798 District Blog

LONDON.- This evening, Sotheby’s Sales of 20th Century Italian Art and Contemporary Art, brought a combined total of £30.4 million/$48.8 million (Est. £22.3-30.5 million*) – substantially more than in the equivalent sales last year (£20 million).

Commenting on the 20th Century Italian Art Sale results, Claudia Dwek, Co Chairman Sotheby’s Italy, said: “We are delighted with the results of this evening’s sale. The auction achieved the above-estimate sum of £17 million representing the highest ever total for a sale in this field staged by Sotheby’s. While the majority of lots were acquired by Italian collectors, the sale saw activity from clients across the globe, including from the Far East. These strong results and healthy sell-through rates testify to Sotheby’s leadership in this field.”

Discussing today’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale, Alex Branczik, Director, Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s, said: “The Frieze Art Fair and the London Art Scene brought the whole collecting community here this week. With this sale, our vision was to showcase, alongside the more established names, the most interesting works by new and cutting-edge artists to satisfy the desires of collectors in this field in London during Frieze week. The energy generated in the sale room for the first two lots of the sale – by Ged Quinn and Ahmed Alsoudani – validated our strategy.”
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BERLIN (MARKETWIRE).- Audrey Hepburn left an indelible impression — an imprint of gracious compassion and respect, which endures in a fashion as timeless as her heart.

In 2002 the German ministry of finance decided to honor Miss Hepburn with a stamp and entered into a contract with the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund (AHCF). Due to an internal breakdown the printing of the 14 million stamps for the German post was ordered prior to obtaining the contractual approvals from the AHCF. The AHCF, unaware of the printing, requested some creative changes. The Ministry, unable to comply, ordered the entire stock destroyed!!! … but for three sheets — 1 kept by the Ministry, 1 by the printer and one located recently in a file in the office of Sean Hepburn Ferrer, the chairman of the AHCF.

These stamps are today, by agreement with the Ministry, the only un-postmarked specimens available for sale (5 postmarked stamps were sold at auction for prices ranging from 50,000 to 125,000 Euros. It is believed that someone high up inside the ministry picked up a single sheet hot off the press and sent letters to friends). The mint condition sheet of 10 stamps is the object of unprecedented desirability and unique value in the international scene of modern philately. The minimum reserve is set at a record 500,000 Euros.

Judging from the very exclusive list of guests and bidders and the limited availability of admissions — Stamp Collectors, VIPs, Bankers, Investors and Industry Captains have been clamoring for invitations. This event promises to be the most exciting Auction, Gala and ‘nonprofit’ social event of the season.

The Audrey Hepburn stamp is estimated to reach close to a million Euros on the final hammer. 100% of the proceeds will go to charity through the AHCF and UNICEF.

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LONDON.- Sotheby’s announced the sale of Francis Bacon’s Figure In Movement, the most significant painting by the British artist to appear at auction in several seasons, in its Evening Sale of Contemporary Art on 9 November 2010 in New York. The 1985 portrait of a man twisting and writhing, demonstrates the artist’s genius in painting the human figure in motion, and epitomizes the full spectrum of his legendary artistic technique. The monumental canvas was given by Bacon to his doctor the same year it was executed and has remained in the same collection ever since. Figure In Movement returns to New York two years after it was featured in the 2008 landmark exhibition Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which began at Tate Britain and was also shown at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. The painting, which has been on extended loan to Tate Britain for the past decade, is estimated to sell for $7/10 million*. It will be shown at Sotheby’s London from 11-15 October 2010.

Figure in Movement was Bacon’s gift to his doctor Dr. Paul Brass, who, following on from his father Dr. Stanley Brass, was Bacon’s personal physician and with whose family Bacon maintained extremely close ties until the end of the artist’s life. Bacon offered Dr. Brass a choice of paintings but when he chose a different work, the artist steered him towards Figure in Movement assuring his doctor that it was a superior painting. This is the second time that Sotheby’s has been entrusted to sell on behalf of Dr. Brass having sold a major Bacon painting in 1994. Figure in Movement was on extended loan to Tate Britain and, in addition to the Centenary Retrospective, has appeared in shows at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Hayward Gallery in London and Gemeentemuseum in the Hague as well as a British Council organized exhibition in Moscow.
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LONDON.- Christie’s will host an exciting series of public exhibitions, events and auctions from today until 18 October in London coinciding with the Frieze Art Fair. The leading highlights of the public exhibition are celebrated masterpieces by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Gerhard Richter, none of which has been seen before in the UK. These works will be offered at the evening auction of Post-War and Contemporary Art in New York on 10 November 2010 and have a combined value in excess of $80 million.

