Just released on March 26, the “Hurun Most Successful Chinese Artists Alive Today 2014” report named three contemporary artists Liu Ye, Zhou Chunya and Zeng Fangzhi out of a top ten which included early modern oils and ink painters. That Zeng Fanzhi made the top of the list was no doubt helped by the sale of “The Last Supper” for US$149m. But behind these heart-stopping figures, lies something more ominous. One of the most interesting finds was the fact that overall sales of living artists have actually declined by half since the peak of the report in 2012. Zhou Chunya, last year’s number one, was down 52% from the previous year. Less than 10 out of the 100 artists saw a growth in turnover, one of the few winners being Liu Ye. The growth in the market for his doll-faced women, rose by 146% all which seems to indicate that the Keynesian beauty pageant factor is in full effect—i.e. don’t pick the woman you personally find beautiful, rather try and guess which one the majority of people will find most alluring, and so on to the nth degree. In this case facile make good financial sense.

For the full report see the Hurun site.

Chinese link http://www.hurun.net/zhcn/NewsShow.aspx?nid=2493