China rises to No. 2 art market as billionaires more than double in 2017, closely watched report says

Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report finds China accounted for 21 per cent of US$63 billion global art sales last year in a market dominated by world’s super-wealthy; Asia ex-China’s market share forecast to rise as its wealth grows

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An employee poses with Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi on display at Christie's auction rooms in London. The rare painting of Christ sold for a record US$450 million last year. Photo: AP

Published: 1:03am, 14 Mar 2018Updated: 8:09pm, 15 Mar 2018

China became the second biggest art market in the world in 2017 on the back of a sharp jump in the number of Chinese US dollar billionaires, according to the just published Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. The closely watched report documented a global recovery in the market, skewed heavily towards works valued at over US$1 million.

Using a variety of sources, art economist Clare McAndrew calculated that global art sales reached US$63.7 billion in 2017, up 12 per cent from 2016, and a strong turnaround after two consecutive years of decline. But the market is truly a 1 per cent club dominated by the super-wealthy.

Last year artworks that fetched over US$1 million accounted for only 1 per cent of the market by volume but a staggering 64 per cent by value – up from 48 per cent in 2016.

Art economist Clare McAndrew wrote the annual Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report.

Of the three most expensive paintings sold last year, two are likely to have been bought by Asians: Qi Baishi’s Twelve Landscape Screens (1925), which sold for US$141 million at Poly Beijing, and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1982), which went to a Japanese collector for US$110 million.

The third of those pieces was Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, bought by the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism for US$450 million, making it by far the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

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