We recently put another comment about overpricing in the Chinese Yixing zisha teapot art market on our Red Hill China blog, which covers general business and investment, in China.  You can find it at http://blog.redhillchina.com/2010/01/02/another-comment-on-overpricing-in-the-chinese-yixing-zisha-teapot-market.aspx . ... << MORE >>

People often like to make mountains out of mole hills.   For example, girls at a hair salon might call themselves color or nail technicians; a janitor may describe himself as being in custodial management or as a maintenance technician.   In China, people like to say that they own or run a factory, even though that factory might be two people with ...

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Last month we attended an art show, in Guangzhou, where we met several new teapot artists whose work we have added to the gallery.  The first is Wu Dong Jun.  We were attracted by a very unusual teapot design of his, titled Mainstay, which won him the creative design award at the 2007 Yixing Pottery Exhibition.  It is a very modern design, like no others we have come across, in our extensive wanderings through the Chinese teapot markets.  It sits atop tall slender legs and has a low-profile body and modernistic handles.  It is also done in chic but simple colors of black and brown; we display it, below:



We looked though his portfolio and decided to add several other uncommon, but more traditional designs, all of which you can find on the Wu Dung Jun Page of the Leona Craig Art Gallery on-line.

The second artist whom we recently added to the gallery is Zheng Qiu Biao.  Zheng, much like many other artists of the past, from Da Vinci to Picasso, is both a painter and a sculptor.  When that is put into a traditional context, in China, it means that he does traditional Chinese watercolor painting and calligraphy and he sculpts Chinese Yixing zish teapot art.  Several of his teapots have been collected by the Chinese Nationality Art Treasures Museum, one of which is an original design, shown, below.  Tha teapot, titled Chinese Culture, has an unusual shape, comes in an uncommon 1500 cc size, and is inscribed with Chinese calligraphy and carvings of a picture of the royal carriage of Qin Shi Wang (Qin Shi Huang) who was responsible for having the terra cotta army built.



Another teapot of his that was also purchased by the museum is inscribed with several hundred Chinese characters from Buddhist sutras.  An important point in all of this is that Zheng, being also an expert at Chinese calligraphy painting, inscribes all of the calligraphy on his teapots, himself.  As we have found out, though our experience in the Chinese teapot markets, although many teapots are decorated with Chinese calligraphy, it is often done by calligraphers, not the teapot artists, themselves.  You can see all of the teapot art of Zheng, included, so far, in the gallery, on the Zheng Qiu Biao Page of the Leona Craig Art Gallery.

Over the past year since we put up the Leona Craig Art Gallery on-line, we have found about a dozen teapot artists and almost 100 pieces of Yixing zisha teapot art that we have seen fit to include in our gallery.

We hope that you enjoy and appreciate all of the Art of Leona Craig Art.

        

I have been in China, now, for five years, and I have been searching the teapot markets for that long, too.  Indeed, the first pieces of art that I bought, here, were teapots.  As we have said in other reports (see, e.g, the In Country Analysis Page of our website), the teapot market has certain advantages over other Chinese art markets, in that teapots are sold by the many tea shops, the fact that they are all made in one area, Yixing, creates economies of scale in marketing, and the art has been further promoted by the government (remember, they have a lot of clout, here) as a truly Chinese art.  Of course, as we have also noted in other reports on the teapot market and the general art market, this skewed promotion has also caused excessive prices by some artists.

At Red Hill Capital and Leona Craig, we are investors and lovers of good art and crafts.  I began collecting art, in 1970, in college, and my initial purchases were ceramic art because it was both beautiful and useful.   I collected 18^th & 19^th century furniture, sculpture and paintings, during my career as an arbitrageur on Wall Street, in the 1980’s.  In the 1990’s, I took my collection of art and antiques, restored an 18^th century estate and created an internationally-acclaimed country inn.  Moreover, having designed and made furniture as a hobby since college, I made folk art and hand-carved and “antiqued” furniture, as a side business at the inn.  The reason that I mention those things is that I want you to understand that I have experience in art, in art markets, and, as an arbitrageur, a sense of internal comparison among art markets and their relationship to other investment markets.

The Chinese, in general, have little or no understanding of art.  Indeed, I have read a number of articles this year, in magazines and newspapers, saying the Chinese people buy art with their ears, not their eyes, that the uneducated nouveau riche Chinese overpay and have no idea if the art is good or bad, unless someone tells them.  I know many Chinese art dealers who admit that they know nothing about art but that it is a good investment and business.  I am not here to criticize.  To me, everyone is my guru because I learn from everyone, and I realize that we are all just different individuals and that good, bad, smart and stupid are all relative terms and depend on the situation.  My purpose is to determine the facts, to look at the causes of the situation, and to figure out if and how to benefit: that is the art of investment.

