www射-国产免费一级-欧美福利-亚洲成人福利-成人一区在线观看-亚州成人

Top Biz News

Contemporary art gets the brush off

(China Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-28 08:05
Large Medium Small

Contemporary art gets the brush off

The fallow plots of farmland on the edge of the artists' village of Songzhuang are a symbol of Chinese contemporary art's recent boom and bust cycle.

When prices for Chinese art soared, there were grand plans to build more galleries and studios in this artists' hamlet near Beijing. Yet today, after art prices plunged by some 60 percent in the past year, the expansion plans have floundered.

Art landscape

After a white-hot stint, the financial crisis has battered China's art landscape, shrinking investment in grand schemes such as Songzhuang, shuttering galleries in Beijing's pioneering 798 arts district and deflating bloated egos, valuations and excesses.

"The Chinese contemporary market was over-swollen before. I felt it wasn't very healthy," said Nan Xi, a former Chinese army officer who became an artist, whose works, huge pointillist ink-brush canvasses which he displays in his spacious Songzhuang villa, fetched around half a million yuan at the peak of the market.

In the good days, ferocious bidding in auction rooms at the market's peak in 2007 and 2008 caused prices to spiral skyward with buyers and speculators treating contemporary artwork almost like stocks or tradable commodities.

What resulted was a glut of average art at inflated prices and a growing community of millionaire artists, some more drawn by the opportunities to make vast amounts of cash than any artistic vision.

"The financial crisis has been a good lesson for us; to better know what the market is, and art's relationship to it. Having too much money is not good for an artist's development," said Nan.

China's leading auction house, Beijing Poly International Auction, which is famous for its repatriation of looted bronze animal heads from the West, has seen business in Chinese contemporary art plunge more than 50 percent in the past year.

Buyers' choice

"A lot of buyers have been pushed out, including the speculators. The collectors who are left are now able to pay more reasonable money for reasonable things," said Li Da, Poly's general manager.

Related readings:
Contemporary art gets the brush off Chinese contemporary art exhibit opens in Washington
Contemporary art gets the brush off China to build largest contemporary art museum
Contemporary art gets the brush off Contemporary art finds own flourish
Contemporary art gets the brush off Celebs arrive at a party at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Li gave the example of a large Zhang Xiaogang bloodline painting, which fetched 16.8 million yuan in May, and said that painting would have sold for more than twice that amount if it had been auctioned in 2007.

Melancholy canvasses by Zhang, one of China's A-list artists, sold at up to $6 million apiece at the market peak. Those valuations have, like many others, since fallen some 66 percent according to an index on Chinese art website Artron.net. Since 2007, the overall market for Chinese contemporary art has shrunk more than 54 percent.

Sotheby's and Christie's, which both pared back their sales of Chinese contemporary art in Hong Kong, have struggled to place outstanding works.

At Sotheby's autumn sales, bidding was mixed for contemporary art with Zhang Xiaogang's "Comrade" one of few pieces testing the $1 million mark. Without an across-the-board recovery in China's economy and a return to the days of huge wealth creation, Li said she doesn't see a comeback in Chinese contemporary art prices anytime soon.

"Right now, the market is still consolidating," said Tim Lin, a Taiwanese gallery owner at the recent Sotheby's autumn sales in Hong Kong.

"The market will go up, but you can't just focus on the short term. See it like a flower: if it blooms too quickly, it will wither quickly. You need to look at the long term."

Auctioneers and dealers say collectors have become more selective since the crash, spurning lesser works while seeking value in younger artists beyond China in Asia and in the West.

"Through this consolidation, there will be better discernment of good artists and good works and their inherent value," said Li, from the Poly Group. "The true connoisseurs of Chinese contemporary art, the collectors are left... and they will be able to pay reasonable money for reasonable things."

Expert's view

Misung Shim, the head of Seoul Auction, which sold a large work of British artist Damien Hirst in Hong Kong last month for $2.2 million, an auction record for the artist in Asia, sees growing opportunities beyond China's art scene.

"We are trying to open the Western art market in Hong Kong rather than the Chinese paintings market," she said.

Plunging prices of avant-garde art worldwide represent big potential upside. Major art investors such as Philip Hoffman of the Fine Art Fund in London are putting their money more in conservative, safer bets.

Recent Asian sales in New York and Hong Kong have shown strong demand and prices for traditional categories of Chinese art, including classic inkbrush paintings, imperial scholars' objects, and ancient ceramics are rising.

"We've allocated more to porcelain and ancient art, but we've allocated very little to Chinese contemporary," Hoffman said. "I've been amazed to see how the recession has not been affecting the very best (traditional) Chinese art."

Echoing this view, Andy Hei, the head of the Hong Kong International Art and Antiques Fair, said: "Antiques turn out to be fashionable again.

主站蜘蛛池模板: 国产精品11p | 精品视频一区二区三三区四区 | 成年女人毛片免费播放人 | 亚洲性免费 | 欧美精品aaa久久久影院 | 91久热| 一级毛片在线完整免费观看 | 天堂色网站 | 一区二三区国产 | 久久精品视频99精品视频150 | 欧美在线综合视频 | 国产在线精品一区二区三区 | 久香草视频在线观看 | 日本一级毛片视频无遮挡免费 | 97久久国语露脸精品对白 | 最新福利片v国产片 | 特级毛片在线播放 | 久久精品免费一区二区三区 | 国内精品久久久久影院老司 | 亚洲成年人在线观看 | 一级毛片在线不卡直接观看 | 男女无遮掩做爰免费视频软件 | 国产片一级片 | 亚洲三级视频在线观看 | 亚洲第一区香蕉_国产a | 99热久久国产精品免费观看 | 国产亚洲精品午夜一区 | 成年女人免费视频播放成年m | 国产精品爱久久久久久久三级 | 男人天堂网在线视频 | a级特黄毛片免费观看 | 美女网站免费观看视频 | 另类在线视频 | 欧美日韩视频一区三区二区 | 亚洲国产韩国一区二区 | 中文字幕日本一区波多野不卡 | 欧美人成在线观看网站高清 | 免费人成网站免费看视频 | 成人国产精品一级毛片视频 | 国产成人精品视频一区 | 美女视频全部免费 |