The Art Newspaper

“I haven’t stopped and I have no intention of stopping”

With the gallery he founded with his father celebrating its golden anniversary, Giuseppe Eskenazi is at the top of his field and has no plans to slow down

By Charlotte Burns. Market, Issue 217, October 2010
Published online: 29 September 2010

Giuseppe Eskenazi with a Tang dynasty Buddha

Giuseppe Eskenazi is one of the world’s foremost dealers in Chinese art and artefacts. The family business was founded in Milan in 1923, and this year marks the 50th anniversary of the London gallery which Giuseppe, together with his father, founded in 1960. After his father’s death in 1967, Giuseppe took control of the business, and by the mid-1970s Eskenazi Limited was at the very top of the dealer pyramid.

Giuseppe Eskenazi has sold more than 5,000 objects in the last 50 years, and been involved in some of the most important deals. He set a record price for an Asian work of art in 2005 at Christie’s London, when he bought a Yuan Dynasty porcelain jar for £15.7m. In 2007, he bought the late Hellenic/early Roman Imperial bronze figure, Artemis and the Stag, on behalf of a private European collector for $28.6m at Sotheby’s New York—at the time, a world record for a sculpture of any period. A major recent purchase was the £3.4m Qianlong imperial jade water buffalo bought in 2009 at Woolley and Wallis, which established a world record for Chinese jade, as well as for a Chinese object sold at a regional auction house in the UK.

The company has built up an illustrious clientele, including important museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the British Museum and the National Museum in Tokyo, as well as major private clients.

Eskenazi was a founding member of Asia House, London, a non-profit, non-political society to promote understanding of business and cultural interaction between 30 Asian countries and the UK. He has been a member of the Asian Art in London committee since its inception in 1998, and in 2006 was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government for services to the arts.

The Art Newspaper: Why have you been able to stay in business so long when other dealers haven’t?

Giuseppe Eskenazi: I don’t know—a lot of hard work. It is harder now, there is no doubt.

TAN: Why is it harder? Because the market has moved?

GE: Exactly, and not because—as I’ve heard throughout my life—it’s all finished. Everybody complains that we’re not going to find any more. So how come we keep on finding more, and they still have a Picasso that comes and fetches $106m? I think the prices attract objects onto the market. Since the mainland Chinese have shown this great interest in imperial porcelain, some of the best imperial porcelain has appeared on the market.

TAN: How much of that comes down to supply and demand?

GE: Supply and demand doesn’t apply to the market. If there is no supply, demand disappears. In other words a collector who feels he cannot collect in a given field gives up. There is also the reverse—as people stop collecting, suddenly there is more supply. People become aware that there is a market and suddenly they feel it is a good time to sell. When prices dip, people don’t sell. If suddenly prices go down and the $106m Picasso is suddenly fetching $80m, then—if I’m rich enough and I have a folio of these paintings—why should I sell? I don’t need the money. It’s not like a dealer who will buy at one level and sell at the next.

TAN: How have you coped with downturns?

GE: When the Chinese art market collapsed in 1973, we were on the verge of a major catastrophe—we were left with a huge stock, but had no collectors. Prices had gone down, and the stock was unsaleable. The only way to survive was to start buying again at this new, much lower level. I negotiated a loan with the bank, which—miraculously—they accepted, and I put away the stock I couldn’t sell. I started buying at the lower level—the same things, but 50% cheaper, and sold them with a 10% or 20% margin. Over three or four years, the market crept back to the prices I had originally paid so, suddenly, my old stock became saleable, and in fact, because it had been put away for so long, it became fresh. I was very lucky to have bank managers that trusted us. The dip was so severe, I could only start again at the new level.

TAN: So, you basically bought a second stock?

GE: Yes, exactly. But when prices go down, you don’t know how far they’ll go. So it wasn’t a matter of going out and saying: “I’ll buy everything at lower prices.” It was a matter of buying one thing and selling it, then another, and so on. The bank didn’t just say: “Here’s the money, do whatever you want.” They wanted weekly reports.

