China Daily, May 9, 2005
Spring Auction Offers Up An Aladdin's Trove

The curtain will rise on the China Guardian Auction's 2005 Spring sale
over the weekend, with the star sale item an over two millennia old
bronze wine vessel returning to China for the first time in decades.

Over 1,100 lots of Chinese traditional paintings and calligraphy and
thousands of other items will also be on sale in the capital following a
three-day preview at the Kunlun Hotel and Huadu Hotel from May 10-12.

The items to be auctioned include art ware, Chinese embroidery, oil
paintings, sculptures, rare books and antique stamps, coins and bronze
mirrors.

The category of modern and contemporary Chinese paintings and
calligraphy features masterpieces by Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong, Zhang
Daqian, Li Keran and others.

Qi Baishi (1863-1957) is noted for his works which combine elegance and
folk temperament.

Of special interest are three albums of figures (lot 536), treasures
(lot 568) and birds and insects (lot 304) by Qi.

Figure portraits made up a comparatively small proportion of Qi's works.

The figure collection, an eight-leaf lot of ink and color features eight
well-known characters in ancient China, including a sketch of Su Dongpo,
one of the literary masters of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), fondling an
ink-stone, his facial expression touched by satisfaction.

Nearly 400 pieces of porcelain, jadeite and other art works will also be
on sale.

But the star of the show is the finely cast bronze wine vessel with a
cover, dating back to the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC).

For decades, (lot 2169) has been in the Idemitsu Museum of Art in
Tokoyo, which has gained a worldwide reputation as a storehouse of some
of the finest Chinese antiques.

It continues to be unusual for Chinese works of art and historic relics
to be featured in domestic auctions, so the inclusion of the bronze is
causing a buzz among collectors.

It is thought to have been an item of tribute given by nobles during the
middle age of the Western Zhou Dynasty to express their gratitude for
their emperor's largesse.

Over the centuries China has won international acclaim not only for its
porcelain, but also its exquisite embroidered products.

Not surprising then that more than 400 embroidered articles, most of
which are classics from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911)
dynasties, a time when the arts and crafts of Chinese embroidery
experienced a period of unprecedent prosperity, are featured.

The lots, of different genres from both the imperial and folk workshops,
cover almost all types of embroidered clothing found in old China.

There are pieces for decoration, coverings, religious application and
buzi, symbols to differentiate between social ranks.

A masterpiece by Shen Shou (1874-1921), an embroidery expert from Suzhou
- one of the homes of silk embroidery in China - will also be on sale.

Born in an antiquary family, Shen's embroidery skills came to the fore
when she was just 15. She rather courageously adopted some of the
aspects of Western fine art, and created a new genre, the "imitative
embroidery," which further advanced the industry's development.

Also on sale will be the largest category of oil paintings (180 lots)
and sculptures (12 lots) the auctioneers have sold in their 11 year history.

Enthusiasts of antique rare books, coins, stamps and bronze mirrors will
also find much of interest in the salesroom. The auction will be held
from Friday to Sunday, May 13-15.

http://service.china.org.cn/link/wcm/Show_Text?info_id=128129&p_qry=art

**************************

IHT, MAY 3, 2005
Diverse cultures (and sales) at Asian art event
Souren Melikian International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK If proof were needed that the art market and the broader
economy do not function under the same rules, it was spectacularly
provided during New York Asia Week, which began on March 28 and lingered
on into April.

China and India may vie with one another as the economic giants of the
future, but in art sales there is no suggestion of parity.

In contrast to the discreet presence of Indian art, Chinese art was to
be seen everywhere in Manhattan.

Leading dealers in Chinese art put on sensational shows across town. In
the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street, James Lally was offering
Song porcelains from a private collection formed over a period of 20
years by a New England connoisseur. By the show's opening on March 28,
37 of the 56 pieces had already been sold from the catalogue. Among
them, a beautiful Song dish, incised on an ivory ground with ducks
floating between riverside plants, under a transparent glaze, was picked
up by an American collector. The $120,000 price tag was not a problem.

A superb lobed pottery dish of the 11th or 12th century that was painted
in green and ochre, and molded on the ivory slip, by an artist from the
mysterious non-Chinese Liao culture, went just as easily. At $25,000, a
Hong Kong colleague of Lally's must have thought it was too good a
chance to pass up.

