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The Price of National Pride

by

Libby Banks

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This is the featured image caption
Credit: This is the featured image credit

Are Chinese collectors unwittingly inflating the value of their art and antiques?

Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.

PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.

In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”

The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris

Are Chinese collectors unwittingly inflating the value of their art and antiques?

If the recent Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong is anything to go by, Chinese art is on an upward trajectory so steep it’s nearly vertical. It was the most lucrative of the firm’s Hong Kong spring sale series ever. Bidding was fierce; estimates were smashed; and auction-goers pushed prices of top lots to pre-credit-crisis levels. Over the five-day auction, lots made a total of HK$2 billion (US$258m), beating Sotheby’s prediction of HK$1.3 billion (US$167m) and positively trouncing the HK$691 million (US$89m) taken at the equivalent auction last year. No doubt Christie’s and Bonhams hope to follow this performance with their own Hong Kong spring sales next month.

Nicolas Chow, Sotheby’s senior director for China and Southeast Asia describes the market as a one-way elevator going upwards. But as auctioneers lick their lips at the prospect of further jaw-dropping sales, a niggling question lingers: how long can the boom times last? The sums that Chinese collectors are prepared to pay has caused concerns that the market might fall prey to an artificially inflated price war. And there are other factors: Western auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s once dominated the Chinese art auction market, but home-grown auction houses like China Guardian and Beijing’s Poly International are steadily building their market share. Pola Antebi, Christie’s head of Chinese ceramics and works of art, noted that the number of ceramics offered at Christie’s Hong Kong sales has dropped by almost half in recent years. The auction giant now appears unable to access the supply of antiques within China due to export restrictions on Chinese cultural properties acquired from abroad. And while mainland art collectors are keen to repatriate Chinese antiques, this means that fewer pieces are available at auction. While there may be opportunities yet to surface, it sounds like this elevator has a glass ceiling.

Sources

Luxury Insider – 13 Apr 10
Reuters – 13 Apr 10
Wall Street Journal – 8 Apr 10
Bloomberg – 8 Apr 10

Libby Banks
Libby Banks

Associate Editor

Bio Not Found

RETAIL

The Price of National Pride

by

Libby Banks

|

This is the featured image caption
Credit : This is the featured image credit

Are Chinese collectors unwittingly inflating the value of their art and antiques?

Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.

PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.

In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”

The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris

Are Chinese collectors unwittingly inflating the value of their art and antiques?

If the recent Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong is anything to go by, Chinese art is on an upward trajectory so steep it’s nearly vertical. It was the most lucrative of the firm’s Hong Kong spring sale series ever. Bidding was fierce; estimates were smashed; and auction-goers pushed prices of top lots to pre-credit-crisis levels. Over the five-day auction, lots made a total of HK$2 billion (US$258m), beating Sotheby’s prediction of HK$1.3 billion (US$167m) and positively trouncing the HK$691 million (US$89m) taken at the equivalent auction last year. No doubt Christie’s and Bonhams hope to follow this performance with their own Hong Kong spring sales next month.

Nicolas Chow, Sotheby’s senior director for China and Southeast Asia describes the market as a one-way elevator going upwards. But as auctioneers lick their lips at the prospect of further jaw-dropping sales, a niggling question lingers: how long can the boom times last? The sums that Chinese collectors are prepared to pay has caused concerns that the market might fall prey to an artificially inflated price war. And there are other factors: Western auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s once dominated the Chinese art auction market, but home-grown auction houses like China Guardian and Beijing’s Poly International are steadily building their market share. Pola Antebi, Christie’s head of Chinese ceramics and works of art, noted that the number of ceramics offered at Christie’s Hong Kong sales has dropped by almost half in recent years. The auction giant now appears unable to access the supply of antiques within China due to export restrictions on Chinese cultural properties acquired from abroad. And while mainland art collectors are keen to repatriate Chinese antiques, this means that fewer pieces are available at auction. While there may be opportunities yet to surface, it sounds like this elevator has a glass ceiling.

Sources

Luxury Insider – 13 Apr 10
Reuters – 13 Apr 10
Wall Street Journal – 8 Apr 10
Bloomberg – 8 Apr 10

Libby Banks
Libby Banks

Associate Editor

Bio Not Found

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