PARIS, Nov. 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite
demonstrations, violent clashes and turbulent elections,
Hong Kong's art market has held up
well and even posted excellent auction results. Last Saturday, 23
November, Christie's finished its session of 20th Century &
Contemporary Art Evening Sale with a total of more than
$136 million. In 2018, the same
session totaled just $52 million.
For the time being, the Art Basel fair is therefore still on for
March 2020. With these latest
results, Hong Kong has shown that
it is still the world's leading marketplace for many of the finest
Asian signatures of 20th century art. However, it also proved
capital for new movement that has become essential to understanding
the evolution of today's Art Market: Hi-Lite.
thierry Ehrmann, Artprice founder and CEO of ArtMarket.com:
"Hong Kong is a bit like
Silicon Valley: a small corner of the world on which all eyes are
fixed! At one and the same time, elections have shaken the city,
Alibaba has accomplished the world's biggest IPO of the year, and a
series of new records have been hammered in its auction rooms. The
Hong Kong art market is promoting
what will perhaps be the first major art movement of the 21st
century: an art advocating greater frivolity in an uninhibitedly
kitsch manner, which Christie's has baptised Hi-Lite."
Hi-Lite: the first major artistic movement of the 21st
century?
Christie's ended its major evening sale with a separate section
dubbed Hi-Lite, and a specific catalogue bringing together
artists, "whose neo-pop aesthetic and connection to commercial
art, cartoons and street culture have gained them a global cult
following. Many of the pieces selected for this sale employ a
similar visual style featuring bold flattened forms, bright colors
and clean lines, referencing images appropriated from popular media
and fashion, music, graffiti and animation."
With only 16 lots, this small sale nevertheless crystallised one
of the main trends driving today's Art Market. The Hi-Lite
movement, like the sale, is based primarily on three core
signatures... three of the most successful artists on the secondary
market: Kaws, Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi
Murakami.
The Christie's catalogue goes on to explain the title chosen by
the auction house: "Hi-Lite: these artists produce work
that is 'lite' - a word that is sometimes used to describe things
that are easy to understand and enjoy, the opposite of heavy. Yet
each of these artists also elevates his medium and subject,
bringing elements of pop, fashion, manga and street culture to a
higher level."
The Hi-Lite session was very successful with all 16 lots
fetching within or above their estimates.
Hong Kong in a positive
spiral
In reality, the Hi-Lite movement goes far beyond the
Christie's session bearing that name. The extraordinary
performances of Liu Ye (1964) and
Ayoko Rokkaku (1982), for example, over the past nine months, are
clearly part of this new dynamic… a dynamic with global momentum,
but in which Hong Kong is playing
a leading role.
As is now customary, Hong
Kong's leading auction houses agreed not to hold their major
sessions simultaneously in the first and the second semester of the
year. In the recent round of sales, Christie's and Phillips waited
until the end of November, whereas Sotheby's, Poly Auction,
China Guardian and Bonhams held
their sales at the beginning of October.
This agreement has clearly benefited the Hong Kong market. The past two months have
seen a large number of auction records hammered for artists from
all periods of creation, from Old Masters to emerging artists.
Top 10 New Artist Records in Hong
Kong during H2 2019
- San Yu – Five Nudes (1950) – $39
million (Christie's)
- Yoshitomo Nara – Knife behind back (2000) – $25 million (Sotheby's)
- Whan-Ki Kim – 05-IV-71 #200 (Universe) (1971) –
$13 million (Christie's)
- Liu Ye – Smoke (2001/02)
– $6.7 million (Sotheby's)
- Huang Daozhonu – Collection of poems (17th c.) –
$5.5 million (Christie's)
- Zheng Wuchang –
Landscapes (1939) – $2.1
million (Sotheby's)
- Eddie Martinez – High flying
bird (2014) – $2 million
(Christie's)
- Li Chen – Dragon riding
Buddha (2001) – $1.4 million
(China Guardian)
- Fei Danxu – Tour of Tao Guang temple (1834) –
$1.3 million (Christie's)
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