If it’s old, it sells

More than 50 years after southern buyers first discovered Inuit art, today’s Inuit art market is still extremely “hot,” says a leading auctioneer.

Last week, hundreds of eager collectors jammed into Waddington’s Auction House in Toronto to place bids on 1,700 works of Inuit art. This record-breaking sale netted $3 million in two days.

Waddington’s auctioneer and co-owner Duncan McLean says he felt a distinct buzz in the crowded auction room as bids repeatedly surpassed estimated sale prices.

McLean says every auction since 1978 has managed to break the previous auction’s sales records.

This past May, a carving by the late Joe Talirunili, the renowned Puvirnituq artist, sold at auction for $278,500, a price that’s believed to set a record for a single work of Inuit art.

“The whole market is changing,” McLean says. “As prices go up, new buyers are drawn to the Inuit art market, and they are now recognizing it for what it is.”

McLean says these buyers are starting to treat Inuit art with the same respect they offer to the Group of Seven painters, southern artists who are usually considered icons of Canadian art.

Inuit art is suddenly being seen as an investment. But McLean says it’s buyers’ passion that draws them to the auctions.

“They’re involved with an art form that is vital and exciting, and they feel they are collecting something different.”

This new enthusiasm is helping to push the prices for Inuit art higher and higher.

The highest price of last week’s auction, $69,000, was for a carving made by an unidentified artist from the 1950s. This work tells the traditional Inuit story of how the small and wily weasel kills a much larger caribou by entering through its anus and attacking it from the inside.

A sleek and humorous carving, “Whimsical Figure” by the late Karoo Ashevak of Taloyoak from the 1960s fetched $46,000. Three other works by Karoo, who some critics call the “Picasso of the North,” sold from $20,700 to $31,200.

Cape Dorset carvings made before 1965 also drew good prices. The late Sheokjuk Oqutaq’s “Joyful Bird” from the 1960s sold at $18,000, way above its price estimate of $4,000 to $6,000.

Minimalist carvings from the Kivalliq by George Tatiniq, Andy Miki and John Pangnark, now all deceased, continued to be extremely popular. Miki’s “Mating Polar Bears,” made in 1967, sold at $27,600.

While the names are of these carvers are well-known, knowing the identity of Inuit artists is not always possible. Generally in the art world, if the creator of a work can’t be identified, a great deal of its value is stripped away, but that’s not the case for art by these early Inuit artists: “the value is in the piece, not in the name,” McLean says.

Usually, the original owners of pieces that go to auction do know where they bought them and have some documentation to back that up.

Wall hangings and prints also performed well at auction, with works by Jessie Oonark of Baker Lake and Talirunili bringing in thousands of dollars. McLean says more recent prints are less appealling to collectors, because they don’t want to buy something that many other people own.

A one-of-a-kind sealskin handbag made by Kenojuak Ashevak of Cape Dorset in 1958 was snapped up for $10,800. The bag, with the image of a rabbit eating seaweed, caught the eye of John Houston in the early 1950s, because its designs revealed Kenoujuak’s huge artistic talent.

In 1959, Kenoujuak’s first stencil was traced from this handbag and enlarged on paper. Many of Kenojuak’s early Cape Dorset prints produced by the West Baffin Cooperative recall the designs on this bag. One early example, “Birds from the Sea” from 1960, sold for $10,200.

But is Inuit art of today fetching the high prices of these vintage pieces? Probably not, or, at least, not yet.

For the moment, early works from 1955 to 1975 comprise a completely different high-end market.

Most of the Inuit art sold at Waddington’s is being sold for the first time. That’s because early visitors to the Arctic in the 1950s and 60s – RCMP, government officials, teachers and doctors – who bought art then, are starting to sell their collections. As the supply of older art works decreases, McLean predicts “prices will only go up.”

Few of these valuable early pieces stayed in the North or with the artists who made them, but McLean says the strength and health of the Inuit art market should be a “point of pride” for Inuit.