Chinese Art Appraisal

The Boom is Over. Long Live the Art (New York Times, Feb. 15, 2009)-Memories of recessions past suggest that a financial scouring can be good for American art.

Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition to be Launched in East England - (Xinhua, Feb 9, 2009) -- An exhibition on Chinese contemporary art opens its door to the public ... with each curator exploring the global market for Chinese art ....

China's Art Market Hits Hard Times (PRI's The World, Feb 3, 2009) ... The Chinese art market bubble has burst. Artists who previously commanded big sums for their work are now hurting. ...

Chinese Art Market Needs Health Check (Taipei Times, Jan 12, 2009)...The global financial crisis has hit the Chinese art market ... In Hong Kong, bids at auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s are disappointingly low, while in China galleries close down, leading to the question: Is the bubble about to burst?

Chinese Art Loses Lustre (artmarketblog.com, Dec 13, 2008) ... Slowdown in red hot Asian contemporary art market? In 2007, China redistributed the cards in becoming the third auction market globally...The most impressive sale results have been achieved at Poly International Auction and China Guardian.

Museums set Stricker Guidelines for Acquiring Antiquities (New York Times, June 4, 2008). ...The new policy advises museums that they “normally should not” acquire a work unless solid proof exists that the object was outside its country of probable modern discovery before 1970, or was legally exported from its probable country of modern discovery after 1970....

Galleries Go to China (Portfolio.com, Jul 30, 2008) ... How bubbly is the Chinese art market? That might depend on how "Chinese" the art looks....

Booming Chinese Art Market (New York Times, Jan 4, 2007): ... Auction frenzy is gripping the art world and in response hundreds of new sellers in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai are putting .... 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.

Prices for the Best Chinese Art, Old and New, have skyrocketed.Chinese economic growth is the driving force behind the volatile Chinese art market. Most important is the blossoming of a new generation of collectors in China itself. Five years ago, the art market's center of gravity shifted eastward: more Chinese paintings, old and new, are now purchased by Chinese buyers than by those outside of China. The major international auction houses are poised to open their own operations on Chinese soil. The global economy and a local rise in income mean that more and more Chinese citizens are taking an interest in art, for both aesthetic and economic reasons. These Chinese art collectors exert a powerful influence on the size and shape of the market.

The new representation of Classical Chinese Paintings is a healthy response to the burgeoning demand for high-quality Chinese art. Although many sellers claim Zhang Daqian as an inspiration, their actual methods as well as the results are second-rate or worse. The supply of poor-quality reproductions is sometimes generated through assembly-line reproduction. Some paintings are reproduced mechanically in the fast-growing economic zones, largely for unwitting tourists or for cheap sale through the less reputable internet galleries.

Chinese buyers constitute a significant force in the purchase of Classical Chinese Paintings, not just in Hong Kong but in New York, London, Amsterdam and Paris.Sales at China's ten leading auction houses topped $1 billion in 2005, up from $100 million in 2000, according to published figures.