgent on my part - yet, on the other hand, if it makes the content more accessible and helps 'outsiders' to appreciate Aboriginal culture more deeply, then it will have been more than worthwhile.
Displaying 1 of 1 review