Asians, Europeans seek bargains at Tokyo art fairs

By Sophie Hardach

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Asian and European art buyers raided Tokyo's art fairs this week, snapping up affordable works by emerging artists as well as more mature pieces, and taking advantage of relatively low prices in Japan.

101Tokyo, launched as a satellite fair to the larger Art Fair Tokyo, officially opened on Thursday, but visitors hoping for a bargain found that many of the works had already been sold at a preview the day before.

Japan's tepid domestic art market and weak yen mean that prices are lower than in Europe -- and rock-bottom compared with hot markets such as China, which makes it particularly attractive for Asian art fans.

"Taiwanese, Chinese, Koreans, definitely, there were a lot of them last night," Julia Barnes, one of the producers of 101Tokyo, told Reuters. "They are really interested in Japanese art because they know the price."

By Thursday, buyers had grabbed almost all of Yoshitaka Amano's sleek and sparkly acrylic-on-aluminum cartoons, described as "outstanding" by Fumio Nanjo, the director of Tokyo's influential Mori Art Museum.

Amano, a Japanese artist, started out producing "manga" comic books. His smaller 50cmx50cm panels depicting cartoon characters sold for 1 million yen ($9,780), less than what they fetch in Europe.

"Festival", an abstract oil-on-canvas painting by Kazuyuki Takezaki, and "Life" by a 21-year-old Japanese artist known only as Masako, each sold for roughly a quarter of that price, putting their pieces in the range of first-time buyers.

Housed in a former school, 101Tokyo had a more experimental feel to it than the established Art Fair Tokyo, which opens to the public on Friday. Visitors' comments on the new fair ranged from "young and fresh" to "sophomoric", but the optimistic organizers aim to build up a serious contemporary art fair modeled along mega-events such as Art Basel.