 hen the large crates arrived, Didier Hirsch opened them up and lifted out his treasures: a painting by Wang Guangyi, a Cynical Realist work by Fang Lijun, and an early Li Shan oil painting.
The whole episode was almost like placing an order with Amazon.com or Ebay. But it was much more expensive.
Over the course of a year, Mr. Hirsch, a 55-year-old French businessman living in California, acquired over 40 paintings and sculptures,  almost entirely through the telephone and the internet, placing orders, wiring money and then receiving huge wooden crates at his home in California.
Indeed, almost overnight, Mr. Hirsch, an executive at Agilent, the high-tech company, has become one of the world’s leading collectors of post ’89 Chinese contemporary art.
Uli Sigg, the former Swiss ambassador to China, owns 1,500 Chinese contemporary art pieces. Guan Yi, the Chinese-born collector, has over 500. And dozens of other collectors, in China, the U.S. and Europe, have 20 to 30 major works. But only a handful of collectors around the world have 40 major pieces worth as much as $5M after the recent run-up in auction prices.
And what inspired this spending spree by Mr. Hirsch, much of which took place in 2005 and 2006?
“I just had an itch,” Mr. Hirsch says. “I heard about the upcoming March 2006 New York Sotheby’s auction. And all of a sudden people were talking about how hot the market was going to get. So I started buying immediately; anything I could get my hands on.”
Eager to purchase works before the prices got too high, Mr. Hirsch said he scrambled to learn about Chinese artists. He ordered books and catalogues about Chinese contemporary art. He paged through them, including Uli Sigg’s book, “Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection.” He also surfed the web and made dozens of phone calls to galleries and collectors around the world.
Today, his collection includes works by Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Liu Xiaodong, Geng Jianyi, Li Shan, Zeng Fanzhi, Liu Wei, Yang Shaobin, Xue Song, Wang Jinsong, Zhong Biao, Li Songsong, Yu Hong and Ye Yongqing.
Didier Hirsch is not entirely new to collecting. His great-grandfather bought impressionist art; his grandfather collected jade; and his parents acquired works by some of the best modern painters.
Mr. Hirsch himself says that for years he bought lithographs and drawings, as well as antiques and Art Deco and Art Nouveau works. He had purchased 20 or perhaps 30 European paintings, but he never had a real desire to start a collection.
When he moved to Hong Kong in 1993 to work as an executive at Hewlett-Packard, he purchased old furniture from the Schoeni Gallery and collected books and catalogues from Hong Kong galleries. He also visited Hanart TZ Gallery, as well as David Tang’s China Club.
Then, in March 1996, shortly before returning to Europe, he bought a 1992 Yue Minjun painting for $6,500 from Manfred Schoeni, founder of the Schoeni Gallery in Hong Kong.
 “First, it was something I could afford,” he says. "I thought it was representative of Chinese art. I had bought mostly Ming and Qing dynasty tables and scholars’ work and I wanted to bring something back that was modern.”
Then, Chinese contemporary art largely faded from his mind, until October 2005, when Christie’s and Sotheby’s held successful auctions in Hong Kong.
“Before the October ’05 auctions I kept an eye on the market,” he says. “Then I saw the rapid and steep increase in prices. And people said the next big increase would be at Sotheby’s in March (2006). So I said, ‘Now or never.’ I’m a man of action.”
Thus began his six-month buying spree. Between November 2005 and May 2006, he managed to contact most of the major galleries around the world dealing in Chinese contemporary art.
“I did some research. Before I had sensed some important artistic movements ahead of others. But I never did anything. The knowledge of the market I had already – through books, magazine, catalogues. So I decided to go after the titans. I felt that quality or historical paintings would rapidly go up in price.”
But finding works wasn’t so easy.
“Basically, the galleries were already out of stock. They didn’t have anything to sell or were keeping major works for known collectors. Many artists didn’t have any works.”
Mr. Hirsch ended up purchasing a Zhou Chunya painting from a collector in San Francisco; he got a Wang Guangyi from a gallery in Switzerland; Fang Lijun’s piece came from Berlin; and several other pieces came from China, though Mr. Hirsch admits he had little negotiating power because of the great distance.
He wasn’t simply buying at random, though. He says he followed a detailed plan. He looked for members of a group he calls “the titans,” the pioneering artists who were the first to gain prominence as avant-garde artists in China in the 1980s, like Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, Yang Shaobin, Li Shan, Liu Wei, Liu Xiaodong and Yue Minjun, among others.
He also made a list of “runner-ups,” or “secondary target,” such as Li Songsong and Zhou Chunya; “interesting artists,” like Ren Xiaolin, Shen Xiaotong, Zhang Xiatao; and even a category called, “not a huge fan, most of the time.”
He largely shunned photographs and bronzes he said, because artists were simply producing replicas and large series, which are easy to copy. He said a photograph might sell for a certain size, and say, 1 of 30, but the artist could slightly alter the size and then sell another 30 or more.
But he is pleased with his paintings. “I prefer buying a painting. No two are exactly the same.” His favorite? “Probably the Yue Minjun,” he says. “But the Wang Guangyi is extraodinary. There are only six of this series.”
 He says buying the pieces was difficult at times because some galleries didn’t return his calls, or shunned him because he wasn’t a well-known collector. He went directly to one artist, who agreed to produce a work for him if he got on the one-year waiting list. But he says he decided not to do that because he likes to see an image of the work he purchases before hand.
Now that auction prices soared far beyond the imagination of any collector in 2006, is he pleased? “On the one hand I feel vindicated,” he says. “But right now I can’t buy any works.”
So what will Mr. Hirsch do with this large collection? “There are days when I want to keep my collection intact,” he says, “and other days, when I see prices go ballistic, when I am tempted to monetize my investment or do a trade-up . So far I’ve kept everything. And that’s my intention. It’s a hobby.”
Didier Hirsch: 10 Reasons Why He Bought Chinese Contemporary Art
1. All economic powers turn into cultural (and military) powers.
2. Huge numbers of Chinese collectors and museums in the making.
3. Historic works were collected by expats and western businessmen. At the time, Chinese collectors and museums could not afford to buy the world.  Now, Chinese collectors/ museums are willing to pay top prices. China’s new rich is flush with money.
4. There are presently few outlets for speculation and diversification in China (access to the international stock market is very limited.) Real estate and art? Therefore, the art-buying frenzy.
5. Western collectors and institutions want to expand their focus.
6. The overall contemporary art market is a bubble, but the Chinese art market is on a secular growth trajectory.
7. Crazy is relative. Chinese artists are relatively much cheaper than their western counterparts.
8. Planned art exposition as the centerpiece of the 2008 Olympic village in Beijing.
9. Very small number of historic painters/works in relation to the huge potential Chinese art market. Rarity because birth of contemporary Chinese market was sudden and with a short timeline. Question of Supply and demand. Supply of historic works is very limited, future demand is huge as institutions, have to have them but they can only buy them from the secondary market.
10. One day a great chasm will open up in China’s collective memory as collectors and institutions do not own pivotal works from the 90s. They will scramble to buy some.
Top Image：Ye Yongqing Banana 2001
Image 1：Wang Guangyi Passport 1995
Image 2：Yu Hong Routine-Me at Party 2003
Image 3：Yue Minjun Flying 1992/3
Image 4：Zhou Chunya Green Dog 3 1997
Image 5：Zeng Fanzhi 2005
Image 6：Liu Xiaodong Dalai Lama 1999
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