Next month, William Kentridge’s Drawing from Sobriety, Obesity and Growing Old (Mrs Eckstein, Preparing for the Day) will go under the hammer, and is expected to be sold for between R2.8m and R3.8m.
It’s an immense sum, and just one of a number of works by the SA artist that auctioneer Aspire will put on the bidding block.
In 2018, a Kentridge work sold for R6.6m, breaking his own R5.5m record, set only the year before. Last year, another of his works, Drawing from Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City after Paris (Soho Eating), sold for €232,200 (upwards of R4m) in Paris.
And that’s only the works on paper. In 2013, a sculptural work of his, Procession, was auctioned off for $1,538,500 (now equal to well over R20m) at Sotheby’s.
You’d think that Covid might have dampened spirits. But last year, furious bidding at online auctions pushed the price of Kentridge posters into the tens of thousands of rands.
One signed, dated poster from the opera The Magic Flute, for which Kentridge designed backdrop projections, sold for R22,000; a signed Bicycle Kick poster, which he designed for the 2010 Soccer World Cup, went for R35,000; and one advertising a 1999 Goodman Gallery exhibition fetched R30,000 (double its estimate).
These posters weren’t even one-off artworks: the World Cup poster, for example, was one of 50 signed prints. Strip out Kentridge’s signature, and all you’d have is an ordinary litho print.
Paul Harris, a top art collector and one of the three founders of banking giant FirstRand, says he includes Kentridge in his collection because he is "probably one of the greatest living artists in the world".
And, adds Harris, "the fact that he’s South African makes it all the better".
Harris says he seldom sells works from his collection, which is on display at luxury Cape Town hotel Ellerman House. So he tends not to focus on their investment values.
"Ultimately, it’s the quality of the work and the quality of the person and the message that his art conveys," he says.
Kentridge is even more prolific than he himself realised.
In an interview with the FM around the time of his retrospective exhibition at Zeitz Mocaa in 2019, he said: "It’s a shock how much stuff there is, the excess, the ‘too-muchness’ of it."
He’d thought that, over his career, he might have produced 400 print works. The real total was more like 1,500.
The exact number of all his work in circulation is hard to tally. Auctioneer Strauss & Co alone has, since its inception in 2008, auctioned 493 lots, generating R118.4m.
"Artworks produced by William Kentridge demanded the highest prices across the exhibition and secondary market in 2018," says a report released in 2019 by consulting and research firm Corrigall & Co, founded by art historian and consultant Mary Corrigall.
In fact, most of the contemporary artworks offered at auction that year were also produced by Kentridge, the report notes.
When it comes to art, the reporting usually fixates on the record-breaking prices. Kentridge acknowledged as much in an interview with the FM after producing a series of woodcuts referencing his large public work in Rome, Triumphs and Laments.
"I can’t pretend not to be a beneficiary of this world," he said, before adding: "It’s certainly not the only way I hope that the work can be seen ... And, of course, there are people whose response to an artwork simply has to do with its price."
The numbers might make for sensational headlines, but this also illustrates just how baffling the art market can be. How can a picture be so expensive? What makes these works so valuable? Is it just that artworks are playthings for the wealthy? Are they the "emperor’s new clothes"? What insights do you need to profit from this market?
All of these questions are surprisingly difficult to answer.
To do so, it may be helpful to explore the Kentridge example. Is his success indicative of a wider trend in the art market, or are his works, specifically, part of a bubble? In other words, do his works defy the laws of supply and demand, or confirm them?
Is it all about William?
A report by Joburg-based market research group New World Wealth, called "The Most Bankable Artists in SA", places Kentridge in the top 10 — the only living artist, along with John Meyer, in that bracket.
New World Wealth’s ratings are based on criteria such as average value of the artist’s works, their ability to hold value (resilience in market downturns), price appreciation and expected price appreciation.
Kentridge is almost always the only living artist whose works are included in the top 10 artworks reported in local auctions.
Aspire has also done some number-crunching around Kentridge’s value.
"Kentridge’s performance [between 2017 and 2019] has been the best overall in the past decade," it says. "2017 saw the highest proportion of works sell at prices above the auction estimate, a figure which stayed buoyant the following two years. This upward trajectory in the amount of work on offer year- on-year indicates an increase in demand and market value."
