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Collector sells £15m Turner collection to buy Chinese contemporary art

Baron Ullens is acquiring new works for his Beijing gallery
By Georgina Adam |
Posted 22 March 2007
LONDON. The Belgian collector Baron Guy Ullens
has consigned 14 Turner watercolours to auction, because he wants to
focus on contemporary Chinese art. The works, which will be sold at
Sotheby's London on 5 July, are expected to fetch £10m-£15m
($19.7m-$29.55m).

Baron Ullens has founded the first private museum for both Chinese and
international contemporary art in Beijing, which is to open in
October. Titled the Ullens Centre for the Arts, it is located in
Beijing's Dashanzi art district and its first chairman is Jan Debbaut,
former head of collections at Tate.

Guy Ullens, whose fortune derives from the food industry,
lived in China in the early years of his career, and collects
classical Chinese landscapes as well as his newest interest,
contemporary Chinese art. He acquired the Turner watercolours over the
past 20 years, some at auction, and some through dealers. Most were
kept in store at the Geneva Free Port and according to Sotheby's
specialist Henry Wemyss, there will be no problems exporting the works
out of the UK should they go to foreign buyers. Indeed, Sotheby's is
taking the group around the world, including Hong Kong and Los
Angeles, before the sale. "Turner is such an international name and
his technique of brush on paper resonates with Chinese buyers, as well
as the more traditional American collectors of his work," says Mr
Wemyss.

The Ullens collection covers everything from early, naturalistic
renditions of British coastal scenes to late, impressionistic views in
Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy. Among the most expensive
works is a large Swiss view, The Lake Lucerne from the Landing Place
at Fluellen, probably 1807-10, estimated at £2m-£3m ($3.95m-$5.91m).
This last appeared at auction in the Wills sale at Sotheby's just two
years ago when it made £1.86m ($3.35m). Another work, Oberwesel, 1840,
carries the same estimate.

Last year saw new Turner records established for an oil and
for a work on paper: a Venetian oil, Giudecca, La Donna della Salute
and San Giorgio sold for $35.86m at Christie's New York while the
watercolour The Blue Rigi sold for £5.83m ($11m) at Christie's London.
Christie's has traditionally dominated the Turner market so the sale
of this collection, which is the biggest to come to auction since the
Munro sales in 1878 and 1879, is a coup for Sotheby's, which offered a
guarantee on the group.

Let 10,000 Young Artists Bloom, Saatchi

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/magazine/11wwlnQ4.t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

Among the young artists whose work can be seen on Charles Saatchi's new
Chinese Web site are two who posted self-portraits: Huiyuan Sun, who
posted a series of photographs called "A Little Matter and My Face,"
above.

Stephanie Hueon Tung describes herself as a "fan of adrenaline and
adventure" on the Saatchi site, on which she has posted her "Light
Writing No. 1" and five other images.

PERUSING the student art on his Web site recently, as he does somewhat
obsessively throughout the day, the British collector Charles Saatchi
happened upon an entry from a painter named Liu Yang. This artist had
posted images of seven of his works, including a painting of a factory
set against a haunting gray background and a work on paper depicting a
woman's elongated torso.

But unlike European, American or Australian users of the site, who use
their Web pages there to tell the world everything about themselves —
their favorite artists, what movies and books inspired them, their
convictions about art or politics — Mr. Liu, a student at the Sichuan
Fine Arts Institute, simply wrote: "I can't speak a lot English. Sorry.
But love. ..." His message trailed off in a few lines of Chinese that
read in part: "I admit that my knowledge of art is limited at present.
However, I am sure I can learn quite a bit from your Web site."

Soon Mr. Saatchi began to notice that Mr. Liu was not alone. Every day
more art students from China were posting their work at Stuart (short
for Student Art), a popular nook of Mr. Saatchi's recently reinvented
Web site, saatchi-gallery.co.uk).

