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Most financial consultants wouldn´t advice you to invest in arts and antiques, unless you are familiar with it and you´d only invest a small proportion of your portfolio.
Fine and antique Asian arts are considered as long term investments. And whether or not profits are gained in the long run, is still not garanteed for any objects.
But on the contrary, there are tremendous wins for some Asian art objects. Gilt Buddhist bronzes acquired in the 80ies or 90ies might be sold for prices considerably higher today. Price ranges from ten to sixty thousand Euros for the same object are even possible within one year in two different auctions.
Objects with highly increasing prices are highlights
within masses of collectables and antiques thrown on the market in recent years.
Here are some examples of how art experts and collectors anticipate price developments in order to gain profits from their investments:
- An expert aquires and deepens knowledge about a specific area of expertise. This enables him or her to consider any buying or selling activity on a wider basis of experience and knowledge. He or she can decide about achievable prices for art objects and therefore predict price races in auctions. Such an expert is able to gain profits from his or her advanced knowledge about objects and prices.
- Collectors focus on special groups of objects. It is easy to find any good looking single piece. But it is hard to find a collection of quality objects. Some collectors try to anticipate trends and to be the first one to collect specific groups of objects. In some cases, collectors even publish catalogues about their collection or lend pieces to museums. But beware, defining a new field of collection is a costly process in terms of times and money.
- Another strategy is to collect art objects at a specific quality and price level. This was successfully shown by the British Rail Pension Fund, who reached an average rate of return of 11,8% p.a. in a timespan of 23 years. The investment strategy was defined by a simple rule: Get the very top level objects available on the market – if they are the best today, they will certainly rise in future. But even for small investors, this strategy is fairly attractive: Get the best object, which you can get for the amount of money you´d want to spend.
- Acquire a collection at once. This strategy can be very successful, but it requires patience and market knowledge. The buyer looks for opportunities, in which complete collections are offered at one time, for example at auctions. The normal market reaction would be a selective buying of the best pieces out of the collection. If a buyer acquires every single pieces of the collection, the good quality ones as well as the lower quality ones, an increasing of prices is psychologically stimulated. The fact that the collection was completely sold, will stimulate marked demand. If the same collection is offered again at a later point, maybe in another setting at another place, it will be considered as highly desireable.
- Go with economic development. This simple rule emphasises on the fact, that people from economically rising countries increasingly spend money for their cultural relics. Japan and China are the best examples for this. At times, when Japanese economy was on top, Japanese arts and antiques were sold for considerably high prices all over the world. But since Japan is faced with economic threads, Japanese collectors stopped investing in their art objects. Therefore, prices for Japanese antiques decreased. On the contrary, Chinese art prices increased as much as Chinese economy rose and made more and more people rich, who naturally started to spread their investments.
Pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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In today´s technological environment one easily beliefs business columnists who optimistically promote the predictability of art price developments.
If technology makes arts and antiques finally comparable,
their price developments will be predictable.
Art price databases are generally accepted because of a general believe in technical means. Even in China, a country where reliable common standards often are hardly realized, more and more efforts are made to get reliable data about art sales prices.
Most people believe, that if it is possible to technically analyse stock market developments, the same should be possible with art and antiques. The only thing that is required for technical analysis is comparability of art objects.
So how do you compare antique paintings, porcelains, works of art, jades, bronze sculptures etc. from different regions of Asia and different periods of time?
The answer is obvious: These objects have got to be described in ways, which make them comparable and usable in data bases. Once again, objects from cultural history are going to be pressed into digital data.
When that is done you might have a technical analysis of future price developments of say Kangxi blue and white porcelain bowls, then the world of arts and antiques will be finally interesting for technical money investors.
What happens to commodity markets at the moment will then happen to art objects in general. They will become objects of capital investment. There will certainly be a recognizable impact of technical developments on art prices for Asian antiques. In some regards, this is already observable in the areas of oil paintings and contemporary arts.
Pictures courtesy of Till Spurny.
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Thomas J. Pritzker is Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation. But he and his wife Margot are als passionate collectors of Fine Buddhist art.
Build up an important collection of Himalayan art
(if you belong to the richest people in the USA).
Spending money for charitable organizations like Mr. Pritzker is an exemplary habit in the USA, which should definitely be followed by more people in Europe. But building up a world-renown collection of Asian art is also a great thing to do.
