Brian Boucher speaks to three key players about pdfs, NFTs, and contemporary patronage

Brian Boucher

Greater China collectors fuel a robust and rapidly growing market 

Despite the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2021 there was a dramatic expansion of the art infrastructure in China, according to the&nbsp;<a href="http://artbasel.com/theartmarket">2022 Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report</a>, written by the cultural economist and founder of Arts Economics, Dr. Clare McAndrew.


	Asian collectors have been a crucial part of the region’s powerful showing. As McAndrew found, in 2021 Mainland China had the highest portion of any country (44%) of collectors spending more than $1 million. They helped establish Greater China as the second-largest art market globally after the US in 2021, with sales increasing by just over one-third (35%), reaching $13.4 billion and representing as much as a 20% share of the global market. Fueled by their collecting, at least 25 new auction businesses have been founded in Chinese cities since 2020 and close to 30 new galleries opened in 2021.
Three collectors from Hong Kong and Taipei, all of whom studied in the West and returned (at least part-time) to their home countries, recently talked to Art Basel about their collecting during the pandemic and their outlook for the remainder of 2022. They spoke in the context of global economies buffeted by high inflation, continuing supply-chain disruptions, lockdowns in many major Chinese cities, and the widespread effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.These collectors – Yan Du, of Hong Kong and London; Alan Lo, of Hong Kong; and Matthew Shieh, of Taipei – have been very active during the pandemic, despite the difficulties with traveling to see art and having to buy art sight unseen.Lo, a restaurateur and property investor, is a member of Art Basel’s Global Patrons Council and serves as a member of the Tate Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee as well as on the board of the Hong Kong art nonprofit Para Site, among other organizations. The Hong Kong native returned home after earning a degree in architecture from Princeton in 2003. His collection includes works by artists such as Nadim Abbas, <a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7729/Harold-Ancart">Harold Ancart</a>, <a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6903/Tomoo-Gokita">Tomoo Gokita</a>, <a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7658/Sterling-Ruby">Sterling Ruby</a>, <a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/41994/Liu-Wei">Liu Wei</a>, and <a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8976/Samson-Young">Samson Young</a>, as well as recent acquisitions by Kwesi Botchway, Sarah Cunningham, and Oh de Laval.

‘Things are a bit depressing, so I’m looking for a moment of positivity,’ he says of the ‘colorful’ works he’s collecting at this moment.


	Du featured in the 2021 ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list and has amassed hundreds of works. She has focused to some degree on those by women artists, including&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6938/Louise-Bourgeois">Louise Bourgeois</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/25902/Lee-Krasner">Lee Krasner</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7763/Yayoi-Kusama">Yayoi Kusama</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/20283/Shirin-Neshat">Shirin Neshat</a>. She founded the Asymmetry Art Foundation in 2019, which is, according to its mission statement, ‘dedicated to nurturing curatorial practice and disseminating knowledge about Chinese and Sinophone contemporary art.’


	‘I’ve been quite active [as a collector] in the past two years because I have much more time to concentrate,’ she says, ‘and I have long meetings with gallerists and artists and other people in the industry.’


	Anyway, ‘I’m quite good at collecting via PDF,’ she says. ‘I’m never disappointed when I see the work. It’s exactly what I picked and exactly what I want, even if I didn’t see it in real life.’ She has bought more than 150 works during the pandemic.

Shieh has been serving as a consultant on a collection started by his parents since finishing the art and business program at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London in 2016. Before he took on his role, his parents focused on Taiwanese artists such as Tan Ting-pho, Liao Chi-chun, and Li Yuan-chia.


	‘They were supporting their friends,’ Shieh says. ‘There weren’t advisors or consultants here at the time. The industry wasn’t that developed.’ Since he assumed his position, they have diversified their holdings with more American artists, including&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/24762/Jennifer-Guidi">Jennifer Guidi</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/19717/Alex-Israel">Alex Israel</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7139/Rashid-Johnson">Rashid Johnson</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7658/Sterling-Ruby">Sterling Ruby</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11234/Jonas-Wood">Jonas Wood</a>, with some focus on artists from Los Angeles.


	Shieh acknowledges that his family’s collecting has slowed down during the pandemic.


	‘I prefer seeing work in person before buying it,’ he says, ‘but we couldn’t go to many fairs or galleries or see shows overseas. But that gave me a lot more time to decide which artist fits us better and which speaks to me more.’


	He continues: ‘These two years I bought everything from PDFs. All the works, I only saw them after they landed in Taiwan.’ In most cases he bought works by artists whose oeuvre the family was familiar with, so he more or less knew what he was getting. ‘But with some of the emerging artists it was more like a lottery when the work arrived.