Known a decade ago for spotting talent and turning his discoveries into
superstars, as he did with so-called Young British Artists like Damien
Hirst and Rachel Whiteread, Mr. Saatchi is fixated these days on
Chinese artists, the hottest sector of the global market. And when he
saw these shyly tentative Web postings, something clicked.

"There are so many artists in China who want their work to be seen," he
said in a recent interview at his London home, pausing every now and
then to scan the large computer screen on his desk. "These students,
like all the others, want to know what's going on around the world."

So in January he decided to create a Chinese version of his Web site to
cater to that audience. Working in a warren of makeshift offices in the
basement of his Eaton Square home, 16 experts now oversee both the
popular Saatchi Gallery site, which is getting more than six million
hits a day, and a site in Mandarin, accessible from the home page, that
went online two weeks ago.

"Our goal is to break down language and cultural barriers," said Neeraj
Rattu, who is leading the site's technology team. Having compiled a
considerable amount of data, the team estimates that 20 to 30 art
schools operate in China; that about 10,000 students will graduate from
such schools this year; and that some 14,000 artists in China are
represented by galleries.

"That leaves roughly 10,000 unrepresented artists," said Kieran McCann,
who is in charge of the site's content and creative development.

About 300 art galleries operate in Beijing and about 300 in Shanghai: a
relatively small number, Mr. Saatchi said, considering the surge in
interest in Chinese work. China also has 100 to 200 auction houses,
many of which sell contemporary works.

Like Stuart, the Chinese site is designed to be as navigable as
possible, so that posting work will be as easy as opening an e-mail
account. So far 23 Chinese students have posted work on the site.

Each has a distinct personality. Kang Can, a serious-looking young man
photographed in sunglasses, writes, in perfect English, that he was
born in 1982 in Chongqing and graduated from the Sichuan Fine Art
Institute, and that he has already shown his work at Art Basel Miami.
Among the 15 images he has posted are a series of paintings in which a
sleeping infant is variously depicted in a chewing-gum wrapper, on top
of a gun, on the rim of a KFC plastic cup and in other poses.

"Babies as a symbol of human purity came to this world simple and
unadulterated," Mr. Kang writes.

Some of the pages are more cosmopolitan than others. Stephanie Hueon
Tung, a student at Peking University, writes that she recently
graduated from Harvard. "Now living and working in the wonderful city
of Beijing," her posting says. "Fan of adrenaline and adventure. Olé!"

Ms. Tung shows six images from her "light writing" series, in which she
scrawled in light on photographs ranging from a still life of a park
bench to an image of a closed-up shop that she embellished with a
heart-shaped graffito. Another student, Huiyuan Sun, has posted a work
called "A Little Matter and My Face," a series of 10 photographic
self-portraits in which he depicts himself in many guises.

In a few weeks the Saatchi team hopes the new site will be as
interactive as the English-language one, with a chat room in Mandarin
and a forum encouraging artists to debate current issues. The team's
eventual goal is to make its chat rooms seamlessly international, so
that students from all over the world can talk to one another in many
languages.

As it did for Stuart, the Saatchi team is reaching out to art schools
in China to let them know that their students can post pages at the
site. "It's all been word of mouth," Mr. Rattu said.

One looming concern is potential censorship by the Chinese government.
In recent months China has aggressively brokered controversial accords
with Google and Yahoo to filter the search-engine services they offer
in China and blocked access to some material offered by the Chinese
version of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Mr. Saatchi's team knows it may encounter problems if work posted on
the site is overtly political or directly critical of the Chinese
leadership. Its pioneering effort is likely to be closely monitored by
Western dealers and auction houses in the months ahead.

Pressed on that possibility Annabel Fallon, a spokeswoman for the
Saatchi Gallery, played down the potential for conflict. "After
discussions with the Chinese Embassy here we don't believe censorship
will be too much of a problem," she said in a written statement.
"According to the dealers and artists in China we are in contact with,
government interference in the arts seems to be at a very low level in
the last 10 years."

She added, "We don't foresee our site becoming a platform for
anti-government propaganda, but we do of course aim to be respectful to
the wishes of our host nation if our site starts being abused."

