Is Singapore threatening Hong Kong as next Asian art mecca? Wall Street Journal

SINGAPORE AND HONG KONG’S COMPETING ART MARKET

Singapore’s art scene has grown rapidly since its 1989 government mandate to recognize the “importance of culture and the art.” Thriving to a point that, according to The Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong–Asia’s epicenter of art–is beginning to take its competitor seriously.

Hong Kong’s challenging art scene

Today’s numbers would suggest that Hong Kong has nothing to worry about for competition.  Hong Kong is currently the third-largest auction market in the world with both Christie’s and Sotheby’s in its territory, and has set aside close to US$3 billion in order to create a much needed world class arts and culture development known as West Kowloon Cultural District. The project, however, has been slow to start and left many frustrated.

“The Hong Kong government first hit upon the idea in 1998 of building an integrated arts and culture neighborhood on 40 hectares of reclaimed land in the West Kowloon district. After many fits and starts, planning for the project recently picked up some momentum…Nevertheless, even if it all goes as planned, the first phase won’t be open until 2016.”

One of the proposed models for the West Kowoon Cultural Centre

The West Kowloon project has been “frustrating and painful,” says Asia Art Archive’s Ms. Hsu, who is also on the advisory panel for the museum at the new West Kowloon development. “For the public it has looked like the government is stalling, but it gives me a lot of hope. The government is very concerned about getting it right.’”

Singapore makes its move

The time spent behind making Hong Kong’s “necessary cultural move” may eventually result in Singapore gaining ground in the market by the country’s pushing ahead with so many art-hub projects of their own.

“It [Singapore] invested more than US$1 billion in infrastructure, including several museums and a 4,000-seat complex of theaters, studios and concert halls called the Esplanade, which opened in 2002, and spiced up its arts programming with diversity and a regional flavor.”

The Esplanade, Singapore

The benefits of Singapore’s art initiatives are already apparent. According to Singapore’s National Arts Council “between 1997 and 2007, the ‘vibrancy’ of the local art scene, measured by the number of performances and exhibition days, quadruped to more than 26,000.”

However, Singapore is still missing a key ingredient to perhaps prosper further: a big art-auction market like Hong Kong’s.

“Some smaller art-auction houses hold sales in Singapore, but the big ones — Christie’s and Sotheby’s — have pulled out and moved their Southeast Asian art auctions to Hong Kong, the former British colony that is home to seven million people and became a Chinese territory in 1997.”

For a city, having the ingredients for a thriving art market creates a virtuous circle. The powerful marketing machines of the big auction houses, including public previews of coming sales, raises awareness and appreciation of art in the community. All this encourages local artists to create more art. And that momentum, in turn, contributes to the development of a city’s broader cultural scene, including music, theater and design.”

Singapore looks ahead

The relationship between big art-auction markets and a thriving art scene can be so entangled that it would appear difficult to navigate a new course in order to adequately compete. Singapore, it seems, is trying anyways.

“Undaunted, Singapore is diligently pushing ahead and has opened several museums and other arts venues while Hong Kong has dithered on the construction of West Kowloon. Christie’s also recently picked Singapore to be the site of a global fine-arts storage facility to open in a duty-free zone in January.”

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New auction houses with new strategies open in Singapore art market

ASIAN ART MARKET TRENDS

Usually, to be a part of the bubbling Asian art market scene, buyers need to associate themselves with industry leaders Christie’s and Sotheby’s for lack of other options. In South East Asia, however, there’s a new way for collectors to discover their contemporary art. According to a recent article by the New York Times, a host of new and smaller auction houses—such as Borobudur, 33 Auction, and Larasati in Singapore—have successfully emerged to “fill in the gaps” of the market, which means they are opening their doors to a broader range of the market, from high-end collectors to first time buyers. So far, sales suggest this may be the right strategy to entice new buyers:

“Last week, sales by two auction houses in Singapore, Borobudur and 33 Auction, brought in a combined $10 million, with the larger sale, by Borobudur, easily beating its pre-sale estimate. Later this month another Singapore auctioneer, Larasati, will offer 160 lots of Asian modern and contemporary art with an estimated value of 2 million Singapore dollars, or $1.4 million.”

A.C. Andre Tananma, "Run Away" 2008. Part of Larasati's Asian Modern and Contemporary Art Auction, Singapore, 25 October 2009.

