Jing Daily’s Top Posts For The Week#
In case you missed them the first time around, here are some of Jing Daily’s top posts for the week of June 7-11:
Luxury Spending Puts HK, Beijing, Shanghai On Global Retail Top Ten List
A new study released this week by CB Richard Ellis, “How Global is the Business of Retail?” sees three of China’s marquee cities — Hong Kong SAR, Beijing and Shanghai — among the world’s top ten ranked by global retailer presence, with Hong Kong maintaining its top position as Asia’s largest luxury and fashion retail market. According to the study (Chinese), Hong Kong was ranked fifth globally, with Beijing sixth and Shanghai in eighth place, with all three cities presenting real challenges to established global centers on the strength of Chinese luxury consumers, whose lavish spending has seen the world’s major luxury and fashion houses trip over themselves to increase their Chinese presence.
Despite the global downturn that saw luxury spending among Western shoppers remain anemic over the past 18 months, London — likely helped by deep-pocketed tourists, many from China — held onto its top spot this year, although Dubai comes in at a close second place and could top the list as soon as next year.
Samsung Sponsors Chinese Cultural Events Amid Intense Localization Campaign
Earlier this year, Jing Daily looked at the phenomenon of major companies sponsoring art exhibitions and cultural activities in China, looking at recent arts-business partnerships like the Ullens Center for Chinese Art and Minsheng Bank and Deutsche Bank’s sponsorship of the recent Hong Kong International Art Fair (ART HK10). For companies — particularly foreign names looking to make a name for themselves among Chinese consumers or domestic upstarts looking for third-party validation — strategic investment in the arts is worth its weight in good PR.
This week, Samsung became the latest company to sponsor a large-scale cultural event in China, lending its name to the production of the opera “Dream Flower” (梦里落花) at Beijing’s National Center for Performing Arts. The timing of this sponsorship, however, is what really takes this story from the sort-of-interesting to the fascinating, since — according to an interview with Samsung Marketing President Jin Rongxia (Korean name transliterated to 金荣夏 in Chinese-language articles) — it is all part of a more intensive, sustained push on the part of Samsung to localize its products by imbuing them with Chinese cultural elements.
ArtTactic’s Analysis Of Christie’s Spring Auctions In Hong Kong: Highlights
Earlier this month, Jing Daily covered the Christie’s Spring Auctions in Hong Kong, which we described as a “buyer’s frenzy” powered by mainland Chinese collectors. With works by blue-chip contemporary Chinese artists like Zeng Fanzhi, Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang proving popular with domestic buyers, we noted that the Chinese art market appears to have recovered from the dip we saw last year in the wake of the global economic crisis.
This week, a new report by ArtTactic finds that the Chinese art market hasn’t only largely recovered from its post-crisis dip, it’s starting to experience strong pick-up in demand and growth is only accelerating.
With the auction world keeping a close eye on the purchasing habits of Chinese collectors, noting that antiquities from select historical eras (previously) and works by blue-chip traditional and contemporary Chinese artists are “must-haves” for a growing number of wealthy Chinese, it’s always interesting to watch the auctions that aren’t widely reported outside of the Chinese-language media to get some insight into what else collectors in China are buying. In addition to jade and jewelry, collectors in China with a penchant for the country’s traditional arts have increasingly turned to — and currently dominate — segments like imperial-era snuff bottles (which sold out at the recent Christie’s Spring Auctions in Hong Kong) and rare teapots (one of which just sold for nearly $2 million).
This dominance isn’t exactly a coincidence. For one thing, domestic Chinese auction houses have ample supplies of Chinese traditional arts — including teapots — and for another thing, non-Chinese collectors have little presence in the teapot auction world, unlike what we see in other segments like Chinese contemporary art or traditional ink paintings. Demand, and competition, for particular teapots is virtually limited only to Chinese collectors, then, buying from Chinese auction houses. Although there are of course occasional teapots up for grabs at Sotheby’s or Christie’s in Hong Kong, mostly from the older collections of Western collectors, the bulk of recent auctions have been in mainland China.
Jia Zhangke To Receive Leopard of Honor At Upcoming Locarno Film Festival
It’s been an interesting year for the prominent Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke. From attending a retrospective of his work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (where Jing Daily interviewed him) to jetting to France for the premiere of his new documentary I Wish I Knew at the Cannes Film Festival — all while working on new projects like his first martial arts film, “In the Qing Dynasty” (在清朝) — Jia has been a busy man. This week, it was announced that Jia’s summer is going to get even busier this August, as he is slated to receive the prestigious Leopard of Honor (Pardo d’onore) at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.
From Variety, which points out that Jia, at 40 years of age, is the youngest director to receive the Leopard of Honor:
“We are proud to pay homage to the immense talent of Jia Zhangke, a gripping auteur who, film after film, with great aesthetic rigor and an innate sense of time and space, gives us a unique outlook on China’s deep changes,” said Locarno artistic topper Olivier Pere.