After the high values achieved in recent New York Asian art auctions, the art world’s eyes focus to Sotheby’s Hong Kong, with Chinese selling art, jewellery and wine this week.
Sotheby’s also held up well in New York, selling over US$41 million (HK$318.3 million) of Chinese ceramics and classical paintings – way above the US$22 million (HK$170.8 million) minimum expected, while Christie’s sold US$45.7 million (HK$354.8 million) – nearly three times the estimate, reported Britain’s Daily Telegraph. Bonham’s made healthy sales of US$9million (HK$69.9 million).
This week sees Sotheby’s in Hong Kong launch into a heavyweight round of sales, expected to fetch up to US$200m (HK$1.55 billion), which would rank Hong Kong third behind leading global venues London and New York. But these estimates just show how far the Chinese art market has slid since the dizzy heights of April 2011, when similar auctions raised $447m (HK$3.47 billion). It wasn’t just Sotheby’s: rivals Christie’s saw sales slump from $904m to $685m from 2011 to 2012. While mainland China charged ahead to became the world’s biggest art and antiques market in 2011, it tanked in 2012, while the rest of the world held reasonably steady.
So why is China a different story? Two recent art market reports have highlighted the slide in Chinese art sales. According to French auction data producers Artprice, in association with China’s Artron, fine art sales in mainland China fell by 44.2 per cent from US$9 billion (HK$69.9 billion) in 2011 to $5.1 billion (HK$39.6) in 2012. Shortly afterwards, the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) estimated the sales drop to be even worse, estimating it at more than 50 per cent for Sotheby’s and Christie’s in Hong Kong and China’s mainland auctioneers, Poly and China Guardian.
According to British newspaper the Daily Telegraph, there are various explanations: “the most obvious being that the Chinese market was so overcooked in 2011 that a radical adjustment was inevitable.”
Maybe it just dawned on Chinese collectors and investors that this was a good old fashioned bubble and that their art was now way overpriced. This also coincided with the check in the mainland economy and the political pause as China waited to see what changes the new leadership would bring.