A precise focus on the global art markets

A renowned cultural economist, Clare McAndrew specializes in the domain of fine & decorative art market. An astute analyst of art-market statistics, she first proved in categorical terms in 2007 that France’s century-long pre-eminent place in the world of art world had been taken over by China. Many experts simply presumed it was nothing more than a blip! But her subsequent report commissioned by TEFAF stated otherwise, underlining the dominance of China.

Her new document courtesy TEFAF (The European Fine Art Foundation) pegs the auction sales in China at around 6 billion Euros in 2010, accounting for nearly 23 percent of the global art market. With a share of 34 percent, the US retained its top slot, whereas the UK with 22 percent slid to third position.

The TEFAF report elaborates: “New buyers and sellers from China and other emerging economies have helped to protect the art market from some of the downside risk it would have been subject to had it still been reliant primarily on the UK, US and other mature European markets.

"Looking forward, wealth and art buying remain highly concentrated in a very small fraction of China’s population, which is a strong indicator for the potential future growth in art sales. When the new middle classes come on stream at the end of this decade another boom in sales is likely and competition for share of this expanding market will intensify even more.”

In the past decades or so, the US, the UK, Germany and France have been the largest art markets. By 2006 China had almost overtaken Germany and France, in terms of auction sales, according to data of Artprice. However, China bucked the trend. In fact, the most noteworthy aspect of her study was the rise and expansion of the Chinese art market. Art sales in both mainland China and Hong Kong scaled a record peak of €4.2 billion (€3.8 billion in 2008), boosting the country’s share of the art market to 14% that year.