Affordable art, with a longer history in western market, now is attracting more and more attention in China and becomes a new star in art market today. For example, Li Xianting, known as "Godfather of Contemporary Art" has said in recent years that he hoped to establish an affordable art market in China. With the rapid development of current art market, "to make art affordable for everyone" is a slogan can be heard everywhere.

Along with the rise of various transaction channels for affordable art and more and more ordinary wage-earners accept the idea of "everyone can be affordable for artworks", a new age of art started in China.

Various transaction channels to promote affordable art collection

Online art trading platforms, shop entities combining online and offline resources, and even some art expositions targeted on affordable art, all kinds of transaction channels are emerging in domestic market, making it much easier to go close to affordable market.

According to He Bin, CEO of Hihey.com, an online art trading platform, the rise of e-commerce promotes the development of affordable art.

"Art market is a natural long tail market. In traditional economic theories, goods of the highest price belong to the traditional auction business, where only artworks created by less than 100 most famous artists can be auctioned. Art, however, is varied and will continue to be subdivided. In an online art auction, the overall transaction amount can be only 5,000 yuan, which can never be agreed to do by a traditional auction", said He.

More and more collectors also joined in the affordable art consumption group, including a lot of ordinary wage earners.

Collectors are majorly white collars born in 1970s

After the emerging of various institutions promoting affordable art consumption, a group of ordinary wage earners began to enter into this new collection field. They use their not abundant capitals to conduct the "everyone can be affordable for artworks" idea in practice.

"Those who come to visit Hihey.com are mainly young buyers, particularly born in 1970s. Though they", said He Bin, "though they cannot compete with those born in 1950s or 1960s in purchasing power, the market is still large."

"We have our own consumer groups. According to the characteristics and prices of our artworks, we majorly focus on senior whiter collars", said a principal of a store entity doing affordable art business.

Moreover, according to Hu Xhiliang, Designer of "I CAN PAY", an exposition of affordable art, the prime purpose of this exposition is to provide an art festival for white collars so that they can buy what they want here.

Annual spending on collecting art no more than 100,000 yuan

There is a theory in art collection that it’s better to spend one third of one’s revenue to buy artworks. At present, in about 10,000 primary collectors on Hihey.com, most are middle class with annual revenue of over 300,000 yuan, said He Bin. As a result, "I CAN PAY" targeted on those earning annually 200,000 to 500,000 yuan.

Wage earners are more reasonable when buying art. "Some collectors even never spent over 1000 yuan on one artwork", said He. Consequently, artistic works created by those born in 1980s who are not famous yet becomes popular choices. "It's just like an investment into entrepreneurial firms, full of uncertainty, as well as possibility", said a collector on Hihey.com.