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Name a world-famous Australian actor. Easy.
Name a world-famous Australian writer. Choose between Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally or Liane Moriarty.
Name a global influential Australian business person. Start with Rupert.
Point is, choose any area of activity you like, and there's an Australian, right at the top.
Except in the visual arts.
In the 21st century, the contemporary art market has exploded.
Where once the big money would go to a Van Gogh — think of our own Alan Bond buying Sunflowers for more than $50 million in those wild old days of the 1980s — now it's a Warhol or a Rauschenberg that can get that kind of money and more.
And it's not just the modernists.
Artists alive, well and still producing are selling in the multi-millions — Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Christopher Wool.
Art fairs such as Miami Basel and New York's Armory Show attract mega-wealthy celebrities who shop for contemporary art like they're buying shoes.
Beyonce and Kanye West hire contemporary artists to design their shows and video shoots.
So, in a market that's risen 1,300 per cent since the year 2000, which turns over multi-billions per year, where are the prominent Australians?
Well, they're pretty much just right here at home.
Why isn't there international interest in Australian art?
Take a look at the Art Price 500 — an index listing the top 500 artists in the money for 2016 — you'll find only two Australians.
Tim Storrier and Rick Amor — and they are well down the list and selling in the hundreds of thousands.
Our giants such as Brett Whiteley, John Olsen or Fred Williams can sell in the millions here, but take them to New York — the world art buying centre — and only the expats will turn up to bid.
It's intriguing, isn't it?
We can reach the top of the game in any other game — until recently we had a world number one golfer and we've still got a top-ranked female surfer — but no-one on the canvas or plinth.
Arts writer Michaela Boland suggested there is no institutional interest.
"The Tate has their Whiteley, but it's not like MOMA in New York is interested. If the big institutions don't buy, then why would collectors?" she said.
But art dealer Tim Olsen — son of John — suggested there may be some local manipulation.
"Art dealers in Australia are not interested in the international success of their artist," he said.
"If an artist sells for $100,000 here, then starts getting $500,000 overseas — that doesn't push the market up here.
"It just kills the local $100,000 market."
'Little interest' in art from Australia, NZ, Canada
Not all dealers agree with that perception.
Justin Miller, for example, suggested in the 1960s, plenty of European galleries were run by Aussies.
"They could get good money for a Drysdale then, but in London now, there's no champion for the Australians," he said.
Art historian Professor Mark Ledbury suggested the same problem affects New Zealand and Canada.
"There is little interest in work by people from those parts of the world," he said.
"Collectors for some years have been drawn to Africa, Asia and, in particular, China."
Photo:
Satellite Fade-Out 2 by Del Kathryn Barton sold for $204,000 in Melbourne in 2014. (Supplied)
There's a famous story — and it's true — about the Australian representative for an international auction house who, when he began his presentation to the international board, was told in no uncertain terms by the chair not to bother.
"Really, by the time I've said the word Australia, we've spent too much time on Australia," he said.
And that was 20 years ago.
For the wealthy collector in Manhattan or Monaco, there are not quite the same bragging rights in displaying work from Melbourne as there is in a piece made by a Chinese dissident.
For a while, Indigenous art held that place.
Millions of dollars were paid for work by Clifford Possum or Emily Kngwarreye, but an oversupply killed the market and turned it into a fashion blip.
Like everything else, China may turn out to be the saviour.
China buys 40 per cent of the world's contemporary art.
We just need to convince them that a Ben Quilty Torana is perfect for their Shanghai penthouse.
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, visual-art, contemporary-art, australia