Up until only about a century ago, art was something that was owned by royalty, their family and friends.  Indeed, much of art, through the ages, has been commissioned by the royalty or other branches of the government.  A century ago, art was commissioned by the royalty and government to make coins, to furnish homes of the wealthy/royal class, to make portraits of family and important scenes.  The common man had no need for art; they could not afford to buy it.  In some cases, through history, owning certain artistic pieces was even prohibited at the threat of death.  In that regard, the general public of the world have had only a century of experience, even much less, if you want the more common man, with the possibility of owning art.  During that same time period, as has been able to change, more into a broader definition of art: some art for art’s sake, not just for practical purposes.  That regression, to being able to simply create, as we did as children, art that we want to create has opened up many new and creative avenues of art, during that time.  It has also opened up some avenues of crap that has been marketed well enough to convince people of artistic genius where it does not exist.

China has been a feudal system, basically, for millennia.  From princes to emperors, there has been a royal ruling class.  There were several decades where the people had democracy, then, they went into a feudal communist system, thereafter.  The people have existed, mostly, in a feudal agrarian society, and that has only been changing for a little more two decades.  If I compare it to the U.S., a half a decade ago, at least, people were concerned about home decoration, not just the rich, but also the relatively poor.  People bought “nice” furniture and that had some sort of framed “paintings” on their walls, and nice rugs on the floors.  Now, there is a growing new rich class, in China, and those are the market for home decoration and art as investment; the idea of home decoration has still not caught on with the billions of Chinese masses.

Art, like the rest of finance, is much about marketing.  Critics and dealers tell us that a painting is brilliant and valuable, just like stock brokers tell us that the price XYZ (never mind the details: you do not need to know anything about the company) is going up, and you will look brilliant and make a killing.  People, especially the new rich, understand that art can be an investment, but they usually have little experience in art, at least that is my observation, confirmed by many others.  Again, there is nothing shameful about not understanding art, just as there is no shame in some people’s lack of understanding of physics or cooking.  However, it does lead to those people overpaying for art, out of  unconcern about the amount of money spent, a need to show off, or because of duplicity on someone else’s part.  In turn, that can lead to distortions, in art markets, schools, styles, or artists.

Arbitrage is about taking advantage of relative differences between markets or investment asset classes.  The price of ABC stock must be correctly relatively priced with that of stock XYZ.  That is accomplished by relative PE (Price-EPS) ratio.  The return in the stock market must be priced correctly with that of the AAA corporate bond market, which must be correctly relatively priced with B-rated bonds and Treasuries.  Price per square inch of Van Gogh must be correctly relatively priced with Damien Hirst.  If prices are not properly relatively priced among all of the possible investments, there is an arbitrage opportunity represented by the inappropriate spread between the markets.

I have been in the arbitrage business for over two decades.  I understood the idea of arbitrage, even from my knowledge of quantum theory where arbitrage has some analogies.  As an arbitrageur, I see opportunities in non-mainstream investment strategies.  As a veteran of investment markets for over three decades, I have seen many irrational situations in markets, including distortions, misalignments, and bubbles, and I have taken advantage of many.

So, a general piece of information that we can take away from the discussion, so far, is that inexperienced people with a lot of money will tend to overpay, at least at times, for art that is heavily marketed to them..  The art markets, in China, are mostly supported, locally, by people with a lot of money or by ruling class people, many of whom know nothing about art except that it is supposed to be a good investment.   Buyers, like that, are susceptible to being told what is good art, and what it is worth.

On the other hand, most of the auction market for Chinese art is outside the country, including Hong Kong, Macau, London, and New York.  However, as the September Christie’s Chinese art and antiques auction showed, uneducated nouveau riche buyers are, now, even phoning in bids to those places from the mainland.  However, many of the sales of art, outside the country, are to people who know art and its proper valuation.  They have a further advantage in their buying, in that the Chinese Yuan is greatly overpriced, and most Chinese artists think in terms of their own local buying power, not the relative valuation of their art, in the world art market.   That is enhanced by the lack of information flow, into the country and because many of those artists cannot read anything but Chinese writing.  Of course, those who do rise to prominence on a larger-than-China art stage tend to command better-aligned prices.  There are even other skews, in the markets, for example, political art from China is appreciated, in the outside world, but not inside.  Artistic teapots are more appreciated, in the West than in China.  Indeed, there are even some crafty Chinese artists who do outrageous works, not always really good, either, that play to those audiences, in the west.

