Marketing African and Oceanic Art at the High-end of the Global Art Market: The Case of Christie’s and Sotheby’s

Abstract

This article examines both the development and implications of a sales strategy deployed by Christie’s and Sotheby’s from the mid-2000s to increase their market share and the prices of African and Oceanic art. The strategy was designed to entice affluent modern and contemporary art collectors with eclectic tastes to African and Oceanic art and to develop cross-category collecting between the two art market segments. This was achieved by capitalizing on the historical links between these art forms and by timing the African and Oceanic art auctions and pre-sale viewings to coincide with sales of modern and contemporary art. A survey of sales catalogues produced by the two corporations between 1966 and 2019 documents how specialists have used the engagement of avant-garde artists with non-European art forms as a storytelling device to enhance the value of African and Oceanic artworks. I argue that in the African and Oceanic art departments’ quest for buyers of modern and contemporary art, auction houses are consolidating aesthetic canons established by avant-garde artists and French tastemakers of the early twentieth century with their current marketing of African and Oceanic art.