Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

Bringing Rules to the Chinese Art Market

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Zeng Fanzhi, Mask Series 1996 No. 6

Alex Errera founded a Chinese Contemporary Art sales site Artshare.com and has become an advocate for the Chinese market by writing for Forbes on the subject. His most recent piece is Five Myths About Chinese Contemporary Art. Here’s just one of them:

There Are No Rules

The Myth: Put a work at auction in China, and pray to be paid. Buy a work at auction, and pray to get delivered. Forget about rules in the private sales market. And good luck taking your claim into a Chinese court.

The Reality: This is changing fast. Why did China recently welcome Christie’s and Sotheby’s in their territory? It’s not for charity. It’s to learn and adjust. As Mr. Zhang, Head of the Auction Associations in China said: “Bringing Western auction houses was like putting a crocodile in a pond. It makes the fish swim faster.” As the Chinese market opens up, it will have to embrace more standards and rules in order to compete globally, not just locally. That will, in time, create a more transparent market.

Five Myths About Chinese Contemporary Art (Forbes)

Amid Bribes and Payoffs, Legitimate Chinese Art Market Hard to Measure

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Chinese Art Auction

The South China Morning Post recaps what is already a well-known feature of the Chinese art market, that it is a convenient venue for offering bribes because Chinese auction houses take no responsibility for a work’s authenticity. However, it would be a step forward if we could begin to quantify how much of the Chinese art market is a conduit for illegal activity and how much is legitimate sales:

“The price of Chinese art is really abnormal,” Jiang Yinfeng, a painter and art critic told the Worker’s Daily. “Art has become the best tool for money laundering and corruption.”

China’s gift-giving culture drives up prices. Demand is driven by businessmen buying artefacts as presents for officials. Fake or genuine, an artwork presents an opportunity to ‘wash’ a bribe, WIC explains. A businessman gives a painting to an official, whose relative auctions it off. The businessman buys it back at an inflated price and the official pockets the cash. This leaves less evidence linking favour to bribe than handing over suitcases of cash. More sophisticated schemes exist but this is the general idea.

It goes without saying that a clampdown on dodgy art deals will hit all players in the business, but no one really knows how much is real.

China art auctions – a great money laundry (South China Morning Post)

Chinese Contemporary Art Provokes at NY’s Met

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Xu Bing, An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy

Melik Kaylan previews the Met’s upcoming show of Chinese Contemporary art, “Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China:”

“There’s so much excitement and hype around contemporary art, the western variety, so we wanted to show that it’s happening in Asia too, that it’s happening even in the most traditional of forms—that Asia has a cultural present as well as a past,” says Maxwell Hearn, the curator and head of the Asian Art department. “And where can one say that more arrestingly than in the historical galleries?”

The shock of the unexpected is, emphatically, part of the message. Imagine you’re a regular, unsuspecting Met-goer dropping by for a soothing dose of Ming vases and Literati scrolls depicting mountains. Instead, you find your favorite objects displaced by a cacophony of contemporary works, often highly avant-garde and challenging. Or, conversely, you are lured in by the promise of traditional Chinese aesthetics extended into the present: modern versions of placid misty landscapes, rock-faces, and calligraphic studies, but you’re ambushed by polychrome cityscapes, photorealist images, photos of tattoo art and body painting, and unreadable calligraphy. Perhaps, you come in to see some of Ai Wei Wei’s works, and you’re mystified when you encounter ceramics by him that seem gratuitously included.

The curators have set out to show that art in China, even the most purely homegrown Chinese genre of ink-art, is merging with global influences and creating astonishing, vibrant hybrids that both illuminate the native tradition and expand the collective consciousness. At its profoundest, the show awakens us to what is happening to national cultural aesthetics everywhere, including our own, as motifs and symbols and visual paradigms wash back and forth across divides.

