CKGSB launches new art indices

Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business launched the MM Chinese Art Indices in Beijing on Tuesday and found that artworks by Chinese artists Wu Guanzhong, Zao Wou-ki, and Sanyu are the most sought after.
The indices stand as a biannual reference guide that determines the changing dynamics of the Chinese art market by measuring repeat auction sales. Chinese artworks have strong long-term investment value and are good inflation hedges, the study said.
Launched by CKGSB Professor of Finance Mei Jianping, by measuring prices, sentiment, liquidity, and artists' popularity, the indices offer a scientific and comparable system on which to evaluate investment decisions regarding Chinese art, a black box for many in the art investment world.
The study is based on auction records from major auction houses Sotheby's, Christie's, and Phillips in Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Paris, London and New York, and it used data from the websites of the three major auction houses and artprice.com, an art price database.
The study has analyzed a total of 327 artworks by Chinese artists from the Greater China region and overseas that have been repeatedly put up for auction from 1988 to 2022 and saw an average sale rate of 85 percent.
The price index rose from 1 to 12.8 between 2000 and 2022, a cumulative rise of 11.8 times in 23 years. Yet, the compound annual growth rate plummeted 25 percent during the financial crisis in 2008, the study found.
Meanwhile, the artist popularity index measures the market performance of repeatedly auctioned individual works of selected renowned artists. It has been found that Xu Bing tops the ranking by outperforming the market by an average of 22 percent annually.
zhuwenqian@chinadaily.com.cn