Andy Warhol's Head After Picasso

An unrepentant Menzies is determined to establish an investment market that will draw people with the money to buy a Picasso for several million dollars.

Having sold the portrait Sylvette for nearly $7 million at its Sydney sale in June, Deutscher-Menzies is putting Andy Warhol's Head After Picasso on the block at its September auction.

The acrylic paint on silkscreen on canvas portrait has an upper estimate of $2 million and will be sold on the same night as Pierre Bonnard's Bouquet de cheminee, which has an upper of $1.4 million.

Menzies was the silent partner in Deutscher-Menzies when the auction house was run by Chris Deutscher.

He has gone his own way with deutscherandhackett and Menzies has become his own spruiker.

"With exquisite investment works by two of the world's top-performing international artists, Andy Warhol and Pierre Bonnard, Menzies Art Brands are taking forward our new auction model by giving premium international pictures the same billing as Australian masters in our September sale."

Verbose, but leaving no one in any doubt as to his mercenary intentions. Rod Menzies believes there are people out there with loads of cash who can be encouraged to invest in high-end art.

Those of more refined taste will sniff delicately and say they are interested only in the intrinsic worth of the art; but it is money that drives the auction market, no matter how the old English firms with their smart young men might dress up their sales.

Menzies Art Brands has outstripped Sotheby's on turnover by incorporating its Lawson-Menzies arm, which sells mostly Aboriginal art.

There is also a sprinkling of modern and contemporary Australian art among the indigenous paintings at the Lawson-Menzies sale the night after the Deutscher-Menzies auction.

But it is international art that Rod Menzies thinks will attract the endearingly rich to his sales while the stock market slides and confidence dwindles among lesser mortals.

Tim Abdallah echoes Menzies' mantra in saying Warhol's Head After Picasso, painted two years before Warhol died in 1987, causes them to be "especially pleased that we can offer this work at a price level that represents a strong opportunity to investors as well as collectors."

We are left in no doubt that the auction market is a place to buy something you can turn over at a profit.

It has been ever thus and Menzies hopes Deutscher-Menzies will turn over $12 million on September 24 and Lawson-Menzies $4 million on September 25.

There are a number of top-quality Australian paintings at Deutscher-Menzies and a Fred Williams minimalist, Hillside II, has an upper estimate of $1.3 million; a John Brack, The Scissors Shop, $420,000; while Sidney Nolan's Kelly in Bush has an upper estimate of $300,000.