Top-100 artists:
We use our proprietary AI - LiveArt Estimate™ to calculate current market value for each artwork. Based on this data LiveArt is able to provide numerous insights into artist and artwork financial performance, including:
See the measure of artist investment performance relative to risk. A higher ratio suggests better risk-adjusted returns, indicating more consistent performance with less risk.
Explore the most prolific periods in an artist's career based on artwork production volume and current market value. It also segments these periods by category, offering insights into when the most valuable pieces were created in each category.
Free to sign up. No credit card required.
| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Aug 29, 2023 | Bonhams | Sydney | Important Australian Art | 30 | $****** - ****** | Ornamentik |
paintings
200 x 120 cm (78.74 x 47.24 in)
paint on canvas
Howard Arkley, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above
Private collection, Melbourne
John Gregory, Arkley Works: Howard Arkley Online Catalogue Raisonne , www.arkleyworks.com, (illus.)
RELATED WORKS
Ornamentik , 1981, synthetic polymer paint on paper, 162.0 x 324.0cm, collection unknown
Untitled ["Abstract"] , 1981, synthetic polymer paint on paper, 59.5 x 86.0cm, private collection
"I take methods, systems, attitudes and subjects previously thought by the abstract mainstream to be nonArt. That is, pattern and decoration, popular culture which includes 60s psychedelic, Art Deco, 50s symbols, Islamic typography... illuminated manuscripts etc. I find these sources can be filled with general and multiple meanings while still remaining abstract".
Howard Arkley, notebook entry, c.1979
Howard Arkley may be celebrated for his suburban Melbourne home exteriors and hyper-glam interiors; however he would have been unable to do so without his solid grounding in such abstract decorative works from the early 1980s such as the present work, Ornamentik , 1981. Renowned for making the mundane marvellous, he famously garnered inspiration for a magnificent suite of "door" abstractions by noticing the patterns on fly-wire doors and the shapes of washing-lines.
"Throughout his career, Howard Arkley, enjoyed a healthy appetite for pattern, sometimes borrowed from everyday sources, sometimes freshly invented. During his early years, this tendency has clear links with the late modern craze for pattern-painting, during the closing phase of the heyday of abstraction. However, Arkley"s taste for pattern also takes us close to the core of his individual artistic project, as does his interest in repetition - of titles, motifs and even whole compositions. Both characteristics also typify the "postmodern" challenge to modernise ideals of "pure form", calling into question traditional concept of authorship and the supposed uniqueness of the suburban theme, through detailed quotation and simulation of the characteristic elements of domestic decoration, wallpaper and floor-coverings.
For Arkley, as for a number of his contemporaries, pattern and ornament raised key critical issues, blurring simplistic distinctions between "art" and "craft", or "form" and "decoration". Anxieties about the presumed superficiality and "mere" attractiveness of images also rise to the surface in this context; and pattern-making and decoration art also important to the "high-low" debate within postmodernism. Arkley"s air-brushed line - at once decisive and indeterminate - perfectly symbolises his natural inclination to complicate such all-too-neat categories. Hence, he was led almost inevitably to explore the nature and history of ornament, and to incorporate decorative elements into his art, in ways that were not only characteristic of his era but also innovative and idiosyncratic... he broke new ground in his approach to pattern, often deliberately combining elements from the most apparently incompatible sources, introducing various optical and decorative subtleties, testing the limits of viewers" taste and even their patience."1
Ornamentik , 1981, a transitional work that curiously marries patterned motifs of abstracted skulls and acorns in a vibrant cohesive statement. An almost identical composition was selected for the 1981 McCaughey Prize held by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Whilst retaining its repetitive decorative montage, the present work side steps the symmetrically charged optical works that dominated the years prior. Aligning it"s ornamental motifs with a sense of punk, graffiti and pop culture - a genre further explored by Arkley that same year in a groundbreaking black and white mural, Primitive (private collection) - a seminal work stimulated by his urban surroundings that shifted the course of his artistic practice.
Alex Clark
1. John Gregory, Carnival in Suburbia: The Art of Howard Arkley , Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2006, p. 53
Howard Arkley (1951-1999)
Ornamentik, c.1981
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
200.0 x 120.0cm (78 3/4 x 47 1/4in).