The teapot market has a number of advantages, in its economy of scales in marketing the Yixing name, in its promotion as a true Chinese art, like the older wispy watercolor paintings or calligraphic writing (what other country claims its written words as art?), in claimed tutelage or familial relations with famous teapot artists of the past century, and in purchases of teapots of certain artists by the right people.   A further advantage is that it is easy to keep inventory of small teapot art, in a small tea shop, of which there are many.  On the other hand, there are not many galleries for oil paintings because there is a general lack of local demand for those, it takes much more space to have a painting gallery, and tea shops also sell tea as a major part of supporting their teapot business, while galleries only sell paintings.  Moreover, there is even an additional utilitarian reason for buying a teapot: to make tea.  Those things, combined with lack of interest or understanding of art, have led to distortions within the teapot art market and with misalignments with other art markets.

As arbitrageurs, we do not like to overpay for art or any other investments.  We know that people paid tens of thousands for tulips, in the 1600’s tulip market bubble, and we know that U.S. investors overpaid for dotcom’s and technology stocks, in the 1990’s.  We know that they overpaid for oil a year or so ago.  We know that people are overpaying for some teapots, right now, and undervaluing others.  We also see a lot of people charging way too much for many teapots, in tea shops, teapot markets and galleries, and on-line.  That is why we have been especially careful in building our teapot art gallery over the past few years.   We have selected teapots that are artistic and reasonably priced, and we have tracked down artists who make beautiful and creative teapot art at reasonable relative prices.

There are a number of contemporary teapot artists who have either had famous mentors or are relatives, in one way or another, of famous past artists.  Given all of the government and other support, to begin with, and noting the importance, in China, of guanxi, the Eastern version of the old boy network, many of those artists have managed to raise their prices to relatively unreasonable levels.  Even though they crank out one after another copy of work that is either a copy of teapots by famous artists of the past or their own uncreative works, they sell those overproduced banalities for tens of thousands of dollars.  An original copy of a  teapot by Jiang Rong, a famous artist from the later part of the 20^th century will cost around $10,000 based on artistic quality and scarcity of originals.  A copy of a teapot by her famous father, Jiang Yan Ting, will cost even more.  On the other hand, I can buy a copy of not so bad quality at the teapot markets for several hundred dollars, at most.  I can buy a copy of a copy of a Jiang Rong teapot made by her adopted daughter for around $5,000, or I can buy a copy from another of her not-too-distant relatives for around a thousand..  In this case, I may buy a copy by an anonymous artist, if it is good quality and the price is reasonable, in the range that I mentioned, or I would buy one from the other elative, but not the overpriced one by her daughter: I am not into buying names.  We see similar situations among the members of other teapot dynasties.  We have our own sense of value based on the relativity of all markets, and we do not buy teapots that show no creativity but only have a name brand attached.  It is the same reason that we do not buy the work of painter, Li Zheng Tian, who has produced many copies of the same paintings, like some teapot makers, many of which were finished off by the assistants in his atelier.  We even know that part of the mispricing, in the teapot markets, is because members of the government are overpaying for teapots of “name” artists, just like they over pay for real estate.  We even heard that a dealer got a call from one of those artists who had seen his teapots underpriced on the dealer’s website.  He told him, directly, that certain old boys had paid much higher prices and that he would be in real trouble, if they saw those prices.  That is in addition to buying by uneducated nouveau riche buyers to whom the higher the price, the better, so that =y can brag to their friends.

The lack of art appreciation has pushed down prices of innovative and artists teapot art, while the guanxi-affect has caused overpricing of the other segment.  A collateral affect that we have observed, in the teapot market, is that many other artists are trying to promote their names and connections, which has also lead many teapot dealers to try to raise their general prices, and the market is very distorted, as a result.

At Leona Craig, we have endeavored to seek out creative artistic teapot art and artists, which is an undervalued segment of the market.  We have considered many others for inclusion in our gallery.  Indeed, we continue to search for good art and artists, and we failed, so far, to find reasonable and talented artists who make some of the more classical shapes of teapots (we have found a few who are unreasonable).  We also found other artistic teapots that were over priced.  For example, we found a lovely lotus pad with frogs theme, which has been around for at least a century, but this one showed creativity with one a frog peaking out from in between the top and bottom leaves.  One artist, who makes it and who is part of a teapot making dynasty family, was asking for $5,000, while another, whose mentor sells unmemorable teapots for tens of thousands of dollars, was asking almost $1,000; we felt that both prices, relative to the market, were too high.

