Since my comment on this article was too long to fit into 1000 characters, and since, as they suggest, in that case, I sent a letter to the editor, and since that never made it into their comments in over a week, I tought that I'd publish it here. The original article is at http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/A+sad+reflection+on+the+art+world/28099

My Comment:

Personally, I think the art press is to blame for much of the current state of the art market. ...

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Art Canton was born just a few years ago after the European partner of Guangzhou International Art Fair threw in the towel. One of the Chinese people who worked for the International Fair left after its change in ownership and established Art Canton.  That person also gained a lease for the building next to the old Canton Trade Fair Center, which had been the home of the Guangzhou International Art Fair and which became the office space for Art ...

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You can read our latest intreview about Chinese art. Sorry, it's in Chinese, and as the magazine does not yet have a website, we scanned the article, which you can download here: article ... << MORE >>

With all of the news about art auctions, one might forget that the major part of the art business is art dealers. You might, at first scoff and say that the major part of the art business is artists, but you would, again, be wrong.  Indeed, even the major art auction houses have recognized this fact and have acquired, through their own envy, art galleries and have also increased their private sale (acting as broker or dealer) ...

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Chinese parents, today, are usually not very happy, if their children want to choose art as a college major and career.  Indeed, many of our staff at the gallery wanted to major in art, but their parents made them major in marketing, finance, accounting, or other majors that the parents thought could be useful in making money in a lifetime career. Others, like several of the artists whose work we include in our gallery, majored ...

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The more famous of contemporary Chinese art seems to be focused on the Cultural Revolution, which is now safely 40 years in China’s past, or on other mundane topics that seem to appeal to a Western audience who is ignorant of the real modern China. Endless series of sullen faces or red faced smiling men seem more appropriate as cartoon series than as fine art.

We look at much more Chinese art than that which ...

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Art.sy was hailed in the international press as the final answer to a real art market, just like stock markets. Of course, as a true investment professional (arbitrageur), I know that there are substantial differences between art markets and traditional investment markets.

I recognize that some art index companies at least to try to make their indexes properly by comparing sales over time, however infrequently they occur, of the same work of art by an artist, as this ... << MORE >>

I have been both amused and appalled to read, lately, in several articles about the art market that art is a liquid asset. This, to me, is simply another attempt by misguided and disingenuous art marketers to convince people that there is a good analogy between investing in art and stocks, bonds, etc.

While there are some analogies between art and other investments, they are not as literal as those art marketers with their new "art investment products" ... << MORE >>

Tang Hai Guo is a younger artists who does figurative portraiture and who has a different take on modern China, not the same old mocking the Cultural Revolution, thirty five years after the fact, like so many contemporary Chinese artists who are promoted by many foreign galleries.

 

 

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We recently added Shen Jian Wei to our list of oil painters represented in the Leona Craig Art Gallery. Although he graduated from the Guangzhou Fine Art Academy in the late 1980's, his full-time painting career only began about six years ago. In those six years, however, he has done some fine and interesting work.

When he graduated, back in the late-1980's, it was not a great time to be ... << MORE >>