The star piece, a $180,000 high-shouldered vase of the ''meiping'' type,
freely painted with dark brown peony blossoms on the ivory ground, will
stay in the United States. When it closed on April 16, Lally's show was
all but sold out.

At the E&J Frankel Gallery on Madison Avenue, the brown glazed vessels
of Yixing porcelain from a Taiwan collection, with no decoration other
than discreetly incised calligraphy on their mat grainy surface, went
even more quickly. The show remains on view until April 30, but 27 of
the 29 pieces had found homes within a week of the April 1 opening. The
catalogue, covering new ground with its hitherto unpublished pieces,
helped, and so did moderate prices, which ranged up to $32,000

Together, the two shows sum up the first asset that gives Chinese art a
huge advantage over Indian art. Thousands of beautiful objects are
available and prices are often comparatively accessible.

The abundance in part reflects an active, centuries-long collecting
tradition in both the West and the East. In China, it goes back to the
Song age, when the court and the literati sought with equal zest objects
from the distant past and the then-contemporary pottery.

In Europe, collecting Chinese art was sufficiently established by the
end of the 16th century for the Medici to patronize the production of
the first European blue-and-white porcelain inspired by Far Eastern models.

By the 17th century, blue-and-white faience, loosely interpreting
Chinese shapes and patterns, was being made at Delft in Holland.
Delftware in turn prompted other imitations. In the 1740s and 1750s,
Limehouse, Bow and other English centers produced porcelain painted with
Chinese landscapes and supplied them with pseudo-Chinese marks for good
measure. In France, Chinese lacquer panels were incorporated into
commodes by cabinetmakers working for the court and Chinese wallpaper
was the ultimate in aristocratic interior architecture. This
centuries-old familiarity with Chinese art paved the way for today's
Western collectors.

Indian art was discovered later in the West, not for want of relations
with India, but by virtue of its nature. Hindu India was dominated by
what might be termed temple culture. It had no porcelain to offer, no
small objets d'art to send abroad — the destructive climate of India
spared only a very few early wooden or ivory artifacts. What the climate
did not destroy, men did. The Indian tradition of melting down old
bronzes to recuperate the raw material eliminated most secular bronzes
of any age. The bronze and tinned brass vessels made for princely
banquets at the Muslim courts, the Moguls included, have trickled to the
West in minimal numbers.

The scarcity of secular art from India formed a striking contrast with
Chinese abundance at the Asia Week auctions. On March 31, Christie's
held a sale of ''Indian and Southeast Asian Art including Modern and
Contemporary Indian Art'' in which Indian works of art were virtually
confined to stone temple sculptures, and these were outnumbered by
statues and bronze figures from Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, Thailand and
Indonesia. The same was true at Sotheby's on April 1.

Seen from a broader perspective, that scarcity is laudable. India bans
the export of antiquities that are part of its cultural heritage; in
recent years, it has had greater success in implementing the law than
countries like Cambodia or Nepal.

The day may not be far away when it will be impossible to buy or sell
Indian sculptures without documentation to prove its exit from the
country before the 1970 Unesco convention. That scarcity leads to
sky-high prices, but those spending vast amounts now may be unable to
recoup their outlay in the not-too-distant future — to say nothing of
the risk of possible legal action.

Such fears are spreading in the United States. They are beginning to be
reflected in auction results, with Indian art worst affected. At
Christie's, the highest price, $486,400, was paid for a wonderful
11th-century statue from Angkor, Cambodia, and the buyer was European,
and not American, as would probably have been the case a decade ago. At
Sotheby's, the star of the April 1 sale was a seventh-century brass
statue described as hailing from ''Gilgit, northwestern India,'' under
the label ''greater Kashmir,'' although Gilgit is in Pakistan, and not
India, and the catalogue suggested that the statue might have come from
a Tibetan shrine anyway. Here again, the bronze went to a European who
paid a hefty $352,000 — a ''world record for a bronze from greater
Kashmir,'' Sotheby's said.

India scored that week, but not with the art of the past. At Christie's,
sales of Indian modern and contemporary art totaled an unprecedented
$3.7 million, more than double the amount fetched by temple-stone
sculptures and bronzes.

One important factor gives China the advantage in the art market. For
the past two decades, a flow of discoveries has been generating
ever-growing excitement. Some have come about as a result of commercial
digging, banned in principle, but largely tolerated.

