[Chinese auction houses are now selling works at a pace formerly associated with those in London and New York. One company that tracks the fine-art market, Artprice, reported that they were responsible for some $8.3 billion in sales, which would make them the world leader.]
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Spencer Platt/Getty
Images
Christie's employees
taking bids in 2006 for Warhol's "Mao."
The portrait was sold
to Joseph Lau, a real estate billionaire.
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As auction houses prepare for their fall sales,
Chinese collectors are expected to be a major boost for the market, raising
their paddles for big-ticket artworks despite a backdrop of global economic
turmoil.
With
China’s economy booming, art collectors there have become an increasingly
powerful force in the market, demonstrating a growing interest in Western as
well as Asian art.
At
Sotheby’s spring sale, a Chinese buyer bought the evening’s priciest painting —
Picasso’s “Femme Lisant (Deux Personnages)” — for $21.3 million. In March, at
the auction house Lebarbe, in Toulouse, France, a Chinese buyer set a new
French record for Chinese art with a $31 million bid on a scroll painting from
the Imperial Palace in Beijing. Last year an anonymous telephone bidder who was
believed to be Chinese paid $106.5 million for Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves
and Bust” at Christie’s, a record for a work of art at auction.
Chinese
auction houses are now selling works at a pace formerly associated with those
in London and New York. One company that tracks the fine-art market, Artprice,
reported that they were responsible for some $8.3 billion in sales, which would
make them the world leader.
“We
have seen exponential growth by mainland Chinese buyers who were brought up
during the Cultural Revolution,” said Henry Howard-Sneyd, Sotheby’s vice
chairman for Asian art. “These are successful business people with huge amounts
of money at their disposal.”
The
auction market is responding to the new demand. Last year Sotheby’s held its first
exhibition for the private sale of art specifically for the Asian market. It
featured Picassos, Monets and Chagalls that sold for $2 million to $25 million.
This
year Christie’s appointed Chinese representatives in both New York and London
to develop new clients in Asia and manage relations with Christie’s most
important private collectors from mainland China and Asia.
“Chinese
buyers are now recognized in the art world and auction world as the most
important area of business development,” said Lawrence Chu, a collector based
in Hong Kong who runs BlackPine Private Equity Partners.
The
current Chinese influx is fueled by the sort of new wealth that has made the
country home to the world’s largest number of billionaires, according to the
Hurun Rich List 2010, China’s version of the Forbes 400. The number of Chinese
billionaires is expected to increase 20 percent each year through 2014,
according to Artprice.
To some
extent, auction experts say, the Chinese regard art not only as a sound way to
diversify their portfolios but also as a tested means to project status as they
interact with international business executives — “the Arnaults and the
Pinaults of the world,” said François Curiel, the president of Christie’s Asia,
referring to the French billionaires Bernard Arnault and François Pinault.
“They
see works of art on their walls,” Mr. Curiel said, “and think, ‘If I want to be
not just a millionaire but someone who plays with the big boys, I’d better be
someone who collects art.’ ”
The
surge in Chinese collecting is not just a reflection of new wealth, experts
say, but also a reaction to the repressive Mao years when the country was
denied culture. For the Chinese, who watched art disparaged as a frivolous
exercise except when put to didactic use, the freedom to explore simple
aesthetic pleasures, to repossess historical works and to show off recent
affluence has been liberating.
“They
have an interest in reclaiming their culture and their history,” Mr.
Howard-Sneyd said.
The
tide of buying is in some ways an effort to make up for lost time. “In China,
for 50 or 60 years, nothing happened,” said Vishakha N. Desai, the president of
Asia Society. “That’s a big break. The last 250 years were years of
humiliation. They now feel an obligation to prize art again and bring it back.”
Because
of that history, Chinese art buying — particularly the public display
associated with an auction — is still a nascent phenomenon. Chinese collectors
are only beginning to develop an artistic eye and expertise.
“They
don’t necessarily have the cultural or education background — they don’t have
the context,” said Jehan Chu, an art consultant whose Hong Kong-based company,
Vermillion Art Collections, helps buyers build their holdings. “There were no
museums, no galleries until recently and not so much access to information.”
Recently
the interest of Chinese collectors has expanded well beyond indigenous works.
“They
are present in all our salesrooms now,” Mr. Curiel said. “You’re beginning to
see Chinese collectors in the world of Impressionists and 20th-century
decorative art. Possibly with the exception of European old masters, we see
China in every center.”
A few
Chinese collectors were ahead of the curve, like Joseph Lau, the Hong Kong real
estate billionaire who recently spent £33 million (about $53.3 million) on a
six-floor London mansion and in 2006 bought a Warhol portrait of Mao for $17.3
million, then a record for that artist, at Christie’s in New York.
Lawrence
Chu, the hedge fund manager, said he collected Western artists like Toby
Ziegler, Mark Bradford and Dana Schutz — as well as Asian art — because “the
artists are more developed.”
“There
is a little more substance to what they do,” he continued.
As the
Chinese market builds, leading galleries are opening satellite offices in
China, including the Gagosian Gallery, White Cube and Ben Brown Fine Arts.
“They’ve
all set up shop in the past two years, and many just in the past year,” said
Jehan Chu, who previously worked in client development for Sotheby’s in Hong
Kong.
The Pace
Gallery was among the first to venture into China, in 2008. The gallery
represents Chinese artists, including Zhang Xiaogang, whose “Forever Lasting
Love” triptych sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for more than $10 million in April,
and Li Songsong, whose “China Past” diptych sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for
more than $500,000 the same month.
Jeffrey
Deitch, a longtime New York gallery owner who now directs the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, said that the uptick in collecting in China
was not just a fad, but represented a real growing interest in art.
“It’s
always individuals — it’s not ‘the Chinese,’ ” he said. “It’s important to
understand who you’re talking about.”
Indeed,
while many liken the latest Chinese wave to the Japanese rush on Impressionist
art in the 1980s, others say the Chinese growth is more deep-rooted and
lasting.
“Art
was part of this whole way of going out and using the economic position of
Japan to possess assets from all over the world — more Picassos, more Monets,
more this, more that,” said Marc Glimcher, the president of the Pace Gallery.
Pace’s
inaugural show at its Beijing gallery was a group exhibition in which Zhang
Huan and Zhang Xiaogang were joined by longtime members of Pace’s stable,
including Chuck Close and Lucas Samaras.
“It’s
the same thing whenever you have a catastrophe followed by a boom,” Mr. Glimcher
said. “The Cultural Revolution was that catastrophe, and this is that boom.”