Many of the new auctions houses have developed as off springs from established galleries, such as 33 Auction (Singapore), Maestro Auction House (Jakarta, Singapore) and Kingsley Art Auction (Beijing), as a way of broadening their offerings to current clients, while also becoming accessible to new ones:

“Like everything else, the art market is not immune from the global recession and consequently sales at most galleries have been down for the past 12 months,” said Valentine Willie of Valentine Willie Fine Art, which has galleries in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, and has in the past helped Borobudur curate its auctions. “Auctions may seem a good way of clearing gallery stock and they offer the possibility for collectors of bargain hunting, especially after the boom of two years ago.”New and smaller auction houses would naturally try to fill in the gaps with more adventurous offerings and lower entry price points because, “the industry leaders, Christie’s and Sotheby’s have a somewhat limited and conservative offering of Southeast Asian art,” Mr. Willie added.”

Some auction houses are targeting the middle class crowd in particular, a demographic rarely cornered by larger and more established auction houses like Christie’s or Sotheby’s. To entice the middle class market, Singapore’s Ziani Fine Art Auction House tactic was to award cash prizes, serve wine, and even offer whiskey tastings at their September 20 debut auction:

“‘When you launch a new business you need to attract new people,” said Frank Veyder, a banker and partner in Ziani, before the auction. “We are very conscious there is a risk that people might think it’s just a fly-by-night, gimmicky house, but we’re holding this auction in a five-star location and we’re offering quality art.

“The pieces are not of the level you would see at Christie’s or Sotheby’s, but we’re not trying to play in that space,” Mr. Veyder added. “Our marketing is targeting to a wider, middle-class crowd.”‘

Though it can be said that the competition between auction houses is good for business, there are some auctioneers that are concerned that the market may have a hard time absorbing everything on offer.  Daniel Komala, chief executive of Larasati Auctioneers, explains:

“‘The art market has bottomed out; in fact, it’s fair to say that it has picked up some speed of late,” Mr. Komala said. “Having said that, the real capacity to absorb, over all, especially in Singapore, is only going to increase by 20-30 percent maximum from its rock bottom level. So, it’s wishful thinking to expect that the market will double up in capacity compared to how it performed six months ago.”

Read more New York Times

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• ARTSingapore – new photography fair, high value sales and gallerists pick top fairs in Asia today – Oct 2009
• Green New affordable art fair in Beijing smashes the traditional format – Sep 2009
• Learn where Singapore art is heading – President’s Young Talents competition – Sep 2009
• Which are the top 10 contemporary international art fairs? – Jan 2009

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New roles for art collectors, organisations created by Cao Fei on Second Life – Uli Sigg is RMB City governor

Cao Fei RMB City A second life city planning 2007

 

INTERVIEW CHINESE ARTIST CAO FEI

Editor of Asia Art Archive’s Diaaalogue, Sue Acret spoke to Chinese artist Cao Fei about her Second Life project RMB City which was officially launched in January 2009. In this project which uses as a medium the online virtual world called Second Life, Cao Fei develops new roles for collectors and art institutions which blur the lines between digital and real.

Susan Acret: Please tell us about your avatar China Tracy and the RMB City work and how the online world of Second Life became a platform for these works.

RMB City – a city utopia with Chinese aesthetics

Cao Fei: During the creation of i.Mirror and the China Tracy Pavilion (A machinima-documentary about China Tracy’s first explorations of Second Life, and the large-scale installation where it premiered at the 2007 Venice Biennale), I started to think about creating a place that belonged to China Tracy within Second Life… her own ‘city utopia’. China Tracy felt that since most cities within Second Life were Western in style, she wanted to represent some of her concepts about Chinese urban development in a space that incorporated Chinese aesthetics and identity, albeit in a surreal hybrid style.

Blurred boundaries between real and virtual for modern generations
S.A: You’ve said that your generation, brought up in a digital world, ‘will always compare virtual and real’ and that sometimes the boundaries between the two can be blurred. Your art reflects this movement between these two spheres. What opportunities do virtual worlds offer artists that are not available in the ‘real’ world?

C.F: Second Life is a world where the conventional free-market economy still applies. Although we call it a virtual world, its economic structure and the virtual currency is tied with the ‘real’ economy. From a visual perspective, Second Life appears to be hyper-real and excessively imagined. Combined with its uncertain identity, it can be mysterious and enigmatic to people. On arriving in this virtual world, China Tracy was attracted by the hyper-real prison, but also felt an unavoidable sense of oppression.

