News Home
UK
World
Society
Politics
Business & Money
Science & Technology
Sport
Arts & Entertainment
- Music
- Film & TV
- Art
- Books
- Media
- Performing Arts
Weather

China's art market on the up

Last Modified: 25 May 2007
By: Lindsey Hilsum

Lindsey Hilsum has been exploring galleries and art fairs in Beijing and looks at how the contemporary art market in China is rocketing up.

Fancy an orginal Chinese painting? You had better have deep pockets.

Auction prices for art are rocketing up - and the fastest climber is Chinese contemporary art.

Its value at auction has increased as much as eight-fold in two years.

So now investors and new collectors are piling in, pushing the market up even further.

Those whom geography condemns to war

I was looking for a bargain, blogs Lindsey Hilsum. The price of Chinese art is said to have risen eightfold in the last two years, so surely Beijing's Affordable Art Fair, where everything was under US$1000, was the place.

Cartoon figures, Georgia O'Keeffe-style flowers/genitalia, distorted faces - none of it appealed. Such is the demand for Chinese art that hundreds of would-be artists are churning out paintings, and inevitably, not all of them are good.

The explosion of contemporary art in China reflects the excitement of the age - censorship exists but it's not as harsh as it used to be, and there's space for people to be creative.

- Those whom geography condemns to war