The Post-War & Contemporary Evening Auction and The Italian Sale on 14 October at 6.30pm will offer 51 and 45 lots accordingly and will include an extremely strong section of photography, and the most important work by Damien Hirst to be offered at auction since September 2008 (estimate: £2.5 million to £3.5 million).

Francis Outred, Head of Post-War & Contemporary art, Christie’s Europe : “This week in London is one of the most important and vibrant in the global art calendar. We will be showing a truly exceptional public exhibition at Christie’s which includes three hugely important works never before seen in this country; Andy Warhol’s ‘Big Campbell’s Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable)’; Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Ohhh…Alright…’; and Gerhard Richter’s ‘Zwei Kerzen‘, together with the auction preview for Thursday’s auction. We look forward to opening our doors and welcoming art lovers to Christie’s in London.”

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HONG KONG— In a sign of the continuing strength of the Asian market, Sotheby’s series of October sales in Hong Kong netted a record-shattering $HK3.08 billion ($400 million) as serious competition for rare, museum-quality Chinese objects sent the auction tallies soaring. Buyers from China’s mainland dominated the salesrooms to such an extent that some wondered whether there was enough supply to meet the spiking demand for historic Asian objects. Western art offered to test the market’s embraciveness, however, was largely overlooked. 

On Wednesday, a Qianlong imperial white jade “Xintian Zhuren” seal featuring a pair of dragons set a world record for white jade when it fetched HK$121.6 million ($16 million), over four times its high estimate of HK$30 million. Then Thursday’s sale saw its own new record for the most expensive Chinese art object ever sold at auction: a Qianlong yellow-ground famille-rose double-gourd vase from an English collection that sold for HK$253 million ($32.4 million), achieving over five times its high estimate of HK$50 million. It was purchased by Hong Kong collector Alice Cheng, who said that “as long you like something, even if it’s expensive, it’s worth it.”

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HONG KONG (REUTERS).- A Chinese Qing dynasty vase sold for HK$253 million (20.2 million pounds) in a Sotheby’s sale in Hong Kong on Thursday, a world record at auction for any Chinese porcelain.

“This is definitely a milestone,” Nicolas Chow, the Deputy Chairman of Sotheby’s Asia told Reuters. “Chinese works of art took their place on the world auction stage today.”

While segments of the Chinese art market cooled substantially during the financial crisis, especially once white-hot Chinese contemporary art, older paintings and imperial antiques continued to generate solid demand and prices, though fewer quality works surfaced as sellers stayed away on still fragile sentiment.

In Sotheby’s current autumn sales, however, a selection of rare works from four major private collections and a flood of free-spending Chinese millionaires, contributed to what many called one of the best sales of Chinese ceramics in recent years.

In a packed auction hall filled with applauding mainland Chinese buyers, a bidding war saw the rare Qing vase finally go to Alice Cheng, a Hong Kong collector and sister of renowned octogenarian Chinese art collector and dealer Robert Chang.

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HONG KONG— Yesterday’s “Fine Chinese Paintings” auction at Sotheby’s proved once again that traditional painting holds the strongest sway over the imagination of Chinese art connoisseurs — and over the Chinese market. While sales results in other sectors, such as contemporary and modern Chinese art, have been uneven this season, the results for Chinese painting at this auction were so impressive that works reaching merely their highest estimate seemed to be failures. Lot after lot, the hammer fell on prices that were multiples of the high estimate.

The star painting of the day — Fu Baoshi’s “Court Ladies” (1945) — was hammered down for HK$29 million ($3.7 million), three times its high estimate of HK$7 million. Ninety one percent of the lots today were sold above the high estimate, and only three out of 270 works on offer were unable to find buyers. All of this added up to the best result ever achieved by Sotheby’s for a various owners sale of fine Chinese paintings, with a total haul (including buyer’s premium) of HK$407 million ($52 million)

The sale also installed five particular artists at the top of the market for traditional painting: Fu Baoshi, Qi Baishi, Wu Guanzhong, Xu Beihong, and Zhang Daqian. Of these five, four were represented in the auction’s top ten lots.

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HONG KONG— In a packed Sotheby’s auction room in Hong Kong on Monday night, Zhang Xiaogang was once again proven to be the ultimate blue-chip name in Chinese contemporary art when his brooding 1992 masterpiece “Chapter of a New Century — Birth of the People’s Republic of China II” was hammered down for HK$46 million ($5.9 million), bringing in twice the painting’s high estimate in a buzzing sale that moved a total of HK$205 million ($26.4 million) in art.

The room was hushed as the price for Zhang’s work climbed slowly, by million-dollar increments, in a battle between a telephone bidder and two paddles in the room. When the gavel finally fell, boisterous applause broke out. The price is just short of the HK$47.4 million ($6.1 million) paid in April 2008 for Zhang’s “Bloodline: The Big Family No. 3,” which at the time set a record for a painting by a living Asian artist.