Entire new schools of Chinese Buddhist sculptures have come to light. At
Berwald Oriental Art at 5 East 57th Street, the limestone head of the
smiling deity Guanyin, which was carved under the short-lived Zhou
dynasty (557-581), ranks among the world masterpieces of Chinese
sculpture. It was unknown until its publication in the Berwald catalogue.

At New York's International Asian Art Fair, which closed on April 6,
Mehmet Hassan of Bangkok was showing an admirable Buddha that revealed a
new style in sixth-century China. Conor Mahony, president of the Chinese
Porcelain Company, displayed a marvelous pottery flask of a type never
seen before. Molded with monkeys perched amid formalized vegetal motifs,
handled in crisp sculptural style, it probably dates from the seventh
century or late sixth century. The $28,000 piece went to a New York art
lover on opening night.

More recent periods of Chinese art reserve as many surprises. S.
Marchant & Son of London brought to the fair a vase with an off-white
glaze that was slightly lavender, and the seal mark of the Yongzheng
period (1723-1735). Formerly preserved in a Japanese collection, it is
unique of its kind in that color. So is a white brushwasher shaped like
an open peach with the Qianlong seal mark. A Hong Kong buyer carried
away the $45,000 gem, beating to the post the curator of a U.S. museum.

The excitement now goes beyond specialists. A man who was struck by the
movement of two Tang pottery horses on Berwald's stand at the Asian fair
bought the pair after checking that they looked nice in his residence.
An impromptu decision to buy on April 3 was made by a French art lover
visiting Mahony's stand. He could not resist the snarling truculence of
two guardians in painted terracotta from the early eighth century. The
price was $175,000

The flow of Chinese art coming out of the country has lately slowed. The
Chinese have now stepped into the art market massively, and the flow is
being redirected back home.

When Grace Wu Bruce of Hong Kong started dealing in Chinese furniture in
1987, eventually becoming a world leader in the field, buyers were
mainly Western. She opened a second gallery in London. Now, she is
recentering her activities on Hong Kong. Demand from China has risen
exponentially. Wu Bruce cites as an example a twelve-panel screen in
zitan wood, complete with its period paintings on silk, which she bought
for nearly $3 million at Christie's Hong Kong on July 7, 2003, thus
setting a world auction record for a piece of Chinese furniture. By
December that year, the screen had been bought by a collector from the
mainland.

Collecting art has become an all-China sport and China's lead in the art
market can only accelerate.

** Souren Melikian is the art editor of the International Herald Tribune.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/03/arts/web.0423china.php

****************************

ips news, May 4
CHINA:
Case of a Pot - Calling the Kettle Black To Halt Artifacts Loss
Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, May 4 (IPS) - An official Chinese government campaign to
reverse the outflow of China's cultural and artistic heritage has
sparked off an impassioned debate about the pros and cons of free trade
in art. It also questions the dubious record of the Communist Party
leadership in protecting its cultural patrimony.

Chinese officials have asked the United States government to share
responsibility for the depletion of Chinese artifacts in the country by
imposing restrictions on the import to the U.S. of all cultural property
over 95 years old. They argue that huge demand in the United States for
China's rich cultural heritage is the root cause for increased looting
and smuggling of artifacts and works of art.

China is not the first country to ask the United States to impose import
restrictions on antiquities. The controversy surrounding China's request
stems from the fact that the list of items presented to U.S. customs
authorities as imports to be prohibited is far more sweeping than
current restrictions on export of cultural items from the country.

Questions are also being raised as to whether China has done enough to
halt the loss of artifacts at home before seeking help from abroad.

Existing Chinese regulations on exports of cultural relics stipulate
that only items dating from before 1795 (which marks the end of Qing
emperor Qian Long's reign), are prohibited from export.

But the Chinese request for U.S. import restrictions though, is all
encompassing, covering works of art in virtually every media, from the
Palaeolithic era to the end of the Empire in 1911.

The request is currently considered by the United States, which is
conducting its own investigation into China's art scene, including the
country's auction houses, antiquities markets and customs controls.

The United States is bound by an art-importation law, the Convention on
Cultural Policy Implementation Act (CPIA), which was passed by the U.S.
Congress in 1983, after a decade of debate, to comply with a 1970 UNESCO
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation)
convention. The law is aimed at resolving crisis situations in which the
cultural patrimony of a nation signatory to the U.N. agreement is deemed
in jeopardy.

