China’s New Cultural Revolution: A Surge in Art Collecting
As auction houses prepare for their fall sales, Chinese collectors are expected to be a major boost for the market, raising their paddles for big-ticket artworks despite a backdrop of global economic turmoil.
With China’s economy booming, art collectors there have become an increasingly powerful force in the market, demonstrating a growing interest in Western as well as Asian art.
At Sotheby’s spring sale, a Chinese buyer bought the evening’s priciest painting — Picasso’s “Femme Lisant (Deux Personnages)†— for $21.3 million. In March, at the auction house Lebarbe, in Toulouse, France, a Chinese buyer set a new French record for Chinese art with a $31 million bid on a scroll painting from the Imperial Palace in Beijing. Last year an anonymous telephone bidder who was believed to be Chinese paid $106.5 million for Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust†at Christie’s, a record for a work of art at auction.
No Comments
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
