Art Market Monitor

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Zao Wou-Ki, Sanyu Dominate Hong Kong Modern and Contemporary 2020 Sales: Analysis

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Sotheby's Modern Art evening sale Hong Kong. Courtesy Sotheby's.

This report on the Summer auctions is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.) 

In July 2020, Hong Kong Modern and Contemporary art evening and day sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips brought in HK $2.64 billion ($341 million). French-Chinese artists led this season: Zao Wou-Ki generated HK$617 million, Sanyu HK$505 million and Chu Teh-Chun HK$143 million – the three artists accounted for 48% of the total modern and contemporary sales.

July 2020 Hong Kong Modern and Contemporary Evening Sales Figures

The evenings sales achieved a combined total of HKD 2.2 billion ($289 million), seeing a powerful 95% sell-through rate yielding 143 sold lots from 151 offered. Like the New York modern and contemporary art sales, the top ten percent of the evening sales account for slightly more than half of the total sales volume. Works by Zao Wou-Ki, Sanyu, Liu Ye and David Hockney were among the highest sellers. Five Sanyu works were sold in the evening sales, making a total of HKD 490 million together and accounting for 21% of the evening sale total.

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Sotheby’s Unveils Massive $45m Zao Wou-ki for Hong Kong

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Zao Wou-Ki’s triptych Juin-Octobre 1985

The Zao Wou-ki market goes from strength to strength with new record prices having been set in recent years after a strong new player entered the market by acquiring a substantial number of paintings from the family. A work from that cache set the record a year ago in Hong Kong when it was sold for 202mHKD ($25.9m). There have been two confirming prices since then; one price in a similar range was achieved earlier in 2017 setting up the record sale.

AMMpro subscribers can see the market trends for Zao’s work here.

Now Sotheby’s is trying to take advantage of the new price levels and out-do them with the announcement of a massive work from the 1980s. Estimated at 350m HKD or $45m, such a price were it achieved would shatter that record and put Zao Wou-ki in a totally new category of Chinese and European painters. The work was last on the market 13 years ago when it sold for a fraction of what Sotheby’s is hoping to achieve which is testimony to how far the Zao Wou-ki market has come in the last decade. The 2005 price paid for this work is no longer among the top 100 prices paid at auction for a Zao Wou-ki painting.

As always, there are several Zao Wou-ki works in the sale. Another carries a very significant 80-120m HKD estimate. Here’s Sotheby’s release for the work:Continue Reading

How the Zao Wou-ki Market Took Off

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This look at Zao Wou-ki market over the past 12 years—based upon data from our friends at Pi-eX—is available to AMMpro subscribers. Monthly subscriptions begin with the first month free. Feel free to subscribe and cancel before you are billed. **The original version of this post contained some charts with erroneous data. We have since had the data cleaned and corrected. The substance of the analysis has not changed.

In late May we published a brief post about the Zao Wou-ki market prompted by some claims on Instagram that the Chinese artist's market had been jump-started by a joint show of his work alongside the work of Willem de Kooning organized by Lévy Gorvy in January 2017 before it traveled to Hong Kong. This prompted a bit of angry email from some readers. They stated, rightly, that the Zao Wou-ki market was not the product of a show comparing the artist to one of the West's great abstract artists.

We promised, at the time, to offer a more detailed analysis of the Zao Wou-ki market that would continue to make clear that Asian buyers were not taking their cues from New York gallerists. Before we get to some charts, let's examine the boldest claim on Instagram. Brett Gorvy used the post hoc prompter hoc fallacy to suggest that his January 2017 show had provoked the successive sales of four works just below or above $20m. In his post, Gorvy described it in this way:

  • This show was followed with a succession of record prices at auction, with Zao Wou-Ki consistently breaking the US$20 million mark over the past year especially

The word consistently is misused here. Used properly, consistently would mean that all of the Zao Wou-ki works sold in the year after the show would have achieved prices above $20m. What Gorvy means is that Zao's work has continually or regularly been able to break the $20m barrier.

Was that caused by Lévy Gorvy's masterly presentation of Zao as a peer of Willem de Kooning? There's no evidence to support such a claim.

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How to Build a Chinese Art Museum

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When Enid Tsui asked Valerie Wang Conghui, the advisor working with Zeng Baobao, to build an art collection—already 200 pieces strong—for Fantasia Holding’s museum in Xinjin, China, why a Hong Kong-listed resort operator and property developer would build a museum in Sichuan province, the answer was simple: “Having a museum adds value to a company, both in terms of branding and by spreading good taste and design ideas…”

In the four years since Zeng decided to fill the museum, the two have been on journey of discovery through all of the world’s art fairs and auctions.

“Initially, there was no clear strategy about the museum’s content and we bought what we liked: fun works such as Li Jin’s contemporary ink paintings. But as we spent more time looking, a theme for the museum developed naturally: modern and contemporary art that conveys traditional Chinese aesthetics.”

But to be a museum, Zhi needs art worthy of being loaned out to other institutions. So the pair invested in works by Zao Wou-ki and Zeng Fanzhi. Whether those two artists were sought because of their art historical importance or their price points is something Tsui leaves unclear in the story.

Chinese art museum finally takes shape with big-ticket items bought on a billionaire’s budget  (South China Morning Post)

Paris Contemporary Auction Analysis: Asian Artists, de Staël Dominate

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This Paris Spring 2018 Contemporary sales analysis is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here.

The Paris Contemporary art sales were punctuated by some dramatic sales that drove the overall performance far above expectations. You can see from market share chart (above) provided by our friends at Live Auction Art that both Sotheby's and Christie's were able to exceed their pre-sale estimates by a significant margin. In both cases, the totals were helped by the performance of a single lot.

For Christie's, that was Nicolas de Staël's Flowers which made €8.25m or more than twice the low estimate.  At Sotheby's, the big lot was Kazuo Shiraga's large and historically significant Takao which made more than four times the low estimate to reach €8.7m.

This analysis of the Spring 2018Paris Contemporary art sales results—including a look at market share by artist and a list of the most dynamic lots—is available to AMMpro subscribers. Subscribers get the first month free on monthly subscriptions. Feel free to cancel at any time before the month is up. Sign up for AMMpro here.

We will have a look at the historical sales numbers in Paris in another post. Here, let's look at the composition of the Paris Post-War sales. Artcurial had a number of modern works in their sale which we have set aside so we can look at the Paris Post-War and Contemporary market.

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