Chinese artists' auction sales in slump

The Chinese art market plummeted last year, with auction sales of living artists' works falling by 45 percent as slowing growth and a corruption crackdown under President Xi Jinping took their toll, a survey said Thursday.

By far the most valuable artist was ink painter Cui Ruzhuo, 72, who is known for his large-scale traditional landscapes, said wealth publisher the Hurun Report, which collated auction results for the 100 most lucrative Chinese artists.

Cui's works fetched $120.4 million, it said, far ahead of second-place oil painter, Zeng Fanzhi, who saw his sales value crash by 62 percent. There were no figures to indicate whether the average price of individual works had decreased.

"A heady mix of the continued anti-corruption campaign, which has put a stop to gifting art to government officers, and a slowdown in the economy have combined to see both sales and the number of top works at auction pretty much halve," said Hurun Report chairman Rupert Hoogewerf.

China surpassed the United States last year to become home to the largest population of billionaires in the world, Hurun said in a previous report - indicating an increase in the pool of potential superwealthy art collectors. The 100 artists' auction sales totaled $56.5 billion.

Only three artists on the list were women. They included Chen Peiqiu, age 94, at No 16. A surprising new entry was Jack Ma, CEO of Internet giant Alibaba, whose inclusion came courtesy of a collaborative painting he executed with Zeng Fanzhi that sold at Sotheby's in Hong Kong for $5.3 million.

Cui was one of just eight artists who saw an increase in sales, with his revenues up 69 percent from 2014. He made headlines last April when an eight-paneled snowy mountainscape of his sold for $30 million at Poly Auction in Hong Kong - the highest ever by a living Asian artist.

Huang Jiannan, a self-taught artist ranked seventh on Hurun's list, saw the auction value of his works drop by 45 percent last year, but he shrugged off the loss.

"These statistics measure the flow of my works in the market - it has nothing to do with me. I don't get the money from these sales directly," he said. Huang's auction sales totaled $13.1 million last year, according to Hurun.

Critics such as Xie Chunyan believe that focusing on auction values is a poor judge of Chinese artists' worth.

"Just because Hoogewerf says he wants to find a common standard to measure things - 1, 2, 3 - it doesn't mean that this is the best method."