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Kevin Kwong

Hong Kong
Buoyant demand from China, a taste for all things contemporary and growing investor confidence are keeping the art market in the region afloat despite the volatile global economy.
Auction house Christie's recently recorded its best sales season in Asia, realising a total of US$310.7 million,  with a particularly strong showing from the Asian contemporary art category.
Edward Dolman,  chief executive of Christie's International, says the market for the finest art objects and paintings remains strong worldwide. In Asia, demand for contemporary Chinese art is particularly buoyant.
Zeng Fanzhi's  Mask Series 1996 No6, for instance, went to an anonymous buyer for HK$75.4 million last month, setting the  record for a work of Asian contemporary art. Dolman says bidders came mainly from the mainland and Taiwan as well as Hong Kong. 'One new trend is that we see 70 per cent of what we sell in our sales here bought by clients from Greater China,' he says.
'In 2002, it was perhaps 15 or 20 per cent. So as our sales [in this category] grow exponentially so does the proportion of [buyers from] Greater China.'
Another new trend Dolman spotted is a shift in taste among collectors towards modern and contemporary works of art.  For example, the collection of clocks from Tokyo's Nezu Museum, auctioned last month, was 'stunning and rare' but they were still overshadowed in terms of value by the contemporary paintings. Dolman says this shift is universal and attributes it to the changing profile of global collectors.  Contemporary art sales, he says, are being driven by a large number of new collectors who are using wealth generated by the new global environment.
'And they are very connected to the now, the present,' Dolman says. 'All these political and social changes in China and Russia have resulted in their ability to buy and they want to be associated with today's world and they are buying contemporary art because it's a symbol of their time.'
So they prefer images of a Coke bottle, Liz Taylor, Tiananmen Square or Mao than, say, a painting of 18th-century rural England.
'They are not as interested in symbols of past times,' says Dolman. 'It's a new phenomenon and it's definitely linked, I think, to globalisation and some of the social and political changes we've seen over the past seven or eight years.'
He says Hong Kong will continue to be a major auction centre where top deals are struck. This city  is the third-largest art market in the world, measured by auction turnover, after New York and London.
And any future growth won't rely on contemporary art alone. 'While Chinese contemporary art has principally driven this growth, we've also seen significant price escalation in Chinese works of art and ceramics,' Dolman says.  'What we're seeing is a general increase in the value of important works of art that are associated with China and appeal to Chinese collectors.'



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