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).
]]>Chronologically, the first section of the exhibition Woodcuts in Modern China, 1937-2008: Towards a Universal Pictorial Language incorporates 34 works drawn from an important collection of over 200 woodcuts dating from 1937 to 1948. Donated to the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University by Theodore Herman, professor of geography emeritus, who acquired them from the artists in 1948, this collection is considered to be unparalleled in the United States. “As historical documents, they offer a unique perspective on World War II…and especially on the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists (1946-1949). At the same time, the prints present the mastery of a new medium at a point when western techniques had been absorbed and transformed by Chinese artists…,” notes Leslie Eliet, who contributed an essay to the catalogue and has collaborated with Dr. Herman over the past 30 years. The remaining 34 works are from 11 important contemporary artists who, after reviewing the Herman collection, selected works that “they felt expressed their reverence for the older masters, engaging them in a dialogue across time,” as Renee Covalucci, co-curator of the exhibition, writes in the catalogue.
Willow Hai Chang, director of China Institute Gallery, states, “Although woodcuts in China have a history of more than a thousand years, modern Chinese woodcuts, often inspired by political events, appeared only in the early 1930s. This unique exhibition covers nearly the entire evolution of these new woodcuts in Chinese modern and contemporary art and shows their extraordinary importance in Chinese art history.”
]]>The strongest bidding in this year’s sale was for 25 modern Egyptian artworks consigned by a respected Saudi collector, Dr Mohammed Farsi. This was expected to make $1.2m-$1.7m, but racked up $8.7m, with all the lots sold.
The collection was said by trade sources to have been offered to Qatar—whose Museum of Modern Arab Art is due to be inaugurated in a temporary space this December—but finally went to auction at Christie’s.
Prominent among Christie’s staffers taking telephone bids at the sale was Isabelle de la Bruyère, glamorous director for the Middle East, who was previously Dr Farsi’s daughter-in-law. She snaffled a number of lots including the evening’s prize, the Egyptian artist Mahmoud Said’s “Les Chadoufs”, 1934, which sold for a startling $2.4m, almost ten times its high estimate (est $150,000-$200,000). Trade sources said that it was destined for Qatar.
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