The closure of the Goodman Gallery points to disturbing trends in=20 the art market, reports IVOR POWELL THE news is out: after 29 years as an institution in the art world,=20 the Goodman Gallery in Hyde Park will be closing its doors at the=20 end of August, pulling down its lighting tracks, clearing its=20 storerooms, getting rid of its old stock …=20 It will be the end of an era in local art. Starting out in 1966,=20 proprietor Linda Givon (in those days Goodman by marriage) has=20 * ot only overseen but nurtured the development of generations of=20 South African artists. She championed the work of Walter Battiss,=20 Julian Motau, Alexis Preller and Cyprian Shilakoe. She presided=20 over the emergence of new generations of painters in the Sixties=20 and Seventies; in the Eighties she was among the first curators to=20 promote then-unknown rural sculptors like Johannes Segogela=20 and Johannes Maswanganyi, as well as pick up on new currents in=20 the work of such artists as Willie Bester. Even today, a one-person=20 show at the Goodman Gallery means “making it” on the cutting=20 edge of South African art. But it’s not just the closure of an exhibition venue that is=20 agitating the art world; it’s the questions raised about the general=20 viability of South African art. Up to six months ago, everybody=20 thought art in this country was about to explode like some=20 fantastic firework. The Johannesburg Biennale was, at one level,=20 an expression of that optimism. Before that, the Read=20 Contemporary Gallery nurtured and promoted a generation of=20 young avant-gardists, realising unheard-of prices for their work,=20 hosting some memorable opening bashes, and generally instilling=20 the sense that something major was going down. =20 Nowadays, Read Contemporary director Trent Read lives in=20 Knysna, mainly selling works by rural primitives to overseas=20 buyers who are more interested, one presumes, in myths about=20 Africa than they are in art. So it goes.=20 And so it goes with the Goodman Gallery, too. After 29 years,=20 Givon has decided to close down her operation. Not because the=20 gallery is losing money; it is one of the few that is not. It is just,=20 she explains, that her interests have shifted. “I’m not closing”,=20 she insists. “This is a redirection of energies.” And, while saying she might reopen the gallery at a later date, she=20 adds: “What would make me very happy is not having to hang=20 another exhibition in my life.” That is one reason. The more serious one goes like this:=20 “There’s a huge demand for South African exhibitions in the=20 outside world. I can’t take care of all the commitments I have to=20 overseas exhibitions and worry at the same time about what’s=20 happening at home.” So maybe the explosion of South African art is happening after=20 all. Only it’s not happening at home, and it’s not the kind of pie=20 that everybody gets a slice of.=20 “One of the things that makes me happy about this move,”=20 Givon confesses, “is that it might induce artists to take a serious=20 * ook at how they produce art. The market is getting a lot more=20 selective, and artists will have to get away from the kind of mass=20 production we’ve seen in recent years.” Givon is mounting exhibitions of South African art in London=20 (two) in September, Los Angeles in October, and Seville in=20 November. She has exhibitions lined up for 1996 in Tokyo and=20 New York, among other places.=20 In fact, Givon has been moving in this direction for some years.=20 Particularly since the later 1980s, a growing international market=20 has opened up for a small band of South African artists, many of=20 whom — notably Willie Bester, Robert Hodgins and Johannes=20 Segogela — are handled by her operation. Bester assemblages are=20 selling to foreign buyers for sums in excess of R50 000 — often=20 before they are made. Nearly half the works on painter Hodgins’=20 * ast exhibition at the Goodman Gallery were bought by a New=20 York dealer before the exhibition opened.=20 The closing of the gallery is not, then, a negation of South=20 African art; on the contrary, it is in response to the opening up of intern= ational markets. =20 Even so, Givon admits to some distress at the way things are=20 moving in this country, trends evidenced in the current Segogela=20 retrospective in Grahamstown. “Nearly everything on that show=20 has to go back to Europe or the States when it closes. It worries=20 me that people here aren’t buying art any more.” Ironically, if the strategy she is pursuing works — if South African=20 art does sell in the outside world; if prices do go through the roof=20 — people will buy South African art. And maybe it will become an=20 attractive proposition to open the gallery again.