Tagesspiegel, 20.08.2005
Anhaltender Höhenflug
Christie’s und Sotheby’s feiern ihre Bilanzen

„Sotheby’s erwartet, dass der gegenwärtige Auftrieb am internationalen Kunstmarkt anhält“, meldet frohgemut die Halbjahresbilanz des Auktionshauses – obwohl es im Vergleich mit dem Erzrivalen Christie’s in der ersten Jahreshälfte 2005 den Kürzeren zog.

Christie’s setzte weltweit Kunst für 1,65 Millionen Dollar um – eine Steigerung von erstaunlichen 32 Prozent gegenüber dem Vorjahreszeitraum und der höchste Halbjahresumsatz der Unternehmensgeschichte. „Dieses Ergebnis spricht für sich“, freute sich Generaldirektor Ed Dolman. Das Privatunternehmen, das dem Franzosen François Pinault gehört, konnte eine Reihe der teuersten Auktionspreise des Halbjahres verbuchen, darunter Constantin Brancusis Skulptur „Oiseau dans l’espace“ für 27,4 Millionen Dollar. Noch höher stieg eine chinesische Antiquität aus dem 13. Jahrhundert: Ein Porzellantopf der Yuan Dynastie brachte in London 15,7 Millionen Pfund – das sind 27,7 Millionen Dollar.

Sotheby’s fiel dagegen mit seinem Gesamtumsatz von 1,3 Milliarden Dollar hinter sein Ergebnis von 2004 zurück, als allein Picassos „Junge mit der Pfeife“ aus der Sammlung Whitney Greentree 104 Millionen Dollar einspielte. Dagegen nimmt sich der Preis für das Toplos dieser Saison bescheiden aus: Wieder ist es ein Picasso, doch „Femmes d’Algers“ blieb im Mai in New York mit 18,6 Millionen Dollar in einer ganz anderen Preisklasse.

Investment Banker und Hedge Fond Manager wie der Amerikaner Steven A. Cohen, der unter anderem bei einem Direktverkauf 52 Millionen Dollar für ein Gemälde von Jackson Pollock bezahlte, treiben den Markt für die Contemporary Art immer höher. In diesem Segment sind die Preise laut der Datenbank Artprice in den letzten 12 Monaten um 13 Prozent gestiegen. Die Umsätze liegen nun gleich mit der Japanerhausse von 1990 – nur auf einer viel breiteren und gesünderen Grundlage, behaupten die Auktionatoren. Groß eingestiegen sind etwa russische Käufer und die Chinesen: Christie’s meldet für die Asienmärkte in 2005 bislang Umsatzsteigerungen von 54 Prozent.
Matthias Thibaut

http://archiv.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/20.08.2005/1999949.asp

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The Guardian, August 18, 2005
Chinese buyers fuel auction house boom
Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent
[image] Dragon economy: A Qing dynasty blue and white dragon vase which sold for $1.6m at Sotheby's. Photograph: Robert Ng/Reuters

First there was the vase that fetched £15.6m at Christie's last month, the most expensive Asian artefact in history. Then there was another 14th-century Yuan dynasty pot, kept on a shelf for years in its owners' dog room, which fetched £3m at auction in Salisbury, six times the record for anything sold at a British provincial auction.

Now if anyone doubts that the Chinese art market is exploding, Christie's has attributed its record sales of £910m for the first six months of 2005 to the emergence of Chinese buyers keen to buy back their cultural heritage.

Asian art accounted for £71.3m of Christie's sales between January and June, far short of the £232.3m spent on impressionist and modern art but outstripping the £38.5m spent on old masters.

Christie's cannot say precisely how many mainland Chinese buyers have snapped up ceramics or ink paintings at its sales. But Ed Dolan, the company's chief executive, said the "growing participation of buyers from mainland China, alongside the growing number of collectors throughout Asia" had contributed "a significant part" to the bumper figures.

Giuseppe Eskenazi, the London-based dealer who successfully bid for the £15.6m Yuan vase, warned against exaggerating the numbers of mainland buyers. He said the five people still in the bidding for the vase above £10m, including his client, were all western, or western or Taiwan-based expatriate Chinese. But according to Mr Dolan, "there were several Chinese clients bidding up to the region of £10m, serious contenders if not ultimate buyers".

According to Mr Eskenazi, American and Swiss collectors still dominate the bidding for the most expensive items, with Chinese collectors buying "at mid-level".

"A lot of Chinese are buying works as investments," he said. "They haven't got the sophistication at the top level."

But the rise of the Chinese mainland market - exaggerated as it may have been - is becoming important, as the Chinese economy booms and its ranks of millionaires grow.

Ceramics and other artworks are seen as a useful addition to investment portfolios given an unstable stock market. There is also an element of patriotic repatriation, of gathering back the antiquities that streamed out of China as the Qing dynasty crumbled and the country was engulfed by revolution.

China is also seeing its contemporary art, which has hitherto sold to an almost entirely foreign clientele, start to gain a domestic market.

