查看文章

In 1999, two major stories hit the media concerning the authenticity of artworks by two of Australia’s leading Indigenous artists: Turkey Tolson Tjupurrala and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, both artists of the Western Desert region. The incidents were quickly tagged as ‘Black art scandals’, with the artists disavowing production of the art¬¬ works in question. In the case of works attributed to Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, there was eventually an arrest and criminal trial of his dealer. For Turkey Tolson Tjupurrala, the situation was more complicated, involving what we call ‘family attribution’. We theorise the market impacts using the lens of stigma, given that, in the art market, uncovering fakes and forgeries may create a panic among buyers of an artist. Our proposed mechanism is that negative media attention about works misattributed to an artist stigmatises the artist’s name and their artworks. We also note the potential stigma transfer to other artists in a style or genre (category-level contagion). Using data from the Australian Art Sales Digest for auctions containing artworks by Australian Indigenous artists (1998–2000), we investigate the auction market reaction to these misattribution scandals. We indeed find a decline in both the clearance rate and value of sales for auctions occurring after the news stories broke.