Cao Fei, i Mirror Second Life Machinima, 28 minutes

Although the boundary between virtual and real is becoming more and more blurred, the way the virtual world contradicts and coincides with reality offers something ambiguous and complex. This, to a certain extent, enhances our lives as a whole, providing a reference for the exploration of individuality and the nature of life.

Another reason that the virtual world appeals to me is that it transcends obstacles in reality, despite being hyper-real. It offers a virtual platform for human beings to experiment with a possible utopia, such as building an individualistic heaven, drafting laws and systems, generating new discussions and thoughts, etc.

 
S.A: How many collaborators have you worked with for your RMB City project? How do you find your collaborations with these ‘real’ people?

C.F: Collaborators involved in RMB City include collectors, galleries, scholars, researchers, artists, schools, various exhibition projects, commissioned projects, biennials and triennials, etc.

New roles for art collectors organisations, Uli Sigg is RMB City governor

1. Collectors
We invite collectors to actively participate in the actual development of the city. For example, we invited Mr Uli Sigg to be the first governor of the city (for 3 months), in order for him to oversee and propose a blueprint for the utopia of RMB City in terms of its systems, construction and direction.

2. Public organizations
We are now working closely with Serpentine Gallery. They are one of the real information centres for RMB City. Also, UCCA which will collect RMB City, will have a virtual art gallery and other independent projects. Some art organizations are willing to rent spaces to be involved in this project and also develop their own projects.

3. Exhibition/ Project
I have realized personal projects for biennials and triennials via RMB City, for example, for the 2008 Yokohama Triennial and New Orleans Biennial, as well as on some consigned projects, such as H Box’s video project. I would like to some overseas artist residency programs to take place the RMB City’s platform.

4. Other
We invite different parties (not just limited to the art field) in the real world to participate in the virtual world. We also invite Second Life avatars who are interested in our project.

Therefore, RMB City insists on ‘the cooperation of virtual and real’: collaborators should come from both worlds. Through this process, we hope to improve conventions and develop a new path.

Cao Fei Cosplayers, video 2004

S.A: Your use of internet platforms such as You Tube and Second Life is a democratic, open way of creating work, insofar as it is available freely to large numbers of people all over the world. Do you often get feedback from ‘non-art’ audiences on the internet?

C.F: Yes. I have received emails and messages to China Tracy in Second life, and comments on my YouTube videos, and friend-offers via My Space and Facebook.

I quite like these different forms of feedback from different channels, and meeting different people in different worlds.

S.A: Born in the late 1970s and brought up in the ’80s, can terminologies such as Generation X (the consumerist generation) or Generation Y (the Net-generation or Generation Why) describe who you are? From COSplayers to the RMB City project, are your art projects the result of generational influence or your personality?

C.F: Since 1978, China has undergone an inevitable reorganization. Before we were ready to respond, we were already receiving all kinds of influences from a new time. Everyone is the product of a generation; ‘I’ am an individual as well as a transcendental object. Perhaps a young person who attempts to influence the world or China Tracy who surfs around the virtual world, are indeed coming from the same route. And as for me, I remain extremely close to yet with an appropriate distance from any of these worlds. This gives me a macro view of the ‘world’. And then I decide how I should deal with it and derive my system to process all the complex messages of life. In Chinese terms, it involves entering (reality) and renouncing (the virtual) the world simultaneously. This journey is to experience both worlds while constituting the two.

This interview is edited. For the full version of this fascinating interview and more images go to Asia Art Archive.

Related categories: Chinese artists, virtual art, reports from China, video art, emerging artists,  new media, Uli Sigg, art collectors

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New fair in London to focus on Russian collectors – FT

ART FAIRS RUSSIAN

Another event is joining the already busy fair calendar, this time focusing on Russian art. The Russian Art Fair is planned to be held on June 6-9, at the same time as the Russian auctions, in the Jumeirah Carlton Tower hotel in London. The city is often dubbed “Londongrad” because of the number of Russian residents, including, of course, billionaire Roman Abramovich. But fair organiser Peter London says his event will target another group, the average Russian millionaire, who has been priced out of the upper end of the art market”. Prices at his fair, says London, will not be much above £50,000 and the 45 exhibitors will bring silver, Fabergé and jewellery as well as paintings.

