Growth Of Chinese New Collector Base In 2009 Gives Auction Houses Reason For Optimism
In recent years, Chinese New Collectors have focused on traditional and contemporary Chinese art, along with antiquities. But in 2010, more are expected to branch into Western masters.
The emergence of the New Chinese Collector was one of the topics we watched most closely last year. In virtually every class of auction (mostly in Hong Kong), from wine to jewelry to traditional Chinese and Chinese contemporary art, mainland collectors seemed to be ubiquitous, snapping up prize items well above high estimates.
This year, as the still-dominant-but-less-so Western and Japanese collectors are expected to remain restrained relative to pre-financial-crisis levels, major auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s are counting on mainland Chinese collectors to account for even more of their sales.
Today, the Wall Street Journal looks at the Chinese New Collector, pointing out that Asian collectors — particularly those from China — are likely to become increasingly dominant in coming years, and are starting to turn their attention to collecting more Western artists along with the Chinese and other Asian artists they have more recently collected.
After a dismal year, Sotheby’s and Christie’s International PLC are set to begin a major round of art auctions in London on Tuesday, and experts say Chinese collectors may emerge as the latest power players to bid up Western icons they once ignored, from Pablo Picasso to Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Auction houses are hoping the coming sales will build on a number of successful offerings— including a $48 million Raphael sold in December—that appear to indicate an art market turnaround. The coming two weeks could thus be a crucial period for re-establishing price levels that have dropped amid a global recession, dealers said.
Until recently, Asians have fixated on collecting their own cultural heritage, a focus that has steadily lifted prices for everything from Imperial porcelain vases to contemporary painters such as Zeng Fanzhi. Now, an influx of collectors from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are branching out to seek artists from the 20th century Western canon, such as Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin and Edgar Degas.
An interesting aspect of this article is that it points out that many of the Chinese collectors that are beginning to branch out into collecting Western art are western-educated and have already collected a significant amount of art from their home country. The article suggests that Chinese New Collectors — those who are just now dipping their toes into the auction scene — will likely keep buying Chinese and other Asian artwork (though we would assume they’ll keep buying rare Swiss watches and French wines at Hong Kong auctions for the foreseeable future), at least for the time being:
Asian collectors, many of whom were educated in the West or travel there frequently, are seeking Impressionist artworks as new status symbols, said David Norman, co-chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art world-wide. They are buying colored gems and Champagne for similar reasons, he added.
“These people are already sophisticated buyers of their own work,” he said, “but they’ve got an international outlook now, and they want the best-known names in art.”
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Why should one collect chinese contemporary art
Feb 04 2010Historically, great art comes out of periods of change — and certainly China is in one of those periods. There are significant issues for artists to address, and work is being produced that is no longer merely about Mao, but about issues of genuine concern — the largest population movements from rural to urban environments in history (and the resulting challenges and dispossessed), the transformation from pre-industrial to post-industrial society in a period of a few years rather than decades or centuries, the bombardment of the digital age, and the desire to reconnect with a disjointed history and rich cultural tradition.
There has been a lot of money flowing around the Chinese art scene over the past few years that has had a dramatic effect on the art scene and the nature of the art being produced. This volume of funds is going to fluctuate in the coming year or so, which is not a bad thing. It might make artists reflect upon the quality of the work they are producing, and encourage some of the new galleries to formulate more productive strategies to deal with a slackening off in the market. So, hopefully, these recent events will have a positive impact.
Many people in China today are only just becoming aware of the contemporary art produced by local artists
As two years ago, few could name even a single Chinese collector of contemporary art. It was a truism that the Chinese preferred to spend their money acquiring antiquities and classical works. Since then several well-known mainland collectors have emerged on the scene.
Looking at the continued innovations of the older generations of artists, as well as the growing number of young graduates from art academies around the country, I think we can safely say that Chinese contemporary art is far from an imminent demise. It might have been a bit under the weather in recent months given the mood of the international and the domestic art markets (and the media), but being still young, vibrant