I attended the First Solo Energy Art Painting
Exhibition (in Malaysia),
which was followed by a mini auction of some contemporary art at the One Utama
Shopping Mall this afternoon. There was a small crowd of people there by the
time my parents and I had arrived. The speaker was in the midst of thanking the
artist, Master Roong Huah, for volunteering to donate the proceeds from the
sale of ten of his paintings to charity. We did not manage to stay till the end
of the auction.
However,
attending this event taught me one thing - Auctioning off your items will not necessarily
guarantee you high returns. The estimated price of most of the featured paintings
was approximately US$950. Granted we only managed to stay for the biddings of
two paintings, but we were surprised that the opening and closing bid for them were
significantly lesser than the estimated price.
We
only have a small collection of Chinese paintings, most of which were bought
for their fine workmanship. Over the past few months, I was repeatedly told by
a number of art collectors and dealers that collecting paintings by reputable
artists is a sound investment as they are very much sought after by other
collectors. This was quite evident in the last auction I had attended in April where
paintings by popular Asian artists consistently fetched higher prices than the
lesser known ones. I’ve heard that demand for Malaysian art is slowly gaining
popularity among Malaysians and foreigners alike. I can't help but wonder if this is true. More importantly, has there been any research carried out to verify this claim?
