The economics of the art world are weird. It seems incomprehensible that anyone would shell out hundreds of millions on a painting, like the infamous $450m (R6.5bn) paid for the "Last Leonardo" in 2017 - which may not be by Da Vinci after all.
And it's made worse by the recent cryptocurrency-driven vogue for paying millions for a non-fungible token - which is basically a digital guarantee that a virtual art object you're buying is unique.
Much simpler to understand is where the art world intersects with conventional global economics - the age-old story of the haves and the have-nots.
African art is a great case in point - apart from the looting of cultural artefacts like the Benin Bronzes by Western colonial powers, most revenue generated by African art comes from exports from Africa to the major Western metropolitan markets, with little revenue flowing back to Africa to grow and develop local art markets.
Now, however, the African art market is beginning to take back some of its identity and self-governance. Two major new coalitions are taking different routes to establishing Africa as a competitive force of its own on the global art scene.
The recently launched SOUTH SOUTH is an online community and platform for artists, galleries, curators and collectors from across the Global South - originally an umbrella academic term to refer to an alternative view of geopolitics not centred on the US and Western Europe.
The initiative brings together more than 50 galleries from across five continents to offer a central portal for programmes and artists from the various galleries scattered across the world.
For its founders it's an ambitious attempt to set up a different art history and economy. It is essentially an aggregate of commercial galleries, supported by a roster of heavyweight collectors from around the world, that wants to move revenue streams for art sales away from the major Western markets and into the global destinations in which they operate.
A new pan-African initiative, the African Art Galleries Association (AAGA)
is attempting to address the imbalance in a different way. Rather than focusing on alternative geographies such as South and Central America and Asia, as well as Africa, it is a dedicated pan-African collective looking to change the art fortunes of the continent's own beleaguered artists and smaller galleries. But how will it go about this?
AAGA was formed by a loose collective of regional southern African galleries in 2016 with the idea of building up collective bargaining power and knowledge in art sectors on the continent through collaboration between similarly emerging galleries.
Its first formal project was launched in 2019 - the Emerging Painting Invitational (EPI), a pan-African emerging painting prize, designed as part competition, part curated exhibition, part art fair, part conference.
It launched that year at First Floor Gallery in Harare. In common with most other art events post-pandemic, it has now moved online, and is a collaboration with South African fine art auction powerhouse Strauss and Co, which sponsors the prize and runs an online auction of the work of participating artists.
AAGA is responding, it says, to the need to support the growth and sustainability of contemporary art sectors in Africa in the context of the rise of interest internationally in contemporary art from the continent. This happens via an emerging gallery and artist network that is properly pan-African, with galleries in southern, western and north African regions.
The collective has also formed a signature event partnership with Artsy, the leading US-based arts media and auction platform, to showcase African art for US and global collectors and museums. The online-only event "African Galleries Now" spotlights AAGA's emerging galleries and African artists in an art fair format happening on June 9 this year.
South African gallery Guns & Rain is one of the collective's founding members, and director Julie Taylor sees the main advantages of AAGA lying in capacity- building and economies of scale that are unusual in the art world.
"Emerging galleries need the support of a professional community, especially in countries where arts infrastructure is underdeveloped, and where it's important to set industry standards for professional practice," Taylor says.
"And it can be more financially efficient to team up with other players on a project. For a pan-African project like this, economies of scale are really important and allow us to negotiate important global initiatives like the EPI and our 'African Galleries Now' collaboration with Artsy. We're certainly demonstrating our African talent for collaboration!"
AAGA founder Valerie Kabov, director of First Floor Gallery, agrees: "As galleries in Africa we're acutely aware that international hype about 'black art' assumes an African identity but in fact often excludes African artists from market access. This is why we launched the 'African Galleries Now' art fair - to spotlight the work of African galleries which are invested in supporting art on the continent from the ground up and not just jumping on board a hyped movement in the market. So AAGA also has a strong ethical and political motivation."
