This thesis focuses on the blooming market of Chinese 20th Century Art. The study object is one category of Christie’s Auction house, Chinese 20th Century Art, before 2009. Eight artists’ auction results are selected to the dataset for the research. We find that the previous researches based on the collection of Western arts cannot explain the whole situation of Chinese 20th Century Art. It has speculative character as an invest option in global art market. And some factors would affect the price changing in the auction activities. The Capital Asset Pricing Model is applied to study the investment condition of Chinese 20th Century Art as a capital asset. The result we get from our dataset presents that Chinese 20th Century Art is with high risks and high returns, which is quite different from the previous studies based on Western Artworks. Regression analysis reveals that some factors do affect the rate of price changes. We find that young Chinese artists who born after 1950 achieve better sale results than older ones. Their artworks are always sold on high realized prices. In addition, the high price sale more often happened in the auction house of Hong Kong and the market of Chinese 20th Century Art is enlarging these years. The rate of price change is increasing by the sale year growing. The prices of the artworks are growing higher and higher recently. However, the findings above just explain parts of the price increasing. All the reasons for the price increasing are not clear in this thesis.

This thesis aims to analyze contemporary art market in terms of auction sales carried out bySotheby’s and Christie’s in London and New York in 2007 and 2009. The study deals withinvestigating the cases when artworks’ prices exceeded their estimates. A model testing therelationships between hammer price, auction house, artist, form of art, the year of object’screation and its current owner along with the year of sale and performance of stock marketwas developed according to the theoretical framework, which includes such concepts as artobjects and their value, gatekeepers and investment and auction theories. Regression analysis revealed that the presence of a pre-lot note published in auctioncatalogue and specifying the collector putting the artwork for sale and the year of art piececreation have a significant contribution to predicting their hammer price. Moreover, theanalysis identified that paintings and sculptures typically reach high prices while drawings,watercolors and gouaches appeared to be less expensive objects. As far as the artists areconcerned, the study showed that pieces by such top artists as Andy Warhol, Jean-MichelBasquiat, Gerhard Richter, Willem de Kooning and Jeff Koons tend to achieve outstandingresults more often. The cases of over-performance were identified according to the model, which provided anopportunity to estimate predicted hammer price and compare it to the one achieved duringthe sale. Analysis did not reveal a clear pattern among over-performers, however, it can beobserved that objects sold at Sotheby’s tend to over-perform slightly more often; AndyWarhol and Damien Hirst appeared to be the artists whose artworks reach prices higherthan the estimates; and watercolors, drawings and gouaches along with sculptures, statuesand figures and photographs and prints turned out to be the over-performing forms of art.

This thesis focuses on the sale of a painting titled Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, a portrait produced by an artificial intelligence, at Christie’s auction house in New York in October 2018. The piece was created by the collective Obvious Art using the AI system Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). An art piece of this genre has never before been presented at a prestigious institution such as Christie’s. The purpose of the study is to estimate the importance of this auctioning for the Art world, based on textual analysis. Firstly, the essay will consider written articles processing the event of the auctioning by using a discourse analytic method. Secondly, the thesis will place the event into a context of art concepts, where Arthur Danto’s theories of the institutional art theory and George Dickie’s reasoning about the conferred status of art are particularly important. In addition, Stephen Davies’ theory of the concept of authority is equally essential in this part of the study. This part of the thesis also considers the historical event when Marcel Duchamp presented the urinal Fountain as art in the early 1900s. Finally, Portrait of Edmond de Belamy is analyzed using Heinrich Wölfflin’s formal analytical method. In the final discussion all parts of the study are merged, and it is argued that the sale of Portrait of Edmond de Belamy may represent a milestone for the art world, the art history and, in particular, for the AI art genre. Since Christie’s has the authority to confer art status upon objects and, based on the act of doing so regarding Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, one can see a clear change in the art history when an AI art is presented as an important piece in the art scene. On the other hand, it is also argued that it is far too early to predict what impact the auctioning will have for the future of the art history as the event is still imminent.