Lo, for his part, has said that he frequently buys at art fairs, since he knows dealers bring their best pieces to these events. ‘For the first time in three years we have gallerists flying in to Art Basel in Hong Kong, which is kind of incredible,’ he says.


	Though he hasn’t traveled for a fair since 2018, Lo says he is ‘definitely very eager to travel again.’


	Du and Lo are both enthusiastic boosters of the Hong Kong scene.


	As the vice chair for acquisitions at M+, Du is particularly proud of the institution, which opened in November 2021. ‘I cried when I saw the collection shows [‘M+ Sigg Collection: From Revolution to Globalisation’ and ‘Things, Spaces, Interactions’, curated by Pi Li and Yokoyama Ikko], because it was the first time I saw such a major show of Chinese contemporary art from the 1970s through the 2020s,’ she says. ‘The artists were doing something really radical, and it was coming from their heart. That really touched me.’


	Lo ticks off some of Hong Kong’s great artistic accomplishments: ‘We have a top-tier international art fair, we’re probably the second-largest auction market after New York, we waited so long and now we have a world-class museum in M+, as well as institutions like the Asia Art Archive and Para Site.’
But while it has a great deal of ‘top-down’ activity, he says, it could use more ‘bottom-up’ initiatives. ‘There is still room to grow in nonprofit spaces and artist-driven spaces, and it would be interesting to see more collector- or patron-driven projects.’ He cites the example of Mimi Brown’s Spring Workshop residency space, which closed in 2018.

All three collectors have watchfully observed the market for NFTs, which exploded to $11.1 billion in 2021, though not all have collected them. Astonishingly, nearly three-quarters of collectors surveyed for the Art Market report had bought art-based NFTs in 2021.

	‘Something important and very interesting is happening, and it’s here to stay,’ Lo says. ‘There’s a lot of crap out there, like anything in the beginning, and it remains to be seen what effect the volatility in the crypto market will have.’ For his part, he’s bought two, both on the primary market, one of them a piece by&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7461/Urs-Fischer">Urs Fischer</a>, from a series released in April via&nbsp;<a href="https://artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1242/Pace-Gallery">Pace Gallery</a>.&nbsp;
Du, Lo, and Shieh express varying levels of confidence about the future of the Asian art market, which is poised to grow due to a meteoric rise in wealth. As McAndrew notes in the The Art Market 2022, China gained billionaires at an even faster pace than the US in 2021, and the growth in millionaires there is expected to surpass 80% by 2025.But Lo has reservations. ‘I feel for the first time that people are actually worried,’ he says, partly because of COVID-19 lockdowns in various Chinese cities. ‘The lockdowns are starting to affect all industries. It’s also becoming very political, and clearly the economy is not the priority for the leadership right now. So much of the art market, not just here but internationally, comes from Mainland China. Something like a third of the market comes from Asia, and at least half of the Asian market is Mainland China.’

Shieh is more bullish: ‘I would quote Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart, after the auction of the collection of Harry and Linda Macklowe, which totaled $922 million. He said, “What else are you going to invest in right now? Art doesn’t evaporate.” I think the market will be strong, even if not as strong as last year since so many crypto billionaires are now millionaires.’Du, too, is more sanguine. ‘There is more and more interest in collecting among people from all different kinds of industries,’ she says. ‘There’s a change in lifestyle in China. [New buyers] know art collecting is serious.’Brian Boucher is a writer and art market commentator based in New York City.

title_style_3

<div>Our art market columnist Brian Boucher investigates</div>

Stories

Years of cultivation gave rise to dramatic growth in China’s art market in 2021. Where is it headed?

<section><div><article><section><div><div>Gallerists and collectors have embraced the online sphere and Post-Internet artists are finally getting their due – but the road to a virtual brave new world remains fraught</div></div> </section></article></div> </section>

Asia in focus: From OVRs to the Metaverse

Download The Art Market 2022, presented by&nbsp;Art Basel and UBS: An annual global art market analysis, authored by Dr. Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics.

Initiatives

The Art Market 2022

Caption for full-bleed images from top to bottom: Details of works by Urs Fischer, Rashid Johnson, and Jennifer Guidi, exhibited by participating galleries at Art Basel fairs.

Brian Boucher speaks to three key players about pdfs, NFTs, and contemporary patronage


Art Collecting

BNM - Banner Module

Text Module

Image Module

Separator line module

H2 - Headline title

Information module

Brian Boucher speaks to three key players about pdfs, NFTs, and contemporary patronage

Welcome,

Discover more related content below: