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Wang Jianlin Bought a Picasso to Hang Alongside Shi Qi

November 11, 2013 by Marion Maneker

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Forbes’s man in Hong Kong, Russell Flannery, interviewed Wang Jianlin, China’s wealthiest man who made news last week buying a Picasso portrait of his two children Claude and Paloma:

In an interview at his Beijing headquarters earlier this month before the Picasso purchase was reported, Wang told me about his interest in two Chinese artists.  The first, Wu Guangzhong, is widely recognized as one of China’s influential modern painters. Wang approvingly described Wu’s blend of Chinese and Western styles. “I bought many of his paintings,” Wang said, based on his early appreciation of the artist who died in 2010. Today, Wu’s works can be worth millions of dollars.

The work that hangs over Wang’s own office desk, however, is by  Shi Qi, a Chinese painter who exhibited his work at the Louvre last year.  Shi’s creativity is “even more advanced” than Wu’s, Wang said. “The Louvre isn’t a place where you say you have money and you can exhibit,” noted Wang, who said he owns about 100 of Shi’s paintings.

Besides This Month’s Picasso Purchase, What Other Art Does China’s Richest Man Collect? (Forbes)

Christie’s Successful $25m Shanghai Sale Means What?

September 27, 2013 by Marion Maneker

Christie's Shanghai sale

In the aftermath of Christie’s ground-breaking Shanghai sale where $25m was raised for an assortment of auctionable luxury goods, most observers are trying to make sense of what the sale means. After all, no foreign company has been allowed to hold an auction on the mainland. Yet Christie’s remains constrained by local laws from dealing in the most lucrative class of objects—pre-1949 works of art—that drive the domestic market.

Instead of framing the sale as one of a protected domestic market under siege from foreigners claiming to offer fair play and transparency as The Economist neatly sums up here:

Cai Jinqing, head of Christie’s in China, says her firm plans to take them on with its depth of knowledge (it offered expert art lectures before this week’s auction), innovation (it does online art auctions) and its trusted global brand.

Zhao Xu, the boss of Poly International, a giant auction firm owned by a conglomerate controlled by the army, is supremely confident that the arrival of foreign rivals “will change little”. He argues that the newcomers have no competitive advantages inside China.

That’s surely true. What the Christie’s—and Sotheby’s which will partner with a local auctioneer soon—has as an advantage is global cachet. A fact not lost on the auction house’s strategists.  The Shanghai sale was long on luxury goods: wine, watches and Western masters like Picasso, Calder and Morandi that would sell best as trophies for wealthy first-time buyers. This was no connoisseurs sale. Nor was it meant to be.

Picasso, Homme Assis ($750k-1m) $1.9mThe evening was a window into a different sort of art market from the one mainland buyers are used to. To amplify the evening, Christie’s encouraged an air of excitement. The auctioneer and Christie’s staff encouraged frequent applause, sometimes after successive bids, as the New York Times noted:

Mostly Chinese buyers attended the sale in a vast ballroom at the Shangri La hotel here, where the auctioneer, Jin Ling, in a vermilion dress, conducted the bidding in Chinese, often in excited tones. […] Before the auction, Christie’s experts said the company decided to offer what they called an array of categories rather than concentrate on paintings and sculpture. In that sense, the sale was a test of Chinese taste that would set the trend for future auctions, they said.

The wheel of Chinese tastes will turn slowly. And the second front in the war between the Chinese way of doing auction business and the Western way—where objects long outside of China are bid upon simultaneously by mainland and overseas buyers—will remain in Hong Kong for obvious reasons. But Christie’s has established an important beachhead from which it can develop something even more valuable than taking a piece of China’s antiquities market. That is, it is continuing to develop a global market for goods that are equally valuable to Chinese buyers, Europeans, South Americans and Ultra High Net Worth Individuals wherever they may be.

Christie’s v. The People’s Army (Economist)

Christie’s Opens for Business in Mainland China With Its First Auction (NYTimes)

Native Chauvinism v. Foreign Transparency in China’s Art Market

September 24, 2013 by Marion Maneker

Zhao Xu, Steven Murphy
Zhao Xu, Steven Murphy

Christie’s auction in Shanghai is bringing out the talking points in a press battle between Christie’s CEO Steven Murphy and Poly Auction’s Zhao Xu:

Zhao Xu, executive director of Poly, owned by Poly Group, a defence contractor originally formed by the People’s Liberation Army, recently said he doubted the ability of foreign houses to compete in the mainland art market.

“Chinese still prefer a big Chinese auction house run by Chinese people to help them sell their art works, since . . . Chinese people know better [about Chinese art],” he told the FT.

Mr Murphy said Christie’s had already been successful in selling Chinese art in Hong Kong, adding that “transparency and authentication” were also advantages that the long-established foreign houses might have over a local auction house.

Christie’s confident over first China mainland auction (Financial Times)

Christie’s Sees Opportunity in Shanghai Free Trade Zone

September 24, 2013 by Marion Maneker

Christie’s will hold its first sale in mainland China on Thursday. Bloomberg pairs that with news of China’s new pilot program establishing a free trade zone in Shanghai which Christie’s CEO Steven Murphy considers an opportunity, “we are hopeful that when the free trade zone becomes more open we are there to benefit from that.”

Francois Curiel explains:

“With the presence of the free trade zone, it will be very much easier now for us to import works of art for sale in Shanghai,” Francois Curiel, president of Christie’s Asia said today. “The difference at the moment is no other than the fact that there are high importation taxes in China and not in Hong Kong, which is a free port.”

The government is studying deregulation to allow foreign auction companies to conduct auctions of cultural relics in the free-trade zone, according to a draft plan seen by Bloomberg News. The nation will suspend some laws on foreign companies in the free trade zone starting Oct. 1, the commerce ministry said. No official announcement on the opening of the Shanghai zone has been made.

Christie’s Says Shanghai Free Zone to Make Art Import Easier (Bloomberg)

Apolitical Chinese Artist Has Compound Razed in Real Estate Dispute

September 10, 2013 by Marion Maneker

Artworks_Airstrikes1

The Wall Street Journal reports on the destruction of Shanghai artist (and Chinese representative at the Venice Biennale) Yuan Gong’s studio and commercial real estate venture:

Shanghai-born contemporary artist Yuan Gong bought a large plot of land 10 years ago and created an art and retail space, naming the compound after himself. One of Shanghai’s 77 industrial “culture and creativityproduction parks,” the 6,000-square-meter facility houses design firms, restaurants, bars and spas, with about half the space occupied by Mr. Yuan’s art studio. […]

Last year, Mr. Yuan said local authorities contacted him about demolishing part of the property to build a road that would allow for a quicker flow of traffic in an area zoned as an economic and transport hub. The compound, located in an area that houses a large expat community and higher-income earners, is within walking distance of L’Avenue, a luxury mall developed by Macau casino tycoon Stanley Ho and other new malls and offices currently under construction by Soho China and Forterra Trust.

“There were three exchanges regarding compensation but there wasn’t any agreement,” Mr. Yuan said, noting that the final exchange was held in mid-August and there was no threat of forced eviction.

At the entrance of the 2,336-square-meter compound, metal scaffolding, concrete debris and glass shards remained at the scene when China Real Time visited Saturday. Tenants at the compound, visibly unhappy about the destruction, tried to carry on business as usual.

Shanghai Authorities Demolish Artist’s Compound (China RealTime Report/Wall Street Journal)

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