Zeng Painting Fetches $2.5 Million in H.K., 5 Times 2007 Price
A painting of a masked man by top Chinese contemporary artist Zeng Fanzhi that Emmy-award winner Lawrence Schiller and his wife bought three years ago for $500,000 fetched five times more at a packed Hong Kong art sale.
Zeng’s depiction of a man with slicked, black hair and outsized hands sold for HK$19.7 million ($2.5 million), twice the presale top estimate, at Christie’s International’s evening sale of Asian art yesterday after a 2-minute tug-of-war among salesroom and phone bidders. The Schillers had bought the oil painting from an American private collector and hung it in the den of their Santa Barbara, California, home before the sale.
“It was a great investment,” Kathy Schiller, Lawrence’s wife, said in an interview at the sale. “It’s also a great painting that we love and we’re sorry to have to sell it.”
Competition for the 2-meter-long (6.5 feet) work, called “Mask Series,” was one of the highlights at Christie’s sold- out auction of 36 Chinese, South Korean and Japanese artworks that fetched a combined HK$303.4 million. Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese buyers placed the strongest bids for works by Chen Yifei, Zao Wou-ki, Zeng and Zhang Xiaogang, a sign Asia’s rich are buying important pieces by established artists to hedge against inflation and financial-market volatility.
The presale estimates don’t include commission, that is 25 percent of the first HK$400,000 of hammer price, then falls to 20 percent for amounts as much as HK$8 million and is 12 percent for prices exceeding that.
Chen’s oil painting of a string quartet fetched the evening’s top price of HK$61 million, a record for the artist, who died in 2005. Christie’s declined to identify the buyer. Bidding was the fiercest since Christie’s May 2008 sale, four months before the start of the financial crisis when Zeng’s painting of China’s Red Guards fetched a contemporary Asian art record of HK$75.4 million.
“This painting by Chen is one of his most important and the only one in private hands. It’s no surprise so many people want it,” said Eric Huang, a Taipei-based buyer and dealer who bought Zao paintings at previous auctions.
Works by Paris-based abstract artist Zao, the most valuable Chinese artist at auction, remain popular with two paintings fetching HK$20.8 million each.
Christie’s also held its wine auction, tallying HK$40 million. The highlight of that event was the sale of 128 bottles and 40 magnums of Chateau d’Yquem spanning three centuries, which sold for HK$8 million to a European collector, making it the most expensive wine lot sold at Christie’s.
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This Wednesday the third edition of the Hong Kong International Art Fair had its VIP vernissage for a teeming assortment of curious dealers, artists, and Chinese and international collectors alike, many of them drawn to the event by market forces that have shifted the Asian art world's focus to Hong Kong. Tellingly, the throng was peppered by representatives of prominent Western galleries — Gagosian and Pace, to name two — that are sniffing out the potential to expand into the city.
01 June '10
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Victims include prime minister’s father-in-law and an old master art dealer. England’s stately homes are being targeted by organised gangs who are stealing important porcelain pieces, with at least 21 major cases in the past three years, according to a leading criminal expert. The list has been assembled by Dick Ellis, former head of Scotland Yard’s art and antiques unit. The data was commissioned by the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, which is handling the most serious case, at Firle Place in Sussex, where porcelain worth £500,000 was seized last summer. Other targets include Sutton Park, the home of Sir Reginald Sheffield—the father of Samantha Cameron, the prime minister’s wife.
01 June '10
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French-born American sculptor Louise Bourgeois, whose abstract explorations of themes such as birth, sexuality and death made her one of the world's most influential contemporary artists, died after a heart attack Saturday in New York.
01 June '10
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The Van Gogh Museum and the Kröller-Müller Museum are working together for the second time on an exhibition in Japan with works by Vincent van Gogh. The exhibition 'Van Gogh: The adventure of becoming an artist' contains prominent works including The bedroom and The sower (Van Gogh Museum), Ravine and Portrait of Joseph-Michel Ginoux (Kröller-Müller Museum). In 2005, the Van Gogh Museum and the Kröller-Müller Museum also organised a successful exhibition in Japan.
20 May '10
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Five modern art masterpieces have been stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. The paintings stolen are Pigeon with Green Peas by Picasso; Pastoral by Henri Matisse; The Olive Tree near Estaque by Georges Braque; The Woman with the Fan by Amedeo Modigliani; and Still Life with Chandeliers by Fernand Leger.