TAN: How difficult has the recent downturn been?

GE: It hasn’t affected the Chinese art market so much, because of China. Had there been no China as a force, pushing prices up, we would have suffered as much as all the other branches of the art market.

TAN: How else have you had to adapt over the last 50 years?

GE: It changes the whole time. Sometimes you are the principal—you buy and you sell. Sometimes the market is such that you cannot buy and sell, in which case you might act as an agent. You cannot stick to one thing, and say “I won’t participate in fairs” or “I will do only fairs”, or “I won’t buy at auction, I will ignore them.”

The tension between the auction houses and the dealers is quite ridiculous, because we all live in symbiosis. It’s not a parasitic existence. We are all inter-dependent, whether you like it or not. The dealers complain bitterly about the auction’s success and yet when they want to make a lot of money, they put something in auction. The dealers need the auction houses to establish prices in the open market, which helps them sell things. The auctioneers don’t want to have anything to do with the dealers, and yet they go to the dealers looking for inventory to help their auctions. It’s part of the same thing. It’s better to deal in a friendly way and co-exist.

TAN: How has interest in Chinese art and artefacts changed or developed since you began?

GE: There have been tremendous changes. When we first started, there was a very strong English market with several very good collectors—all of whom have disappeared. They have not been replaced. By the mid 1970s most of the great English collections were being sold at auction, and the biggest buyers were Japanese. By the 1980s the Japanese were building private museums and dominating the market. Parallel to that was America, where collectors and museums were competing with the Japanese, but often being out-priced. By the early 1990s, Japan was in trouble and Hong Kong had completely taken over. Today the market has completely changed yet again, and mainland China is the leading force. It has taken them months, or a few years, to achieve the growth that took decades for countries in the west. It’s mind-boggling. There is no reason why, logically, we shouldn’t have thought that one day this would happen, but it was such an austere country 30 years ago.

TAN: To what extent has the growth of the Asian market impacted on the western markets?

GE: Both New York and Hong Kong have grown at the expense of London. Private collectors, unlike dealers, are not prepared to get on a plane and fly for 12 hours to London to look at a pot, buy it and go back. If you can provide that in their own surroundings, at their leisure, where they can come and look with wives or friends then go back to attend the sale, it becomes an event. The moment it became an event, it became very successful.

Hong Kong is a parallel case. Now they outbid everyone. They are prepared to pay higher prices to repatriate their own culture, and there is an enormous amount of money in China. They are keeping a lot of the economy in the west going, particularly in luxury goods. Sooner or later we’re going to see more private museums in China. There are literally hundreds of auction houses. There were none. Who would have thought that Sotheby’s and Christie’s would have had not one, but ten rivals—all in one country?

TAN: What do you think of the record prices recorded by the mainland Chinese auction? Is it sustainable?

GE: How much do we know, really? If you take it at face value, they have obtained some remarkable results. We have purchased, for the first time, something very important at auction in Beijing for over £1m, which could be exported and, within 24 hours, was on its way to us. We would never have dreamt of being able to buy something like that.

It was a ceramic porcelain object which had been in the west 10 years previously. The last owner was a Chinese collector, who decided the best place to sell it was Beijing—not Christie’s or Sotheby’s, not London, New York or Hong Kong, but Beijing with a Beijing auction. Who would have thought that even five years ago, let alone 50.

TAN: What do you think is the long-term future of Hong Kong auctions?

GE: As long as Sotheby’s and Christie’s cannot run their auctions practice in mainland China, Hong Kong will survive. The moment they can, it will be a repetition of what’s happened in the move from London to Hong Kong. That will happen again from Hong Kong to the mainland.

TAN: Do you think Sotheby’s and Christie’s will be able to access the mainland?

GE: As far as having a licence to sell there, so far they have not been able to.

TAN: Do you think that will change?

