Benjamin Genocchio; 26/6/08
It’s often said that anyone who bought Aboriginal art in the 1970s for the purposes of investment and resale was very clever. But was it really such a perspicacious investment? And how does it compare with increases in the prices of other artworks over a similar period? In truth, a great many prudent art investments made almost anywhere in the world in those days would have performed similarly: take Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, bought by the National Gallery of Australia for $US2 million in 1973 and today probably worth anywhere between $US100 million ($104.6 million) and $US200 million. Greater percentage increases have been recorded in the value of the work of artists associated with contemporary art movements of the same period – pop art, for example – as well as more recent artists. In 2004 a Jeff Koons sculpture, bought in 1986 for about $US60,000, sold for $US5,495,500. What is different, even unusual, about Aboriginal art is that prices rose at all; after all, Australian art generally doesn’t have much of an international market and, until the mid-1990s, there was little in the way of a secondary market for Aboriginal art.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23921647-16947,00.html
