Everyone has heard about Chinese products, and everyone knows about the Chinese art of the past. However, what people think they know and reality can be very different. On the products side, life can be treacherous. There are fakes, poor quality, and dishonesty from the start to the finish of your dealings. On the art side, Chinese art has evolved over the last century, and, although the older, more traditional styles of art are still being produced, oil painting, a la the West, has become a major part of Chinese artistic endeavor over the last century, and China has participated in major artistic movements from Impressionism onward.
That is not even the best news. The really good news is that prices of this modern Chinese art, just like the prices of all of the products that the Western World has been buying from China over the last two decades, are relatively inexpensive because of the mispricing of the Chinese Yuan. It is the reason, we figure, that buyers, in London, New York, Hong Kong, and Macau, account for almost half of the monetary value of sales, in the auction markets for Chinese art. In fact, those buyers outside the mainland have another advantage: they know art, and they use it to decorate, to invest in, or just to appreciate. Inside China, the whole idea of home decoration has not yet really caught on. Thus, there is a lack of competition from the mainland in buying art, not only because it is expensive, but also because home decoration, including wall art, sculpture, and even nice rugs for the floors, is not part of the current culture.
My specialty is investing in inefficient market. I worked on Wall Street, managing private money, in arbitrage, in the 1980s and early 1990's. In addition, over the last four decades, I have been involved in art investment, mostly 18th and 19th century American and European antiques and paintings. In the early 1990's, I had a fairly large collection, so I bought an 18th century estate, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and restored it to house the collection. Eventually, we turned the estate into a country inn, Auldridge Mead, which gained international recognition and appeared in major magazines, including Country Living (cover and four pages, inside), Vogue Magazine (cover and inside), Italian Vogue, and Travel & Leisure. It was also included in a book, written in the late 1990's, called "The Best of Everything". Visitors to the inn would comment that it was like being able to stay in a museum because they got to experience fine art and antiques, up close for an extended period of time, not just for an afternoon craning at pieces over the barriers, in an ordinary museum.
Source : Ezinearticles
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