The Pritzkers travelled the Himalayas in the 1970ies. They started buying ancient sculptural art from Kushan, Tibet and Nepal during the journey already. Later, the collectors specialized in early Tibetan Thangkas.
Thomas Pritzker once sayed, that for each piece they are interested in, they will first live with it for a while and let it unfold its charisma. After that they will finaly decide whether to purchase it or not.
One of the most famous exhibits of the Pritzker Collection is a sculpture of the so called “Three Silver Brothers” (height: 71cm).
This is a brass cast work of three Bodhisattvas from Western Tibet dated ca. 1220. This exceptional Bodhisattva triad has been produced around the same time as a life-size Bodhisattva triad at Khojarnath monastery. It is much to be hoped, that Mr. Pritzker will put his collection on display again, hopefully also to be seen in Europe.
Pictures courtesy of Amy Heller.
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“The energy and traffic was considerably greater than 2012, which was already a strong year for us,” said Suneet Kapoor of the Kapoor Galleries in New York. “I noticed some new museums visiting, which have not done so in the past, such as the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Korean National Museum, as well as the regulars such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Newark Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Dallas Museum of Art and some of the University Museums: Lowe Museum at the University of Miami, Smart Museum at University of Chicago, Yale University Art Gallery. We also noticed an uptick in European collectors as well, on the rise over the past two years, reinforcing New York as a premier destination for Asian art.”
Many happy comments from sellers at Asia Week NY 2013
“I had a record-breaking week which surpassed all my expectations,” said Joan B. Mirviss of her eponymous gallery. “The responses from both the museum world and the savvy collectors have been astonishing.”
James Lally of J. J. Lally & Co. in New York said: “Our special exhibition of Song Dynasty Ceramics was very well received… The number of serious collectors and curators and Asian art aficionados passing through our gallery during Asia Week 2013 was significantly higher than last year.”
Erik Schiess of the Portland, Oregon-based Jadestone, reported that he developed new relationships and met new museum clients as well. “We sold most of our top items. Approximately 2/3 of the sales were to mainland Chinese buyers and the rest were to European and American clients.”
“The energy and enthusiasm is more intense than last year,” said Katherine Martin of Scholten Japanese Art in New York. “I had visitors almost non-stop throughout the week.”
“We had an amazing week selling more items this year than ever before,” said Michael C. Hughes from New York.
Brendan Lynch, of the London-based Oliver Forge & Brendan Lynch, reported that a number of institutions bought and reserved Indian miniature paintings, including The British Library, The Art Institute of Chicago, and Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. “We had more curators returning to visit than for the past two years with our private buyers from America and Europe,” said Lynch.
“I was delighted to see hundreds of past, current and future clients, as well as academics and museum curators from all over the country take great interest in the exhibition and catalog.” said Eric Zetterquist of Zetterquist Galleries, in New York.
“The response to my show has been enormous and extremely positive,” said first-time participant Dr. Robert R. Bigler, from Ruschlikon, Switzerland.
“We had one of the best Asia Weeks in years with sales across the board from $7,500 to over $3M,” said Carlton Rochell, whose gallery is based in New York.
“I was very impressed with the energy of this year’s Asia Week New York,” said Carlo Cristi. “There were many more international visitors than in the past.”
Marsha Vargas, of the Xanadu Gallery in San Francisco, was “very pleased with the comments and requests from several museums.”
New York contemporary Chinese painting specialist Martha Sutherland reported that two Hsia I-fu ink monochrome landscapes were sold, “with many other sales from American museums.”
John Siudmak, from London, explained that “this was a very good year, with more museum curators visiting the gallery than in prior seasons.”
Next Asia Week New York will be held March 14 through 22, 2014.
Images courtesy of Marylin White.
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The “face of majesty” or “face of glory” is seen everywhere all around Asia. The “monster mask” might be used as an ornament on antique Chinese bronzes dating back even to the pre-Buddhist dynasties Shang and Zhou. In Chinese art history, it is called taotie-decor or -mask, but it has got an equivalent in the Kirtimukha (Skr.), which derives from ancient Indian history.
Jalandhara demom devoured his own body until only the head remained
Throughout the whole of China, as well as in India and South East Asia, the smiling taotie-mask can be found as guardian of doorways. Also in the Himalayas the monster mask is extensively shown on temple walls, hanging banners, archways and as door handles and knockers.
According to a Hindu legend from the Skandha Purana, Kirtimukha derives from a demon called Jalandhara, who once has been created from the blaze of Shiva´s third eye. The demon devoured his own body until only the head remained.