Few dispute the need to stem the flow of plundered artifacts from China.

Last year China had 36 large-scale robberies of museums, tombs and
temples resulting in the loss of 223 antiquities, according to the State
Cultural Relics Bureau. The rate of successful thefts has increased by
80 percent compared to the year before, the bureau estimates.

But art dealers and collectors from both sides of the Pacific agree that
granting China its request would be tantamount to shutting down the U.S.
market in Chinese antiquities.

Restrictions on imports of Chinese artifacts will have far-reaching
implications for the cultural lives of U.S. citizens and all foreigners,
they say, because it would deprive them of valuable opportunities to
appreciate and study China's astonishingly rich culture.

''That would be a throwback to McCarthy-era restrictions of the 1960s,
when all Chinese art imported to the U.S. required proof that it was not
owned by a communist,'' James Lally, a renowned U.S. Asian art dealer,
was quoted in 'Orientations' magazine -- a publication for art collectors.

The 1950s and 1960s were an ugly time for thousands of U.S. citizens of
Chinese origin, clustered in Chinatowns across the country, who became
the target of anti-communist fervor ignited by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and
aimed at the Soviet Union and China.

U.S. museum curators have described China's request as a shotgun
solution that would do little to stop or decrease looting and smuggling
of artifacts. But China's art dealers have been equally vocal in
opposing the request as flawed.

''There is too much emphasis on control; on export restrictions,'' said
Liu Shangyong, an auction official with Rongbao Auction company,
commenting on China's policies on cultural relics. ''To eliminate
looting and smuggling, you have to promote openness and many channels
for antiquities exchange rather than simply blocking them."

''It is more or less a measure of desperation, an admission that we
cannot tackle the problem at its source,'' said Zhang Deqin, a former
official with the State Cultural Relics Bureau. ''Since we cannot stop
people from looting relics inside the country, we have to ask foreign
countries to supervise their imports.''

Many argue that the Chinese government's commitment to investing in huge
infrastructure works is a far more substantial source of artifacts loss
than looting. The most obvious example of artifacts lost to construction
and development is the Three Gorges dam. The world's largest reservoir,
going up on the Yangtze River, has caused the inundation of numerous
historic towns and ancient tombs. Many artifacts from the area were only
salvaged thanks to private collectors.

Government engagement in the art trade is being scrutinised, not the
least because of Communist China's unsavoury past record of preserving
its cultural patrimony.

Until ten years ago, all buying and selling of Chinese antiquities
abroad were monopolised by the state. That meant that the Ministry of
Foreign Trade exported works of art to earn foreign currency that was
later spent on buying steel and cement to finance China's industrialisation.

The exodus of art works had started with the collapse of the Qing empire
in 1911 and in the modernisation drive that followed when valuable
antiquities were sold off at rock bottom prices. With the ascendance of
the Communist Party to power, what was left of China's vast cultural
heritage was either destroyed, or confiscated and exported.

When the frenzied destruction of the Cultural Revolution (1956 to 1966)
was over, the state invited foreign dealers to visit the vast warehouses
stacked full of confiscated works of art and buy in bulk. By some
accounts, in the 1980s China was exporting a million snuff bottles a year.

Trying to reverse this wholesale pillaging of the country's cultural
heritage, China announced in April a large-scale programme aimed at
reclaiming national treasures from abroad.

A quasi non-governmental organisation, the China Cultural Relics
Recovery Programme, has began work on recovery of items that were
stolen, looted and smuggled abroad between 1840 and 1945, before the
founding of communist China.

This task force claims that Chinese cultural relics held by private
individuals abroad exceed the numbers of antiquities stashed away in
foreign museums by ten times. UNESCO figures suggest that 1.67 million
Chinese antiquities are owned by more than 200 museums in 47 countries.

The official 'Xinhua' news agency quoted one senior cultural heritage
preservation expert, Xie Chensheng, as saying: ''The spiritual wealth
can be shared by the whole world, but not the ownership -- just like
property rights on software. Ownership of the scattered cultural
treasures should lie with the Chinese people."

