der standard, 12. Juli 2005
Teurer als ein Pott voll Gold
... ging eine leere Keramik-Schale aus der Yuan Dynastie über den Auktionstisch: für über 22 Millionen Euro
[image] Der Asien-Rekordhalter

Wien/London - Bei einer Christie's-Auktion wurde eine Keramik-Schale aus der Yuan Dynastie für 15.688.000 Pfund (22,7 Mio. Euro) versteigert. Damit wurde das Gefäß zum teuersten jemals versteigerten Kunstwerk Asiens, teilte das Auktionshaus in einer Aussendung mit. Den Zuschlag im Rahmen der Auktion "Chinesische Kunst und Keramik "erhielt die in London ansässige Galerie Eskenazi, eine von Europas wichtigsten Kunsthandlungen für Asiatika.

Bei dem Objekt handelt sich um eine außergewöhnlich seltene Keramik-Schale aus der Yuan Dynastie (1279-1368), hieß es. Die Schale ist mit einer Szenerie aus einem kriegerischen Konflikt in Kobalt-Blau bemalt. Sie ist eine von nur acht Schalen, die heute noch existieren. (APA)

http://derstandard.at/?id=2110268

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post-gazette.com, Friday, July 08, 2005
New art from China attracts big money
By Karen Mazurkewich, The Wall Street Journal

Patricia Tang has been an avid collector of master drawings for more than 30 years, and can quickly tick off 18th- and 19th-century favorites like Edgar Degas and John Constable. But the artists Ms. Tang is most excited about these days are of a more recent vintage -- from late 20th-century China.

"These people are alive; there's a lot of energy there," says Ms. Tang, a New Yorker who has invested about $100,000 in works by a conceptual artist who works with hair and body fluids and a contemporary Chinese calligrapher, among others.

The art world's latest discovery: Chinese artists who came of age in the 1980s. In a fit of speculation and discovery, Americans are starting to buy, show and sell contemporary Chinese art -- just as prices for the works are rising at auctions in Hong Kong and Beijing. New York's Max Protetch Gallery, traditionally associated with big-name architects, has added four edgy Chinese artists to its roster. Sotheby's in New York has a month-old contemporary Chinese art department, while Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art this summer is devoting a football-field-sized exhibit in North Adams, Mass., to works by conceptual artist Cai Guo-Qiang. (The centerpiece: colored lights pulsing from hundreds of transparent rods with nine white Fords suspended midair.)

The main reason collectors and galleries are turning to China now is because the art is relatively cheap, especially in the booming contemporary market. Paintings by '80s American art stars like Richard Prince and Eric Fischl, for example, now fetch up to $1 million at auction, while a painting from contemporary Chinese artist Li Shen can go for $6,000 at a gallery. Another selling point: The images are pretty easy for Westerners to relate to -- Mr. Li, one of the pioneers of the "Mao Goes Pop" movement, is famous for depictions of the former Chinese chairman on Mark Rothko-like color-fields.

There has long been an active market for antique Chinese decorative items and furniture, but the country's traditional ink-brush works never caught on in the same way with international collectors. The Chinese art scene began to change in the early '80s, after the end of the Cultural Revolution and artists were allowed to experiment. Xu Bing distorted traditional calligraphy and inserted it into landscapes. (He now does multimedia installations and is a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award winner.) Wang Guangyi played on images of American consumer brands, becoming another of the "Mao goes pop" artists.

But the Chinese government remained wary of some artists. Gu Wenda's ink and paper works were so controversial -- plays on traditional concepts of calligraphy and sloganeering -- that Chinese propaganda officials closed down several of his shows, and Mr. Gu emigrated to the U.S. in the late '80s. A decade later, he was doing well enough that a work made with hair and paper sold at auction for $16,000. Today, the 50-year-old lives in a brownstone he owns with his wife, an interior decorator, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and his works go for $50,000 and up in galleries around the world. "I can't keep up with commissions," Mr. Gu says.

For collector Howard Farber, investing in the works is "another way to play China." The 67-year-old New Yorker first discovered contemporary Chinese art wandering through a gallery in Hong Kong, and has since become an active buyer. He's also started a business advising U.S. corporations on purchasing Chinese art, and has sold off older American works to pay for his Chinese hunch. "I never thought my Georgia O'Keefe would be replaced by a Gu Wenda," he says.

Now, dozens of the contemporary Chinese artists are surfacing in catalogs for auctions in Hong Kong and China -- and Americans are out shopping. Since the major houses have yet to put this work on the block in the U.S., collectors either travel to China to attend the sales, bid online or use a local representative to buy for them. China Guardian, the nation's largest auction house, says sales of Chinese paintings have almost tripled since 2003, with spring sales hitting a record high of $44.5 million. (The highest price ever paid for a Chinese painting was $2.6 million for a gold panel screen, "Crimson Lotuses on Gold Screen" by modernist Zhang Daqian, in 2002).

But some auction executives and gallery owners wonder if speculation is outpacing reality. At last month's spring auctions in Hong Kong, a 1991 piece by Mr. Cai (consisting of gunpowder markings and calligraphy) sold at Christie's for $569,000, more than five times its estimate. Prices at the auctions were high both for top-of-the-line contemporary works and "mediocre" ones of the same period, says Henry Au-yeung, director of Grotto Fine Art in Hong Kong. "There are some lesser artists who are getting triple their high estimate," he says.

Artists like Zhang Huan attribute the interest in their works to changing perceptions of China. When he moved to the U.S. from China in 1998, Mr. Zhang could rarely find a buyer willing to pay more than $100 for one of his photos, which range from staged shots of male bathers to stark self-portraits. But at the Hong Kong auctions, Mr. Zhang's "Family Tree" series -- showing the artist's face covered with Chinese characters -- sold at Christie's for $96,000. Westerners "are interested in China as an economic power, so now they look to the art," says Mr. Zhang, 40, who now divides his time between New York and Shanghai.

At least 10 New York galleries are now carrying contemporary Chinese artists, and collectors are traveling to the mainland to see the action first hand -- though not for price breaks. Galleries keep rates for the new works the same around the world. In China, Beijing's art districts, nonexistent a decade ago, have grown to about 22 registered galleries. Three new museums dedicated solely to contemporary art -- generally works produced after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 -- have opened in Shanghai in the past year.

While collectors like John Fernandez are happy to see their investment in such artists appreciate, they worry how real it is. In the past three years, Mr. Fernandez and his wife, Carmen, have spent about $1 million on contemporary Chinese works in Internet bidding. At Christie's spring sale in Hong Kong, though, the couple lost out on every Chinese painting they were interested in, even though they often offered twice the high estimate. The owner of a printing company in New Jersey, Mr. Fernandez says it's like betting on a runaway train. "Keith Haring and Basquiat (were) moving at 50 miles per hour and I flipped it for something moving at 100 miles per hour."

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05189/535096.stm

 

__________________

with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

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

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