DALMI-HAM-F2017-04

South Korean Art Auctions and the Rise of Dansaekhwa Art

by Sonia Hernandez, Alex Loughnane, Astha Puri, Christina Shin (2017)

Recent articles cover the rise of Dansaekhwa art starting in 2014 in American auctions, especially at Christie’s New York branch. However, research has yet to analyze the commercial rise in its domestic market in South Korea nor the market itself, which is composed of two auction houses, Seoul Auction and K Auction. Our research focuses on this duopoly in South Korea, Seoul Auction and K Auction, for the period of 2011 through 2016. We examined their online and in-person auction results for this period in order to compare their auction strategies and the commercial growth of Dansaekhwa. However, online auction data was not available for K Auction, and a number of auctions are missing from both houses. From our analysis, we have determined that Seoul Auction is the more traditional of the two houses based on style of art sold and auction platform type. Seoul Auction has a higher amount of traditional artists, such as Sangbom Yi, and thus, also has a larger amount of ink art, the most popular medium for traditional works. Furthermore, Seoul Auction adopted online auctions eight years after K Auction entered the online market, indicating its preference for standard in person auctions. We also found through analyzing the sales from specific artists that the Dansaekhwa movement gained commercial popularity in 2014, which has been maintained in following years. The movement also increased the value of artists like Kim Whanki, who is often credited with inspiring Dansaekhwa art, which shows a general increase in interest for monochrome Korean art. Finally, we observed that online auctions are increasing in popularity in comparison to in person auctions for Seoul Auction. Online auctions not only allow wider access to consumers but also typically involve lower valued art than in-person auctions. It is also important to note that hammer prices of online auctions were not as affected by the rise in popularity of Dansaekhwa that occurred in 2014 onwards due to the style of records sold in the online market.

Keywords: 

South Korea, Seoul, Auction Houses, Dansaekhwa

JEL Classification: 

Z1

 

 

 

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