Covid might have taken some of the polish off the top — but not much. Mutual Art, which tracks auction sales, reports that Kentridge’s prices in 2020 were lower than they had been for the past few years, with sales of just over $3m internationally. This was down from almost $4.5m in 2019 and $5.5m in 2017. (These figures are somewhat skewed by single works fetching record prices, yet the numbers are still remarkably steady.)
As SA’s most famous living artist, he is both a prime example of SA contemporary art, and an anomaly.
As the Joburg-born son of prominent lawyers (his father, Sir Sydney Kentridge, defended Nelson Mandela, and his mother, Felicia, co-founded the Legal Resources Centre), Kentridge began his career relatively late, after first trying his hand at theatre.
Though he has now reached the kind of status normally reserved for the greatest contemporary international artists — his art adorns the walls of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London, among others — he only really hit his stride in his 30s.
Now in his mid-60s, Kentridge rose to international prominence in the 1990s, making his mark in the unlikely medium of animated art films. His unique style of drawing and erasing images in charcoal in an idiosyncratic form of stop-animation took his reputation to new heights.
Today, he is known for his versatility.
Two of his public works illustrate this.
The Head and the Load was a hybrid performance work — made as part of the vast programme the UK arranged to commemorate World War 1. It involved music, dance, film projections, mechanised sculptures and shadow play. It was first performed on a 70m-long stage in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, but has since toured globally.
Another, Triumphs and Laments, consists of 90 images, each 12m high, etched into the dirt along the banks of the River Tiber in Rome, stretching over half a kilometre.
When people think of famous South Africans, the obvious contemporary names that tend to crop up include Elon Musk, Trevor Noah and Desmond Tutu.
Yet Kentridge has given the famous Norton Lectures at Harvard University, which invites "individuals of extraordinary talent who, in addition to their particular expertise, have the gift of wide dissemination and wise expression".
In this diversity, perhaps, is the key to his success. Aspire director Ruarc Peffers says what defines Kentridge’s status as the leading artist from SA, and solidifies his position at the top of the market, most obviously, is that "there’s a robust international market for his work and global currency value in his art".
Investors are drawn to his work, Peffers says, because it has value internationally and it can be traded in almost any economy in the world. It’s a claim that can’t be made of too many artists.
Peffers says Kentridge has also "been savvy in the way that he’s managed his career". As an artist, he is intellectually convincing; as a figure or brand, he is "the consummate professional".
"Every milestone that you’re obliged to achieve as an artist in the process of becoming a huge name, William has done magnificently," he says.
Dealers tell the FM that his works hold their value — though, understandably, they express doubt about the long-term value of signed posters.
Ultimately, though, says Peffers, "Kentridge … is the SA artist who led the way or pioneered the way for SA artists to essentially create a global following and currency".
Tapping into a vein of global demand
Kentridge may be the forerunner, but there’s been a wave of renewed interest internationally in SA and African art.
Corrigall & Co’s report says that in the decade to 2019, "over 50 new art platforms had been established", most of them commercial galleries.
It means that while SA’s art-buying public remains stable, the steep growth has come from international buyers. Their focus, largely, has been in the primary art market — in other words, in contemporary art usually sold in galleries — rather than the secondary market, where owners sell the artworks they already own, usually on auction.
It helps, says Peffers, that certain SA galleries — including Stevenson and the Goodman Gallery — participate in international art fairs and even have overseas branches, which has raised the status of local art.
While you might think, from the headlines of record-breaking sums, that pricing is a fairly transparent process, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Great secrecy shrouds pricing in the art world, and it’s often nigh impossible to get a straight answer about how much anything actually costs.
In part, this is because galleries need to set a particular value, one way or another, to create sufficient stability for the artist to get on with their work and, if they’re lucky, make the kind of perception-shifting contribution that marks the exceptional artist. So they may maintain an illusion of a particular price, when in fact they’re discounting it behind closed doors.
But it’s also because the long-term value of a contemporary artwork is extremely difficult to predict. On the secondary market, for example, prices can be inconsistent, especially for new artists, where there is little on which to base an estimate.
Michael Stevenson, founder of one of SA’s top galleries, the Stevenson, first tackled the topic of art economics in a thesis he wrote in the 1990s for his master’s degree.
In theory, Stevenson says, recognising the kind of talent that will prove of art-historical value should be easy.
