Chinese Tycoons Push Hong Kong Art-Sale Total to $213 Million

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Christie’s International’s five-day auction in Hong Kong, which ended yesterday, raised an above- estimate HK$1.65 billion ($213 million) as Chinese tycoons battled for the top lots.

The total soared above the London-based auction house’s presale forecast of HK$1 billion as Wang Wei, the wife of Shanghai collector Liu Yiqian, became a focal point, chasing down paintings by artists such as Liu Ye.

Mainland Chinese buyers are taking over from Americans and Europeans at the top end of the multi-billion-dollar Chinese antiques market. Some Western buyers cut back on purchases in the credit crisis. Liu, who made his fortune buying stocks, benefited from China’s government spending program, which kept the economy growing and sent the Shanghai stock-market 80 percent higher this year.

“The Chinese bidders are easy to underestimate because they seem so low-key,” Eric Huang, a Taipei-based art buyer and dealer, said in an interview, “but they are the crouching tigers of the art-auction market with phenomenal buying power.” Huang paid HK$15.8 million for an oil painting by Zao Wou-ki at Sotheby’s October sale in Hong Kong. “Many wealthy Chinese I spoke with say they are buying art to beat inflation,” Huang said.

China’s central bank said last month that the nation’s consumer price index, which measures inflation, will turn positive in the fourth quarter as well as next year.

“With one-of-a-kind artworks, one can keep them for a few years and expect to sell at a much higher price later, so wealthy Chinese like Liu don’t mind paying,” said Huang. Liu declined to comment and Wang said she’s buying “for the love of art.”

Artistic Taste

“I will buy any artwork that I think is good,” Wang said on Dec. 1 at the auction. “I have my own taste in art that’s different than my husband’s. When I see something I like, I will insist that we buy it.”

Wang said they are building a private museum in Shanghai that will open in October. On the 2009 China rich list run by Hurun Report, Liu ranks No. 176, with a net worth of $740 million. Wang wouldn’t say how much she has spent on artworks. They have spent more than 1 billion yuan ($146 million) this year buying art, said Zhao Xu, executive director of Poly International Auction Co., which sold Liu a Ming Dynasty scroll last month for 170 million yuan, the most for a Chinese painting.

With her Louis Vuitton bag, clove-shaped Van Cleef & Arpels necklace and earrings and leopard-print shoes, Wang cut a striking figure at the Dec. 1 jewelry auction when she and Liu offered about HK$70 million for a 5-carat pink diamond. The gem was wrested from them by a rival phone bidder who offered a record per-carat price of HK$83.5 million ($10.8 million). Christie’s declined to confirm that the buyer was also mainland Chinese.

Chinese Buying

The Chinese won 21 percent of lots at Christie’s sale of 2,000 gems, art and antiques this week, compared with last year’s 16 percent, according to the company’s Hong Kong-based spokeswoman Kate Malin. The Chinese bought about half the 11 top lots at this sale, she said. Last year’s sale tallied HK$1.13 billion, missing a presale estimate of HK$1.75 billion.

At Sotheby’s October sale in Hong Kong, Shanghai-based Liu pursued a Qing Dynasty imperial throne with bids of about HK$5 million ($650,000) each until he won the 18th-century, dragon- motif wooden seat for a record HK$85.8 million.

Wine purchases by the Chinese have also risen to 20 percent of lots at this sale compared with last year’s 9.6 percent. Christie’s sold HK$40 million of wine, including a 78- bottle lot of 1999 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, which fetched HK$1.44 million.

Wine, Jewelry

Hong Kong is becoming Christie’s top venue for the finest wines and jewelry. Wines sold in Hong Kong by Christie’s average HK$150,000 per lot, the highest among auction houses in the city and between twice and three times more than at the company’s own London and New York sales, Christie’s said.

Chinese buying is also boosting demand for artworks by established artists. At the Nov. 29 evening sale, a 4-meter abstract painting of falling snow, “Vertige Neigeux” by France-based Chinese artist Chu Teh-Chun (1920- ) fetched a record HK$45.5 million; a 1944 scroll of ink-and-color on paper by Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) called “Landscape Inspired by Dufu’s Poetic Sentiments” fetched an artist record of HK$60 million in the day sale.

While prices of Chinese contemporary art, mainly by artists in their 30s and 40s, still trailed those of older paintings by a wide margin, some are recovering from last year’s lows.

Zeng Fanzhi’s 1994 oil painting, “Untitled (Hospital Series),” the star Chinese contemporary lot at the evening sale that was expected to fetch as much as HK$12 million, sold for HK$19 million. Wang Wei paid HK$7.2 million for Chinese artist Liu Ye’s scarlet-and-pink acrylic-on-canvas work “I Always Wanted to be a Sailor.”