GE: It depends how the government approaches commerce and economics on a worldwide scale. To be in tandem with the rest of the world, I think they probably will.

TAN: Who are the top Chinese buyers?

GE: They are private buyers. Some of them want to have museums. They are mostly collectors who want to buy Imperial porcelain—works of art and porcelains that come from the Imperial palace, from either the Forbidden City or from the Summer Palace. They are attracted to some earlier porcelains as well but mostly it’s the late 17th to the end of the 18th century—the three emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong. And of course they buy very fine jades.

TAN: Are there still important collections being formed in the west?

GE: There are, but very few and not on that scale. In America and Europe there are one or two collections, but they are reaching an end. As far as a replacement is concerned, the collections that are now being formed in America and Europe, are mostly earlier art—excavated or tomb art.

TAN: Is it true the Chinese collectors don’t buy the grave goods that appeal to western taste?

GE: There’s a kind of stigma attached to taking art out of tombs and bringing it into the house. The Chinese did resist buying earlier art, particularly tomb art, for a long time. Predominantly they still do not, though they do buy Sung ceramics—those produced in the 12th and 13th century, so there’s still a great difference though sooner or later they will be buying right across. They will be buying sculpture as now we see them buying early paintings and late paintings. We’ve seen it in New York where the Chinese hardly ever attended auctions. They started with Hong Kong and soon after a few appeared in London. Now the Chinese auctions in New York are totally dominated by mainland Chinese. They have bought early bronzes, as well as early jades from the Sackler collection. Five years ago there wasn’t a single person from China buying those categories. Particularly when it’s presented to them with a catalogue and a provenance and they see that this comes from an old collection, they feel they should be interested in this, and should take it back.

TAN: And are the expanding middle classes having an impact?

GE: I am not aware of it. Maybe locally, but what we see is the cream of the wealthiest buyers.

TAN: There have been reports that, in the last five years, the Chinese government has allowed Chinese collectors to spend more money abroad to encourage import. Is that something you’ve experienced?

GE: Yes. There were currency restrictions—there was no way of getting money out of the country to buy. But, perhaps to show the rest of the world how modern they are, the government is adapting and changing a lot of the rules to make it easier, and encouraging people to go out and buy, so they are not seen as an exploding developing economy at the expense of the rest of the world.

TAN: And what’s the Chinese attitude to exports?

GE: It’s defined very clearly that legally you cannot export art from before a certain date. You can apply for a permit, but you won’t get it, and the object is for local buyers. But, what we have seen lately—which is quite amazing—is how much is being fed from outside China into these Chinese auctions, because the prices are so good. The very things that are sent to China for sale from abroad can come out again. It’s another proof of how they are adapting to the commercial understanding you would have in the west.

TAN: There have been striking examples recently of Chinese objections to works appearing at auction in the west. How do you interpret that?

GE: It is fairly official. The Chinese feel very strongly about anything that was—we say removed, they say plundered—from the Summer Palace. They feel quite sore, and it’s understandable, but things have been out since 1860. Now that they have reached this economic power, they can just buy the things, and bring them back, which is what they’re trying to do. There was the case with the two bronze heads from the Zodiac fountain [looted from the Summer Palace in 1860] at the Christie’s Yves St Laurent sale. Before the auction I was asked about it by one or two fairly senior staff at Christies, and I thought it was a very bad idea, because it’s like dangling a carrot in front of someone. You can do what you want, of course, but then you have to suffer the consequences. The price is very heavy in that they wanted to ban Christies from going to China or exhibiting in China. But, on the other hand, Christie’s had a job to do and a collection to sell. [The heads were bought by a Chinese buyer who, in a patriotic gesture, refused to pay for them.]

TAN: Do you think the increased tightening of regulations concerning the trading of Chinese art, particularly in the US, threatens the whole market?