"Very little art becomes Art History (with a capital H)," he says.
Three characteristics are required for an artist’s work to have the potential of art-historical significance: they need to be introducing "a new language"; they must have something fresh to say "even if it is about surface or brush marks"; and they must be technically accomplished.
"You’ll find two of those things very often," Stevenson says, "but rarely three."
One of the artists in Stevenson’s stable, who Corrigall previously described as the top contemporary artist in SA, is Zanele Muholi. Stevenson says he sees all three characteristics in her work — but it’s usually extremely difficult to identify this potential in young artists.
Then there’s market noise, which can make the signals even more difficult to discern.
At the moment, there is undoubtedly a correction taking place in the global appetite for contemporary art from Africa. Partly, says Peffers, this is due to international institutions focusing on "rectifying historical omissions" in their collections, particularly relating to African art.
But trends can also distort the picture: Chinese, Brazilian and Indian art, for example, have moved in and out of fashion.
At the same time, Stevenson believes SA has produced a disproportionate number of "extraordinary artists", who will achieve lasting art-historical value. Other countries with more developed art ecosystems — such as Spain, Australia and New Zealand — have not produced the same number of remarkable artists as SA, he says.
Getting a handle on enigmatic pricing
Corrigall tells the FM her "pricing and patterns" report isn’t about predicting prices, but rather "understanding the conditions and culture that inform pricing".
The idea is to make the market and its mechanisms more transparent to collectors so that they "feel more at ease".
Corrigall says the intention is to create more transparency, revealing that ultimately the "value of an artwork is determined by characteristics beyond aesthetics".
Factors such as "an artist’s position and a gallery’s status in the art market" also play a role. "You can pay a lot of money for a ‘bad’ work by a well-known artist represented by a high-status gallery," she says.
(Galleries tend to price works of similar size by a particular artist similarly, preferring not to make a distinction in quality through price. Only on the secondary market does the market tend to let critical judgment affect price.)
Corrigall’s report aims to provide a snapshot of the art economy at a particular point in its historical trajectory. At this early stage of the art ecosystem’s development, it "needs to be understood and measured more fully", she says.
But pricing, to the average enthusiast, remains enigmatic.
Any auctioneer will tell you that the "true" price of an artwork can only ever be established at auction. At that moment, the market produces potential buyers, who reveal what they are willing to pay. Auctioneers believe in the purity of this process.
Yet there is significant tension between auctioneers and galleries.
As Corrigall explains in her report, auction records may be the best way to establish the value of an artist — but this can only apply where there is a record for that artist.
Dependable track records, based on auction data, tend to exist only for artists who are no longer alive. Contemporary art, in contrast, usually has little or no record on the secondary market.
Several people she interviewed, mostly collectors and gallery owners, described auction pricing for young contemporary artists as "volatile" and unreliable.
In the early stages of an artist’s career, pricing is established "by consensus". It relies on "uncertain qualities such as individual taste, perception, fashion and insider or specialist knowledge," the report reads.
To establish this "consensus", the market looks to other forms of validation — including exhibitions, whether works feature in the media, and whether works are selected by curators of a certain stature in galleries or museums. (Though this often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more curators select a particular artist, the more others will follow.)
In SA, it’s trickier. While art prizes bolster the value of young, contemporary artists, the lack of a robust critical arts press in SA doesn’t help.
Public galleries also play a diminished role in establishing value in SA, given that a lack of funding and political will has left many of them marginalised.
University galleries — such as the Wits Arts Museum, the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery and the new Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria — carry weight, as do certain corporate galleries, such as those run by Standard Bank and Absa.
Large private museums, such as the Zeitz Mocaa and the Norval Foundation, also in Cape Town, are also influential, even if they are, in the final analysis, personal collections.
Stevenson says it gives him "the heebie jeebies" that commercial galleries can play such an outsized role in validating their own artists. In a world where public institutions have a smaller role, the degree to which commercial galleries can promote their own artists — through exhibitions, art fairs, publications, solo exhibitions and their own general stature and influence — is exaggerated.
Is art betrayed, or boosted, by commerce?
It’s a tricky assessment, as galleries try, in good faith, to look after the best interests of their artists, including guiding their careers.