20 May '10
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Walter Mixa, who was forced to step down as bishop of Augsburg in southern Germany after five ex-pupils accused him of physical abuse, faces another allegation. He is accused of using money intended for a Catholic orphanage to buy a Piranesi engraving that is likely to be fake.
20 May '10
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Indigenous peoples, economic migrants, the vanquished, dispossessed and marginalised take centre stage at the latest edition of the Sydney Biennale (until 1 August). “The aim of this biennale is to bring work from diverse cultures together on the equal playing field of contemporary art, where no culture can assume superiority over any other,” said artistic director David Elliott.
20 May '10
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Walasse Ting (Xiongquan Ding) has passed away at the age of 80 last Monday May 17. Ting died in New York after he was moved from the Netherlands two weeks ago. Ting suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2002 in his home in Amsterdam, the town where he lived since 1985.
19 May '10
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Optimism has returned to the multibillion-dollar art market. Pablo Picasso’s 1932 painting 'Nude, Green Leaves and Bust' was sold yesterday at Christie's in New York for 106,4 million dollars.
05 May '10
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Disruption to flights is likely to impact on art shipments up until late April and possibly into early May, affecting exhibitions and the trade. Flights in north-west Europe were banned from 15 April following the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Although air traffic had partially resumed as we went to press, this could be interrupted by further volcanic ash clouds. Even after the airports fully reopen, logistical problems and shortage of seats will take some days to resolve.
22 April '10
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One of the impressive collections of art, documents and historically significant objects from the Vatican ever to tour North America is coming to the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis for a limited engagement beginning May 15, 2010. “Vatican Splendors: A Journey through Faith and Art” will present unique objects illustrating the Vatican’s impact on history and culture through 2,000 years.
24 March '10
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Selected by a committee of international experts, Cy Twombly is the third contemporary artist invited to install a permanent work at the Louvre, Paris: a painted ceiling for the Salle des Bronzes.
24 March '10
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The 2010 European Fine Art Fair, TEFAF held in Maastricht, the Netherlands closed its doors on Sunday with dealers reporting stronger sales than last year, when concern about worldwide financial turmoil kept many collectors’ pocketbooks shut.
24 March '10
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Paintings by Stockport artist William Turner gained world record prices at Bonhams Chester Picture sale on Wednesday 17 March. William Turner, who was born in 1920, specialized in painting urban views based on the mills and streets of Manchester and Stockport.
19 March '10
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The National Gallery of Victoria presents "Stick it! Collage in Australian Art", the Gallery’s first exhibition to focus on this fascinating art form.
Featuring over forty works primarily drawn from the NGV Collection together with a small number of loans, Stick it! Takes a look at graphic and eye-catching works created by pasting and applying paper, ephemera and other materials to a base.
19 March '10
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The rich and splendid tradition of Islamic embroidery, sweeping from Pakistan in the East and Morocco to the west, will be the subject of a important exhibition opening 6 April in Gallery One at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. Presented under the patronage of His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, A Story of Islamic Embroidery in Nomadic and Urban Traditions, on show through 28 July, will bring together more than 200 rare and majestic textiles, including much embroideries from Central Asia never before exhibited in the region that permit visitors to explore the exchange of trade and culture across the Silk Road and beyond. These works, with their kaleidoscope of motifs and colours, create a form of abstract art and show the role of Islamic women in creating an artistic tradition of great significance and beauty.
19 March '10
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The Museum Folkwang’s masterpieces are now together again for the first time in over 70 years. The museum’s spectacular pre-1933 collection has been reassembled for the first large-scale special exhibition in the New Building designed by David Chipperfield Architects. The Museum Folkwang was home to one of the most significant collections of modern and contemporary art worldwide in the 1920s and early 1930s. On his visit to Essen in 1932, Paul J. Sachs, co-founder of the MoMA in New York, called it “the most beautiful museum in the world”.
19 March '10
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Christie’s announced that they will offer an exceptionally important and highly celebrated masterpiece by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in the evening auction of Impressionist and Modern Art in London on 23 June 2010. Painted by one of the leading artist of the 20th century, Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto, 1903 comes from the artist’s celebrated Blue Period, arguably the greatest period in Picasso’s career. The painting will be priced at £30 million to £40 million and all the proceeds will benefit The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, a charity founded by the celebrated composer in 1992. Working for the public benefit, The Foundation focuses on the promotion of arts, culture and heritage in Britain.
18 March '10
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