African art forms have long been subjected to fetishisation by the Global North. Throughout the 20th century, the art historians of the West focused much of their attention on fetish objects when discussing African artistic traditions — indeed, the fetish stood metonymically for art in and from Africa. At the start of the 21st century, a different kind of fetishisation emerged: even as art collectors increasingly saw contemporary African artworks as desirable investments, this was often born out of a fascination with their “exoticism” and novelty rather than inherent aesthetic or other qualities.
In recent years, however, the African art market (both the art market in Africa, and the global market for works by African artists) has developed greater nuance as it continued to grow in dollar terms. Much of this is attributable to gallerists, curators and auctioneers advocating a better understanding and appreciation of the artists they represent.
At a symposium organised by auction company Strauss & Co in the run-up to the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in February, the consensus among participants seemed to be that this greater collector discernment works in African artists’ favour collectively. Many individual artists who have benefited from the African art market boom, though, may find that their short-term success is not sustainable — perhaps indicating that market conditions, rather than the substance or significance of their work, inflated their value.
These are rather intangible considerations, but one can apply some hard figures to the analysis. Towards the end of last year, SA art market consultant Mary Corrigall combined the findings in two reports published internationally (the UBS Art Basel Collectors Survey 2022 and Artprice’s Ultra-Contemporary Art Report 2022) to come to a better understanding of the forces shaping art buying practices among wealthy individuals.
Corrigall’s conclusion is that even billionaires are looking for bargains: “The perception that wealthy people prefer to buy works by famous artists or those with institutional recognition is not necessarily accurate ... an increasing appetite for emerging artists on the auction circuit reveals an interest in ‘betting’ on artists early on in their careers, while they are more affordable.” Prices for artists aged 40 and under — “ultracontemporary” in Artprice’s nomenclature — are thus on the up and up, and one in 10 of them is African.
Auction houses benefit from these conditions, but to its credit Strauss & Co is not simply responding to the phenomenon with a sell-at-all-costs approach. Its recent exhibition Curatorial Voices: Modern and Contemporary Art from Africa included works by artists from 15 countries and was curated by a team connecting SA, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
Likewise, Latitudes, a digital platform focusing on art from Africa, sees itself not only as a purveyor of African art but also as a public arts education initiative. Corrigall’s assessment of the African art market is one of many editorial or feature pieces published on the site, which functions simultaneously as an online shop, a virtual exhibition and a visual repository. Latitudes boasts an accessible artist-orientated model that aims to contribute to the democratisation of the fine arts sector, both for those buying and for those selling art via the platform.
Latitudes Online’s current show, Reverb: Abstract Resonances, Contemporary Voices (until 24 March) includes the work of more than 50 contemporary African artists forging “a sensorial map of sight, sound and texture through the medium of abstracted form”. The emphasis on abstraction undermines the common assumption that African artists speak exclusively to political issues or are bound up in the fate of a nation.
While it blurs national boundaries, the abstract here also works against the Africa-as-a-country homogeneity that the very phrase “African art” implies. Instead, the medium becomes the message: as the curators note, works on paper “transmute” two-dimensional limitations, artists using wood or rubber engage in “textural alchemy”, and attention to colour palettes results in “chromatic vibrations”.
Latitudes started out not as a digital adventure but a pre-Covid-19 gathering designed to connect independent artists to collectors. The Johannesburg — and African — arts scene is already buzzing with excitement about the return of the RMB Latitudes Art Fair at the swanky Johannesburg venue Shepstone Gardens, from May 26-28.
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