All in all, we have searched though thousands of shops and dealers and on-line, and we have made good progress, in the past year.  We now have about seventy different works of teapot art, included in the Leona Craig Gallery, from about a dozen different artists, six whom we have chosen to represent with larger collections of their works.  Lu Wen Xia makes beautiful detailed original teapot art, mostly in the wood and bamboo themes.  Her creations have the look and of natural wood and bamboo, and her work has been collected by the Chinese ministry of culture and other branches of the government, as well as collectors, in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe and the U.S.  Zhu Qiu has chosen to do artistic teapots, even though he knows what the Chinese markets are like, but he has the soul of an artist.  Nevertheless, he has managed to win gold prizes with his work in shows, in East Asian countries.  He has devoted much study to the wood themes, and he manages to make realistic, colorful, and beautifully-textured wood theme teapots, as well as some simpler traditional teapots.  His brother also borrowed an original silkworm teapot by Qing Dynasty artist, Chen Ming Yuan, and Zhu has produced a beautiful and exacting copy of that.  He has also done a number of creative and artistic teapots in other nature themes.  Qian Jian Sheng is a nephew of Jiang Rong who has learned teapot art from his aunt as well as other famous mentors.  His work includes creative and beautiful variations of some classic teapot themes, and coming from a teapot dynasty family, he has access to the very best clay.  Jiang Mei Zhen, whether or not she is related to the late Jiang Rong, makes really beautiful teapots in lotus and leaf themes, in beautiful green clay.  She also makes a silkworm on mulberry leaves teapot after a design by early 20^th century teapot artist, Xie Man Lun, which is quite fun and lovely teapot art.  Our artist Chen Dong Zhu concentrates on variations on a tree stump theme with various creatures on the stump and a thin outer layer of rough brown clay over yellow base clay to give the appearance of bark pealing off a dying tree stump.   The final artist that we have, so far, featured in our gallery is Sun Jin Li, who has created a number of teapots in the shapes of animals and monsters; the work is very creative, and is even already being copied by other artists.  We believe that the art that we are including in our gallery is fine art at reasonable prices.  In fact, when we look at the prices of the same teapot art at other dealers, both on and off line, we find that we offer the same teapot art at prices, sometime, one-fifth other prices.

You can see the collection of Yixing zisha teapot art that we have put together, thus far, at Leona Craig Yixing Zisha Art Gallery on-line at http://www.leonacraig.com/Chinese_Teapots_Intro.htm.  We hope that you appreciate our efforts and that you like the look of our teapot art.  We will continue to search the markets for more teapot art and artists who make beautiful art that also represnts good investment value, so, check back with the gallery from time to time.  You can read more of our analysis of the teapot art market, other Chinese art markets, and other topics in investment and finance on our In-Country Analysis Page at  .

You can also read our other blogs:
http://blog.incountry-china.com - for information about life, culture, language, customs, amd travel, in China.
http://blog.redhillcapitalco.com - for comments and analysis of general finance and investment
© 2009 Red Hill Capital Corporation, Delaware, USA; all rights reserved

        

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The art of making zisha teapots, originated, in Yixing, China, during the Ming Dynasty, over 500 years ago (1368-1644 AD).  Indeed, that first teapot, called the Gong Chun, was very artistic, and is still copied and varied, into the present day.  However, today, true teapot art is not appreciated, in China.  Having only risen from a poor rural society, several decades, ago, the idea or mindset of interior decoration has not yet caught on with most people, in China.  As a result, few people appreciate art, and even fewer understand the concept.  The teapot market, in particular, suffers from this lack of art appreciation.

Even when people have caught on to the idea of art investment, they still usually lack experience with knowing what is good or bad art.  A prominent art dealer, in Beijing, recently said it best: "Chinese people buy art with their ears, not their eyes."  In the teapot market that translates, first, into the amount of effort that has gone into convincing Chinese people that Yixing zisha teapots are a true Chinese art.  Thereafter, people tend to invest large sums of money into  a teapot artist who has a name, for some reason, but produces many copies of standard teapot themes, nothing innovative or creative.  Moreover, those teapots by famous artists command prices that are way out of line with other segments of the teapot and more general art markets, going for $10,000 to $20,000.  The result is that teapot prices are skewed away from really the thoughtful, technically detailed, and artistic end of the teapot market, and that segment of the market contains art that is relatively undervalued. 

To fill in some background (see our website on the In Country Analysis Page for more analysis of the General Art and Teapot Art Markets), Teapot art from Yixing has been marketed by the government and by Yixing.  The teapots are unique because zisha clay comes from only that part of the world.  China (or India, according to the present dispute) discovered tea, and it was the first to make teapots, during the Ming Dynasty, having used ceramic cups to steep it in a few dynasties before.  Thus, it is easy to promote Yixing zisha teapots as a true Chinese art: marketing economies of scale that any teapot maker can lay claim to.  There have been some famous teapot makers over the many years.  Many of the current high-priced masters are either from family or are students of famous teapot makers.  At Leona Craig Art, we simply cannot justify paying up to $20,000 for a close copy of a famous teapot maker of the past.  We invest in art, and we understand that art markets must make sense vis-a-vis one another.