In remaking his Web site nine months ago to appeal to artists and
students and to be more interactive, Mr. Saatchi says, he resolved to
buy nothing posted there for the site's first year. Nonetheless he has
already bought works elsewhere by popular Chinese artists like Wang
Guangyi, Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang. And when his new gallery, a
50,000-square-foot space on Kings Road in the Chelsea section of
London, opens in the fall, its first show will be devoted to
contemporary Chinese artists.

In the meantime he and his Internet team spend their days pondering
ways of attracting more artists to the site. In addition to Stuart, for
art students, and Your Gallery, a separate area where artists of all
ages can post their work and sell it directly without relying on a
dealer or other middleman, the site offers links to museums around the
world and a magazine with art world news and feature articles.

It is also sponsoring a six-month competition called Showdown, the art
Web equivalent of "Pop Idol" in Britain or "American Idol" in the
United States. Artists registered at the site can enter works on which
the Internet public will vote; the winner will get £1,000 (about
$1,930) and a chance to show his or her work at the Saatchi Gallery
when it opens. The runner-up will get £750, or about $1,450.

After posting its first call for submissions last week, the site
reported nine million hits over a 24-hour period. The team will soon
post the contest instructions in Mandarin so that Chinese artists can
compete.

But Mr. Saatchi says he won't stop with China. Over the next six months
his team hopes to draw in artists from India, Russia, Spain and South
America.

"My aim," Mr. Saatchi said, " is to do everything I can to maximize the
site's exposure."

In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism

In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: January 4, 2007

Images:http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/01/03/arts/20070104_ARTI_SLIDESHOW_2.html

SHANGHAI, Jan. 3 — After the peppered beef carpaccio and before the pan-fried sea bass there were raucous toasts and the clinking of wine glasses in the V.I.P. room of New Heights, a jazzy restaurant in this city’s most luxurious location, overlooking the Bund.

Wang Guangyi, one of China’s pioneering contemporary artists, was there. So were Zhang Xiaogang, Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Zeng Fanzhi and 20 other well-known Chinese artists and their guests, many of whom had been flown in from Beijing to celebrate the opening of a solo exhibition of new works by Zeng Hao, another rising star in China’s bubbly art scene.

“We’ve had opening dinners before,” said the Shanghai artist Zhou Tiehai, sipping Chilean red wine, “but nothing quite like this until very recently.”

The dinner, held on a recent Saturday night in a restaurant located on the top floor of a historic building that also houses an Armani store and the Shanghai Gallery of Art, was symbolic of the soaring fortunes of Chinese contemporary art.

In 2006 Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the world’s biggest auction houses, sold $190 million worth of Asian contemporary art,

most of it Chinese, in a series of record-breaking auctions in New York, London and Hong Kong. In 2004 the two houses combined sold $22 million in Asian contemporary art.

The climax came at a Beijing auction in November when a painting by Liu Xiaodong, 43, sold to a Chinese entrepreneur for $2.7 million, the highest price ever paid for a piece by a Chinese artist who began working after 1979, when loosened economic restrictions spurred a resurgence in contemporary art.

That price put Mr. Liu in the company of the few living artists, including Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, whose work has sold for $2 million or more at auction.

“This has come out of nowhere,” said Henry Howard-Sneyd, global head of Asian arts at Sotheby’s, which, like Christie’s, has just started a division focusing on contemporary Chinese art.

With auction prices soaring, hundreds of new studios, galleries and private art museums are opening in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Chinese auction houses that once specialized in traditional ink paintings are now putting contemporary experimental artworks on the block.

Western galleries, especially in Europe, are rushing to sign up unknown painters; artists a year out of college are selling photographic works for as much as $10,000 each; well-known painters have yearlong waiting lists; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Pompidou Center in Paris are considering opening branches in China.

“What is happening in China is what happened in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century,” said Michael Goedhuis, a collector and art dealer specializing in Asian contemporary art who has galleries in London and New York. “New ground is being broken. There’s a revolution under way.”

