Asia's investors spend more on art
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China.org.cn, December 19, 2011
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The last night of the fall Poly Auction on Dec 9 in Beijing, which ended with a total hammer price of 4.95 billion yuan. [Photo/China Daily] |
China’s art market cooled this fall after several boom years. Both collectors and investors are buying less in retail stores and at auctions.
The autumn auction season brought in 40 billion yuan ($6.3 billion) to the 219 auction companies tracked by Beijing-based Art Market Monitor of Artron. That's a drop of 6.6 percent from the spring season's 42.84 billion yuan. However, some auction companies reported their business volume was down 30 percent.
Last year, China became the No.1 arts market with one-third of the world market share, according to Artprice.com, a market monitor and analyst.
Despite giddy Chinese art prices showing some strain from global economic uncertainty, collectors like Lo think values will continue to rise due to limited supply and continued strong demand as Asian collectors become more affluent.
"As East and West get into more of a confluence in taste and in the market place, it will still go up," said Lo, a Cambridge-educated writer and jewelry designer, a slim, elegant woman known for wearing mis-matched designer shoes.
"Now we are facing not only the traditional collector, who sees the value of items in terms of art and culture, but also the investors with a huge amount of capital who have taken to art as a way of increasing their fortunes,” Dong Guoqiang, president of Beijing Council International Auction Co, explained.
"Though this year the whole market is not as good as expected, we are still impressed by the consumption capacity of our new customers," said Jiang Wei, who works at Beijing A&F International Auction.
"They paid quickly for the collection items and inquire little about the investment value in the future," Jiang said.
He also said these customers have huge buying power and the next step the auctioneers should take is to find ways to cultivate them in a new area, art as an investment.
Hong Kong has played an important role in Asia's art market boom. Its auction market turnover soared 300 percent from 2009 to 2010, powered by a wave of Chinese millionaires buying art with avid fervor.
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