798 District Blog

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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NEW YORK—Stemming from Lehman Brothers’ massive 2008 bankruptcy, the auction  of contemporary artworks from the Neuberger Berman and Lehman Brothers Corporate Art Collection that Sotheby’s held on Saturday morning was, in effect, a liquidation. In contrast to the financial fate that led to the sale, however, the auction was a success: nailing the $12.3 million high estimate, Sotheby’s found buyers for all but 24 of the 142 lots for a 17 percent buy-in rate by lot and five percent by value. One work sold for over a million dollars and 17 artist records were set, according to the auction house.

The decision to schedule the sale early in the day — in part to cater to Sotheby’s expanding collector base in Asia — seemed to pay off, with work by Asian artists turning in strong numbers. Liu Ye’s large-scale 2005 figurative painting “The Long Way Home,” part children’s book fantasy and part biting commentary on China’s brutal Cultural Revolution, sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for $962,500 on an estimate of $500-700,000.  Meanwhile, Fang Lijun’s 1997 “Untitled (Swimmer No. 1),” a painting mocking former leader Mao Zedong’s supposed Olympian swimming feats, sold to another telephone bidder for $374,500 against a $200-300,000 estimate. The work was acquired from the Max Protetch Gallery in 1998, when the artist’s primary market paintings were priced in the $10,000 to $20,000 range, according to one of the underbidders, who didn’t want to be identified.

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LONDON.- Following the resounding successes achieved in the field of Islamic Art at Sotheby’s, the company’s forthcoming biannual Arts of the Islamic Works Sale in London, which presents more than 400 lots, on Wednesday, October 6, 2010 will be the company’s strongest ever staged. The auction contains a fine selection of rare objects, including weaponry, textiles, metalwork and manuscripts, ceramics, and paintings, which encompass a wide range of periods, spanning the 7th century through to the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The sale is expected to realise in excess of £10 million.

Commenting on the forthcoming series of Islamic Art sales, Edward Gibbs, Senior Director and Head of the Middle East Department at Sotheby’s, said: “The market for Islamic Art continues to grow in strength and with each sales season Sotheby’s has established new records and benchmarks in several different areas of the Islamic field. Innovative and leading museums, such as the Museum of Islamic Arts in Qatar, have played a significant role in the increased global awareness and strength of this area of the art market. We very much look forward to showcasing in Doha, from September 20th to the 21st, a selection of remarkable objects which highlight Sotheby’s forthcoming Islamic Art Sales in London.”

In the wake of the record-breaking success achieved by Sotheby’s in both London and Doha for Safavid textiles, the forthcoming auction will present for sale the “Karlsruhe” Safavid Niche Rug from Central Persia (above). This rug, which dates from the second half of the 16th century, is one of a very important group of Safavid Persian niche rugs previously referred to as the ‘Topkapi’ or ‘Salting’ rugs, named after a carpet bequeathed to the Victoria & Albert Museum by George Salting upon his death in 1909. Revered by early scholars such as A. U. Pope, F.R. Martin, F. Sarre, E. Kühnel, W. von Bode and G. Migeon they are considered superb examples of Safavid court workmanship. When these rugs first appeared on the market in the early 20th century they were purchased by renowned collectors with several of them now in institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Carpet Museum in Tehran. Safavid prayer rugs such as the example offered here rarely appear on the market and this fine example is estimated at £1-1.5 million.

A further highlight is an exceptionally rare and important Ear-Dagger, from 15th century Nasrid Spain. Ear daggers are considered the most important contribution to the Nasrid panoply of arms and armour. Ear Daggers probably originate from North Africa and were widely used in Spain during the 15th and 16th centuries, before being introduced to Christian Europe. Daggers of this type were once extremely fashionable among great nobles, and there exists a portrait of the young King Edward VI of England, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, clutching an Ear Dagger at his waist. Deriving its name from the striking design of the hilt pommel, the Ear Dagger (dague à oreilles in French and alla Levantina in Italian) comprises two flattened discs which resemble ears, issuing from either side of the grip and which show Arabic and Latin inscriptions. The damascening around the forte of the blade in the present example comprises the figure of a man with a crossbow in chase of numerous animals including a lion. There exists the possibility that the lion as quarry depicted in the damascened decoration is a metaphor for Castile-Leon, the Christian neighbours of the Nasrids. Leon (lion) united with Castile (castle) in 1037 AD. Castile- Leon became the most extensive of the Christian Kingdoms in Spain, taking a leading part in the conquest of the Muslim south. Only a handful of comparable examples of the dagger exist, and all in museum collections. The dagger is estimated at £600,000-800,000.

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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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HONG KONG.- Sotheby’s Hong Kong will hold its Contemporary Asian Art Autumn Sale 2010 on 4 October at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, bringing forward a total of 217 lots estimated at over HK$150 million / US$19 million. The sale highlights an important work of contemporary Chinese art – Zhang Xiaogang’s 1992 masterpiece, Chapter of a New Century – Birth of the People’s Republic of China II (Est. HK$21 – 23 million / US$2.69 – 2.94 million). This season we are also honoured to present Property from an Important European Collection, which encompasses 38 lots with a total estimate of over HK$30 million / US$3.8 million (please refer to separate press release for details).

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