This is the challenge which we face right now. To see the world around us with new eyes and to create a story which changes the anonymity we are so used to with a new personality, perhaps one that draws on our indigenous history and the diversity of our people. . . read more

The UK Daily Telegraph advises its share-shocked readers that Sotheby's contemporary art sale in New York last week (11 November) defied fears of an imminent international art market collapse.

These fears failed to materialise at the Sotheby's auction of 63 artworks where ‘the majority of bidders were American, raised $125 million, significantly below the $200 million presale estimate, but Sotheby's stressed that the estimate was set in September, before the financial crash.'

The clearance rate was a modest 68 per cent but Sotheby's remarked it was "very happy" with the sale. The Outsider was pleased to see that one work by Damien‘dollar-thirsty'Hirst failed to get a bid.

The Telegraph then goes on to say ‘The fact that so many works were sold below their estimates reflects Sotheby's success in persuading sellers to lower their expectations and adjust the minimum price they would accept.' Now either this is a fatuous piece of spin to rationalise a poor sale or the owners must have stolen the artworks in the first place. Maybe it's a bit of both. When Eli Broad a high roller among collectors, who spent $8 million at the sale, describes the auction as a "half-price sale" you know the world is nuts.

One thing however you can rely on. Art is long and life is fleeting. Valuing beats valuation every time.

In October 2008 I spent a week in Hong Kong just as the financial crisis started turning into a global sized tsunami. Now Hong Kong is a town built on and for money - where brand names like Bulgari, Louis Vuitton, Armani are the key defining features of streetscape. This is a place where money is not a means to an end, it is the means that defines and defies the ends. So while in Europe the crisis was being observed in the manner of "well this is probably going to make things a bit complicated and what should we do together to make it better" in Hong Kong there were shrill undertones of a crisis of identity and consciousness.

After all if the most important reason one does anything in life is money, then the financial markets collapse, well so does your raison d'être, or at least that is the logical if not entirely sane conclusion. Not to engage in spoon-feeding however, but conversely if one does something because it is important and meaningful and income/money is an outcome and facilitator, then the financial crisis, any financial fluctuation merely affects how easy it is for you to carry on with your work/life but it does not change its purpose.

This kind of sanity is self-evident to any artist world over and perhaps it is this kind of vocational meaningfulness that makes will need to re-emerge elsewhere. It was certainly missing in HK, where people took pains to explain: " You simply don't understand how important money is to people here!"

Art and art market is the clearest manifestation of why making money the top priority is doomed to failure. It is not merely that greed is not good it is just that it is not a good basis for decision-making or for ascertaining value. Enter, stage left, the failures at the October Sotheby's auction in Hong Kong of slightly too fashionable Chinese art. Over the past couple of years, I have been watching from the sidelines, as numerous Chinese artists started producing stylized and trite work to please a new clientele of investment bankers with interests in the booming Chinese market and have been predicting this outcome for quite a while.

Australia similarly has not been immune from the phenomenon, where it led to a range of exploitative dealer jumping into the booming Aboriginal art market. Prices were driven up through acquisitions by people with little understanding (let's not be too hard on investment bankers but still) and on the basis of speculative interest rather than merit. Consequently the drop in the market was less of a shock or distress but rather a relief and with a sense of vindication in one's faith that merit and long-term vision do prevail in the end.

So what do art collectors need to consider in the current climate? As usual - don't believe the hype or buy into the panic. The upside of the downturn is that if one aims at merit and value one will find bargains in the current auctions, although we predict that proven quality works will not be significantly affected by the downturn. Sotheby's November 2008, auctions are proof. While the absence of hype has had a visible impact, with prices down to 2006 levels, works of exceptional quality still attracted top prices. In New York, paintings by Kazimir Malevich and Juan Gris fetched record $60 million and $20 million, while in Melbourne Brett Whiteley's iconic "Balmoral" was sold for $AU990,000 ($90,000 above the estimate of $700-$900,000). In the art world, this probably signifies shifts away from high-risk high fashion artists and towards a more rigorous approach to buying. This will also lead to greater accountability from art advisors and greater need for personal education. This could not make us happier (just ask us about our badly hidden secret guide for the art perplexed "Why Art? or How to become your own art expert"). So as always the word to the wise even when you are confident, it pays to get advice...

Valerie Kabov is a critic, a visionary and educational art consultant. This column is based on materials appearing in Why Art? Valerie's monthly email newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter write to valerie@renaissanceaic.com.au or visit www.renaissanceaic.com.au

The work reveals the irony of life’s ‘soft’ transience being represented by $50 million of durable and precious ‘hardware’. Tickets for the show are free except if you want to view the skull. It’s not clear where God comes into it, mind you. For the Love of Mammon is a much better handle. . . read more

Humanity is a ghostly presence; and not one written in a familiar script. All of which encourages a heretical thought. Why is contemporary art at its best, as here, so emphatically detached from the tangible passions and problems of the average sort of days we lead on this earth?

Is the search for higher meaning a form of denial of the everyday reality which shapes most lives? . . read more

This is odd. Not because we shouldn't try and rationalise decisions but because of the choice being proposed. Why not pull the British troops out of Basra and do both? . . read more

The cash being used to generate such profligacy is a function of the long boom which has ramped mergers & acquisitions, and delivers spending money for the art-loving business and professional types who reap excessive bonuses from private equity deals and the like. You can be certain of one thing above all else. The studios of practising artists will not be benefiting from this trade and their inhabitants will continue to be among the poorest groups in our society.

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George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and "compassionate conservatism," an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government. What did we actually get? Once in office, this chameleon president almost immediately set out to embroil the country in a major war in the Middle East against the nation of Iraq. The game plan was laid out at the president's first National Security Council meeting... It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush/Cheney administration, at a minimum, wanted an attack on American soil, and a national disaster that would put the country on a war footing.

Surveying at the appalling wreckage left after eight years of the Bush administration, it is hard to recognize the country that he started out with in 2001. A once proud nation-one that only a few years ago was admired around the world and that now is viewed as a pariah and a rogue state-today trembles before a handful of turbaned fanatics holed up in caves in the Hindu Kush, its trillion-dollar high-tech military colossus fought to a standstill in Iraq and Afghanistan by a few thousand brave men and women armed with RPGs, antique AK-47s and home-made roadside bombs...

Forget all the nonsense about Barack Obama being a closet Muslim. We already have our Manchurian Candidate in the White House, and he has largely accomplished what he was programmed to do: destroy the country. [More] . . read more