Asian Art Auction Sets Records for Artists
By BETTINA WASSENER
Published: April 6, 2010
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Close LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalink HONG KONG — Auctions by Sotheby’s are setting new records for Asian artists, exceeding presale expectations, and raised a total of $41 million Monday alone. It is a sign that the market has returned full force from the downturn that followed the global credit crunch in 2008.

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Mike Clarke/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“Self Portrait as a Hooligan” by Yan Pei-Ming at the Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong.
Although bidding in the auctions in Hong Kong came from around the world, the sales are also testimony to the growing spending power of buyers in Asia, a region that mostly escaped the worldwide economic downturn last year.

Both Sotheby’s and a rival auction house, Christie’s, say Asian buyers have emerged in recent years as a major force in sales not only of Asian arts and antiques but also in other categories like gems and ultrahigh-end wines.

On Monday, a work by Liu Ye, a contemporary Chinese artist, went under the hammer for $2.45 million, almost three times the pre-auction estimate. The painting, “Bright Road,” which shows a smiling, dancing couple with a blazing object in the sky behind them, also set a record for the artist.

Sotheby’s held three auctions Monday, and “Bright Road” was part of a sale of contemporary Asian art that brought $18.7 million — topping Sotheby’s preauction estimate of as much as $16.3 million.

Hit hard by the global credit crunch after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the international art market began to recover last year, hand in hand with the global economic recovery. The amount raised at Sotheby’s previous Hong Kong sales series in October — which included art, jewelry, watches and other categories — was up nearly 90 percent from the spring 2009 series, for example. The results Monday showed that the rally was continuing.

Evelyn Lin, head of Sotheby’s contemporary Asian art department, said by telephone Tuesday that the latest sales demonstrated a strong return for blue-chip contemporary Chinese artists.

“There is no question that these results show pent-up demand for great art,” she said. Buyers of Asian art, she said, “have become much more mature, more sophisticated, more discerning,” helping lift prices for such works.

At the same time, the market remains a long way away from overblown, analysts say.

Sharp property price increases in mainland China, Hong Kong and elsewhere have raised fears that bubbles are developing in those markets. The Asian modern art market, however, “still has a long way to go,” Ms. Lin said. “There is no bubble. Prices are still low, compared to what some Western contemporary artists’ works can command.”

Analysts at Nomura echoed that assessment in a research note last week.

“In terms of scale, China still has a long way to go to touch the Japanese exuberance of the 1980s,” they wrote. “Total sales between 2000 and 2009 for Chinese arts amount to a little over $4 billion. This is in stark contrast to Japan, which experienced a massive investment of around $19 billion on art in just three years between 1987 and 1990.”

“As China enters the sweet spot of economic growth and more and more wealth is created, the art market should maintain its momentum,” they continued. “We believe that the recent correction could actually drive out the speculators and make the market more widely accessible.”

Demand for Asian art extended to the two other categories at Sotheby’s on Monday. Those sales, of 20th-century Chinese art and modern Southeast Asian paintings, also topped pre-auction estimates.

An Asian collector bought Lee Man Fong’s “Bali Life” for $3.24 million, more than tripling the previous record for the artist and making this the most expensive Southeast Asia painting ever auctioned.

Sotheby’s sale of jewels and gems Wednesday is expected to raise more than $47 million. The highlight of that sale is a flawless 5.16-carat, pear-shaped, vivid-blue diamond, estimated by the auction house to be worth as much as $5.9 million.