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=28552

**********************

welt, 7. Mai 2005
Der Trend geht zum Erstkäufer
Hannover: "Kunst in Herrenhausen"
von Gerhard Charles Rump

Mit rund 8000 Besuchern hat sich das Publikumsinteresse stabil gehalten.
Vom 27. April bis zum 1. Mai lud diese kleine. hochfeine Messe ins
Herrenhausener Galeriegebäude und die Orangerie. Mit dem Erfolg ist der
Handel zufrieden, zum Teil war man sogar sehr erfreut. Ein Beweis, daß
gute Kunst nicht teuer sein muß, trat unter anderem Depelmann
(Langenhagen) an, der einen Holzschnitt mit Blattgold (25er) von Peter
Hermann für 250 Euro anbot - und das, obwohl auf jedem Blatt allein für
30 Euro Blattgold verarbeitet sind. Depelmann punktete auch mit A. Paul
Weber und Klaus Fußmann (Aquarell von Blumen in Vasen, 42x56 cm, 8500
Euro). Bühler (Stuttgart) hatte gleich drei Gemälde von Courbet (120-165
000) dabei, darunter eine rare Winterlandschaft im
Caspar-David-Friedrichschen Geiste. Bei den Alten und Neuen Meistern
beeindruckte Thomas Schneider (München), der unter anderem einen großen
liegenden Akt von Oskar Moll zeigte (76 000) und eine reizvoll
Napoli-Ansicht von Oswald Achenbach. Mit dem erfolg war man hier zufrieden.

Möbel sind traditionell ein Schwerpunkt hier, und Georg Britsch jun.
(Bad Schussenried) richtete so manches Sammlerzimmer ein. Starobjekt war
ein musealer Halbglobus-Nähtisch (Wien, 1810 mit Widderkopfzier für 44
000 Euro. Bei Britsch Senior beeindruckte eine gut 170 lange Büchse
(Steinschloß) aus Bambergschem Fürstenbesitz (um 1680; 14 000 Euro) und
ein Relief der Hl. Katharina, oberschwäbisch um 1500 - mir originaler
Fassung (22 000). J. H. Bauer (Hannover) sagte der WELT: "Ich hatte hier
die beste Messe seit 12 Jahren." Kein Wunder, er verkaufte viele
Scherenschnitte (bis 900 Euro), darunter auch von Ph. O. Runge,
Altmeistergrafik (etwa Dürers "Lautenzeichner", 1525, 2400 Euro) und
eine Reihe von Gemälden von Wilhelm Busch, darunter ein hübsches Kuhbild
(12 000 Euro). Die "Aachener Fraktion" war wieder mitbestimmend:
Bürgerhausen hatte ein reizendes Wiener Kabinettschränkchen (Carl
Baumeister, um 1850) mit 82 Appliken von Emailmalerei für 24 000 Euro,
Schürenberg präsentierte finnisches Glas (Karhula-Iittala, frühe 50er,
um 1500 Euro) und bei Steinbeck lief Porzellan gut: "Vor allem ging
frühes Meißen, auch die Chinoiserien." Eine wichtige Erfahrung: "Bei
raren Stücken spielt der Preis keine Rolle mehr."

Nachkriegskunst war gut vertreten, etwa der "Dornbusch" von E. W. Nay
(1951) für 148 000 Euro bei Koch (Hannover), Silber prunkte bei Schepers
(Münster) in der Form Augsburger Becker (um 1738) von 2500 bis 6500
Euro, Schmuck funkelte bei Ritscher&Sandmeier (Berlin), vor allem ein
edler Halsschmuck (um 1770) mit azurblauem Kristallglas (12 500).

Hoch beachtlich immer das Angebot an Asiatika: Peter Hardt
(Radevormwald) verkaufte einen bedeutenden goldenen Buddha aus Tibet
(14. Jh.), bei Sandvoss (Hannover) gab es Chinesische Snuff Bottles von
100 Euro an (bis etwa 2500 Euro), Flachsmann hatten großartige Netsuke,
so einen liegenden Eber von Mitsushiro, um 1840, 5 cm, 17 500 Euro). Ein
Knüller: Brenske (München) mit der Kombination von Serge Poliakoff
(Farblithos 5-13 000) und extrafeinen Ikonen. Besonders gut liefen
kleinere für 2-5000 Euro). Stefan Brenske: "Die Leute, die man sich
wünscht, waren da. Besonders erfreulich ist, daß es zunehmend Erstkäufer
gibt."

http://www.welt.de/data/2005/05/07/715106.html

 

__________________

with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de

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