Wealth Blog | Art auctions – Chinese collectors buying their past

You can’t move in Hong Kong at the moment without bumping into someone headed to an art auction or an art fair. The market for Chinese art has exploded over the last decade, but then it sagged, and now seems to be surging at full speed again. The statistics for the Sotheby’s auction in New York last month were staggering, with records being broken all over the place.

Granted the classics, best and oldest treasures tend to go under the hammer in the US, so it’s not really likening apples with apples to compare New York sales with Hon Kong’s where the art offered is generally more contemporary here. Yet this week and last, records have been tumbling here too.

Records tumble here too

Sotheby’s five days of Hong Kong sales in their autumn 2013 series totalled HK$4.196 billion / US$538 million, surpassing ore-sale estimates of HK$2.88b / US$369.23 m.

Not only did they have the world action record for a Chinese sculpture, a big Ming Gilt-Bronze Figure Of A Seated Shakyamuni Buddha, which made HK$236.44m / US$30.3m.

Another record was achieved for contemporary Asian art, plus the world auction record for a work by a living Chinese artist with Zeng Fanzhi’s The Last Supper, which fetched HK$180.44m / US$23.13 m.

You get the picture. Buyers were shelling out telephone numbers for Chinese art. This follows hard on the heels of the week of Asian Art sales at Sotheby’s New York, which made a total of US$74,077,814, more than double the combined low estimate (est. $30/43 m). Bidding was brisk for two thousand years of Asian Art spanning from Archaic Chinese Bronzes to Modern Indian Paintings. The highest price of the week in New York saw The Gong Fu Tie Calligraphy by Su Shi, described by the auction house as”one of the towering figures of early Chinese history, make $8,229,000.