Shiva named him Kirtimukha and bid him to remain for all eternity as a guardian to the threshold of his door.
Images courtesy of wikimedia commons.
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Chinese art buyers irritate global art markets with easy liquidity and lots of money.
Chinese art investment vs passionate collecting
As market observers point out, Chinese art buyers are not considered as classical passionate collectors in general, but rather as speculative collectors.
Most Chinese art collectors acquire specific knowledge about their favourite areas of collection according to market trends and short term wins.
The dominance of Chinese art and antiques in terms of their high monetarily value is already considered as a market bubble. When it bursts, art market will concentrate on its long term customers and passionate collectors again. Hopefully, the financial damage of a Chinese art investment bubble won´t be too big.
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There is an ongoing discussion among Asian art experts, which emphasises the fact, that faked and reproduced Chinese antiques and porcelains currently appear in large amounts in auction houses globally.
Auction houses act on a caveat emptor principle: Let the buyer beware!
The idea of publishing a kind of a “Fake-Lot-Blacklist” is already being discussed among experts. Such a blacklist would show auction lots offered in different auction houses, which are believed to be fakes.
This would of course help anyone interested or semi-professional collectors, who are threatened to loose money when buying faked art objects. Especially in Chinese antiques such a list would be gratefully welcomed.
But how can it be, that there are so many faked antiques and replicas from China on the auction market, when global art market is getting increasingly transparent.
Shouldn´t globalization and digitalization of the art world automatically help erase such frauds and faked art objects?
Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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Artprice.com together with AMMA (the Art Market Monitor of Artron) publishes a free survey of the Asian and international art market development in 2012. There has been a significant decline in Chinese auction sales in 2012. Auction houses in China have witnessed the end of their golden age due to the erosion of the high-end art market, a significant drop in the number of sales and the downward revision of estimates.
The art market in China in 2012
In 2012, total sales in Chinese auction houses substantially dropped down 37.14% on the year before. Chinese fine art, including fine Chinese painting and calligraphy, oil painting and contemporary art, even dropped down 44.24% on 2011.
AMMA points out, that it sees one of the major reasons for this turn down in a general reluctance to sell among art collectors, greatly reducing the volume of artwork for sale. According to AMMA, one key feature of the 2012 Chinese art auction market has been monotony and a lack of highlights.
Chinese auction houses’ turnover went down especially for the two auction giants in China, Poly International Auction (down 48.39% on 2011) and China Guardian Auctions (down 53.15% on 2011). Beijing´s traditional auction house Hanhai even lost 75.89% of its annual turnover compared to 2011.
Market analysts generally tend to give a posivite interpretation of this development, emphasizing the idea, that this downturn can be regarded as a chance. Artprice.com states, that this period of readjustment in the Chinese art market should be viewed as an opportunity rather than as a setback.
Download or read the full market survey from artprice.com & AMMA (Art Market Monitor of Artron):
The Art Market in 2012
Go to: artprice.com
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The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, USA, doesn´t have the size and publicity like the large museums in New York, London or Paris. But it has got an innovative approach regarding the use of online media in relation to its collection. Like many international art museums, Walters also put its collection data base online and presents the exhibits with pictures and short descriptions.
What are online databases of art museums good for?
On museum´s homepages, you often can search their collections, but there is no possibility to decide about relevance. The general visitor will not be pleased, if searching through thousands of objects and not knowing, which one is interesting, important or relevant for him.
There is a need for relevance definition services for online databases. Museums provide online tours, online curating or specific contextual frameworks to help navigate through their online collections.
The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is forerunning in this field. Even if it doesn´t provide large online stories, audio and video tours, like other museums, it stands out, because it publishes all antique objects under the so called the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License. This means, that images of art objects are allowed to circulate.
Walters Art Museum offers different “ways to browse” their collection, as they call it. You can navigate through objects according to their categories, dates, mediums and so forth, but also filter with “museum locations” or “community”. The latter shows some arrangements from registered users of their website, not unlike lists of favorite exhibits.
All this isn´t really the big solution yet, but these are examples of trying to find new ways of relevance definitions for online art databases.
Of course, there are still further ideas needed, which help to make large collections of antique and modern arts accessible on museum´s internet sites.
Go to: The Walters Art Museum
Images courtesy of The Walters Art Museum.
