The Art Of China

China’s still-young art market has huge potential, but how does it compete in today’s winner-takes-all global art economy?To get more china art news, you can visit shine news official website.

In a buzzing auction house in the affluent coastal city of Shanghai, the throng of buyers shuffle to their seats. Up at the podium, the auctioneer begins calling out works by celebrated contemporary Chinese artists Shang Yang and Zhou Chunya, but it is the names of Western artists—Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso—that captivate the audience. When the final bids are tallied, the lots from Western greats pull in double those of the Chinese.

The 2015 Christie’s international art auction personified a notable change in the tastes of Chinese buyers that the industry is still grappling to understand. In earlier years, the Chinese preferred traditional artworks and antiques, long considered particularly sound investments. But over the previous two decades, both the number and sophistication of buyers has been gradually increasing. Rather than gravitating towards local contemporary art, many Chinese investors are beginning to see Western art, which hangs in museums and galleries around the world, as a safer bet.

International interest in Chinese contemporary art has also declined since a decade ago, with African art the current flavor of the month. So, what is the future for the art market? Will the next generation of Chinese buyers reinforce existing market dynamics by looking towards Western and African art, or will they support local contemporary art, allowing it to carve out a strong space in the ecosystem?

Developing the market
After lying largely dormant from when the Communist Party assumed power in 1949 through to the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s, the domestic art scene underwent an astounding four-decade boom. Under the planned economy, only state-owned antiquities stores could buy and sell artworks, but this began to change in the 1980s with Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms. By the early 1990s, private galleries and domestic auction houses were emerging, marking the transition to a market art economy.
China’s first art auction house, state-owned Duo Yun Xuan, launched in Shanghai in 1992, followed by China Guardian Auctions in Beijing a year later. The arrival of auctions, coupled with rapid economic growth and rising individual wealth, created substantial domestic demand for domestic art. While in the West, galleries serve as the primary market for artists to sell to collectors, in China it is local auctioneers who whip up interest and shape tastes.

“Artists didn’t have gallery representation because there were no commercial galleries. Auction houses played the primary market role,” says Anita Archer, director of Pegasos5, an Asia-focused art consultancy. “The auction houses were crucial for the development of the contemporary art market.”

According to a 2019 survey of Chinese collectors by The European Fine Art Fair, TEFAF, auctions are considered more trustworthy and transparent than dealers and galleries and are still overwhelmingly the preferred choice for buying and selling art. “The Chinese like auction houses,” says Olivier Hervet, partner of HdM Gallery, which has outposts in Beijing and Hangzhou. “You feel safer in your investment when people are fighting to buy the same works as you.”

During the 1990s, art shows, galleries and private museums began to emerge. The Yan Huang Art Museum, the first to feature an individual’s collection, opened in Beijing in 1991. The Red Gate Gallery, China’s first private contemporary gallery, pioneered by Australian collector Brian Wallace, followed shortly after. In 1992, Art Bazaar, the first art fair, launched in Guangzhou. By 2017, there were 525 auction houses, including the 2005-founded Beijing Poly International Auction. Today, Beijing Poly International Auction and China Guardian Auctions are the third and fourth largest auction houses in the world, trailing only the international duopoly of Sotheby’s and Christie’s.