hong kong art fair: a feint whiff (of business and ai weiwei)

Judd Tully provided excellent HK art fair coverage for artinfo.com. He noted that In the first few hours of the preview, one dealer sold to a European collector she already knew. Another gallery that featured a Chinese star “fielded significant interest” at $2 million and then sold a print for $15,000. A New York gallery sold Asian art to a US museum and NY collector, well worth the trip, I am sure. But there was an actual sale to an actual Chinese: a watercolor for $5,000. So the good news is that there truly is a burgeoning Asian art scene…if your goods are $5,000 or less. In the coming years though, it seems all but certain the machine will gear up to join the international parade assimilating wave after wave of art. I was surprised Judd didn’t mention Ai Weiwei which must have been like a stale cloud hanging over the fair; or maybe, with business as usual there was nothing more than a feint whiff.