But the auction frenzy has also sparked debate here about whether sales are artificially inflating prices and encouraging speculators, rather than real collectors, to enter the art market.

Auction houses “sell art like people sell cabbage,” said Weng Ling, the director of the Shanghai Gallery of Art. “They are not educating the public or helping artists develop. Many of them know nothing about art.”

But the boom in Chinese contemporary art — reinforced by record sales in New York last year — has also brought greater recognition to a group of experimental artists who grew up during China’s brutal Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

After the 1989 government crackdown in Tiananmen Square, avant-garde art was often banned from being shown here because it was deemed hostile or anti-authoritarian. Through the 1990s many artists struggled to earn a living, considering themselves lucky to sell a painting for $500.

That has all changed. These days China’s leading avant-garde artists have morphed into multi-millionaires who show up at exhibitions wearing Gucci and Ferragamo.

Wang Guangyi, best-known for his Great Criticism series of Cultural Revolution-style paintings emblazoned with the names of popular Western brands, like Coke, Swatch and Gucci, drives a Jaguar and owns a 10,000-square-foot luxury villa on the outskirts of Beijing.

Yue Minjun, who makes legions of colorful smiling figures, has a walled-off suburban Beijing compound with an 8,000-square-foot home and studio. Fang Lijun, a “Cynical Realist” painter whose work captures artists’ post-Tiananmen disillusionment, owns six restaurants in Beijing and operates a small hotel in western Yunnan province.

If China’s art scene can be likened to a booming stock market, Zhang Xiaogang, 48, is its Google. More than any other Chinese artist Mr. Zhang, with his huge paintings depicting family photographs taken during the Cultural Revolution, has captured the imagination of international collectors. Prices for his work have skyrocketed at auction over the last two years.

When his work “Bloodline Series: Comrade No. 120” sold for $979,000 at Sotheby’s auction in March, many art insiders predicted the market had topped out and prices would plummet within months.

But in October, the British collector Charles Saatchi bought another of Mr. Zhang’s pieces at Christie’s in London for $1.5 million. Then in November at Christie’s Hong Kong auction, Mr. Zhang’s 1993 “Tiananmen Square” sold to a private collector for $2.3 million. According to Artnet.com, which tracks auction prices, 16 of Mr. Zhang’s works have sold for $500,000 or more during the past two years.

Are such prices justified? Uli Sigg, the former Swiss ambassador to China and perhaps the largest collector of Chinese contemporary art with more than 1,500 pieces, calls the market frothy but not finished.

“I don’t see anything at the moment that will stop the rise in prices,” he said. “More and more people are flocking to the market.”

Mr. Goedhuis insists that this is the beginning of an even bigger boom in Chinese contemporary art.

“I don’t think there’s a bubble,” he said. “There’s a lot of speculation but no bubble. That’s the paradox. In China there are only a handful of buyers — 10, 20, 30 — out of a billion people. You only need another 10 to come in and that will jack up prices.”

He added: “Another astonishing fact is there is not a single museum in the West that has committed itself to buying Chinese art. It’s just starting to happen. Guggenheim, the Tate Modern, MoMA, they’re all looking.”

Representatives from those museums, as well as others, have made scouting missions to China. A growing number of international collectors are looking at Chinese art too.

“After the 2005 Sotheby’s show I just jumped in,” said Didier Hirsch, a French-born California business executive who has long collected American and European contemporary art. “People said the next big run-up in prices would be at Sotheby’s in March so I said, ‘Now or never.’ ” Mr. Hirsch purchased nearly his entire collection — about 40 works — by phone after doing research on the Internet. He said he went first for what he called the titans — the original group of post-’79 painters — including Wang Guangyi and Liu Xiaodong.

Some critics here say the focus on prices has led to a decline in creativity as artists knock off variations of their best-known work rather than exploring new territory. Some are even employing teams of workers in assembly-line fashion.

