Taking place from 2 to 7 October alongside the 20th Century Chinese Art pre-sale exhibition is Treasures of the Century, an educational non–selling exhibition that provides academic insight on 20th Century Chinese art. Over 20 seminal works by masters and pioneers from Xu Beihong to Chen Yifei will be on view. Please refer to a separate press release for details.
]]>The Noon Award was founded by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation to recognize an established artist and an emerging artist from that year’s edition of the Biennale whose work particularly embodies its spirit and theme. For this first award a jury composed of the internationally-renowned curators Bice Curiger, Okwui Enwezor, Sungwon Kim, Akira Tatehata, and Vicente Todoli recognized the legendary 83 year old Gustav Metzger as recipient of the established artist prize, and acknowledged young South Korean Haegue Yang in the emerging artist category.
]]>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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The special exhibition, jointly organized by the National Art Museum of China, City of Alexandria, and the Beijing Cultural Office of Italy, is to exhibit painting masterpieces, and other works like declaration, posters, books, photography, design and furniture of futurism representatives, such as Balla Giacomo and Carrà Carlo, on all sides at the National Art Museum of China for the first time.
]]>MOK Kim Chuan, Sotheby’s Head of Southeast Asian Paintings said, “The success of our Spring Sale is a testament to the growing global interest in rare and quality Southeast Asian paintings. This season, Sotheby’s will continue to present a careful selection of works by established modern masters, highlighted by S. Sudjojono’s A New Dawn. The Contemporary section will feature record-breaking artists led by I Nyoman Masriadi, as well as a group of exhilarating works of young, up-and-coming artists who have demonstrated outstanding creativity and potential in their creations. There will also be innovative 3-D installation works that, along with the other bold selections in this Autumn Sale season, are sure to stimulate the collecting interests of new and established art collectors alike, and to present another opportunity for them to acquire interesting works.”
]]>Maleonn is one of the most famous Chinese artists in conceptual photography. Ma’s photographs are filmed both on location and in studio, his previous professional work as a TV commercial director gives a staged quality to both his indoor and outdoor shots. And Ma often participates in his art by incorporating the use of his own facial masks and body parts. His staged photography represents a whimsical world, with total manipulation of space and matters. In one of the series What Love Is, the phantom objects include fire flames, butterflies, flowers, decorative lights and paper-cut figures on a miniature red-curtained stage. These make-shift elements seem to signify that ‘Love’ is like a dream/play.
Jiang Pengyi moved from his less developed hometown to the rapidly changing Beijing when he was a teenager, the cultural shock bred a deep sense of alienation in Jiang amid the bustling city. Excessive urbanization, demolition, redevelopments are recurrent themes in his art. In his series Unregistered City, Jiang uses digital manipulation to place new skyscrapers from real life among demolished sites of city expansion. Jiang intends to diminish the presence of human beings in his works, yet most of the images are filled with traces of human activity.
]]>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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