ABOVE: Detail from John Brack’s The Bar (1954), which has already provoked record-breaking estimates on its auction price.

It’s summertime in Australia, and the living is easy. The hot-ish Australian contemporary art market has puffed The Bar, a newly available painting by Australian artist John Brack, into the rarefied, oxygen-starved, braincell-killing stratosphere inhabited by major collectors. The painting is expected by auctioneer Sotheby’s to fetch upward of AU$2 million, a record for any 20th century Australian painting, and not quite 300 percent more than Brack’s previous high seller, which went for AU$530,000 only two years ago. If, that is, The Bar actually reaches that price point. But the painting is considered a better one than Collins St., 5 p.m., a Brack painting which is a prized possession of the National Gallery of Victoria.

The Bar was snapped up by a Melbourne collector when it first showed in 1955 for 90 guineas (who knows what the hell a guinea was worth, but rest assured it was a bargain in the long run), and that collector’s death just last month has placed the painting on the block. So far as we can tell, there’s no date for the sale yet, but it’ll be sometime this spring.

LINK: The Age > Money on The Bar