Christopher Phillips, a curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, has become a regular visitor to China, scouting young artists for the center and other places. On a recent trip “I went to visit the studio of a well-known Beijing painter,” Mr. Phillips said. “The artist wasn’t there, but I saw a group of canvases being painted by a team of young women who seemed to be just in from the countryside. I found it a little disconcerting.”

There are also complaints that some artists are ignoring international standards by selling works directly into the auction market, rather than selling first to collectors. And many experts here say that some gallery officials and artists are sending representatives to the auctions to bid on their own works to prop up prices, or “protect” the prices of some rising stars.

But Lorenz Helbling, director of the ShanghART Gallery here, said Chinese artists continue to produce an impressive array of works, and that talk about the market being overrun by commercialism is exaggerated.

“Things are much better than they were 10 years ago,” he said. “Back then many artists were commissioned to simply paint dozens of paintings for a gallery owner, who went out and sold those works. Now these artists are thinking more deeply about their work because they’re finally getting the recognition they deserve.”

Chinese Art in the news

Art in the news from Artzinechina.com

A painting by Liu Xiaodong sold in November for $2.7 million, shattering the record set by Zhang Xiaogang to become the most expensive Chinese contemporary art work ever sold at auction. The painting, "Three Gorges：Newly displaced Population," was sold to a Singapore collector in 2005. But the piece was put up for auction and the Chinese Poly auction house sold it today. The buyer was Zhang Lan, the founder of the South Beauty chain of expensive Chinese restaurants.

A conference called“The Reality and Dream of Chinese Contemporary Art” was held on November 17 at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Artists Liu Xiaodong, Xia Xing, Cui Xiuwen and the critics Yi Jinna, Zhao Li, Yu Ding and Feng Boyi discussed the topic “Can artists create artworks freely when they live in the market”drew lots of attention from the audience.

The Shanghai Art Fair arranged 2000 square meters space for 50 Young Chinese Contemporary Artists under 35 years old. Ma Liang, Han Zijian, Zhanghua, Xiang Qinghua, Zhou Jianhua, Liang Haopeng and Shen Na attended this special exhibition.

Zhai Mo, a 35-year-old abstract artist, will set out alone by sailboat from Shanghai for his around-the-globe voyage on January 1, 2007. His press conference was held at Chang An Club in Beijing last month. Zhai is hoping to become the first Chinese to travel around –the globe by sailboat.

Gu Ya, A 32-year-old woman from Yi Liang village in Yunnan Province, has created more than one thousand abstract pen–and-ink paintings in past three years, but she was only educated as high school level and never received art training. When asked to explain the meaning behind her images, Ms. Gu spoke in a language no one was able to decipher. The artist strange art and language has drawn enormous coverage from the media and on the internet. Now, CCTV – the national television network – plans an interview in the hopes of figuring out what this woman is saying and drawing.

Now in his 80s, famous Chinese abstract artist Zhao Wuji, who lives in Paris, was named last month an honorary professor of Fudan University. Five of his traditional art works have recently sold at auction for over $1 million, the highest being a 1958 composition that sold for $3.1 million – the highest price ever fetched by a living artist in China. Among contemporary artists, Liu Xiaodonghas sold for the highest price.

“Visible-Invisible”Chinese abstract painting exhibition was opened in One Moon Art Gallery which was located on Beijing Ditan Park on Dec. 2. Based on this exhibition, the seminar named “Chinese abstract painting” was held on Dec. 3. The artists of the exhibition were Chen Ruobing, Li Yang, Lin Yan, Tan Ping, Tang Kaizhi, Wang Guangle, Xu Hongming, Zhang Fan, Zhou Yangming.And the attendees of the seminar were: Gao Minglu, He Guiyan, Huang Du, Lei Hong, Li Xu, Liu Libing, Shao Yiyang, Sheng Wei, Wang Dunting, Wang Luyan, Wang Nanming, Wang Xiaojian, Zhu Jinshi, Zhu Qingsheng, Zhao Xun.