At Leona Craig we appreciate art in all of its different forms.  We have been buying ceramic art for four decades at various places around the world, and we have always bought it for its artist content in addition to its quality and technical execution.  Indeed, we appreciate the execution of those masters who dwell on the traditional or mundane, but we prefer more creative teapot art.  Indeed, we have endeavored to put together a reasonably priced collection of teapots, most of which are artistic or creative variations on standard themes, and we have also focused on finding teapot artists who create true and different art.  We believe that, as time goes on, the more artistic, creative, and relatively scarcely copied teapots will become more prized in the market.

You can see some of the work of the latest teapot artist that we have added to the Leona Craig Art Gallery, Zhu Qiu, on the Zhu Qiu Page of the Leona Craig Yixing Zisha Teapot Art Gallery.

        

At Red Hill Capital, we abhor dishonesty, which includes both lying and cheating.  In China, in all businesses, there are many people who lie and cheat.  In the teapot art market, there are many people who overprice teapots, in the retail and wholesale markets, so, we strive to find artists to deal with, directly, and we keep relationships with wholesalers who are honest, as a means to participate in the inter-dealer markets.  When it comes to artists, there are many who charge unreasonable prices for their work, which, to us, is tantamount to dishonesty.  Moreover, they turn out copy after copy of those overpriced teapots, so there is not even value created by uniqueness or limited edition.  In the end, it is difficult to find artists who are honest, creative and reasonably priced.  As a result, we are constantly searching for new teapot artists to add to our gallery offerings and our collection.

Over time, we have accumulated brochures from many potential artists to consider their art for inclusion, in the Leona Craig Gallery.  In many of those brochures, artists include pictures of themselves with other famous teapot artists, sometimes, their mentors.  Of course, as students of both psychology and of marketing, we understand their motivations, and we would never put them down for simple self-promotion.  However, we have made another discovery, recently, as our collection of such brochures has grown.

As you may or may not know, Jiang Rong was one of the most famous teapot artists of the second half of the twentieth century, and she only recently passed away, in her 80's.  Indeed, she is part of a teapot artist dynasty with her father, Jiang Yan Ting, a famous teapot artist from the earlier part of the century, and with many of her relatives, including her adopted daughter, continuing the family tradition, into today.  In fact, we do talk to some members of the family, and we have included some of their works in our collection and gallery.  Another thing that you should know is that people, even those who simply buy a teapot from a famous artist, like to have their photos take with the artist, which we are sure has happened with Jiang Rong countless times during her lifetime. 

Indeed, now that we have seem so may pictures of Jiang Rong we have noticed that most of the pictures are taken at the same table, in her house, with a settee, in the background with one of her crutches leaning against it.  In fact, what we have discovered, in looking more closely at some of those pictures of contemporary teapot artists, supposedly sitting at the table with her, is that they are, obviously, actually, composite photos in which the artist and, sometimes, even their teapots are photoshopped into the photo with Jiang Rong.

So, as not to be upstaged by dishonest teapots artists, we, too, have photoshopped a picture of me with Jiang Rong, which we show, below.  We did not even take the time to make it perfect, and we purposely chose a photo of me in the wind at the beach, in a standing position, in the bright sunlight to make it even more kitschy.  We cleared the table of the teapots that the teapot artist had photoshopped in, in their photo with Jiang Rong.



As we have said, many times, the Yixing zisha teapot markets are treacherous, and you need someone with integrity, experience, connections, and analytical ability to assist you through its muddied waters.  We, at Red Hill Capital and Leona Craig Art , abhor dishonesty, whether it is in overpricing, in selling fakes, or, simply, in photoshopping relationships.

Special thanks to K. Scott Shay for his assistance with photoshopping our photo.

Craig Mattoli, CEO Red Hill Capital Corporation, Delaware, USA
owner of Leona Craig Art Gallery, Guangzhou, China
© 2009, all rights reserved worldwide

        

In the art business, we have seen a lot of trends, over the years.  Now, that we are in China, dealing in Chinese art, we have noticed some trends, here, one of which is an obsession with paintings of girls.  You might respond that, in portrait painting, there are only two choices, but there are some deeper forces at work.

