Audience continues to grow despite pandemic
Sotheby's postponed 2020 spring auction is held in July at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. (ZHANG WEI / CHINA NEWS SERVICE)
Interest in contemporary Chinese art and artists has mushroomed globally in recent years, including in Australia.
From local and international exhibitions in galleries and museums to a significant presence in auctions and private markets, the audience for Chinese art in Sydney and across the country continues to grow, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
The billionaire philanthropist Judith Neilson, who has amassed one of the world's biggest collections of Chinese contemporary art, is one of the art scene's leading figures in Australia.
Her White Rabbit Gallery in the inner Sydney suburb of Chippendale, which has just celebrated its 10th anniversary, has become a major draw for art lovers, both locals and foreign visitors.
Over the past 20 years, Neilson has put together a collection of more than 2,500 pieces by some 700 artists.
Her passion for Chinese contemporary art grew from trips to the country in the 1990s with close friend and artist Wang Zhiyuan.
In an interview published in Tatler Hong Kong magazine in June, Neilson said: "I decided to focus on Chinese art because China has the greatest number of practicing artists in history. Therefore, I would see more of the good, bad or ordinary than would be possible anywhere else."
Twenty years ago, contemporary Chinese art barely raised interest among collectors or investors.
Today, artists such as Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaogang, Liu Ye, Zhang Enli, Liang Yuanwei, Hao Liang and Huang Yuxing, to name just a few, are among the most sought-after in the world, including at auctions.
The 2019 Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report said nearly one-fifth of the US$67 billion outlay on art the previous year was spent in China, making it the world's third-largest art market.
Staff members at Sotheby's 2020 spring auction at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre protect themselves with face masks. (ZHANG WEI / CHINA NEWS SERVICE AND WU XIAOCHU / XINHUA)
According to the auction database Artprice, Liu Ye was the bestselling Chinese contemporary artist last year, with a "sold" rate as high as 94 percent.
Artprice said, "Liu Ye's artworks have recently gained greater popularity, thanks to a combination of several factors, including academic recognition, greater visibility and the new success of pop culture."
Arthur de Villepin, who opened a gallery in Hong Kong in March with his father, the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, said the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen major exhibitions and auctions either canceled or postponed this year, has not stopped artists from working, or collectors from buying.
Michele Chan, head of research and specialist in contemporary art at auction house Sotheby's in Hong Kong, said Chinese contemporary art has literally taken the art world by storm.
"It barely existed before 2005 and went through seismic shifts in the following decade," she said, adding that the market is now less speculative, more mature and is welcoming new voices.
"Chinese contemporary art has been accepted as a global genre－people collect not because of the nationality of the artists but because the voices are recognized as good art by established and new collectors," Chan said.
The birth of the genre is widely debated among academics, but most tend to agree its emergence can be traced to the rise of an avant-garde group of artists in the late 1970s and early 1980s known as The Stars.
Founded by Ma Desheng and Huang Rui, the group included some of China's up-and-coming young artists.
Visitors take pictures of works on display before the auction and one held last month. (ZHANG WEI / CHINA NEWS SERVICE AND WU XIAOCHU / XINHUA)
Great change
Olivier Krischer, acting director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said: "It was a time of great change in China. What made The Stars and those who followed exciting was the fact they had no formal training… their work represented a new freedom of expression.
"There was an influx of new cultural ideas, art, music, literature and other things from all over the world. At the same time, young artists were rediscovering parts of Chinese culture."
By the mid-1980s, China's contemporary art scene had become established and artists were starting to make their mark overseas.
According to Krischer, there were "endless debates whether this was a new art movement or not. One school of thought described it as a cultural renaissance. It was a time when Chinese contemporary art was growing in popularity not only at home but overseas, where there was a great deal of interest.
"Many of the rising stars ventured overseas to Europe and North America, while others stayed in China."
Krischer said it was common at the time for a notebook to be kept at exhibitions in China to document people's views.
"Some didn't like the new art form. Others didn't know much about it but thought it was a good idea. Then you had others who liked the idea of artists expressing their emotions and thoughts through art," he said.
In the early days, Hong Kong played a significant part in promoting the new art form to collectors and investors internationally.
One man who had a prominent role was Johnson Chang, credited with turning artists such as Zeng Fanzhi, Wang Guangyi and Fang Lijun into international sensations.
Chang, founder of the Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, has built a formidable collection of Chinese contemporary art.
An oil painting by Liu Ye is dislayed in Hong Kong in July. (ZHANG WEI / CHINA NEWS SERVICE AND WU XIAOCHU / XINHUA)
Krischer said: "Chang's role in Chinese contemporary art should not be understated. He was instrumental in taking it to the world. Chang promoted individuals and their art, rather than groups."
Chang was also behind the Chinese Exhibition at the 1995 Venice Biennale in Italy and the China section of the 22nd International Biennial in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1994.
He has been quoted as saying he did not discover artists but "simply created a stage for them at a time when few spaces were available to them".
This month, Sotheby's sold works from Chang's collection, including icons of Chinese contemporary art such as Zhang Xiaogang, Zeng Fanzhi, Liu Wei, Fang Lijun and Yu Youhan.
The works were included in The First Avant-Garde: Masterworks from the Johnson Chang Collection, part of Sotheby's Contemporary Art Autumn Sales 2020 on Oct 6-7 at the Hong Kong Convention Center.
