Comment about Yesterday's New York Time article about Chinese Art

The New York Times reported, yesterday, that the Chinese art markets are down from last year.  They were not sure if they will ever go back up.  What a stupid thing to say.  The article had a negative tone.  However, for one thing, it was in the arts section, not the investment section, and secondly, it put a negative tone on things that are actually positive.
It pointed out, for example, that Charles Saatchi has been a big buyer of Chinese contemporary art, in recent years.  It lamented his holdings, when it should have been keying on the fact that a savvy international art collector has been concentrating on that market.  Moreover, as the Baron de Rothschild said, "when there is blood on the streets that is the time to buy hand over fist."  It also seemed to question the fact that some contemporary Chinese arts have "quickly" been able to enter the million dollar clud for their paintings.  First, of all, we would like to point out that it hasn't been so quick.  To make a short answer long: Impressionism drew on artistic elemnts of oriental art.  Then, in the early 1900's, Chinese art began to participate in the rest of the world's artistic movements in oil painting.  However, with the closing of China, in the mid-1900's, art was discouraged and it could not come out, even if it existed, except in the cases where Chinese artists moved to the West.  Then, China finally opened, again, in the 1980's ... not very long ago.  Chinese contemporary art was only introduced to the Western pulic, in general, through it's inclusion by international art aucion houses, in the late 1980's.  Even today, most people would not even realize that Chinese art has been merged with Wester oil painting art, evn though that iformation is almost 100 years old.  Indeed, although Chinese art has been discovered by savvy art investors for about 20 years, it is still relatively undiscovered, and, still, Chinese artists can already command high dollar amounts for their pantings, even in an undiscovered market.  That just shows how good it really is. 
In our opinion, the Chinese art market is already a good place to invest because of the undervaluation of the Chinese Yuan, in the first place.  What makes it even better is that the market is down from last year, at least in the highly visible, upper end.  Actually, the overall market had been down from a slight bubble for several years.  All in all, those are good things for those of us who want to invest.

 

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