See full article in Financial Times, latest news on art fairs, collectors, reports from London

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Saatchi back with new gallery, school programme, China show, – Reuters, BBC

COLLECTOR SHOW CHINESE ART

Influential British art collector Charles Saatchi is back after three years out of the limelight, opening a major new gallery in central London showcasing some of China’s hottest artists reports Reuters. The man who introduced the world to Britart stalwarts like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin has been largely absent from the art scene since his gallery was forced out of its previous home on the River Thames in 2005. Now he is back with a huge new exhibition space in upmarket Chelsea, where he hopes free entry to the imposing former headquarters of the Duke of York will attract passers by.

Critics have lauded the imposing three-storey building with its glass and white-walled interior, and welcomed back one of contemporary art’s biggest players. But the inaugural show, opening on Thursday, has earned mixed reviews.

“The Revolution Continues: New Art from China” is dedicated to Chinese artists including established stars like Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang and Zeng Fanzhi, whose painting fetched $9.7 million in May, a record for Asian contemporary artwork.

Some critics have categorized the crazed, laughing men of Yue or the gray, stylized portraits of Zhang as repetitive, even “mass production” art.

Generally more popular were the sculptures, particularly an installation piece called “Old Persons Home” by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, involving 13 aging men on wheelchairs moving randomly around a large basement room. Their striking resemblance to late world leaders turns the work into a commentary on the pitfalls of power and conflict. The gallery calls it “a grizzly parody of the U.N. dead.”

But the gallery’s head of development, Rebecca Wilson, said Saatchi’s target audience was less the experts — critics, collectors and curators — and more the general public, most of whom are unfamiliar with contemporary Chinese art. “There was a feeling that all of these artists were suddenly emerging from China, doing very well at auction, there were the Beijing Olympics coming up,” she told Reuters. “There was this kind of convergence of interest in China, so we felt it should be the exhibition that we open with.”

IRAN, IRAQ ART TO COME

Early next year the Saatchi Gallery will put on a show dedicated to contemporary Middle Eastern art, including from Iran and Iraq, by artists never seen in Britain before.

“None of those artists have been seen in this country before and will be very little known elsewhere in the world as well,” said Wilson. “I think Charles has been searching for months to try to find interesting works.”

Saatchi sells some art after an exhibition ends, partly to fund his enterprise. Auction house Phillips de Pury is supporting the gallery to ensure entry will be free.

_____________________________________________________________________________

BBC coverage:

Only free contemporary art museum in world

The BBC reports that the Saatchi gallery claims to be the only completely free entry contemporary art museum of its size in the world. Simon de Pury, of auction house Phillips de Pury & Company, who is sponsoring the exhibition, said they expected “millions” of visitors.

Ground-breaking school education programme to come

The gallery said it was seeking to establish a “ground breaking” education programme “to make contemporary art even more accessible to young people.

“It is anticipated that the facilities that the Saatchi Gallery plans to offer – at the gallery, via its website and the gallery’s own classroom – will ensure that teachers receive the best on-site and outreach support for their students.”

——————————————————————

Artists: Zhang Dali, Zeng Fanzhi, Wang Guangyi, Zheng Guogu, Zhang Haiying, Zhang Hongtu, Zhang Huan, Qiu Je, Xiang Jin, Shi Jinsong, Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Li Qing, Wu Shuanzhuan, Shen Shaomin, Li Songsong, Zhan Wang, Liu Wei, Zhang Xiaogang, Zhang Xiaotao, Cang Xin, Shi Xinning, Li Yan, Bai Yiluo, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Zhang Yuan, Yin Zhaohui, Feng Zhengjie

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Iranian artists dominate Saatchi’s upcoming Middle Eastern exhibition

 

Sara Rahbar Flag 19 Mixed media

ACQUISITIONS MIDDLE EASTERN ART

As financial markets roil , art collectors seeking a safe haven eye up opportunities in the Middle East. If anything, some players expect an even stronger market in the Middle East than in China, because so many of the art initiatives-to showcase the region’s artists as well as import Western art-have the direct backing of the government or royal families. Abu Dhabi is planning to spend $50 million to fill its Louvre.  