The flip side is that galleries are often seen as gatekeepers, unfairly deciding who can and cannot own certain kinds of art. In some cases, to bring stature and value to an artist’s work, they look to place his or her artworks in influential collections or expose the works abroad, often while trying to shelter the artist from the boom-and-bust cycle associated with being the "hot young thing".
Stevenson says that sometimes, a young artist might generate a lot of hype. If their work then sells on auction for a lot more than their gallery is charging, it can cause as much damage to the value of their work as selling for a much lower price.
The Knight of the Long Knives, a photograph by Cape Town artist Athi-Patra Ruga, sold for R1.7m at a Strauss & Co auction in 2019. While it hasn’t hurt Ruga’s career, this seems to be an anomaly.
Corrigall’s report says that in some cases, galleries also seek to look after the interests of their clients. If an artist burns out, "collectors risk never recuperating what they paid initially for a work by a young, celebrated artist".
There are all sorts of strategies that galleries use to try to create value — from withholding works of an artist to create the perception of scarcity, to "showing an abundance of artworks by an artist across multiple platforms", according to Corrigall’s report — to drive up prices. There is also often a difference between the quoted price for a work and the amount that is actually paid for it.
It is a delicate process, illustrating why there is so much secrecy around pricing.
Corrigall is now updating her report to take into account new developments.
Among them, she lists "the impact of online trading on the ecosystem", as well as the fact that high-status art fairs such as Art Basel and the Frieze Art Fair have "opened the playing field", allowing local galleries to participate and expand their global status.
"Bizarrely, there are a lot of new players," she adds. "The ecosystem has expanded."
While Covid-19 has led to many galleries closing, the fact that physical space is no longer a necessity for a gallery to operate has actually removed a significant barrier to entry, and allowed wider participation.
One dynamic hasn’t changed: the tension between the artwork’s value and its price.
As Corrigall puts it: "A market for an artist can also be sustained just because too many people are invested in it remaining buoyant."
Stevenson has faith that the market, in the end, will tell the truth and validate work that is of true art-historical value. But along the way, it can often be a minefield.
He cites the example of top-selling artists Irma Stern and JH Pierneef as examples of the phenomenon where sustained demand from wealthy buyers has kept prices high.
Here, the cultural affiliation for the artist helps. In particular, demand among rich Afrikaans collectors for Pierneef works, and a similar niche demand among wealthy Jewish SA collectors for Stern, have buoyed prices.
In his memoir, At the Strangers’ Gate, writer Adam Gopnik recalls living in SoHo in New York in the 1980s, as it was emerging as the epicentre of the art world. At the time, he recalls, art was being commercialised in a way that was hard to understand.
Gopnik describes New York as "both a cathedral village dedicated to the religion of advanced art, and a market town, devoted to selling produce of the true faith".
Addressing the moral question of the relationship between art and commerce — whether art is compromised by its commodification — he says "art isn’t betrayed by commerce; it begins there".
Fingers crossed, the commodification of contemporary African art, imperfect though it is, may herald the start of its global influence.
Sprawling across both worlds
Kentridge, at least, seems to have both aspects well-covered: commercial value, and artistic credibility.
"I’m delighted that some people want the work," he told this writer in 2017. "It’s essential for me that people who want the work also pay for the work. That’s not just how I live; it’s also how a lot of projects are possible: projects that do not have any end point of a picture that sits on a wall, that can pay its own way."
Corrigall says Kentridge’s relatively low-value film works may have "less market value than the drawings [or] sculptures", but they often help market his less culturally important, but more profitable, drawing and prints. This gives Kentridge a rare flexibility to pursue projects without any inherent commercial objective.
For example, he supports The Centre for the Less Good Idea, an arts incubator in Joburg’s Maboneng district that supports "experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects".
Last year the centre launched "The Highway Notice Project", in which it placed messages on billboards as a kind of public intervention aiming to do nothing more than provoke thought and raise awareness. It had no commercial element to it (though, as an advertising billboard, it automatically commented on commercialised sentiment).
This illustrates that his is a model that rotates around the full circle — touching on commercialism, artistic and public imperatives at one point.
In this way, Kentridge’s art does both the things that Gopnik described in 1980s New York: existing as a commercial object of luxury and as an object of sincere expression. In that lies a good part of its true value.
What sets Kentridge apart is that there is an international market for his work and global currency value in his art
— What it means:
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