798 District Blog

NEW YORK, NY.- This week, ArtTactic released its newest Chinese contemporary art market confidence survey, which — as expected, considering the success of this spring’s auctions in Hong Kong and mainland China — shows a 27% positive increase in confidence over December 2009, with a majority of respondents believing either that the Chinese contemporary art market has rebounded or will do so within one year.

Over the past 18 months, the emergence of the mainland Chinese auction house as a strong regional force and the growing clout of new Chinese collectors has injected a serious dose of optimism into the market, and led ArtTactic to conclude that the current trend sets out the possibility that Chinese contemporary art volume in 2010 might even come close to pre-crisis historical levels.

Highlights of ArtTactic’s latest report:

• 71% of respondents believe the market has already rebounded (35%) or will do so within one year (36%). This is significantly higher than in December 2009, when only 22% of respondents said they thought the market would rebound within a year or earlier.

• The 27% positive increase in the Chinese contemporary art confidence indicator is driven by substantially better Hong Kong and mainland Chinese auction results in the first half of 2010, as well as pick-up in primary market activity.

• 53% of respondents believe the market will go up over the next 6 months, 39% belive it will level out, and 8% believe the market will fall.

• The Confidence Indicator (which now sits at 73) suggests that a significant amount of optimism has re-entered the Chinese art market, and the primary driver for the Chinese contemporary art market going forward will be economic growth.

• The lower end of the Chinese contemporary art market (works priced below US$50,000) has the highest market confidence, although the top end (works above $1 million) shows more positive than negative sentiment — reflected in the success of blue-chip artists in this year’s spring auctions.

• The speed of the recovery in the Chinese contemporary art market has accelerated in the first half of 2010.

• The strong growth in the domestic auction house volume suggests that market share is shifting away from Hong Kong towards the Mainland. Last year showed the strength of the domestic collector base and the ability of domestic auction houses to attract top quality consignments.

• Top 10 prices reveal the difference between domestic and international taste. Although there are overlaps with blue-chip artists like Liu Ye, Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang and Liu Xiaodaong, mainland Chinese auction houses focus on Chinese contemporary oil paintings by artists like Guo Reunwen, Yang Feiyun and Shi Chong. Conceptual artists like Ai Weiwei, Zhang Huan and Cai Guo-Qiang who are popular at auction in Hong Kong are rarely seen in Mainland auctions.

• The Chinese contemporary art market currently consists of two parallel markets: one catering to domestic demand and the other catering to a predominantly international art market. In terms of growth, the domestic market is having the upper hand.

• Sell-through rates at Sotheby’s and Christie’s Hong Kong have risen significantly, approaching 80% and rising, over an autumn 2008 low of slightly more than 60%.

• The average Chinese contemporary artist confidence indicator stands at 60.1, up 14.4% from December 2009. A total of 84% of the contemporary artists in the survey have shown a positive increase in their short-term confidence levels.

• Zeng Fanzhi has moved from rank 18 to rank 2 on the artist confidence indicator, Cai Guo-Qiang has risen from rank 13 to rank 4, and Yang Fudong is in the top position for the second time in a row. Other artists in the top 10 include Zhang Huan, Xu Bing, and Ai Weiwei.

• In the long-term artist longevity indicator, Ai Weiwei shares the top spot with Cai Guo-Qiang, with no change in the artists rounding out the top 10, which include Yang Fudong, Zhang Huan, Xu Bing, Zeng Fanzhi and Gu Dexin.
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london. A recent swathe of auction records has led, as in 2004, to speculation that the rich may once again be treating art as an investment vehicle. Major records include Giacometti’s L’Homme Qui Marche I, 1960, which sold for £65m at Sotheby’s London in February, Picasso’s Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur, 1932—the world’s most expensive work of art—sold in May, for $106.4m at Christie’s New York, and Rubens’ Portrait of a Commander, around 1612-14, sold for £9m at Christie’s London last July.

This was backed up by a report by Capgemini SA and Merrill Lynch & Co published in June, which found that the number of global millionaires grew 17% last year, and, with financial markets in flux, art had emerged as the most popular category of “passion investment”. Trade sources agree. As New York old master dealer Richard Feigen, told The Art Newspaper earlier in the year: “The art world is inundated with money—there’s so much liquidity out there because people are afraid of currency. They’ve been told that art is a place to park cash.”

Art appeals because it is tangible, can be traded in any currency, and comes with kudos—collectors cannot hang stocks and shares on a wall to show their friends. Art may be particularly attractive now because of the uncertainties of the stock markets, big currency fluctuations and the looming spectre of inflation in some major countries, and deflation in others. Giovanna Segre, lecturer in the economics of culture at Turin University, observed in an article on this subject for our sister paper Il Giornale dell’Arte, the anti-cyclical nature of the art market could be coming into play. The art market “offered annual returns of more than 7% between 2001 and 2004, when the stock-market exchange index was in the doldrums”, she wrote.

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A slew of new businesses are popping up offering goats for rent. Yep you can rent a few goats or an entire herd now to come round and mow your lawn, provide high quality fertilizer and generally brighten up your day.

Goats are ferocious eaters and could clear a lawn pretty fast and be happy doing so. I personally love the idea and so do some pretty big name players such as the US National Parks Service, Google and Yahoo.

There is also talk of using goats to clear areas of brush susceptible to forest fires. So many uses!

Most people seem to reporting that the costs are similar to paying a business for mowing or less but much less dangerous and less hard work.

