While double-digit inflation sweeps the art collecting world, the newly rich Chinese are paying upward of fivefold increases in just a year for new works by their native sons.
Helping fuel those soaring auction prices – both here and abroad – is the New York hedge fund crowd’s thirst for acquiring status and refinement with their newly minted billions, experts say.
Although Sotheby’s and Christie’s have just ended a season of numerous multimillion-dollar sales of works by renowned artists such as Picasso, Cézanne and Andy Warhol, the art world’s loudest buzz surrounds the boom in Chinese art prices.
Only a year ago, new works by emerging Chinese painters were fetching barely $100,000 at the Sotheby’s and Christie’s galleries in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia.
But now those painters are commanding $1.2 million and higher for comparable works, which they’re cranking out almost monthly to meet demand from China’s newly wealthy art collecting class.
“We haven’t seen a phenomenon of such proportions as this in decades,” said one collector familiar with the boom.
One of the hottest of China’s new cultural heroes, painter Zhang Xiaogang, set two world records for the fall season for contemporary Chinese art prices at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, at $1.2 million and $979,200, respectively. In the past few years, some of his works sold for little as $10,000.
Another of his new works, “Amnesia and Memory: Boy,” is on the block March 21 at Sotheby’s for up to $500,000, but it could fetch more than that, experts said.
One of his young rivals, Wang Yidong, is also in the Sotheby’s sale with his “Yi River,” a piece inspired by Rembrandt’s “Crucifix,” which is on the block for up to $600,000.
For local hedge fund billionaires on the prowl for more Rembrandts and other masterworks, Sotheby’s is offering a rare piece painted by Rembrandt in 1661, “Saint James the Greater.” Expect it to clear the $25 million mark in a Jan. 25 sale, experts said.
Meanwhile, Christie’s is offering a painting by celebrated American artist Edward Hicks in his “Peaceable Kingdom” series.
The last painting he completed before he died in 1849, it is being sold off his original easel by family members. It’s expected to fetch as much as $4 million. An earlier Hicks piece in the series sold for $4.7 million in 1999.
The three major auction houses – Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury – hit a record $1.4 billion in November alone.
