J.J. Lally on the Meteoric Rise of China’s Art Market & the Scholar-Painters of the Song, Ming & Qing Dynasties

The sudden and rapid change in the Chinese market is clearly the result of historic changes in mainland China. When the country’s premier Deng Xiaoping declared “to be rich is glorious” in the early 1980s and began the reversal of the Communist economic and social policies that had banned normal artistic and collecting activity in China, the revival and growth of the art market came faster and stronger than anyone could have predicted. Chinese art now produces the largest sales volume of any category of art in the world, and the volume still continues to grow. Not only has the Chinese art market changed dramatically in the last 40 years; curators and collectors have also changed their methods and developed new attitudes.

What impresses me most about this rapid international growth of the Chinese art market is the expanding list of categories being explored, studied, and pursued, creating new knowledge and opportunities. A good example is the category known as “Art from the Scholar’s Studio,” which refers to the items used and collected by sophisticated scholar-painters in the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties: inkstones, seals, brush rests, incense burners, brush pots, cabinets, boxes, strange rocks, soapstone carvings etc. All of these kinds of items were not studied or pursued, and were little understood in the international market 40 years ago. In “Chinese Art from the Scholar’s Studio” at J.J. Lally & Co., highlights will include a large cast silver seal surmounted by a seated tiger from the early Kangxi period, inscribed and dated 1686; a Ming dynasty gold-splashed bronze censer from the 17th century; and a very rare and impressive cast iron panel, with a figure of the demonic deity Kui Xing, known in China as the guardian of scholars.