Having cut itself off from the rest of the world, in the middle of the twentieth century, China is playing catch up, economically, technologically, socially, and in fashion and home decoration, for the past two decades.  Living here, observing, listening, and conversing, we have discovered a number of things.

Not only did China miss out on the cultural and sexual revolutions that took place, in the West in the late 1960’s to early 1970’s, but women were, actually, encouraged to not be feminine, during Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution, which took place around the same time.  While girls, in the West, were wearing makeup and miniskirts and developing feminine walks, females, in China, were wearing short hair and clothing that deemphasized their curves and were taught to walk with heads hug down to further hide their femininity.

Thus, while other fads and trends entered the cultures of the rest of the world, China was kept in the dark for around four decades and only began to get a glimpse of what had happened in the rest of the world, beginning in the late 1980’s.  Since then, it has been playing catch up, and even that has been slowed down due to a lack of information flow into the country.   The internet has helped, but most Chinese are still cut off because they cannot read the European alphabet, and there is a lot of unreal stuff on the internet, in China, anyway.

I grew up with older sisters and a lot of girl cousins, and, as a result, I guess, I have had an easy time talking to girls.  I have always treated girls as people, rather than looking at them as sex objects, and girls react by treating me as a friend and someone they can talk to about anything.  Indeed, most of my friends over the past several decades have been female.  I have been teaching at an expensive university, in China for the last five years, so I meet girls from the wealthier class, but I am also friendly with the local village workers who work at the school, and I have spent time in villages, larger towns that seldom see foreigners or things Western, and I live in Guangzhou, which is near Hong Kong and is in the heart of the area that is responsible for producing many of the products exported to the West.  From what I can see and have observed, since China opened up, in the late 1980’s, it has started around where it was stopped, around mid-twentieth century.   Moreover, the lag in catch up with revolutions in fashion, morals, and other trends has been further prolonged because many Chinese have been raised, mostly, by their grandparents because many Chinese move in with their parents when they get married, and the grandparents do most of the rearing.

I am a student of everything, having been trained as a physicist for eight years, I am constantly looking to see what makes things, and people, tick, and I have made a number of conclusions and conjectures based on what I have observed and have been heard or have been told by Chinese and expatriate males and females of various ages from college age on up.  To begin with, many girls talk of themselves as “traditional”, which is the equivalent of “old fashioned” or “good girls”, in the U.S., in the 1960’s to early 1970’s.  Girls who are more “loose” are referred to as “open”, sometimes, even for just holding hands with a guy in public.  College girls have told me that it is ok to make love with a boy, if she is “in love”.  A Girl who was just out of college told me that her mother had a boy expelled from middle school because he passed her a note in class, in the late 1990’s.  In contrast, we passed each other love notes in grade school, and by the time we got to middle school, we gave rings to girls and “went steady”.  I have been told by others that girls were not even allowed to wear makeup or high heels, in college, when she attended college in the early 2000’s.

In contrast, in my mother’s generation, towards the end of the first half of the twentieth century, in the U.S., girls and women wore lipstick, but other make, like eye shadow, were considered floozy, and high heels were a must.  When I was in grade school, little girls, in my neighborhood, played dress up, wearing their mother’s high heels and maybe a little smeared on lipstick.  When my sisters were in junior and senior high school, makeup was becoming “in”, and by the time I got to junior high school, in the mid-1960’s, almost all of the girls wore makeup.  The mod era was taking off, in England, and white lipstick, false eyelashes, and dark eye shadow were in: the “slutier”, the better.  By the time I got to college, it was free love and the hippie era, and, in my first year of college, after making love with a hippie girl, in the cow pastures at Penn State, and blurting out “I love you” (as a result of conditioning with the high school girlfriend I left behind), in the middle of it, she left and never wanted to see me again.

Back to China.  Many college age girls have little experience with both high heels and makeup.  It takes practice from those early years of playing dress up to really get the hang of it, at least, from what I have observed.  When I lived on Christopher Street, which was in the heart of the gay area, in New York City, in the 1980’s, I could pick out the best of the drag queens, who would parade through my neighborhood, by the way that they walked and carried themselves, in high heels.  Even today, in a large and more advanced city, like Guangzhou, there are not many girls or women who wear make up: it is just beginning to catch on as a fashion trend.  Moreover, I hear from men, women, boys and girls, alike, that Chinese men do not like to see their women or any women wearing makeup: the males tend to think that it is slutty.