Christie's completed a record breaking auction of 20th Century Chinese art today with sales of $67.9 million worth of Asian contemporary and 20th century Chinese art works. Zhang Xiaogang's 1993 work, "Tiananmen Square," sold for $2.3 million, the second highest price ever paid for a work by a Chinese avant garde artist. Zhang Xiaogang had another work sell for $2.3 million and two other paintings sell for close to $1 million, making him easily the most sought after Chinese contemporary artist. Also, Yue Minjun's 1993 piece, "Kites," sold for $962,000 -- a record for a work by the artist. And a Zeng Fanzhi piece, "Mask 1999 No. 3," sold for 816,400 -- a record for the artist.

Two works by Chinese contemporary artists were banned from the Shanghai Art Fair held this week at the ShanghaiMART. The works were by Huang Rui and Cang Xin. The Cang Xin work portrayed him licking a Mao figurine. The works were being shown by the Hong Kong gallery 10 Chancery Lane. The gallery's other images -- including photographs of Zhang Huan and Ma Liuming undressing and standing naked with a large group of artists and other people -- were not taken down.

The latest issue of Time magazine features an article about the boom in Chinese contemporary art. The article, by Simon Elegant, is called "The Great China Sale," and it explains how hot the art market is right now. The article also mentions that Christie's auction in New York last week, one of Zhang Xiaogang's paintings sold for $1.36 million. The article also says that the British collector Charles Saatchi paid $1.5 million at a London auction for another piece by Zhang Xiaogang.

A man calling himself the “Yanan Clay Sculpture King,”Wang Wenhai, has accused the well-known Beijing sculptor Sui Jianguo, who is the professor of Central Academy of Fine Arts, of violating the copyright by creating a sculpture called Sleeping Chairman Mao. Wang, who worked in the Revolutionary Museum in Yan'an, the central province of Shaanxi, has devoted much of his life to creating sculptures of Mal. In 2002, Wang said he created a sculpture of Mao sleeping. Mr. Wang,who says Mao is his hero, also say Sui Jianguo's Mao in his work "Nightmare," also depicts Mao as the devil. Wang told one Chinese newspaper he was so angry about the image he fainted. This case was heard at a court in Beijing Chaoyang District People Court on November 21 2006. No word yet on the verdict.

In 2006 Taipei Biennale, the young artist from Guangzhou, Cao Fei, created what is being called her National Father project. As a curator, Cao Fei planned the whole sculpture solo exhibition for her father, the sculptor Cao Chongen. At the exhibition, she exhibited six small bronze sculptures of the famous Chinese leader Sun Yat Sen in his different time such as youngster Sun Yat Sen, the Great President, Great Marshal, etc. Cao Chongen, Cao Fei’s father, created many of the Sun Yat Sen sculptures that are now displayed in China.

China's new millionaires see capital gain in art

China's new millionaires see capital gain in art

By Will Bennett - Financial Times

Published: September 29 2006 16:37 | Last updated: September 29 2006 16:37

China may still pay lip service to communism but it is fast emerging as a capitalist superpower and its rapidly growing millionaire class, already numbering more than 300,000, is starting to flex its muscles in the international art market.

Auction houses and dealers are watching the progress of China's new rich as well as their counterparts in India, another booming Asian economy, with self-interested fascination.


India's new millionaires are sending prices for their country's contemporary art soaring but it is the mainland Chinese who represent the most glittering prize for the likes of Sotheby's, Christie's, Bonhams, all among the world's leading dealers in Asian art.

Most of China's 1.3bn people are poor by western standards but economic reforms have created a breed of wealthy entrepreneurs some of whom are keen to buy art, either as an investment or to display their recently acquired riches.

In May and June, Christie's ran up more than $154m at its Hong Kong sales, the highest for a series of auctions held in Asia.

A few weeks earlier, Sotheby's sales in the former British colony, now a semi-autonomous part of China, brought in $108.5m with record prices for paintings, textiles and jewellery.

In March, Sotheby's New York Asian sales totalled $51.6m with a 14th-century Yuan dynasty jar becoming, at $4.7m, the most expensive Chinese work of art ever sold by the auction house in the US.

