[private_subscriber][private_bundle]In the past, traditional paintings and works of art have been the backbone of the Asian art market. Traditional works ruled in terms of volume, accounting for 70% of the Asian lots sold over the past five years (Fig 3). A look at the highest prices achieved by Asian art since 2005 reveals that traditional works also typically represented the category’s top price points, including the most expensive Asian artwork ever sold: a Yuan Dynasty jar that Eskenazi Ltd. bought for $27.7 million in 2005 (Fig. 5). As demand increases for modern and contemporary works, however, the value distribution of the category is changing. For instance, since 2007, when Zeng Fanzhi’s Mask Series 1996 No. 6 earned the top price of the year at $9.7 million, the gap between maximum prices for traditional and modern and contemporary art has diminished. Moreover, traditional art has fallen far behind modern and contemporary art in terms of average prices (Fig. 4). Although the two subcategories posted similar averages in 2005, the modern and contemporary average price outstripped the traditional average price by a whopping 62% in 2009. The buyers responsible for driving the unrivaled value increase in modern and contemporary art are predominantly Asian—especially when it comes to the most highly valued works (Fig. 6). Of the top 100 modern and contemporary works sold annually since 2005, Asian buyers bought 74% overall, spending an average of $662,502 per work; their consumption of the priciest modern and contemporary art peaked last year, when they bought 91 of the top 100 lots.
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