Christie’s chairman discusses market for Asian art
Print Edition
AS Chairman of Asian Art for Christie’s, Jonathan Stone oversees the sale and appraisal of Asian art and antiques at auctions and private sales all over the world. He holds an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London and a Master’s degree in History from Peterhouse, Cambridge University.
Shanghai Daily recently spoke with Stone about his work at Christie’s and the growing global interest in Asian art and collectibles.
Q: How does your experience working in East Asia and your understanding of Asian art play into the efforts of your company to act as a bridge between artists and collectors around the world?
A: Increasingly we’re breaking down the silos — the divisions — whether it’s by country, culture, category or age. I believe that’s how collectors are increasingly looking at objects. A long time ago I think people were more narrowly focused in their collecting patterns, but nowadays people do collect much more across categories, different cultures, countries and epochs.
So for example it makes sense to position Korean and Japanese contemporary design alongside Chinese contemporary design.
Meanwhile, I think maybe we shouldn’t be thinking of Western art and Eastern art. It is “world art,” because it doesn’t mean that if you’re Chinese you only buy Chinese art, or if you’re English you only buy English art. People do buy across different categories.
At Christie’s, it remains to be seen what the reaction from the Chinese buyers will be to our effort, but we will continue to develop and introduce new artists although there’s a lot of focus on the great names of art in China.
Q: Your team has been promoting younger Chinese artists via the relatively new “+86 First Open” platform. Are buyers of art also becoming younger?
A: No, clearly in China, as elsewhere, you have collectors across all ranges. I think perhaps in China the average collecting age is a little bit younger although I don’t have any proof of this. It’s great to bring in younger collectors, because first of all it’s exciting to have younger people. And from a business perspective, the younger collector now maybe in 20 years’ time will be an older collector — and perhaps be a bigger client. Frankly if you look in Europe or America, many of the relationships we have with clients go across generations, and I can see this will happen in China, too. I’m sure we will have relationships with our Chinese clients for 20 or 30 years, long after I’ve retired . So we’re planting the seeds which will continue to grow in the future.
And as you know, there are certain restrictions as to what we can sell in Shanghai as a foreign auction house. We can’t sell properties prior to 1949. So we focus on multinational offering from the second half of the 20th century and early 21th century, and we’d like to develop new ideas such as to involve younger artists at Christie’s.
Q: Offering art education to the public must be an integral part of your strategy to engage more clients. You personally have talked about telling the stories behind objects. Why is this philosophy important?
A: The educational process is really important to the business. For me, that’s one of the things we are trying to do with the exhibition of musical instruments in our showroom — offering an educative process to explain why these are creative instruments, why they’ve been recognized as such for hundreds of years and what are their place in the evolutionary culture of art. It’s important because it gives people an intellectual basis for commercial activity.
It’s not purely encouraging people to buy, but it is part of that as well because it supports the business by helping people understand and appreciate the art objects.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