While galleries are increasingly showing Middle Eastern contemporary art, especially in London, it is still uncommon in Western collections says Conde Nast’s Portfolio. Most of the artists are unknown outside of the Middle East.

That could be about to change as British art collector and marketing guru Charles Saatchi makes his interest in Middle Eastern art known. A recent addition to his planned exhibiton list is Out of Arabia: New Art and New Perspectives in which he showcases artists from Syria, Iraq and Lebanon and predominantly Iran.

At time of writing artists include:

• Iran: Sara Rahbar, Tala Madani, Laleh Khorramian, Rokni Haerizadeh, Ramin Haerizadeh, Ali Banisadr
• Lebanon: Jeffar Khaldi
• Iraqi: Halim Al-Karim, Ahmed Alsoudani
• Syria: Diana Al-Hadid

For most recent list of artists, bios and images visit Saatchi online , latest news on Middle Eastern art, Islamic art, thread art, feminist art, identity art.

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Niubi kids and American art – Top ten shows in Hong Kong September 2008 part 2 – Saatchi Online

 EXHIBITIONS HONG KONG

Top ten shows in Hong Kong this September part 2 published in Saatchi Online Magazine and written by Art Radar Asia’s editor Kate Evans.

Lee Waisler: Portraits and Abstractions
11 September to 11 October
Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Sundaram Tagore’s first solo show in its new gallery in Hong Kong features the eminent American artist Lee Waisler whose works are in permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lee Waisler presents two series of works: portraits of iconic figures and abstracts, both in a trademark style in which he loads the canvas with layers of paints and organic materials to create thick sweeps of pigment separated by knife-sharp ridges. His portrait series includes the stylized over-bold faces of, amongst others, Marilyn Monroe, Mahatma Gandhi, Kafka and Albert Einstein. Their textured planes draw our hands to hover over the surface, curious, wanting to touch but not quite daring: a potent echo of the real life lure of iconic idols and our visceral compulsion to draw near, look closely and touch. For this show Waisler has created an interesting new body of work incorporating Chinese culture and imagery including a portrait of Anna May Wong, a famous Chinese-American actress of the 1930s and 1940s and Doctor Ho, a renowned healer from China.

 

Larry Yung: Desire – Loss

Amelia Johnson Contemporary
4 September to 27 September 2008

In the works of this much anticipated show two years in the making, Chinese American artist Larry Yung places idealized images of American and Chinese people alongside material objects of desire and cultural icons such as Mickey Mouse. Smiling characters are painted with a flatness reminiscent of the iconography of Chinese propaganda posters and 1950’s US advertisements of the American Dream. This juxtaposition invites us to examine the complex relationship between the demise of the American Dream and the rise of Chinese aspirations. His stiff stylized figures appear artificial and remind us material prosperity is impermanent and illusory: part of a fleeting cycle of lack, desire, success and loss. His work has been commissioned by Proctor & Gamble, Pierre Cardin and Nordstroms and is held in various private collections including those of Marvel Comics, Esquire Magazine and Microsoft.

 

Niubi Newbie Kids
Mixed media group exhibition: Chen Fei, Chen Ke, Zhou Jin Hua, Zhang Ye Xing, Zhou Yi Qian, Feng Wei
19 September to 13 October 2008
Schoeni Gallery

Schoeni was pivotal in the nineties in promoting the art of then unknown Chinese political pop artists such as Yue Min Jun, Zeng Fan Zhi and Zhang Xiaogang, many of whom have since gone on to achieve iconic status and high auction prices. This September the gallery is showing the next generation of 80s born unknowns, the rebellious Niubi Kids. Untranslatable and a play on Chinese slang curse words, the word ‘Niubi’ is used by young people to identify the new wave of rebellious cool young Chinese. Also termed China’s ‘Me’ generation, a product of China’s One Child policy, they are less concerned with politics than with themselves, issues of identity and alternative worlds. This provoking not-to-be missed show of mixed media works, replete with influences from the internet, comics, video games and Japanese culture, is the result of two years work by the gallery and is the first in a biannual series.

Western art advisors turn to Asian new media art for their corporate clients – International Herald Tribune

NEW MEDIA ART FROM SOUTH EAST ASIA FOR COLLECTORS

Fortune Cookie projects, an art consulting service with clients who include Clifford Chance, Hermes, UBS and Saatchi, plan to set up headquarters in Singapore this year and they are on the look out for Asian new-media artists whom they can introduce to the West.

