China is ‘the world’s largest art marketplace’, according to a study of auction data for the first half of this year conducted by Artprice.com. The report estimates that global sales turnover for the first six months of the year amounted to $6.53bn (approximately £4bn), with China accounting for $2.32bn. This represents an 18% turnover growth for China, while markets in the West have experienced a significant slowdown, with London going down 30% and New York 49% – attributed to the currently low availability of masterpieces. This growth can be partly explained by the strong auction results in Hong Kong, which, the report says, is ‘the only major marketplace in the world that has continued to post market growth (nearly +10%) and it is clearly keeping the Chinese art market alive’.
As for the list of top artists by auction price for this half year, the first five are as follow: Pablo Picasso ($196.4m), Daqian Zhang ($180.8m), Guanzhong Wu ($102.6m), Jean-Michel Basquiat ($101.7m), and Amedeo Modigliani ($83.4m).
29 July 2016.