The market for contemporary Chinese art has never been stronger with Christie's Hong Kong sale totalling a record $39.1m.

Bidding from mainland China has been credited with driving these remarkable prices but the reality, as with most things in this vast, complex nation, is more complicated. The market for Asian art and, in particular, for Chinese works has always been international and many of today's biggest buyers are American and European collectors and dealers.

At Christie's Hong Kong sales, the piece that attracted headlines worldwide was a 14th-century Ming porcelain vase that sold for a record $10.2m. The buyer was Steve Wynn, the American gambling magnate, more usually known as a buyer of impressionist and Old Master paintings, who donated it to a museum in the Chinese port of Macau, where he is due to open a casino.

The most expensive lot at London's Asian art sales in July was a Yuan dynasty jar bought for $3.9m by London-based Giuseppe Eskenazi, the world's most important dealer in Chinese art.

That price was a fraction of the $27.7m that Eskenazi had paid for an even rarer Yuan dynasty jar at Christie's in London a year previously, a purchase for a European collector rather than a millionaire in Shanghai or Beijing.

A syndicate from mainland China had bid up to $18m for the jar but the final four contenders, who pushed the price into the stratosphere, were from elsewhere.

"The mainland Chinese have not had such an impact at the very, very top end of the market," says Eskenazi. "They are buying in the upper part of the middle market but not at the top where you need a sophistication that people acquire when they have been buying for a long time."

Although Asian art buyers are often Chinese, they are not necessarily from the People's Republic. Many of the high rollers are from Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, which now have more than 170,000 millionaires between them.

One of the big spenders in London's summer sales was veteran Hong Kong dealer and collector Robert Chang and, when he won a hotly contested battle for a vase at Bonhams, his chief rival was a Taiwanese dealer.

Hong Kong's importance is undoubtedly growing but New York and London remain the biggest centres for the market. Their strength will be evident at the ninth annual Asian Art in London exhibition. Auction houses, dealers and museums will combine to stage the event from November 2-10 to promote the British capital's important role in the sector.

One of the key, and as yet unanswered, questions is whether western auction houses will hold sales in mainland China. Since the communist authorities legalised the private art market in 1992, almost 2,000 local auctioneers have set up businesses boasting, in 2004, a combined turnover of more than $1bn. Works of art made up about a quarter of this total and it is clearly a market with huge potential.

The problem is that although the People's Republic theoretically opened its doors to foreign competition almost two years ago, in order to fulfil its obligations as a member of the World Trade Organisation, government regulations, in effect, exclude outsiders.

Christie's discovered this last year when it formed an alliance with the Beijing-auction house Forever and held a successful $12.1m sale of modern and contemporary Chinese paintings. Within weeks, Forever's auction licence was withdrawn because the law bans joint ventures to sell cultural items with foreign companies. Christie's is still waiting for its local partner to resolve the situation with the authorities.

For the moment Sotheby's and Christie's find it easier to sell in the less bureaucratic atmosphere of Hong Kong. But, in spite of such setbacks, there is no doubt that China's new millionaires will play an increasingly important role in the market for Asian art.

"They will get there in the end," says Eskenazi. "There is so much cash available."

www.asianartinlondon.com

M50 review

M50 is a very special art district where massed with many galleries and artists locating in large groups of depots. Regardless of the rubbishy street (old, dirty street, even the cab driver has not heard about) and the letter written by some person who used to live in the neighborhood to appeal that some land agent forced to occupied his house, M50 is a unique product of the new attitude and policy of the local government which reveals the contemporary art gradually blooming and merging into the culture and economy. Simple and crude houses can not conceal the gorgeous art works in them. The whole area permeates the breath of art and the ropey wall better stand out the solemn and quiet atmosphere. Modern signs, logos and old depots and all kinds of arts, numerous inconsonant things form the entire M50, just like you haven’t stop memorizing the works in one gallery and then step into another art world. Outside the M50, more and more galleries and workshops are under construction, as MSG gallery. In the lecture given by Davide, I fundamentally understand the association between the art gallery, exhibition, museum and the government. The conversation totally breaks up my view of foreign artists in China, which I used to think they are oversea communicators to find the connection between different culture background and they must have some privilege as an artist and with a considerable salary. Now I learned that it’s also or even harder than domestic artists to publicize their works or modern ideas and not so easy to make a profit. Now I’ll illustrate some works seen in M50 below.