Chinese contemporary art has become hot in Europe and the US over the past five years and the appearance of the first Chinese pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale confirmed the acceptance of China as a player in the contemporary art world.

According to Lorenz Hebling, a Swiss dealer who set up a gallery in Shanghai in 1996, native Chinese buyers are gradually emerging - "creative people who are close to the artist, or people who spend a lot of energy finding out what is going on". He said Chinese collectors "want to keep [the art] in China", and paintings were "still the main thing" although installations and video works, in which Chinese artists are particularly active, were also being sold.

In addition to that 100 state-run and private museums in Shanghai alone are expected to be built in the decade following the city's World Fair in 2010. Observers expect about 1,000 museums to be built in China as a whole by 2015.

Chang Yungho, a Beijing-based architect, said during an event at Art Basel, a contemporary art fair, that he was working on a museum town: 25 museums, along with commercial and residential spaces, south of Anren in Sichuan province.

The museum-building spree is largely spearheaded by property developers, and with only a limited vision of the art they might house. Huo Hanru, a Paris-based Chinese expatriate curator, said at Art Basel: "Very often the museums being built have basically no programme, and the programme comes usually three months before the event happens, very often because of people coming with money and power saying 'I want to rent the space'."

The majority of the museums will be filled by temporary exhibitions so there will not be a buying spree for permanent collections.

Even so, the rise of a culture of museums and galleries in China is likely to boost the domestic art market.

The London-based gallery Haunch of Venison is planning to open outposts in Shanghai and Beijing, hoping to sell both western and Chinese art to Chinese clients.

Harry Blain, the director of the gallery, said it was responding to a "real thirst" for contemporary western art in China.

"There are some very encouraging signs and an enormous enthusiasm," he said. "We hope that will translate into the emergence of new collectors."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1551374,00.html

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artdaily, 8/16/2005
Fine Chinese Ceramics at Sotheby's
[image] An outstanding limestone figure of the future Buddha, Maitreya.

NEW YORK.-On September 21 & 22, 2005, Sotheby's will hold its sales of Fine chinese Ceramics, Works of Art and Paintings and the Arts of the Buddha as a part of the twice-yearly celebration of Asia Week in New York. The sales are expected to bring in excess of $12 millionand $5 million, respectively.

Fine chinese Ceramics and Works of Art - Following the tremendous spring Asia Week in March 2005, in which Sotheby's sold 23 lots over $100,000 and achieved the three highest auction prices for Asian art that week, including a previously undiscovered 14th Century copper-red bottle which brought $2 million, the September sales of chinese and Asian art will feature a number of treasures, including a monumental pair of late Ming dynasty lacquer cabinets with reignmarks of the Wanli emperor (1573-1619). Acquired in Beijing in 1918 by a scion of the Goodrich Tyre fortune of Akron, Ohio, the cabinets were purchased upon their removal from a temple within the Imperial palace grounds. At almost 11 feet high, these oversized cabinets with their matching hat-chests could only have graced the cavernous halls of Imperial palaces. The quality and consistency of the lacquer is astounding, and after 400 years they remain in superb condition, exhibiting a very even craquelure. Their long vertical exteriors are treated as hanging scroll landscapes, with 'Shangri-La' scenes of faraway pavilions and misty mountains amid rivers drawing the viewer's eye up their massive doors and sides. The cabinets are estimated to bring $1/1.5 million.

Highlighting the sale are three Ming blue-and-white porcelain vases, each a consummate masterpiece of its type and made within 100 years of each other. These works provide insight into the changing political and artistic developments during a key period of chinese history, the 15th century. One of these fabled vases, a 'prunus blossom vase' or meiping, was used as a lamp by philanthropist Laurance S. Rockefeller in his upstate New York residence, Kent House, up until last year. At 14 inches, it is one of the larger sizes of this form and its refinement in construction and decoration are breathtaking. Painted with a central field set with six detached sprays of luscious fruit, it reveals all the key characteristics of Ming porcelain. The design is executed from nature with almost documentary precision so that each different fruit is identifiable – peach, pomegranate, crab-apple, loquat, lychee and longan. The creamy white porcelain is treated like an unfolding handscroll, moving clearly away from the over-crowded banded designs of the 14th Century which occupied every inch of ceramic space. Instead, the vases from the Yongle period display their decoration in a restrained and lyrical manner, with the boldness of the cobalt-blue reaching a purity that would be unsurpassed for hundreds of years. While several meiping are in major institutional collections, a smaller meiping was recently sold by Sotheby's Hong Kong in May 2005 for $1.18 million. This vase is expected to bring $300/400,000.

A wider blue and white jar, in guan form, painted with a ferocious five-clawed dragon striding among clouds, was executed around the 1440s. Made just at the beginning of this tumultuous period, termed 'the Interregnum', the dragon guan jar is actually a political statement, declaring the authority of the Son of Heaven. Seen as a benevolent yet powerful dragon, the strong claws and writhing scaly body pull clouds and elemental forces to bring rain, fecundity and prosperity to the people of China. It is estimated to sell for $100/150,000.

