798 District Blog

In response to the increasing interest throughout Asia and especially within China in the field of Impressionist and Modern art, Sotheby’s announced a major selling exhibition to be held this autumn. Modern Masters: Impressionism and Early 20th Century Art will comprise approximately 20 works representing many of the most important artists active in Europe from the late 19th and early 20th century and who left an indelible impression on art history, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Edgar Degas, among others. The exhibition will preview in Beijing from 22-25 October 2010 and will then move on to Hong Kong from 26-28 November 2010. The works included in this exhibition are priced from US$2 million to $25 million (HK$15.6 to $195 million).

“This exciting event is both a first for Sotheby’s and for China,” said Patti Wong, Chairman of Sotheby’s Asia. “We have been impressed by the interest in the field of Impressionist and Modern Art from within China and across Asia in our recent auctions. While we will continue to serve this market through our regular auctions of Impressionist and Modern Art in London and New York, mounting a selling exhibition specifically for the Asian market consisting of high quality works from significant artists in this field is a unique opportunity for our many clients in the region. Asian collectors have historically shown considerable interest in other Sotheby’s selling exhibitions of modern and contemporary sculpture – at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, UK and Isleworth Country Club in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. We look forward to bringing this assembly of works directly to our discerning Asian clients, and continuing to develop enthusiasm among collectors for this important field.”

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Christie’s Hong Kong will hold its Fall sales of Fine Chinese Modern Paintings and Fine Chinese Classical Paintings and Calligraphy on 30 November at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. These sales will showcase over 350 rare and exceptional works from the Chinese masters, valued in excess of HK$260 million (US$34 million).

Chinese calligraphy and paintings are among the most culturally rich and meaningful art forms and encapsulate the history of Chinese culture. The Fine Chinese Classical Paintings and Calligraphy sale will feature important works by artists spanning both Ming and Qing Dynasty (15th-19th Century), including Ming Dynasty calligraphers and painters such as Wang Duo, Ni Yuanlu, Huang Daozhou and Lan Ying, as well as important Qing artists such as BaDa ShanRen, Hua Yan and Yuan Jiang. The Fine Chinese Modern Paintings sale will present a body of magnificent works by renowned 19th and 20th Century masters such as Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, Fu Baoshi, Zhang Daqian, and Lin Fengmian. Showcasing a wide range of works by artists of different styles and schools, these sales cater to the variety of diverse palettes of today’s discerning collectors.

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HONG KONG— One of the biggest names in Western art history is poised to headline not just one, but three separate sales in Hong Kong this fall. Seven works by Picasso will be featured in an exhibition and private sale at Sotheby’s in late November, and two of the city’s top galleries are offering an additional 33 works by the Spanish modern between them. Offering assured market power as an international center of finance, Hong Kong also provides a chance to test the Asian market’s burgeoning interest in Western art — and what could be better for the job than Picasso, with his ironically askew portraits and lascivious nudes?

Sotheby’s sale — which also includes pieces by Chagall, Monet, Degas, and Renoir — will cover the Picasso’s Blue Period, as well as his Cubist works and later Expressionist paintings from after 1960. The works will first be shown in Beijing from October 22 to 25 before being exhibited in Hong Kong from November 26 to 28. With prices ranging from $2 million to $25 million, the works on view will include the standout “Jeune Fille aux Cheveux Noirs (Dora Maar),” a celebrated 1939 portrait of the artist’s most famous lover and muse.

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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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HONG KONG.- In response to the increasing interest throughout Asia and especially within China in the field of Impressionist and Modern art, Sotheby’s announced a major selling exhibition to be held this autumn. Modern Masters: Impressionism and Early 20th Century Art will comprise approximately 20 works representing many of the most important artists active in Europe from the late 19th and early 20th century and who left an indelible impression on art history, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Edgar Degas, among others. The exhibition will preview in Beijing from 22-25 October 2010 and will then move on to Hong Kong from 26-28 November 2010. The works included in this exhibition are priced from US$2 million to $25 million (HK$15.6 to $195 million).

“This exciting event is both a first for Sotheby’s and for China,” said Patti Wong, Chairman of Sotheby’s Asia. “We have been impressed by the interest in the field of Impressionist and Modern Art from within China and across Asia in our recent auctions. While we will continue to serve this market through our regular auctions of Impressionist and Modern Art in London and New York, mounting a selling exhibition specifically for the Asian market consisting of high quality works from significant artists in this field is a unique opportunity for our many clients in the region. Asian collectors have historically shown considerable interest in other Sotheby’s selling exhibitions of modern and contemporary sculpture – at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, UK and Isleworth Country Club in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. We look forward to bringing this assembly of works directly to our discerning Asian clients, and continuing to develop enthusiasm among collectors for this important field.”
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HONG KONG.- Sotheby’s Hong Kong 20th Century Chinese Art Autumn Sale will be held on 4 October, offering a meticulous selection of more than 120 lots estimated at HK$130 million. Apart from a number of outstanding works passed down by celebrated Chinese painters active in French art circles from the early 20th Century, the auction will also feature a collection of exceptionally rare paintings scheduled to debut in the art market for the first time.

Taking place from 2 to 7 October alongside the 20th Century Chinese Art pre-sale exhibition is Treasures of the Century, an educational non–selling exhibition that provides academic insight on 20th Century Chinese art. Over 20 seminal works by masters and pioneers from Xu Beihong to Chen Yifei will be on view. Please refer to a separate press release for details.

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