ARTS The crowd in the ballroom of the Kunlun Hotel in Beijing erupted in applause as the hammer went down on Wu Guanzhong’s “Ancient City of Jiaohe”. The occasion was Poly Auction Co’s inaugural evening sale on May 31 when the 1981 painting sold for a record Yn37m (£2.8m).
The room, packed with collectors and buyers, had been growing increasingly animated as bidding drove up the price from its estimate of Yn15m. When the final bid was announced, the crowd seemed to be celebrating not only the record sale but the vibrancy of the Chinese art market as a whole. Poly Auction representatives believe it to be the highest price paid for a work by a living Chinese artist.
The buyer, identified only by his surname, Cai, was from Singapore while 80 per cent of buyers at the sale were Chinese, according to Poly Auction director Li Da.
There were plenty of other high prices that evening. Mao Yan’s “Memory or the Dancing Black Rose” fetched Yn9.1m. Shi Chong’s “Contemporary Scenery” sold for Yn15m. Buyers for both were from mainland China.
The evening sale netted a total of Yn248m. Sixty-five contemporary works were offered for sale and, of these, 48 matched or exceeded their high estimate.
Though some at the auction dismissed the prices as “crazy”, the results were in line with the recent trajectory of the Chinese contemporary art market with prices having risen as much as tenfold over the past year. This jump, however, has led some to speculate that there is a bubble market.
Beijing art dealer Meg Maggio, who also serves as Poly Auction’s foreign adviser, dismisses this idea. “People are reacting because there’s no more bargain shopping in the third world,” she says. “At Poly, who got the highest prices? An 85-year-old man, who has dedicated his life to painting. The living father of Chinese modernism, Wu Guanzhong. If anyone deserves to get these prices, it’s him.”
The success of the sale has bolstered Poly Auction’s already impressive performance history. In November, it set a record price for Chinese contemporary art when “Newly Displaced Population”, a painting by Liu Xiaodong, sold for more than $2.7m.
Though Poly was only founded in 2005, it has clear aspirations to rival the leading international auction houses. “Like world renowned auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s, Poly International Auction is focusing on the quality rather than quantity of our spring auction collection,” a Poly press release says. Even the idea of an evening sale was modelled after western auction companies. Poly is affiliated with Poly Group, a former People’s Liberation Army unit now owned by the state’s cabinet.
At the evening sale, technical glitches revealed Poly’s relative inexperience. Xia Xing’s “Perfume in February” was auctioned twice without explanation. Computer errors caused confusion during bidding more than once. Witnesses said there were too many pieces on sale and criticised the replacement of the auctioneer halfway through the night.
Despite these “teething pains”, as Maggio puts it, Poly has grown exceptionally fast. Armed with capital from Poly Group, the auction house has participated in big international art shows over the past year and also plans to open an office in New York. “Our company’s mission in 2007 is to upgrade our services to meet international standards, as well as extending our market to foreign lands,” a January press release stated.
So far, Poly’s efforts – such as holding preview exhibitions for the spring auction in New York and Hong Kong – have paid off, says Li Da. Compared to Poly’s past auctions, the percentage of foreign buyers at the spring sale increased by 10 per cent.
When asked if Sotheby’s faces competition from Chinese auction houses, Xiaoming Zhang, the head of Sotheby’s Chinese contemporary art department in New York, immediately names Poly. “If you’re looking at their results, they’ve been doing extremely well recently,” she says. Sotheby’s itself opened a Beijing office this spring.
The art market has become unusually prominent in China, experts say, because of the absence of an established museum infrastructure. Most Chinese museums lack high curatorial standards and they rarely stage contemporary art exhibitions.
“Right now there’s a void, so the galleries and the auction companies have naturally filled that void,” says Maggio. “It’s like we’re missing the third point on the triangle.”
Kent Logan, an American collector who owns about 210 pieces of Chinese contemporary art, said the deficiency of important shows, in China and in the west, was Chinese contemporary art’s “Achilles heel.”
“There’s not a good conceptual understanding of what the art’s all about,” says Logan. “Everybody can quote the prices but there’s not a real thorough understanding of why this art is important and where it fits into the total scheme of things.”
But experts point to a number of developments in Beijing as signs of change, including the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, due to open this autumn, the Central Academy of Art’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which is under construction, and the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, which opened last month.
Another project is the Poly Art Museum, operated by Poly Group. The museum, which used to house only antiquities, opened in 1999. The collection is in the process of being moved to New Poly Plaza, where Poly Auction is also located. When the museum reopens this summer, it will occupy three floors, one of which will be devoted to contemporary art.
With new museums opening and more shows of contemporary art being organised, many predict auctions will attract less attention as people look to curators and critics to validate artwork.
“I see a movement starting now, with more spaces for serious art, separate from the commercial sphere,” said Wu Hung, a curator and professor of Chinese art at the University of Chicago. “I think it’s very encouraging.”
Chinese crackers
Poly International Auction, Floor 3, New Poly Plaza, Beijing, tel: +86 10-6408 2277; www.polypm.com.cn/english/english.php
Meg Maggio, Pekin Fine Arts, Beijing, tel: +86 10- 5127 3220; www.pekinfinearts.com