“Chinese artists have been the flavor of the month for the last five years,” founder Rutkowski said. “That will not cool, but it will change a bit. International collectors that went in early have got their works and they won’t buy an artist that they got for $20,000 a few years back for $4 million now; if anything, they’re going to sell. So many are looking along the Silk Road, and there is a very strong interest in the Southeast Asian region.”

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UBS collecting video and global art, showing four decade survey National Art Museum Beijing to Nov 2008

CORPORATE COLLECTORS SHOW 

Moving Horizons: The UBS Art Collection 1960s to the present day, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 29 September – 4 November 2008

 
The UBS Art Collection embodies four decades of collecting, from the 1970s to the present day. Most of the works from the 1960s-1980s were assembled for an American investment company, PaineWebber, which was acquired by UBS in 2000. These works joined the artworks that UBS had been collecting for its sites across Europe to form what is today The UBS Art Collection.

Change in collecting pattern: local to global

The Collection reflects the change in collecting from local to global, from a world in which most artists lived in the country where they were born and the art market was led by New York City, to a world in which artists migrate or divide their time between continents, and the art market has multiple centres across the globe. The Collection also reflects the change in visual arts practice from one that was prescribed by movements to one that is diverse and fluid.

1960s: pop art

This exhibition of approximately 150 works demonstrates these changes. Beginning with a large group of Pop Art prints and drawings by artists including Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Edward Ruscha, the exhibition then presents a group of prints and drawings by Minimalist artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella.

1970s: conceptual art

The 1970s ushered in a quieter conceptual aesthetic, represented in the exhibition by Vija Celmins and, although very different, Alighiero e Boetti. Here too is Chuck Close, who used a structure of grids and symbols in his multiple series of portraits.

1980s: explosion of figurate painting

Then came the explosion of highly expressive figurate painting in the 1980s. Reacting against the performance-based and ephemeral conceptual practice of the 70s, these paintings and drawings often contained personal metaphors to reflect the lives of their makers. In Italy Sandra Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi and Mimmo Paladino were grouped under the banner of Transavantguardia. In Germany Neo-Expressionists such as Georg Baselitz had an influence on the younger sculptor Stephan Balkenhol, included here, and painters such as Eric Fischl, Susan Rothenberg, David Salle and Julian Schnabel received wide acclaim in the United States. The British artist Lucian Freud had consistently focused on figurative painting since the 1940s, but didn’t receive international attention until the 1980s, the decade marked by this “return to painting’. He is represented in the exhibition by both paintings and prints.

1990s: photography and YBAs

In the 1990s photography was a critical medium, used to record the physical world with apparent objectivity by artists such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, Candida Höfer and Beat Streuli. The ’90s was also the decade of the much fêted ‘YBAs’, the group of young and savvy British artists represented here by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Gary Hume and one of their mentors, Michael Craig-Martin.

2000 on: global diversity, migration and video

By 2000 thriving markets were by now established across the globe – from Mexico City to Mumbai, from Berlin to Shanghai. Biennials and triennials in Brisbane, Yokohama, Istanbul, Sarjah, São Paulo and Singapore, to name a few, had shifted and expanded loci of interest, and The UBS Art Collection now hopes to mirror this diversity and expand the possibilities for displaying art in its corporate environment with the acquisition of video in particular.

Navin Rawanchaikul

The final part of the exhibition includes large-scale photo-based installations by American artist Susan Hiller and Chinese artist Xu Zhen as well as videos by Chinese artists Qiu Anxiong and Cao Fei, as well as Chen Chieh-jen from Taipeii, Navin Rawanchaikul from Thailand, Adrian Paci from Albania and Oscar Muñoz from Colombia. Their work addresses political concerns pertinent to their own experiences, but relevant across the world, issues of rapid industrialization, migration, memories of painful pasts and hopes for brighter futures.

Joanne Bernstein, Curator, The UBS Art Collection, May 2008

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Fresh evidence contemporary art price rise is structural says FT

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Financial Times

MARKET NEW BUYERS MORE BUYERS The huge wealth from oil and mining in the Middle East and Russia is flowing into fine art, with a rush of new buyers entering a market that was already booming. 