華人藝術市場的主要區塊是台灣、香港、及中國大陸，然而三者的發展背景、時間和模式都不同。其中，台灣因為保留了最完整的中華文化與人文素養，使得台灣成為最早發展華人西畫藝術的地方，也是發展最成熟的地方，幾乎主導了「二十世紀華人藝術」項目的市場走向。 八零年代開始台灣經濟起飛，各項商業活動蓬勃發展，藝術市場也欣欣向榮。國際知名拍賣公司—蘇富比（Sotheby’s）洞見先機，1981年便來台設立辦事處，1992年台灣正式成為拍賣中心，於3月22日舉辦台灣首拍。競爭對手佳士得（Christie’s）則於1991年成立台灣辦事處（太古佳士得台灣分公司），1993年10月10日在台舉辦首場拍賣。這兩家在當時獨佔全球藝術拍賣市場的國際公司來台舉行拍賣會，帶動了台灣拍賣產業與國際接軌，更發展台灣成為華人西畫藝術最重要的成熟市場。 本研究的目的是比較九零年代兩大國際拍賣公司進入台灣市場的營運策略，梳理其策略觀點與資源基礎之分析，探討哪些異質性資源決定了企業競爭力的差異、影響持久競爭優勢之形成，及如何充分運用差異性機會追求成長。由於大多數台灣本土拍賣公司的規模與優勢較小，面對亞洲市場的成長和外國拍賣公司的潛在競爭，期望本研究結果有助於台灣本土拍賣公司在經營華人藝術項目的拍賣策略與經營方向的擬定。 本研究發現，蘇富比與佳士得在台獲致成功的營運策略核心是調適策略—因地制宜且熟悉地主國文化之地主國導向調適；而有關進入對台灣拍賣產業帶來之影響，本研究發現，兩大國際拍賣公司不僅幫助台灣藝術拍賣產業奠定各項規範，使台灣正式與國際接軌，也帶動畫廊、藝術博覽會等相關藝文產業升級，成功的拍賣會更擴大帶動周圍其他產業（如旅館業、餐飲業、會展業、精品業等）的發展商機。 ※ 關鍵字：資源基礎，佳士得，蘇富比，二十世紀華人藝術。 / The main areas of Chinese art market are Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China; however, the developing background, time and model in each area are quite different. Among the three, Taiwan is the earliest and the most developed market for Chinese oil paintings because of its full preservation of Chinese culture and humanities. Taiwan almost dominates the market trend of “20th Century Chinese Art”. In 1980s, the economy in Taiwan was booming and commercial activities were very active which lead to thriving art market. Sotheby’s foresaw the opportunity to carry out auction business in Taiwan. Therefore, the company established Taiwan branch office in 1981 and upgraded the branch to auction center in 1992, holding the first auction in Taiwan on March 22nd in the same year. Its competitor, Christie’s, established Taiwan branch in 1991. Unlike Sotheby’s, Christie’s formed a joint venture to enter Taiwan. It established “Christie’s Swire” Taiwan in 1991 and started its first auction in October 10th, 1993. The two global auction companies coming to Taiwan to hold auctions drove Taiwan’s art auction industry to be geared to international standards. Furthermore, Sotheby’s and Christie’s coming has transformed Taiwan to become the most mature art market of 20th Century Chinese Art. The purpose of this thesis is to compare the operational strategies of Sotheby’s and Christie’s in Taiwan in the 90s. By analyzing their strategies and resource bases, we can understand how heterogeneous resources affect their competitiveness, sustainable competitive advantages, and pursuing of growth opportunities. Because most Taiwanese local auction houses are small and have less competitive advantage, facing the strong growth of Asian art market and potential competition of foreign auction houses, I hope that my research findings can help their strategic thinking and strategy formation to capture the business opportunities in 20th Century Chinese Art. This research finds that the core strategy to make Sotheby’s and Christie’s successful in Taiwan art market is “adaption”, which is a poly-centric adaption in which the companies are pretty familiar with local conditions and culture of the host country. As for the impact these two companies have on Taiwan art auction industry, this research finds that Sotheby’s and Christie’s coming not only help Taiwan settle the norms of auction and make Taiwan to be geared to international standards, but also drive galleries, art fairs and other related art industries upgrading. The successful auctions in Taiwan have also stimulated the development of other industries, such as hotels, restaurants, conventions, exhibitions, and luxury industry. ※ Keywords: Resource-based view, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, 20th Century Chinese Art.