CCTV9英语新闻：Cui Ruzhuo best-selling artist in 2015

The newly released Hurun Art List for 2016 ranks the 100 Best-Selling Living Chinese Artists by how much their works sold for in 2015. Although China remains the second largest art market in the world, the Hurun list shows 2015 was not a strong year for Chinese artists in general. Zhong Shi joins me now in the studio with more details.

Q1.Zhong Shi, let’s start with the strong performers.

A1. Seventy-two-year-old Cui Ruzhuo once again topped the list.  Last year's sales at public auctions reached 120 million US dollars, up 69% from a year earlier. He painted four of the 10 most expensive Chinese works sold at public auctions in 2015. A familiar but rather surprising name on a related list is Jack Ma, founder of retail giant Alibaba. A painting Ma worked on with renowned artist Zeng Fanzhi ranked No.4 on Hurun's Top 100 Most Expensive Artworks.  It sold for 5.3 million US dollars. Zeng Fanzhi himself sold a total of 16.9 million US dollars last year, down 62%, but enough to put him at the No. 2 spot.

Q2. I understand that total amount sold by the top 100 artists has seen consecutive drops in the last few years. What does that say about the vitality of China’s art market?

A2. You’re right. Total transactions of China’s 100 best-selling living artists have been falling four years in a row. Last year, it was 3.7 billion yuan, down 45% from a year earlier. The threshold to make the list was also down 55% to reach just over 9 million yuan. Despite the drops, the Chinese art auction market remains the world’s second biggest, with 4.9 billion US dollars in total transactions. That’s 30% of the world’s total, just shy of the 38% of the US but well above the 18-and-a-half percent of the UK. Art industry insiders attribute the cooling period to collectors' reluctance to sell amid a slower growing economy. The Chinese art auction market has been lucrative for collectors and investors alike over the past years. Experts say in more mature western markets, art works generally become profitable after going into collection for a good 20, 30 years, with profit margin between 20 and 30%. In China, it’s not unusual for paintings to grow multiple times in value in a mere decade. It has been observed that some collectors were able to buy art at western auction markets and then sell them on the Chinese market for a quick profit.