GE: Yes, especially in the USA. Two or three years ago they signed this so-called embargo. In my opinion it has affected the American market. American collectors in those fields are far more cautious about what they buy, and far more demanding about provenance. It goes back to the Unesco specification for them to feel absolutely comfortable. Five years ago they didn’t really bother. They just bought what they liked. Certainly fewer earlier Chinese objects which were excavated, objects from tombs, are appearing at auction in New York.

TAN: What will happen to the supply of porcelain? And with supply, with more excavations probably going to happen, it’s not something that will dwindle?

GE: There is an enormous amount still around, which keeps on popping up when you least expect it. There are still large collections in the west which are all going to the Far East to be sold. The second or third generation are more interested in contemporary art.

TAN: There was an announcement that thousands of Chinese museums would be built. Do you see that happening, and where?

GE: I think it might be a slight exaggeration but I don’t tour all the provinces, and there is no doubt that provincial museums are being built. It’s part of education and their culture. They are proudly showing younger people their history—which is something that didn’t happen earlier.

TAN: You have had exhibitions by artists who paint in the classical style. Can you comment on what traditional brushwork means in Chinese culture?

GE: Calligraphy, painting and poetry—it’s the great form. To the Chinese this is far more important than ceramics. Unlike in the west we consider something a copy not a creation, they see it as painting in the same tradition, but the painting is different. It is abstract in a controlled way—the way the ink is applied means something completely different, relating to the control of the brush in the Sung period or the Yuan or Ming period.

We have had two exhibitions of works by very famous Chinese painters, and the first exhibition sold out in one day. We had never had an exhibition that sold out in one day! He had specifically asked us to try and sell everything to English or European collectors and not American or Chinese, because he was already established there. We did his first exhibition in Europe and it worked exactly as he said—the majority of things sold went to European buyers. We were very surprised and then we had another exhibition in New York.

TAN: What is the state of studies in Chinese art? Has scholarship increased?

GE: Immensely, yes. In the early days you could study Chinese history, archaeology or art without any background in Chinese language. Today, you certainly cannot do that. Language skills are encouraged much more, and there are more student exchanges. The systematic excavation, rather than just pilfering of tombs, has brought a lot of knowledge. And we had a lot of very wrong information—wrong on purpose—which was quite criminal. When people were stealing out of tombs in the 1920s and 1930s, even before, a lot of them didn’t want their sources known so they would confuse us by saying it came from a different site. It took a lot of time to unravel.

TAN: What is the status of art fairs?

GE: That is something new again. It creates a market for people who are nervous about walking into an auction house and bidding—they can go and look at something and discuss it with the dealer. I have heard stories where Chinese collectors have asked the price of the entire installation, and bought it as an instant collection.

I’ve never been in a fair, and certainly if I’m going to, then the first time I shall do it in either England or Europe, not in China. I’ve been invited to participate in fairs there entirely at the cost of the fair organisers. But I don’t see the attraction. I suppose commercially it could be very viable, and we might do it one day.

TAN: What can you tell us about Asia Art Week London?

GE: Roger Keverne and I were talking over a casual lunch many years ago about London losing so much of the market, and what we could do to revive it. We thought why not try and organise a fair concentrating on Asian dealers. Then we realised it didn’t make sense—what are we going to do? Take our art and go into a fair? Why don’t we each participate with an event in our own gallery, but all at the same time—and that’s how it started. Now it’s very solid and well-developed to the point where we were copied by watercolour, old master and sculpture dealers. If you can add something like a symposium, a museum exhibition or the auctions, then it’s a kind of jamboree, and people come. It’s been very successful.

TAN: What is the future of the gallery?

GE: I’m 71, and I haven’t stopped working and I have no intention of stopping. My son has been very successful—he’s been here nearly 20 years now. We have a very good team. There are 11 of us here. We have three people who do research, all the catalogues—this is our 75th exhibition. All the catalogues are produced in-house. We have probably one of the largest specialised libraries in private hands with over 15,000 volumes. Everyone here is much younger than me and hopefully they’ll carry on.