So, lets take a closer look at those male attitudes.  Back in the early 1960’s, in the U.S., guys wanted to find a “good girl”, who was a virgin, to marry.  That seems to be the attitude of men, at least as young as late-twenties and up, here, in China, today.  I have even heard of girls who have had hymen reconstruction after having been a little looser and played around but were starting to think about marriage.  My assistant and her sister like to wear makeup, now, that they have discovered it when they were in their twenties, but they cannot wear it when they go home to visit their father, who is a successful merchant, in Shenzhen where they grew up: a progressive boom town, more open to influence by things Western since it is right next to Hong Kong.  My observation about the general reaction to this social-norm-behavioral structure, imposed by grandparents, parents and the man-boys that they are looking to marry, is that a more common style is to dress, look and act cutesey: no makeup and demure little-girlish clothing.  On the other hand, when my assistant or other girls with whom I am friends wear a denim miniskirt or makeup or a slightly low cut top, although not even like the amount of makeup or sexiness of dress that I have been used to since the early 1970's, Chinese men of all ages will oggle them; some will even assume that they are hookers.

Moreover, over the past several decades, male and female have lived separated existences, while growing up.  In the generation of little grade school kids playing around my building, there is some mixing of playmates.  As some of our previous anecdotes suggest, that has not been the case, even with much of those who are college age, now.  When I go to a party, in the West, there is a lot of mixing, but when I go to a party, here, males and females are usually separated.  I even went to weddings where I was seated at one of the men’s tables, whereas, in the West, I would be seated with men and women, usually, purposely, next to a female.  That, too, has contributed to the Chinese male mentality.  In fact, much like wealthier European men of the middle of the twentieth century, many wealthier Chinese men also have mistresses who live as kept women in pied-a-terre's: my neighborhood is full of them.

Since art is a reflection of the society, in many ways, portraits of girls and women is a large part of the art that we see, in China, today.  You might respond that there are only two choices for subjects of paintings: male or female, but what we do see is heavily weighted towards the feminine.   We see, in the press and in email from artists who want to be included in our gallery, Betty-Boop-type paintings of girls or women with long false eyelashes and brashly-colored lipstick on exaggerated lips.  From others we see portrait after portrait of nudes.  A number of the artists whom we have included, in our gallery, also, paint portraits of females, in a number of different styles and settings, and for a number of reasons.  Da Zhong Zhang (Zhang Da Zhong), for example, has done his Red Guard Girl series in reaction to the way that women were told to be during the cultural revolution: his sister and his friend were real Red Guard girls.  Certainly, he does use beautiful models for his paintings because he knows men will like that, and he tends to pose them in situations and poses that he thinks will be attractive to Chinese men: little girlish.  Of course, his paintings have political undertones and stories, but mostly, Chinese men buy the paintings because of the cutesy girls, not because of the meaning, which they would never even guess.  Foreign buyers, while certainly also drawn in by the pretty face, also, buy because of the story, too.  Yi Xing Ma (Ma Yi Xing) includes both a horse and a beautiful woman in many of his paintings: the horse, because he feels that men, like horses, are controlled; a beautiful woman, because at least his mind is his own, and he can dream of whatever he pleases, so, it might as well include dreams of beautiful women.  The theme of the horse is lost on most people (who might just assume that it is because his last name, Ma, means horse), while the beautiful girl sells the painting.  Ri Dong Ou (Ou Ri Dong) has painted a number of paintings of Hillary Clinton, just like Warhol painted Marilyn Monroe: blonds are not common, in China.  He also has painted pretty young women as military commandos: lipstick and a rifle are part of their arsenal of weapons.  Jin Ming Lee (Li Jin Ming) has done a number of portraits of minority girls from China, like the Zang, the Yi, and the Miao, all of whom just happen to be very pretty, too.  He also likes to paint portraits of “traditional” girls, complete with bandanas on their heads, like Audrey Hepburn might have worn in a movie from the early 1960’s.  Again, although their paintings have additional appeal for non-Chinese buyers, they know exactly what they are doing when they use the faces of beautiful Chinese girls, in all of those portraits.  Most of those artists also have a nude or three in their inventories, also, to appeal to the libido of Chinese men, who are the major buyers of their works.  Indeed, Feng Wu Sui (Sui Feng Wu) does his more serious portraits, using the faces of men, while all of the female paintings that we have seen from him are, exclusively, nudes.  We always say, in the U.S., that sex sells.  Here, in China, it is the same, although the avenue is usually more subliminal.

