KEY POINTS:
Sometimes you have to wonder what planet the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Culture have been beamed down from. Their latest brainstorm is to force everyone who sells a secondhand artwork - anything from a McCahon painting to a homemade garden gnome, "irrespective of artistic quality" - to pay 5 per cent of the proceeds to the original artist. Or if he or she is dead, to their nearest and, but not always, dearest.
The ministry seems driven by the idea that purchasers of new artworks are rapacious speculators, seeking out starving geniuses at the dawn of their brilliant careers, paying them peanuts for their Mona Lisas, then a few years on, flicking them on and reaping ill-gotten gains.
As a modest patron of the arts over the years, I find this picture not only farcical but rather insulting. Anyone who buys the works of young artists planning to make a quick buck probably also invests in Nairobi-sourced email banking scams.
My guess is that most New Zealand art, if auctioned, would fetch less than its original dealer gallery price. Yet under the Culture Ministry's proposal, if I chose to sell at a loss, I would be expected to take my punishment like a man, then grit my teeth and add to my woes by forwarding a portion of the resale price to the artist; or even worse, to his estate.
It would be more in the spirit of the ministry's original premise that everyone's in it for the money, that in such circumstances, the artist compensate the original buyer for his or her losses and plead with them not to alert the Commerce Commission. For obviously the artist ripped off the buyer with the original inflated sale price.
Of course the real life situation is very different. Over the past 35-odd years, a prosperous and lively market for New Zealand art has developed full of supportive buyers and ever-hopeful artists. And nowhere more so than in Auckland. I recall the pioneering Barry Lett Gallery in the mid-1960s, full of mostly unsold McCahons.
There wasn't a market for him then. Now his works can top $1 million and his estate, which dribbles new works on to the market, makes a handsome return. I don't begrudge them their windfall. But I don't see why the trustees, for example, should also get a free handout every time one of the early supporters of Colin McCahon sells up.
And that goes for any artwork. If ever there was a discretionary and fashion-driven commodity, it is surely a work of art. How else do you set the price but via the market? In the 1960s you could buy works of the current pillars of the art firmament like McCahon, Woollaston, Walters, Illingworth or Hanly for what seems a song now, but that's all they were worth then. The artists weren't forced to paint. Nor to sell at the prices they did.
Prosperous Coromandel artist Michael Smither was quoted yesterday as saying the proposed scheme would protect struggling artists. The figures in the ministry's research material don't show that.
Based on 2006 auction sales, of the 801 artists who would benefit from the 5 per cent royalty, 740 would have received a handout of less than $2500 for the year, and of these, 701 would have got less than $1250. And that's before administration fees of 15 to 25 per cent are deducted.
At the top end, one beneficiary, presumably the McCahon estate, would have pocketed more than $75,000 for the sale of one painting. Rather than helping the strugglers, the vast majority of the estimated $498,000 of 2006 resale royalties would go to the 40 or so top-selling artists.
To be rather harsh, artists who are still struggling into old age should try some other trade. Meanwhile the successful ones such as Smither can paint another picture and benefit from their market popularity.
Many years ago, I bought an "original" condition house for what now seems a derisory amount. If I were to sell, I wouldn't expect the vendor to pop up and ask for 5 per cent of the proceeds. Nor, if I were to sell the art on my walls, should I expect the artists to play a part in the proceedings. Unless it was to offer compensation for any losses.