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The 798 ART FESTIVAL is coming soon.

Starting from the 18th of September, there will be various events and exhibitions at the 798 District in Beijing.
If you are in the area, make sure to join in the festivities.

For more information on the Festival’s events, please have a look at our 798 Festival micro-site at http://www.798district.com/798festival.

A single-owner sale of more than 400 works, which is estimated to bring more than $10 million, has been scheduled for Saturday, 25 September 2010 in New York. Among the works to be auctioned are examples of early works by many of the leading artists of the late 20th century – Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Richard Prince, John Currin and Takashi Murakami, as well as examples by artists whose work has become more internationally acclaimed over the last decade – Neo Rauch, Julie Mehretu, Liu Ye and Do Ho Suh.

“We ran a rigorous process to find the right auction house for this distinguished group of works,” said Mr. Bill Gordon, a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal. “Sotheby’s longstanding familiarity with the collections of both Lehman and Neuberger as well as its reputation and experience with corporate collections were important factors in our decision. We are confident that Sotheby’s is the best fit for the Estate’s mission to deliver maximum value to our constituents.”

Mr. Kelly Wright, an advisor to LBHI who is overseeing the evaluation and sale of these works, said “It truly is a visionary collection, and Neuberger Berman’s astute reputation for investment is clearly seen in the selected works for sale. Many of the works were acquired from cutting edge and emergent artists who have since evolved into the vanguards of the contemporary art world.”

Lehman Brothers long history of collecting art can be traced back to Robert Lehman. Works he collected were donated to the Metropolitan Museum and comprise the Lehman Wing. Works from the Lehman Brothers Corporate Collection currently being offered at this auction provide buying opportunities for works of important provenance to both seasoned collectors wishing to supplement an established collection and first-time purchasers. As a result of Lehman Brothers’ 2003 acquisition of Neuberger Berman, the two firms’ collections were integrated.

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In 2005, this humoristic asumption by Evariste Blanchet allowed us to understand that there were different types of comic boods, while suggesting that there was a real need to classify and define contemporary comic book art.

But how can we define contemporary comics art, and is there comic book art created today that cannot be classified as « contemporary » ? One could assume that, as for contemporary art, all comics cannot be called « contemporary » ; the works of an artist painting Montmartre «Poulbots» or « Marines » for an art gallery in Le Touquet can hardly be called contemporary, even if the execution shows genuine virtuosity.

One will point out the fact that contemporary comics have a long history, which has been widely referenced and commented on, and that a number of artists throughout the past decades have challenged the boundaries of the genre : from Gilbert Shelton to Aurélie William-Levaux, Moebius, Philippe Druillet, Chris Ware, Christophe Blain and many others. And creators have to be aware of the fact that they belong to this history, and have to mistreat their medium by multiplicating hybridisations with other artistic specialities to make unknown aspects emerge.

One could conclude that the purpose of an event such as the Le Havre contemporary art biennale is to reference, in a non-exhaustive way, the most convincing of these hybridisations. A word that has to be understood in its latin meaning, « mixed blood ».

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Chengdu is an important city in Chinese Contemporary Art, Which nurtured a lot of famous artists and critics, but the art collection is not so active comparing to Beijing and Shanghai. How to accelerate the development of the Chengdu art market and to increase the number of local collectors, is the question to be deal with.

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World famous sculptor Ju Ming from Taiwan is holding a large-scale solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, showing a selection of his Living World Series sculptures that he has created over the past 30 years.

A total of 150 sculptures are on display in four exhibition halls at the museum, revealing the artist’s personal interpretations of the kaleidoscopic human world. The exhibition also provides an insight in part, to the great contemporary sculptor’s lifelong artistic achievements.

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Pablo Picasso was the 20th century’s most important artist. Picasso’s many-faceted personality is reflected in the wide array of creative paths he chose — his forms, colors, and the materials he used. The Picasso Story invites you to meet Picasso, the man, and to delve into his life and creative world, to walk in his footsteps, to discover him, and like him, to embrace your internal creative spirit, and to leave a legacy for the world. The Picasso Story has been on display in Berlin’s Humboldt Carré since November 1, 2009. At the heart of the exhibition is a collection of Picasso’s ceramics and graphic art, complemented by the incredible images of Edward Quinn, who accompanied Picasso as a photographer for decades.

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Sotheby’s sold an Edouard Manet self-portrait for 22.4 million pounds ($33.1 million) on Tuesday, a record for the artist but toward the lower end of pre-sale expectations of 20-30 million pounds.

The painting, one of only two self-portraits by the artist and the only one in private hands, was the centerpiece of the auctioneer’s main impressionist and modern art sale in London this summer.

Overall the auction fetched 112.1 million pounds, within expectations of 101-148 million pounds, although the sale tally included buyer’s premium while the estimate did not.

Three works of art sold for eight figures — Manet’s “Self Portrait With a Palette, Andre Derain’s “Arbres a Collioure, which sold for 16.3 million pounds, double the previous record for the artist, and Henri Matisse’s “Odalisques jouant aux dames” (11.8 million pounds).

Sotheby’s said the results were “strong,” although the auction total was smaller than the equivalent sale in London in February which raised 146.8 million pounds.

Alberto Giacometti’s “L’homme qui marche I” sold for 65 million pounds, which was then a world record for any work of art at auction.

Christie’s, Sotheby’s main rival, holds its main sale on Wednesday, and expects to sell art worth 164-231 million pounds. If it makes even the lower end of the target, it would set a record for an art sale in London.

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