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By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop
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During the mid-2000s, Chinese contemporary art rose to world attention, with political pop and cynical realist works by artists like Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang regularly breaking records at auction. In 2008 Zeng Fanzhi's Mask Series 1996 No. 6 sold for $9.66 million at Christie's, setting a world record for a contemporary Chinese artist, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York ran a major retrospective of Cai Guo-Qiang's gunpowder works. But when the global economy shut down, China's art market faltered along with so many others. Now it's back, this time powered in large part by Chinese buyers. And unlike their Western counterparts, they are eschewing contemporary works in favor of 20th-century Chinese masters and classical ink paintings.
Last year the most expensive Chinese painting sold at auction was a rare scroll by 16th-century Ming-dynasty artist Wu Bin. Bought by Liu Yiqian, a private collector from Shanghai who paid $24.8 million, Eighteen Arhats was the seventh-most-expensive painting sold worldwide in 2009—right behind Picasso, Matisse, and Rembrandt. That was more than double the previous record price for a classical Chinese painting, a Ming-dynasty masterpiece by Qiu Ying that was sold in 2008 before the financial crisis hit. By comparison, the top price achieved last year by a contemporary Chinese artist, Chen Yifei (1946–2005), was a mere $5.3 million—and his romantic-realistic painting of melancholic women in traditional dress couldn't be further from the political pop style embraced a few years ago by collectors. "Classical Chinese art has seen a massive surge in interest, due in part to the increase of wealthy Chinese collectors, and also to the perception that classical art is a safer bet than the more fashionable contemporary art," says Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of the Hurun Report, which publishes various surveys including the Hurun Art List of contemporary artists.
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Traditionally, buyers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States have collected classical Chinese paintings. When newly wealthy mainland Chinese began flexing their muscles at international art auctions in 2005, they focused their attention mainly on Chinese antiques and imperial works of art, seeking to repatriate what they considered national treasures. The interest in contemporary Chinese works was driven largely by Western and, to a lesser extent, other Asian collectors. But when the art market collapsed in late 2008 and Western collectors became scarce at auction, Chinese buyers began calling the shots, and as their tastes broadened, classical paintings soared.
To meet this new demand, Christie's decided to offer more classical works during its Asian week in New York in March, says Elizabeth Hammer, a Christie's specialist in Chinese paintings. That auction set a record price for a classical Chinese painting sold in the United States: $3.44 million. Buyers also snatched up classical paintings at Sotheby's Hong Kong spring sales in April. While contemporary Asian art raised $18.5 million on the sale of about 76 percent of 170 lots, 97 percent of the 237 classical-painting lots sold for a total of $39 million. An ink depiction by Fu Baoshi (1904–1965) of three men mulling over a traditional Chinese game of go sold for $5 million. Auction houses are taking note, catering to Chinese buyers. Sotheby's recently hoisted a Chinese flag outside its New York headquarters, along with the flags of its other core clientele: the U.S., Britain, France, and Switzerland. Meanwhile, Chinese auction houses like China Guardian and Beijing Poly Auction are setting up offices in the West, an effort in part to bring Chinese masters back home, which should drive up prices even higher. Indeed, as Chinese works become scarcer in the West, it's possible that one day Chinese masters will be more valuable than Western ones.
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