Australian Aboriginal art on Madison Avenue? Thank Steve Martin, its surprising new champion

Comedian had a light bulb moment when he saw a New York show of Australian indigenous paintings, and bought one to hang at home between a Bacon and a Freud

He learned about their minimalist, apparently abstract forms, met artists, bought more and turned gallerist Larry Gagosian onto them. ‘Let’s do a show,’ he said

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An avid art collector, Steve Martin has bought more than two dozen Aboriginal paintings in the past four years. Photo: Rick Wenner/Washington Post

Published: 5:00am, 21 May 2019Updated: 5:00am, 21 May 2019

It is late summer 2015: comedian Steve Martin, who has just celebrated his 70th birthday, is at home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side reading the fine arts section of The New York Times. Besides his careers in comedy, acting, writing and banjo-playing, Martin is known for being a serious art lover.

In the apartment he shares with his wife, Anne Stringfield, there are paintings by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney, and an array of major American moderns, including Edward Hopper. But Martin is more than just a collector. He wrote a novel set in the contemporary art world and a play set in Montmartre, France, in Picasso’s day. Most recently, he was even the curator of an acclaimed travelling museum show.

So it’s no great surprise that Martin is reading the art reviews. But on this particular day, there’s a story about something he has never seen before – art by an Australian Aboriginal artist in his late fifties who is having his first solo show in New York. Martin is so struck by the story that he gets on his bicycle and rides downtown to Salon 94, a commercial gallery on the Bowery.

The show is filled with big paintings by Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, each in a pared-down, minimalist palette. Their asymmetrical patterns of parallel dotted lines seem to ripple and hum as they shift across the canvas. Martin is dazzled.

Untitled, 2013, by Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri. Photo: Rob McKeever/Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri/Artists Rights Society/Gagosian

He buys one of the paintings and hangs it near the Bacon and the Freud. It’s bigger than both of them. He’s not sure what to make of it.

At this juncture in his life, and despite having just entered his eighth decade, Martin isn’t exactly idle. Bright Star, the musical he wrote with singer-songwriter Edie Brickell, is about to open at the Kennedy Centre before heading to Broadway. He’s working on a play, Meteor Shower. He’s performing with comedian Martin Short. And oh, yeah, he and Stringfield have a two-year-old.