Word: asianness
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...alone. Auction houses are emerging across the region, capitalizing on the growth of an Asian art industry that is becoming too big for the traditional duopoly of Sotheby's and Christie's to control. The new firms are moving into vacated markets (when Sotheby's shifted its Singapore sale to Hong Kong in the hopes of finding wealthier buyers, Borobudur gladly picked up the slack), or they are targeting new ones. China Guardian, for one, focuses on the Chinese domestic market. Osian's does the same in India. For now, most of the new players are sticking...
...millions being spent on Asian art are a potent lure. In 2004, Christie's grossed $179 million from its Asia-based sales, but took $466 million in 2007 - a jump of almost 160% in just three years. Sotheby's notched up over $345 million last year. Such numbers are being driven not so much by traditional buyers from Europe and the U.S. but by big-spending Chinese and Indian collectors, alongside other wealthy new players, from Russian oil barons to Middle Eastern magnates. They are united in what Jonathan Stone, Hong Kong-based business director of Asian art at Christie...
...Even so, the new Asian auction houses must allay a couple of concerns. The first lies in the area of authentication. Some firms invest heavily in expertise - Bid & Hammer has Sotheby's former head of South Asian art on its staff, as well as a historian. But most of the new firms simply cannot match the seasoned in-house proficiency of Christie's or Sotheby's. Borobudur, for example, refuses to handle Chinese porcelains because, Andreas says, "we don't have the experts...
...artist valuations. The temptation for smaller houses is to cash in on rocketing prices by flooding the market with the work of as many artists, new or old, as the market will bear. But how many of those artists have international staying power? "Globalization has persuaded collectors that local Asian artists will become globally important," says the director of the Singapore Art Museum, Kwok Kian Chow. At the same time, the critical literature with which the long-term importance of those artists may be evaluated is, in many cases, nonexistent. "There is a need for a parallel development of museums...
...other words, the new auction houses face a tough call: they must act with restraint at a time when the Asian art market is at its most inviting. They need, in fact, to learn the haughty connoisseurship of Sotheby's and Christie's. And then, who knows? Maybe one day we'll see the likes of John Andreas in a bespoke suit after...