Of course, we like the paintings of those artists for their additional subsurface appeal, although we do also appreciate a beautiful girl, as we appreciate beauty in anything.  We also appreciate a well-done nude.  Indeed, we appreciate the other Chinese girls that other of our artists have portrayed.  Jian Bai Xu (Xu Jain Bai), an artist from the earlier days of late-impressionism in Chinese art has done some wonderful portraits of women, in the honest revealing style of other impressionists, like Van Gogh.  Her portrait of a simple fishmonger from the 1950’s is one of her masterpieces.  Xin Ming Xuan (Xuan Xin Ming), too, has done both portraits and nudes of real women, as they are, not as some beautiful perfect vision of fantasy.  Dapu (Zhang Ai Min) has done some wonderful portraits of the real women of Xinjiang, in China’s western desert, and from the Tibetan plateau, one of which has been chosen for inclusion in a book celebrating the 60^th anniversary of the Peoples Republic of China, in art.  Those kind of portraits have appeal more for the serious collector or aficionado of art, not for the locals with a little extra money looking to invest in art and choosing nothing but portraits of pretty girls.

In the end, though, whatever the motivations, we have sold dozens of portraits of beautiful Chinese girls, over the last several months, as the art market has been emerging from the doldrums.  In fact, they represent the bulk of our sales, in number of paintings sold, during the period.  So, it seems that Chinese girls are very popular with buyers from both China and from the West.  They have been popular with me for many reasons for much longer than that.

    

   

   

We have included some of the various paintings of Chinese girls, currently available in the Leona Craig Art Gallery.  To see more, you can use this link to go to the By Artist Page of our website and do some further exploration of portraits of Chinese girls and other works by the artists mentioned in this article: http://www.leonacraig.com/Wall_Art_intro.htm 

© 2009 Red Hill Capital Corporation, Delaware, USA, owner of Leona Craig Art, Guangzhou, China.  All worldwide rights reserved.

        

While some news reports have focused on the fact that the total value of the recent June 2009 evening sales of Impressionist & Modern art was about one-third the value of the same sales, last year, we think that it is more informative to look inside the sales data.  First of all, art auctions are about what is offered for sale: no more can be sold than is offered, and, therefore, the sales, first, reflect that only one third the value of art was offered for sale at these auctions, this year versus last.  Moreover, auctions are a specialty end of the market: wholesale-institutional.  An appropriate analogy is in the markets for money, in which retail markets are for the average person, while the wholesale markets involve packages with minimums in the $20 million plus range.  Another analogy is the real estate markets: you can sell a house by calling a real estate agent and listing your house, or you can sell it at auction.  If you use the latter route, you will likely get a higher price, but it may take a year to sell.  On the other hand, if you sell at auction, you will sell (provided that you do not put too high a limit on the sale) on the auction date.  In the world of high priced art, in the range of $10 to $100 million, it may be impractical to try to sell art, in a gallery: auction might be the only practical venue for sale.

In looking at the gross results, it is easy to understand that people might want to offer pricey works for sale in a hot market, just as professionals, in securities would be sellers going into a peak of a bull stock market, which is what seems to be the case in the 2008 Impressionist and Modern Art London June evening auction sales at both Christies and Sotheby’s.  At Christies, the most expensive piece had a price tag of $80 million; several other of the 56 lots were in the $10 million range; and eight world auction record sale prices were achieved for a number of artists.

In the 2009 Christie’s auction, the high offering was only $10 million.  That lot was a Monet, Au Parc Monceau, which had sold only one other time at auction, in 2001.  The price, realized at this year’s auction, represented a compound annual return on investment of about 7%.  More encouraging was the sale of the second most expensive piece, L’Homme et Epee by Picasso, which sold for over $9 million, and represented a compound annual return on investment of 21% over its four year holding period since 2005.  At Sotheby’s, results were similar.  Another L’Homme a l’Epee by Picasso brought the high price, over $11 million, followed by another Picasso and a Monet, which brought prices of around $7 million.  At both auction houses, sell trough rates were around 90%.

Thus, while we have seen news reports lamenting the results, we believe that they have missed the point.  There was no panic dumping of art but only selected sales at a rate that comports with a recovering market. In addition, the price ranges of the works were not in the gargantuan range of some of those offered a year earlier.  Thus, the dollar volume was necessarily lower than a year ago around a market peak.  However, the prices achieved were respectable and represented, not losses, but reasonable returns on investment.  We believe that, all in all, these results add to other confirmation that the art market is making a good recovery.

        

Art Basel 40 http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31464 ...<< MORE >>

Recently, someone wrote that the Chinese Yuan will become a reserve currency and boost the value of Chinese art.  When publicized, we immediately commented to those who marketed it that it was misguided advice.  We, at Red Hill Capital, In Country China, and Leona Craig Art, have always advised that the Yuan will eventually appreciate, and that, combined with the undeveloped domestic market for art and art collectors, will eventually translate into extra profits, in Chinese art.  However, the suggestion that the Yuan will become a special international reserve currency is pure folly, at least in any of our lifetimes.  ...<< MORE >>