The arrival of Russian, Middle Eastern and emerging market collectors has given fresh evidence to those who believe that the powerful rise in the price of artworks is structural rather than cyclical – reflecting a long-term shift to a truly global market supported by growing numbers of millionaires and billionaires.

 

Last high 1990 surpassed in 2007

Last year, the art market – as measured by proceeds for the top 100 artists sold at auction – in nominal terms surpassed the previous high set in 1990, according to data from Art Market Report. After a decade in the doldrums the market recovered sharply in 2003-04 and has been on the upswing ever since. The rise in the contemporary market has been especially strong, with prices up by 300 per cent in the past three years, according to Art Market Report’s Contemporary Art 100 index.

 

Doomsayers wrong so far

Doom sayers have been predicting a fall in art prices for the past two years. The high level of nervousness about the market was revealed last November, when shares in Sotheby’s plummeted 28 per cent in a day. The reason? The auction house had failed to sell a work by Van Gogh at its sale the night before. The share price has not recovered.

Many respected dealers and collectors believe the market has reached its peak. Eli Broad, the Los Angeles-based billionaire collector, has said several times that he does not believe prices will continue to rise.

One bearish New York-based dealer says: “Mark my words, the Russians will turn out to be the Japanese of the early 21st century.” During the last art market peak, Japanese property developers were famously among the biggest buyers, snapping up Impressionist works – they were especially fond of Van Gogh – only to offload them at much lower prices just a few years later when the Tokyo asset bubble burst.

 

Customer base from more countries now

The underlying support for today’s art market does appear to be much more broadly based. 

Sotheby’s points out that five years ago, its buyers who spent more than $500,000 on an artwork came from 26 countries. Today, buyers spending that level or more come from 58 countries. Last year, 21 per cent of buyers at its sales were new, the auction house says. Since few buy at auction only once, that means an influx of customers. Helena Newman, vice-chair of Impressionist and Modern art at Sotheby’s, says: “The whole make-up of buyers has changed beyond recognition from 10 years ago. Now we have a far bigger global reach. We are also seeing far greater demand for the very best works. Our big challenge remains the sourcing of works.”

Simon de Pury, who heads the Phillips de Pury auction house, echoes that trend, saying: “Five years ago, the market was concentrated in western European and American collectors, a small group of art cognoscenti. The Contemporary market was dominated by three countries – the US, the UK and Germany. Now we can see the change just in our website: the hits are coming from Brazil, Turkey, China, India, Indonesia, Korea.”

 

Change accelerated 2 years ago

Mr de Pury says the change accelerated two years ago. He predicts that Contemporary art will continue to grow in buyer popularity, in part because the sheer number of buyers means that demand for works from previous eras cannot be met. “It is a question of availability. If you have unlimited money, you can no longer buy the best Old Masters collection in the world. But you can buy the best collection of living artists. For that reason Contemporary art will be the most significant market for the next 20 years.”

 

New museums adding to demand

He adds: “In China, every new [top-end] real estate complex being built has an art museum. All these spaces need to be filled and that will keep demand high.”

Most Middle Eastern nations are likewise building art museums, with both a Guggenheim and a Louvre destined for Abu Dhabi, for example. These museums will start accumulating works to fill their vast spaces later this year. In the US, the home of most of the world’s billionaires, there is a growing trend for rich art-lovers to build their own museums rather than donate works to existing museums as used to be the practice.

 

More millionaires 

There are far more rich people in the world and they are simply far more likely to buy artworks. The number of millionaires in Brazil, Russia, India and China grew by 19 per cent last year, according to the World Wealth Report, released this week by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini. The top 10 collectors in the world now include Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian steel billionaire, Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecommunications tycoon, and Qatar’s Sheik al-Thani, according to ARTnews magazine, which this week released its annual list of big spenders.

Art is also seen as a socially desirable channel for the wealth resulting from the 20-year growth in financial services. US hedge fund managers such as Steve Cohen have emerged as big Contemporary collectors. Ben Crawford, the chief marketing officer of MutualArt.com, says: “It starts with the wealthy and then there is a trickle-down effect. Look at the beginning of the century – who bought designer clothes? Tiny numbers of high-society people – but once they became available to more and more people, the buyers didn’t go back. The art buyers won’t go back to putting Star Wars posters on their walls.”

Image details: Eli Broad, art collector

See:

• Billionaires from Russia Middle East new in top 10 art collectors 
• How Russians, Asians are changing the art market

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