THIS year’s spring auctions, which concluded in June, witnessed a number of Asian and even world record-breaking deals of Western modern and contemporary artworks, indicating the growing international and professional art connoisseurship of domestic buyers.

At major auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the regional art auction hub in Asia, the total sales of Western modern and contemporary artworks in spring auctions surpassed HK$1.68 billion (US$216 million), compared to sales of only HK$500 million for the same period last year, according to statistics from Artron.net. Meanwhile, a total of 20 Western rising artists had they works auctioned at personal record-breaking prices, including the late American Black artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose paintings swept the top three most valuable Western artworks in Asia’s spring auctions.

Besides the Black artists, works by female, ethnic minority and LGBT artists have also become more recognized by Chinese buyers in the spring auctions. In an auction jointly conducted by Phillips Auction and Beijing Poly in June, a pop painting titled “Broom Life” by American female artist Emily Mae Smith was given a starting price of HK$300,000 and was knocked down at a hammer price of HK$10 million after several rounds of fierce bidding, which is 30 times more than the work’s reserve price. The artwork was finally sold for HK$12.35 million including the commission. “Concealment: An Essential Generated by the Lack of Shade” by British black female artist Jadé Fadojutimi was auctioned at a hammer price of HK$5.67 million, breaking the artist’s personal auction record. It was the first time for Fadojutimi’s work to be auctioned in Asia.

Regarding the mainland auctioneers led by China Guardian, Beijing Poly, Yongle Auction, and Holly’s Auction, Western modern and contemporary artworks were also popular among the buyers in the spring auctions with a total turnover of 163 million yuan. At this year’s China Guardian Contemporary Art Night Show held May 20, “Column” by German visual artist Gerhard Richter was sold for 80.5 million yuan, which thus far is the most expensive Western artwork auctioned on Chinese Mainland. Also, British contemporary artist Damien Hirst and German Neo-expressionist Markus Lüpertz set their new auction records with Hirst’s work “Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain” sold for 44.28 million yuan and Lüpertz’s six sculptures sold for 4.14 million yuan, respectively, by mainland auctioneers this spring. What’s more, British Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor, who is also the designer of the Chicago Cloud Gate, held his first exhibition on the Chinese mainland in 2019 and made his debut at mainland auction houses through selling his work “Untitled” for 7.25 million yuan.

According to Xu Wen, founder of the Shenzhen-based KennaXu Gallery, as more currencies and capital have been put into circulation in lights of the quantitative easing policy on U.S. dollars, people are showing more interest in investing in luxury goods and valuable artworks, which greatly boosted the global auction market. Moreover, given that many offline art exhibitions had been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more art enthusiasts are inclined to directly purchase artworks from auctions to satisfy their spiritual needs.

Xu also shed lights on the growing fad of Western modern and contemporary artworks on domestic market. “Chinese collectors are getting younger and showing more avant-garde conneusuirship nowdays,” he said. “As many young people have taken interest in buying Western artworks, they also help the modern and contemporary artists and their works to become more recognizable in domestic markets. Also, there has been a long tradition of collecting classic artworks by Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin and Morandi in China, and many outstanding works by those artists are collected by public galleries and museums. So there are not so many choices for the new collectors to purchase classical works nowadays and modern and contemporary works have become ideal options.”

“I hope that more modern and contemporary artists will be recognized by domestic collectors and more of them will be able to hold exhibitions in China in the future,” said Xu. “I am also pleased to see that more laborious and professional young Chinese collectors active in the domestic market. They are also encouraging the auction houses to introduce more new modern works to satisfy their needs.”

(Wang Haolan)