New art and culture revolution across an Asian giant

As auction houses get ready for their fall art sales, it is expected that Chinese collectors will give a boost to the market, likely to raise their paddles for big-ticket works in spite of global economic turmoil. With the nation’s economy thriving, collectors there have turned a growingly powerful force in the art market, exhibiting a palpable interest in both Western and Asian art.

At spring sale of Sotheby’s, a Chinese buyer acquired one of that evening’s priciest paintings; it was ‘Femme Lisant (Deux Personnages)’ by Picasso, picked up for $21.3 million. At the auction house Lebarbe (Toulouse, France), a Chinese buyer with a $31 million bid happened to set a new French record in March for exotic Chinese art - a scroll painting from Beijing’s Imperial Palace.

An anonymous telephone bidder, believed to be Chinese, paid a whopping $106.5 million last year for ‘Nude, Green Leaves and Bust’ by Picasso at Christie’s. It was a record for an artwork t at auction. It has been observed that Chinese auction houses are apparently offering works of art at a pace that was associated with those in New York and London formerly.

A renowned company, which tracks the fine-art market, Artprice, has reported that they were mostly responsible for around $8.3 billion in sales. The figure would more certainly make them the undisputed world leader.

“We have observed exponential growth especially by mainland Chinese buyers brought up during the Cultural Revolution,” stated Sotheby’s vice chairman (Asian art), Henry Howard-Sneyd, who added. “These are successful businessmen having huge amounts of money at their disposal.”

A news report (China’s New Cultural Revolution - A Surge in Art Collecting) by Robin Pogrebin mentions: “The auction market is clearly responding to the new rising demand. Sotheby’s held its first ever exhibition last year for the private sale of works of art specifically for the growing Asian market. It featured Monets, Chagalls and Picassos that fetched in the range of $2 million to $25 million.”