The Wall Street Journal sat down with Guillaume Cerutti to talk more about the changing composition of its buyers and sellers. Asian buyers are obviously growing and Cerutti addresses that. He also remarks upon the central importance of American buyers—and sellers:
Five years ago, someone asked me if Asian buyers would one day be active in the competition for modern Western art. Today we know they are buying a quarter of the offerings in this category. There are major players coming from Hong Kong and continental China, but we’ve seen a major new bidder coming from Indonesia, too. So we’re seeing more diversification of bidders across Asia. […] It’s clear that Europe is the place today where you have more sellers than buyers, and Asia has more buyers than sellers. America is the place where you have an equal number of both. Last year, so many of the collections that went on the market came from America, but the buying side remained extremely strong—especially for postwar and contemporary art.
