Art collectors in China are becoming more prudent, serving as a sign that the country's art sector is already maturing. (Photo : Reuters)
Art collectors in China are becoming wiser according to market insiders, citing the reasonable prices they are paying for the pieces and works they purchase.
Furthermore, industry experts said that this behavior is regarded as a sign of the maturing of the country's art sector.
In a European Fine Art Foundation report, the 51-billion-euro global market for arts comprises 22-percent share of art sales from the Chinese mainland in 2014.
The report also showed that China contributed a huge 30.7 percent, equivalently 7.56 billion euros, to the global auction business.
The top two auction centers in the country are the China Guardian Auctions Co. Ltd. and the Poly International Auction Co. Ltd., with 621 million euros and 908 million euros worth of sales, respectively.
In China, the number of well-off art collectors has been significantly increasing. Among the top 200 collectors in the world, 6 percent came from China, according to a 2014 statistics. The figure is a vital upsurge from the less than 1 percent statistic a decade ago.
Market experts claim that as the country's art sector matures, collectors can have wider choices of pieces following the works of local artists becoming more available.
Kong Dada, Shanghai Cultural Artwork Research Institute's executive head, shared that auctions play a key role in the development of the market in the absence of a well-established gallery distribution system.
"Valuation and pricing of artworks remain issues for investors and collectors. A platform should be established so that professionals in the valuation and appraisal fields can set fair prices," Kong remarked.
For the past decade, China has been opening its art market, inviting more investors to put up exchange hubs catering to regional as well as global transactions. As art exhibits become more common, the market has also been attracting more visitors and buyers.
"I think that in China, we have unprecedented access to a wide range of art, and we can be exposed to various genres. Collecting art can mean spending 100 million yuan on an antique tea cup, or just tens of thousands of yuan on an emerging artist's painting," art collector Song Xiaoshan shared.
