Shanghai indices track art for investment's sake

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - In Shanghai, even the art market is in a bull run -- just take a look at the indices.

Would-be art investors can turn to the "Chinese Painting 400" or the "Oil Painting 100", and chart the rising prices of paintings from a favourite artist or genre.

A Shanghai printing company, tapping its connections with auction houses and eyeing the growing ranks of wealthy Chinese, developed the indices with the knowledge that nothing gets attention in China's financial hub like a tracked uptrend.

"When we tried to start the art index, our first aim was to attract more investors. So we used lots of terms from the stock market," said Yu Feng, manager of Artron.net in Shanghai.

"We established alliances with different auction firms when we were publishing brochures and art albums for them. We could therefore gather the most comprehensive records of art market trading in China."

New galleries and auction fairs have been opening regularly in Shanghai, Beijing and other major Chinese cities in recent years, giving a steady boost to the index and its compilers.

The "AAMI" (Artron Art Market Index), a brainchild of Artron.net, was launched nearly 7 years ago and steadily gained influence among those who trade and collect art.

According to Artron's latest data, the overall turnover of auction events for paintings in 2006 was 162.9 billion yuan (10.8 billion pounds), seven times the level five years ago.

The index is compiled monthly to reflect both the size and prices of paintings at auctions run by more than 100 houses in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and other Chinese cities. The results are posted on Artron's Web site, index.artron.net.