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September Grace Mahino

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought much of the global economy to a skidding halt and that goes for the art world, too. This year’s Art Basel Hong Kong was cancelled, part of a sorry trend that has seen the suspension of art fairs, exhibitions and events all over the world. Together these cancellations have left the future of the global art market uncertain.
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Despite its standing as the third biggest market in the world, chances of the Chinese art market’s return to the glory days of 2011 – when it overtook the United States with a US$5.1 billion turnover for fine art and antiques – remain slim. While the Asian giant accounted for 18 per cent of the US$64.1 billion that was spent on art last year, according to the latest Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, there were also decidedly fewer buyers and collectors making bids in Chinese auctions. Political and economic issues, such as the trade war with the US and the Hong Kong protests, have created what Art Economics founder Dr Clare McAndrew described in the report as “a cautious climate for both buyers and sellers”, resulting to a 10 per cent drop in sales in 2019 – a loss for the second consecutive year. Both the US and UK markets also experienced a decline last year.
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Yet appreciation for Chinese art – antiques in particular – continues to rise. The most expensive artwork ever sold by Christie’s in Asia is the 1,000-year-old rare ink painting Wood and Rock by Su Shi, which went for just under US$60 million in 2018. Sotheby’s Asia’s highest-value lot in 2019 was a 300-year-old pouch-shaped Beijing enamelled glass vase, which sold in Hong Kong for US$26.4 million. A more recent piece, Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki’s Juin-Octobre 1985, sold for US$65.2 million at Sotheby’s in 2018, the most expensive work of art to go under the hammer in Hong Kong.
According to Sotheby’s Asia chairman Nicolas Chow, who also serves as the auction house’s international head and chairman for Chinese Works of Art, Chinese art continues to be in high demand among collectors from China, the US and Europe. He points to Sotheby’s US$196 million in aggregate sales for Chinese artworks in 2019 as proof. “Buyers are selective and discerning, but the appetite for top quality, rare and fresh masterpieces continues to be there.”

A rising number of these buyers are millennials. “Our latest Contemporary Art Hong Kong Online sale (held in the first half of April) achieved over HK$10 million (US$1.29 million), and almost 50 per cent of the bidders were aged under 40,” says Chow. Aside from being digitally savvy and accustomed to non-traditional bidding methods, these young buyers also “tend to be more eclectic and diverse, going beyond the status quo and supporting artists that align with their personal tastes and styles”. Both interested in art history and exposed to global contemporary art, they’re as likely to buy a Zhang Daqian as a Zao Wou-Ki.
And for some of them, they’re likely to become major players in the art industry as well.
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Michael Xufu Huang, 26, is an example. In 2014, he co-founded M Woods, a non-profit private art museum in Beijing that is now an international art destination in China. He resigned from the museum five years later to partner with fellow University of Pennsylvania alum and millennial collector Theresa Tse in creating the X Museum, a new Beijing arts space that houses 300 works and 10 galleries. A collector since he was 16, Huang’s collection includes paintings by Nicolas Party, Julie Curtiss and Wang Xiaoqu, and sculptural/installation works by Jesse Darling, Max Hooper Schneider and Pamela Rosenkranz.

The 2020 Art Market Report cites the biggest year-on-year growth rate (19 per cent) among buyers who are under 40 years old, indicating the bigger role millennial collectors are playing in the scene – and a possible lifeline for an unstable art market. “Changes make opportunities. I think this is the time for millennials to demonstrate how we can use some new technologies and ideas to reform the art world,” says Huang.
Going online has been a growing trend for the global art market in the past couple of years, offering lower operating costs and a more flexible business model, especially useful when targeting younger buyers who are digitally savvy.
The Chinese art market has had a head start in this arena. According to the 2016 report from the China Association of Auctioneers, total online auction sales in China generated US$3.2 billion in 2014, a time when online art sales were still nascent.

With the nation as the most tech-adoptive country in the world, the figure comes as no surprise. “According to data, we have more Chinese people visiting our virtual museum than the rest of the world combined”, Huang says.
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For a few years now, Chinese platforms such as Verisart, ePaiLive and Hihey.com have been providing services to new buyers to make online purchases easier and safer. Truly embracing the younger market, WeChat even created the auction group ArtJeff Day and Evening Sale, where buyers can view and bid on contemporary works from Chinese, Japanese, and Western artists through the app; Cifnews reports that ArtJeff’s annual turnover as of 2015 was 10.45 million yuan (US$1.5 million).

Huang clarifies, though, that post-pandemic, X Museum’s digital platform will exist alongside their physical operations: “We are not shifting our focus [to only] online; X Virtual Museum is built as an extension to our physical space.”
With the physical restrictions set by the pandemic, the developing digital trade presents a way forward for Chinese galleries and artists to strengthen their presence among younger buyers and overcome the uncertainty posed by current physical restrictions. “Digitisation of the art market has been in the making for years. Collectors are ready for this type of engagement and transaction”, says Belin. “Online buyers are transacting at higher average lot values as they gain confidence with digital purchases.”
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The upheaval also presents a prime opportunity for the market to be more dynamic. “The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly been challenging for many companies, but it [does not mean] a complete change of direction”, Chow opines. “This unprecedented period is crystallising pre-existing trends and accelerating innovations.”
Business may not be usual for quite a while, but that doesn’t mean everything has to be on ice.
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Pandemic, politics and protests have provoked caution in markets worldwide, but an underlying appetite for Chinese art remains strong and younger buyers are increasingly leading the fray


Pandemic, politics and protests have provoked caution in markets worldwide, but underlying appetite for Chinese remains strong – especially among millennial