This is a work from EastLink Gallery, there are losts of great works there, and many of them is photos of perform art. From the introduction book I learned that this gallery more focus on the association between science and art. Some of them are through accurate calculated, like the chair above, and this remind me the aim of MIT media lab, use kinds of modern technique to perform art. And the manager there is also big collector. There are so many interesting collections.Like this oneZeng Fanzhi is a very talent oil painter, from his works we can see he is pretty good at manifest lines, these clutter and delicate lines give us great imagination.Those are two pieces of his works.

BJG II: Art Economy Forum Schedule

October 6,2006
Current Creation Situation and Recent Collection Trends of Contemporary Art

Host: Pi Li (Curator, Art Critic)
14:00—14:20 Opening Speech by Shang Yusheng, Secretary-General, Wu Zuoren International Foundation of Fine Arts
14:25—15:15 A Speech by Fan Di’an, Director, National Art Museum of China
15:20—16:10 A Speech by Uli Sigg, Former Ambassador of Switzerland in China, Art Collector
16:15—17:05 A Speech by Pierre Huber, Founder of The gallery Art & Public
17:05—17:35 Discussion

October 7, 2006
The Strategy in Art Investment and The Management of Art Fund

Host: Yu Tianhong (Vice-Director,Tai He Media Group)
14:00—14:50 A Speech by Jone Tancock, Vice-Dirctor, Sotheby’s New York Ltd.
14:55—15:45 A Speech by Friedhelm Huette, Curator of Deutsche Bank
15:50—16:40 A Speech by Zhangfan, CEO, Sequoia Capital China
16:40—17:10 Discussion

2. Special Forum

October 8, 2006
Concept and Strategy—Management of Gallery in the Globalization Background

Host: Gu Weijie (Producer and Chief-Editor, Art Finance Magazine)
Speakers: Directors of six different galleries from around the world, which are very young or not well-known, but promising. They will introduce their galleries’ history, management style and represented artists, and discuss the recent trends in their local art market.

14:00—14:30 A Speech by Alexander Ochs, Director of Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin / Beijing
14:35—15:05 A Speech by Meg Maggio, Director of The gallery Pekin Fine Arts
15:10—15:25 A Speech by Yun Chea Gab, Director of The gallery Arario Beijing
15:30—15:45 A Speech by Ye Mingxun, Director of Main Trend Gallery
15:50—16:05 A Speech by Xiao Qiong, Director of The gallery C5 Art
16:10—16:25 A Speech by Fang Fang, Director of Star Gallery
16:30—17:00 Discussion

October 9,2006
Topic: Art and The Public-The Goals and Responsibilities of Contemporary Art Medium
Speech Time: 15 minutes for each Chinese speaker and 30 minutes (including translation) for each foreign speaker
Host: Zhao Li (Vice-President, School of Liberal Arts Central Academy of Fine Arts)
Speakers: 6 experts from famous public media, art media and web media around the world. They will introduce national and international art newspapers, art magazines, art book publishers and art websites, and discuss the recent trends in contemporary art news report.
14:00—14:30 A Speech by Inna Kanounikova, Manager, LTB Media Liaison Office
14:35—14:50 A Speech by Shu Kewen, Sub-editor, San Lian Life Weekly
14:55—15:10 A Speech by Jiang Wei, Director, www.artron.net
15:15—15:30 A Speech by Zhu Qi, Chief-Editor, Art Map Magazine
15:35—15:50 A Speech by Gu Weijie, Producer and Chief-Editor, Art Finance Magazine
15:55—16:10 A Speech by Wang Gang, Director, www.artnews.cn