The third major discovery is a circa 1460s meiping from a famous collection formed in the 1930s by Shanghai collector J.M. Hu. It is one of the finest pieces executed in the so-called 'windswept' style. A horseman is flanked by sword-bearer and servant with baskets of food and wine, while the mood is conveyed by breezes rustling the leaves of arching willows and pines. This is possibly a depiction of the historical episode, 'Xiao He pursuing Han Xin by Moonlight,' whose theme of honor and duty to the empire found resonance as the Ming dynastic line regained the Mandate of Heaven upon the Zhengtong's release (est. $150/200,000).

Three other unique masterpieces reveal the development of the Imperial concept during the succeeding Qing dynasty. The first is an unparalleled rarity, a grand-scale court painting of a Prince of the Royal Blood, Prince Guo (1733-1765) (pictured right), sixth son of the emperor Yongzheng and half-brother of the emperor Qianlong. Commemorative court paintings with sitters depicted in rigid symmetry and frontality were strictly propagandist depictions of the authority of the state, but this unruly character is hinted at in the portrait. It is recorded that at age seven, he was caught watching fireworks instead of attending class, and having run from the presence of the emperor, an even worse affront, his chief eunuch was given sixty lashes This attempt at individualization and expression was revolutionary, and an innovation only introduced by Western Jesuit painters to the Qing court in the early 18th Century. In the discovery of the original ink under-drawing beneath the colors on silk, evident is the sure and expressive hand of the famed artist Giuseppe Castiglione and his studio, who was the favorite of the Court. Three other depictions of Prince Guo are known, including two in the Arthur M Sackler Gallery in Washington DC, but no other grand-scale court painting of this quality has appeared at auction in recent years (est. $300/500,000). In addition, there will be a selection of Modern chinese paintings from the collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth featuring a Lin Fengmian, Mountain Landscape, 1970s (est. $150/200,000), an extraordinary rare Pan Tianshou Calligraphy from 1961 (est. $50/70,000), an early Qi Baishi landscape from 1922 (est. $150/200,000) and several lovely works by Zhang Daqian.

http://www.artdaily.com/section/news/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=14632&b=chinese

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der standart, 17. August 2005
Private Altersvorsorge
Hochpreisig: song- und mingzeitliche Kalligrafien und Rollbilder des letzten chinesischen Kaisers Pu Yi
Von Johnny Erling
[image] Die "Versammlung der Gelehrten im westlichen Garten" des Hofmalers Li Gonglin (1049-1106) löste Bietgefechte bei Sungari aus

Aus dem Palastmuseum geschmuggelte song- und mingzeitliche Kalligrafien und Rollbilder des letzten chinesischen Kaisers Pu Yi erzielen Rekordsummen am asiatischen Versteigerungsmarkt für chinesische Kunst.

Peking - Mehrere vom letzten chinesischen Kaiser Pu Yi aus dem Palastmuseum im Jahr 1922 für seine Alterversorgung entwendete Kalligrafien und Rollbilder sind nach einer spektakulären Auktion in Peking wieder in chinesischen Besitz zurückgekehrt. Die aus Japan gelieferten Gegenstände wurden Höhepunkt der Jubiläumsauktion des Auktionshauses Sungari zu ihrem zehnjährigen Bestehen.

Alleine fünf solche Gemälde, die aus der Song-Zeit (960 bis 1279) stammen, erzielten rund sieben Millionen Euro, ein neuer Rekord für alte Malerei, die innerhalb Chinas versteigert wird. Chinas letzter Dynastieherrscher hatte auch nach seiner Absetzung im Revolutionsjahr 1911 weiter im Kaiserpalast leben dürfen. Mithilfe seines Bruders Pu Jie schmuggelte Pu Yi insgesamt 1285 Rollbilder, 502 klassische Bücher, 69 bemalte Fächer und 45 Stempel aus der Palastbeständen heraus, um so zu Geld zu kommen. Nach 80 Jahren sind bisher erst 60 Gemälde über Auktionen wieder nach China zurückgekommen.

Besonders ein vier Meter langes songzeitliches Rollbild "Versammlung der Gelehrten im westlichen Garten" des Hofmalers Li Gonglin (1049-1106) löste Bietgefechte aus, die mit Applaus im Saal bedacht wurden. Ein taiwanischer Unternehmer erhielt den Zuschlag bei 25 Millionen Yuan. Mit der zehnprozentigen Auktionsgebühr kostet ihn das 900 Jahre alte Gemälde 2,9 Millionen Euro. Kurator Zhao Yu sprach vom höchsten Preis, der je im freien Handel für ein Bild aus der kaiserlichen Palastsammlung gezahlt wurde.

Neben Christie's und Sotheby's in Hongkong dominieren sechs bis acht große inländische Auktionshäuser, darunter Guardian, Hanhai oder Sungari, den asiatischen Versteigerungsmarkt für chinesische Kunst und Kultur. Ihr Gesamtumsatz erreichte 2004 mehr als 310 Millionen Euro.

http://derstandard.at/?id=2146319

 

 

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with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

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

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