A New Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum Puts a Modern Face on Chinese Art (The Daily Beast)

Artnet’s Chinese Art Market Report Released

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Poly Auction

Artnet’s report on the Chinese market is out and the highlights are here along with a link to the full report:

— Sales of Chinese Art and Antiques shrunk 35% by value sold worldwide in 2012 due to the rapidly contracting market in mainland China.

— In 2012, the market for art and antiques in mainland China was roughly half the size of the market in 2011.

— Even while the market was contracting by value, the number of auction houses offering works in this category grew by roughly 10% in 2012.

— In mainland China, Chinese painting and calligraphy represented two-thirds of the market by value, with over 125,000 works sold. Overseas, the market was primarily dominated by Chinese porcelain, jade, and miscellaneous works of art, which accounted for 60% of the market by value.

— In 2012, the average price for works sold in mainland China dropped considerably, while prices remained relatively stable overseas.

— In 2012, 410 works sold for more than CN¥10 million at auction. This number decreased dramatically from the 831 lots sold in this price range the previous year.

artnet & CAA.

What’s at Stake in Christie’s First Auction in India

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A visitor walks past a painting of Tyeb Mehta's Mahisasura during a preview of Christie's first art auction in India

Christie’s is down-playing the stakes for tomorrow’s sale of Indian Modern and Contemporary art in Mumbai but local observers are see the event as a potential turning point for the market. Here’s commentary for an Indian gallery owner:

The questions on everybody’s minds are, “Will this auction herald an improvement in the sale of Indian art and improved prices? Will it open up the market for international buyers and can we expect this auction to lead to a season of improved prices”? These questions are being asked for a very good reason, since over the years, it has been established that Indian art fares far better abroad than in India. So much so that a leading art gallery owner ruefully stated, that art sales in India have reached rock-bottom stages and many are resorting to auctioning the works of important artists abroad, to keep their businesses going.

Christie’s CEO Steven Murphy would prefer to keep the scope of this sale small bore, according to Bloomberg:

“The objective for Christie’s is to be on the ground,” Murphy said. “The sold total for this week’s sale is not the most important thing by any means.”

The sale is seen as an important bellwether of the health of the local art market, which went into steep decline after the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, said Girish Shahane, a Mumbai-based curator and art critic.

“Everybody who bought got their fingers burned, and a couple of art investment funds had trouble paying back investors,” he said. “A lot is riding on this sale. It’s really a marker of whether the market can move forward.”

The Financial Times offers some important historical perspective:

Christie’s is not the first to test India’s market for its own art. In 1992, rival auction house Sotheby’s held an Indian art sale in New Delhi, and sold works worth £1.2m – a hefty sum at the time. But the auction faced stiff bureaucratic resistance, while then still strict foreign currency restrictions hindered profit repatriation. Subsequent auctions of Indian art by Sotheby’s – like Christie’s – have all been abroad.

The newspaper also spoke to a few old India art hands:

But Suhel Seth, a brand adviser and art collector, said some wealthy Indians may hesitate to participate in an auction at home, amid the pervasive gloom over India’s faltering growth. “Given the economic mood of the country, a lot of people may not want to be seen in public bidding,” he says. […]

Mr Seth expresses scepticism, saying art is seen as elite preoccupation in a society still struggling to deliver basic services like education and clean water. “Companies won’t want to be seen splurging on things considered elitist,” he says.

Art consultant Javed Abdulla, who organised Sotheby’s 1992 sale, says India would need years to develop a genuinely informed, and committed art collector base that might also support public access to the arts.

“The bulk of buying is driven by people who feel they have arrived,” he said. “They have a big house, a German car and they feel they have got to have a contemporary Indian master. It’s a symbol of their status, and a cipher for their wealth.”

Christie’s India auction to rekindle nation’s art scene? (MyDigitalFC)

Christie’s Expands With First India Art Auction in Mumbai (Bloomberg)

Christie’s takes maiden Indian art auction to Mumbai (Financial Times)

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