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The internet in China is stronger restricted than in the Western world. Yet, Chinese art websites are lively and diverse – in some regard they have got an even greater sense of freedom than art websites in Western countries.
But the Chinese internet also allows opportunities for liars and criminals. For internet visitors it is difficult to decide, whether information from Chinese websites is trustworthy or not.
In China, less than 15% of the country´s population enjoys access to the internet. Chinese art websites are generally loaded with information. Some of them offer extensive chatting and exchanging opportunities, which mostly requires registration and user verification.
The designs of Chinese art websites appear to be loud, confusing and need to get used to – at least, if you are used to the clear designs of internet hompages from European und USA galleries. But in a way, Chinese homepages seem to be the livelier ones.
There are very few copyright standards in the Chinese internet. Especially in the field of Chinese art and antiques, it is not possible for website visitors to decide, whether object descriptions and given informations are true or not.
This lack of reliability on Chinese art and antique homepages seems to open Pandora’s box. Chinese auction houses and galleries are invited to advertise with faked hammer prices and sales informations. Informations from Chinese websites are generally treated carefully on the international scene.
Here are some of the biggest art websites in China:
www.gucn.com, www.shyzgw.com, www.cang.com, www.fobao.cn, www.huaboli.com,
www.taaicn.com, www.baxia.com.cn
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China Center NYC announces that it will assist with fostering a cross-continental dialogue and will sponsor the translation of digital Asia Week New York materials into Chinese.
China Center New York’s artistic director, Weng Ling, will join the coterie of Asia Week New York visitors this year, navigating this year’s schedule of top-tier exhibitions, auctions, lectures and special events.
“We are excited to partner with Asia Week New York as it presents the finest in Chinese and Asian art to influential members of the international social, business and creative community,” said Jonathan Heath, chief executive officer, China Center New York.
The importance of Chinese customers on the international Asian art market is still growing in 2013.
For more informations please visit:
China Center New York City
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This year´s spring auction sale in Hongkong is again going to show global luxury market trends. Christie´s Hongkong will conduct a set of high-end auctions in May 2013, which clearly indicates international luxury market development trends.
Art & antiques as high end luxury goods
The signifant composition of Christie´s spring auctions express a strong demand for luxury goods like watches, wines and jewellery in addition to contemporary Asian arts as well as Chinese paintings and antiques.
Christie´s Hongkong spring auction series will take place from 24th to 29th of May 2013. Within the scope of this auction setup, Chinese antiques and works of art as well as ceramics and classical paintings are presented as a special type of luxury goods.
The development trend of the Asian art market towards a luxury market is once more underlined here. A classical collector´s market is transforming into a luxury market.
To read more details, please visit:
Christie´s Hongkong Spring Auctions May 2013
Images courtesy of Christie´s Hongkong.
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Chinese monochrome porcelains are often described as the most beautiful and esthetical group of Chinese ceramics at all.
Form and glaze reproducable
The specific beauty and elegance of monochrome porcelains from China derives from the long history of Chinese porcelain production. In monochromes, the Chinese porcelain makers found a perfect composition of material, form, glaze and colour.
The beauty of these pieces is a result of centuries of experiece in porcelain in China. No wonder, prices for antique monochromes from China continued to rise during the last decade.
But recently, there seems to be a decline on the market, since many of those monochrome porcelains with traditional shapes and forms appear as new productions from Jingdezhen.
The new porcelains do not lack in beauty in esthetics, if made with a certain quality. Why should people buy antique monochromes for thousands of Euros, when new porcelains from China, similar compelling in elegance, are available for much lower prices?
Images courtesy of The Walters Art Museum.
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Ancient Asian art objects are naturally limited by age and history. There are limited resources and limited numbers of objects available in any area of antique Asian art.
But not in antique Chinese jades, as it seems.
Qing dynasty Chinese jade objects, especially white jades, are highly demanded nowadays. Authentic Chinese works of art in jade are currently sold for prices on the rise. But actually, they seem to appear on the market as if it was on demand.
Does anyone care about the fact, that this type of jades belong to the group of easiest reproducable objects in Asian art? Even the most famous auctioneers, galleries and experts can´t simply tell from the naked eye.
How do all these pieces of jade appear on the market, when the large part of good jades have at least been collected in important collections since the 1920ies?
Please take care in that area. And if you like, take an online tour and view some antique Chinese Jades from the collection of the British Museum:
British Museum Chinese Jades online
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Images courtesy of British Museum.
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