According to Chan, from Sotheby's, several factors are driving the market for Chinese contemporary art, with perhaps one of the key ones being the rise of "new and cuttingedge private institutions in China, which increases local exposure to homegrown talent".
"Then you have had increased international exposure through auctions, museums and galleries."
Western collectors who normally collect blue-chip Western contemporary art are increasingly paying attention to Chinese contemporary art as a solid category, she said.
The genre has also been helped with the support of local and international galleries, she added, "especially when mega-galleries such as Hauser& Wirth and David Zwirner begin to represent artists like Zeng Fanzhi and Liu Ye".
Chan said another factor has been the rise of young collectors in Asia who "tend to collect across genres".
Passion surrounds opening of gallery in Hong Kong
When Arthur de Villepin decided to open his art gallery in Hong Kong in March, he knew he was taking a gamble.
After all, the city had just gone through a difficult year and the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to take hold.
But De Villepin, the son of the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who co-owns the gallery, was determined to go ahead with the launch.
"No, I have no regrets at all opening when I did," he said.
"I have always found Hong Kong to be a 'feel-good' city and firmly believe it has a bright future."
Arthur de Villepin grew up surrounded by art and artists. His mother is the celebrated sculptor Marie-Laure Viebel de Villepin and his sister, Marie de Villepin, is an established and successful artist.
During his childhood, he was introduced to many leading artists, including Zao Wou-Ki, Anselm Kiefer, Myonghi Kang, Pierre Soulages and Miquel Barcelo, all of whom trained him to see art through the eyes of artists, rather than the market.
This experience had a profound and lasting effect on him, nurturing a passion for collecting based on close friendships with artists.
The launch of the Villepin gallery in Hong Kong was a natural progression for him.
Based in the city for 10 years, Arthur de Villepin cemented many of his earlier artistic contacts, especially with some of China's leading contemporary artists.
"It was only natural we opened by showcasing the work of Zao Wou-Ki," he said.
"He was someone I had known for a long time and his work is greatly admired around the world.
"Despite COVID-19, the public response to the exhibition was better than we anticipated."
Arthur de Villepin passionately believes in Hong Kong's future.
"When I arrived in Hong Kong, I was drawn by its vibrancy and energy … its balance with nature and sense of community. It is a place where you can do a lot of things," he said.
"Despite what some people say, I firmly believe it has a great future as an art center."
He also said the city has to be more than just a bridge for artists to connect China with the rest of the world.
"The art scene here is very vibrant, but Hong Kong needs to look forward. It doesn't have to be a platform just for buying art, but a place where art can be created and a place that brings together different ways of looking at art," he added.
"I think this is the challenge, and to do this will mean bringing innovation and new people forward."
He said exhibiting the works of Zao Wou-Ki not only showed something of the man behind the art but also of someone who had been "a bridge"－born in China and worked in Europe.
Considered one of China's pioneering new-wave artists, Zao once said: "Everybody is bound by a tradition. I am bound by two… a lifetime of experimentation, and negotiation between Chinese and Western artistic traditions."
Working in oils, Chinese ink, lithography, engraving and watercolors, Zao traversed cultural boundaries and created an ever-evolving synthesis of Chinese and Western art.
This is Arthur de Villepin's vision for his gallery in the years ahead.
Chinese works sought by collectors around the world
Art as an investment vehicle is holding its own despite the global pandemic and economic turbulence－at least for those who can afford it.
Samuel Hardwick, co-founding director of Art Works, one of the leading art investment consultancies in the Asia-Pacific region, which is Australian-owned and based in Singapore, said, "Whenever there are economic downturns and the markets are volatile, it's only natural for people to turn their attention to lower-risk tangibles.
"Art has always been considered a safe haven as one of the oldest and most stable asset classes."
During the global financial crisis of 2008, a lot of money went into the art market, in particular the Chinese market, which boomed three years later.
"We are certainly seeing signs of that happening again," Hardwick said.
"What is really encouraging is the growing number of under 40s who are buying－Chinese and foreign."
The Art Market Report 2020 released by Art Basel and UBS earlier this year cites the biggest year-on-year growth rate－19 percent－among buyers below age 40, largely fueled by the rise and rapid growth of online trading.
However, the global art market shrank by 5 percent last year, with a total of US$64.1 billion in sales, according to the report. Chinese contemporary art contributed some US$11.5 billion of that total.
Art Works focuses heavily on Chinese contemporary art, which has seen phenomenal growth over the past 20 years.
Hardwick said: "The reason we focus on Chinese contemporary art is simple. It is the fastest-growing art market in the world. From an almost zero base at the turn of the millennium, it briefly overtook the United Kingdom market in 2017 and was second only to the United States in terms of volume of sales."
Since then, China's contemporary art scene has blossomed, with works by the country's contemporary artists highly valued by collectors.
A prime example of this is Ma Dongmin, who is known for his series of equine paintings.
"We held an exhibition in Singapore with him last year, which was a huge success," Hardwick said.
"While we had traded his works for a couple of years, it was Ma's gold medal at last year's Biennale in Venice that catapulted his value up overnight.
"He went on to see his auction record broken twice－in June (US$332,000) and July (US$368,000)－much to the delight of our clients who invested in his earlier works."
