Beijing. For the past two centuries, Chinese art has flowed out of the country, through pillaging by foreign armies, forced sale by impoverished Chinese, not to mention the ongoing activities of tomb raiders and smugglers.
Now, however, the growing strength of the market inside China means that overseas collectors are sending Chinese art and objects back to China, instead of to auction rooms in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Europe or the US. The shift is encouraged by Beijing’s stated policy that Chinese art and antiquities that were legitimately acquired and exported in earlier periods can be brought back for auction, and then re-exported if bought by an overseas buyer. Sellers get the benefit of emerging mainland interest, and established demand from overseas collectors.
A case in point was China Guardian’s sale of pieces from the Jade Studio Collection. It was built up by rich Shanghai aesthete Wong Nanping, who fled to Hong Kong ahead of the 1949 Communist revolution. He moved to the US where he died in 1985. Twenty lots were sold by China Guardian, one of the leading auction houses in the mainland, in Beijing last November.
An album of 10 landscapes painted by Wang Jian in 1668, Landscape in an ancient style fetched 12.65 million Yuan ($1.5 million). A series of flower paintings from 1680 by Yun Shouping went for 6.93 million Yuan ($830,000). Significantly, in both cases the buyers were Chinese from Taiwan or Hong Kong (whose identity was not revealed).
Overseas collectors such as these are coming up against new domestic collectors like Xu Qiming (see above), and this is forcing prices to new highs. In its first sale of the New Year on 16 January, China Guardian sold 47.462 million Yuan ($5.74 million, £3.06 million) of paintings and calligraphy, with some 82% of the lots finding buyers. The paintings were mostly in the traditional style, with the top price, 2.2 million Yuan ($265,800) made for a 1958 work by Pan Tianshou. It featured an evergreen tree and a rock, which was meant to symbolise the 41st anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia.
This followed a four-day marathon sale by China Guardian last November which included classical paintings, calligraphy, modern works in Chinese traditional and Western styles, porcelain, stamps, and bronzes as well as the Wong material mentioned above. It brought a total of 480 million Yuan ($58 million); two lots sold for over 10 million Yuan including the Wang Jian, and Fu Baoshi's Chinese mythology figures, which made 18.7 million Yuan ($2.3million). Six lots sold for over 10 million Yuan.
There is an intriguing footnote to this new auction activity in the mainland. Prominent members of the staff at the Chinese auction houses include children of Communist leaders who were victims of radical Left-wing movements that smashed up many cultural relics. China Guardian’s Miss Wang is daughter of former party chief Zhao Ziyang, put under house arrest for life after he opposed the crackdown on protestors in Tiananmen Square. He died on 16 January. Another auction house, Sungari, is run by Liu Ting, daughter of Liu Shaoqi, a main target of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Art is flowing back to China'