Zhang’s work was the headlining lot of Sotheby’s fall contemporary Asian art sale, but it was not the only one to generate excitement when changing hands. Immediately after Zhang’s piece was carried from the hall, a key work from early in Fang Lijun’s career came to the block: an untitled 1989 painting featuring a group of bald-headed youths whose averted gaze and alienated appearance, typical of Fang’s early imagery, led him to become the leading exponent of what critics dubbed Cynical Realism. The piece went for HK$9.5 million ($1.2 million), more than three times its high estimate of HK$3 million ($390,000).

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HONG KONG—Next Monday the fall auction season begins in China with a jam-packed day of sales in Hong Kong. Sotheby’s will begin the market event in the morning with modern and contemporary Southeast Asian paintings, but most collectors will be focused on the afternoon sales, when Sotheby’s and Seoul Auctions will both offer highly-anticipated lots of recent Asian and Western art.

Hitting the block at Sotheby’s will be 20th-century Chinese art, a sector which consistently attracts spirited attention from Chinese mainland collectors and which provided the star lot in Christie’s spring auctions in Hong Kong, when Chen Yifei’s “String Quartet” sold for a new auction record of HK$7.85 million (US$1.01 million). The auction house’s slate this fall is particularly strong. Headlined by Sanyu’s gorgeous painting “Pink Nude on Floral Sheet” (HK$12–18 million or $1.5–2.3 million), the sale also includes masterworks by members of China’s “School of Paris,” including Zao Wou-ki and Chu Teh-chun, as well as an important 1970s work by the late great Wu Guanzhong, “A Mountain Village in the North,” that is estimated at HK$5–7 million ($644-902,000).

The Seoul Auctions afternoon sale — which opens a scant hour after Sotheby’s — covers modern and contemporary art from Asia and the West. The respected Korean auctioneers have pioneered the sale of Western art in Hong Kong and this event, with a total estimated value of HK$100 million ($12.9 million), takes their efforts to a new level with the inclusion of a beautiful late-period Marc Chagall titled “Bestiare et Musique” (1969), which is making its auction debut, carrying a HK$31.2 million ($4.0 million) estimate. This is seen as something of a litmus test for the development of the Chinese market, where collectors have almost exclusively focused on Chinese art as dealers and auction houses continue to hope that the region embraces Western art with the enthusiasm that marked Japan’s entry into this market in the 1970s.

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LONDON.- Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening auction on Friday, 15 October, 2010, which coincides with the Frieze Art Fair in London, will present for sale 40 artworks that are estimated to realise in excess of £10 million. In addition to the outstanding pieces by leading artists such as Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach in the auction from the Collection of Jerry Hall, the world-famous American supermodel and actress, the sale will also feature important works by established artists such as Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder and Andreas Gursky, as well as pieces by a younger generation of artists including Bansky, Elizabeth Peyton and Ahmed Alsoudani, whose artworks have never before been offered at auction.

The auction record of £1.7 million for Andreas Gursky (b. 1955) was established by Sotheby’s London in 2007 for the artist’s 99 cent II (diptych), and the forthcoming October Evening Auction is to be headlined by – among other works – a major cibachrome print by the artist, Pyongyang IV. Executed by the artist in 2007 and from an edition of 7, the work is one of a series of five images that Gursky made on this subject following his 2007 visit to North Korea. The work examines the same formal themes of surface ornament and pattern that pervade many of his best works, but in an entirely different corner of our globalised society; North Korea, the last outpost of communist dictatorship. The festival, held annually to commemorate the birth of North Korea’s former leader, Kim Il Sung, is recognised as the largest event of its kind in the world and is the showpiece of the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Il. In this painstakingly choreographed spectacle, tens of thousands of gymnasts, individually hand picked for their skill, execute with mechanical precision a sequence of synchronised moves which radiate waves of energy around the Rungrado May Day Stadium, the largest stadium of its kind in the world. In the background, thirty thousand strictly disciplined school children in white attire hold up sheets of paper of a different colour at the appointed time to create a succession of background images, each child an individual tile in a monumental human mosaic. To avoid any potential political gloss, Gursky’s photograph consciously avoids depicting portraits of Kim Il Sung, Korean slogans or propagandistic images of the happy proletariat which, in the course of the spectacle, variously appear on the human screen in the background. Instead, Gursky’s camera focuses on the abstract patterns that underpin this event. The work, illustrated on page one, is estimated at £500,000-700,000. Sotheby’s sold one other work from this edition in 2008, in the New York (AUCTION) RED, well above the estimate of $300,000-400,000 for the sum of $1,375,000.
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