Importance Of Chinese Collectors In 2009, Growth Of Wine, Antiquities And Contemporary Art Collecting Drives Auction House Optimism#
Recently, Jing Daily profiled the upcoming Sotheby's auction of Contemporary Asian Art, set to be held on April 5 in Hong Kong. As we wrote at that time, the series of auctions Sotheby's has planned at the beginning of next month seem to be tailor-made for the growing ranks of mainland Chinese "New Collectors," with diamonds, contemporary and traditional art, and watches up for grabs.
A shift we've seen developing in the past year is a strong preoccupation with asset diversification on the part of many wealthy mainland Chinese, and the resulting deluge of investors turning to "portable wealth" in the form of Chinese art, antiques and jewelry -- objects with a strong cultural resonance as well as strong investment and appreciation value -- has made waves in the global auction market.
International auction houses obviously understand this shift, and have made great efforts to establish stronger footholds in Asia. Although they're unable to conduct auctions in mainland China, Sotheby's and Christie's, among others, have made Hong Kong a top priority. Though mainland Chinese collectors obviously reign supreme at auctions held by domestic houses like Guardian and Poly, this fall, as traditionally dominant American and European collectors held back, mainland Chinese collectors were out in force and ready to buy at overseas auctions as well. The trend we saw this fall has continued in 2010 as well, with mostly mainland Chinese collectors wiping out the first Sotheby's wine auction of the year -- held in Hong Kong -- to the tune of nearly $53 million.
However, the reach of Chinese collectors isn't limited to the Greater China region. Last month, at contemporary art sales in London, across four auctions that included contemporary Chinese art, 19 out of 21 pieces sold, with 100% of the items up for grabs at Sotheby's and Philips de Pury auctions selling out. Although prices have not fully rebounded from their pre-financial crisis highs, as an ArtTactic survey (previously on Jing Daily) found, Chinese collectors expect the Chinese contemporary art market to fully recover within the next year and a half.
Until then, as ArtTactic noted, it's still "a buyer's market." That's good news for New Chinese Collectors -- they can take advantage of prices that are on the upswing, which should continue to climb for at least another 18 months, while keeping their money in assets that should outpace the inflation of the RMB and any potential revaluation and looking like heroes for "repatriating" Chinese art from western collections.
New Chinese Collectors will get their chance to flex their muscles again in a couple of weeks. We'll definitely keep an eye on the run-up to the Sotheby's auction series in Hong Kong, and will speak to experts before and during the auctions to see to what degree mainland collectors are dominating the Hong Kong auction market.