China Daily, November 10, 2005
CHINESE ANTIQUES TO GO UNDER THE HAMMER IN GERMANY

Chinese nouveau-riche are racing across the globe to buy art. More than 250 Chinese are expected in Stuttgart, Germany, next week where old European private collections will go under the hammer.

"Altogether buyers from China will be more numerous than what we can see in the salesroom, because Chinese buyers are now bidding via the Internet, just like in the salesroom," said Uwe Jordan, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Stuttgart-based Nagel Auctions.

Nagel, the largest auction house in Germany, will present Chinese art from four important private collections in Europe at its annual autumn auction of Asian art between November 14 and 16. A preview is to take place in Stuttgart between November 10 and 13.

The four collections are an old German collection of trade paintings and export porcelains related to the tea and silk trade, a European collection of Chinese jades and bronzes, a German collection of Chinese modern paintings and a European collection of 46 porcelains from the Yuan (1279-1368), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

Highlights of the collections include an underglazed copper-red pear-shaped ceramic vase and a blue-and-white ceramic vase from the Ming Dynasty, a coral-ground ceramic bowl and famille rose yellow ground bowl from the royal collection of the Qing Dynasty, and ink paintings by Chinese artists Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) and Zhang Daqian (1899-1983).

"Most of the Chinese art we can offer is unknown in the market. This is the most important advantage of Nagel over Christie's and Sotheby's and Chinese auction houses," said Nagel's CEO Jordan.

"If you buy in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, you will see so many materials that have been on the market before that they become less attractive," he said.

"But if you buy in Germany, we all know that there has been a long tradition of co-operation and there were so many German families living in the late 19th century in China. So they cannot be fakes," he added.

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China Daily, November 8, 2005
RECORDS SET AT ART AUCTION

A colour ink painting depicting 40 parrots on trees - by 86-year-old artist Wu Guanzhong - went under the hammer for 30 million yuan (US$ 3.7 million) yesterday, setting a world record for its genre or, indeed, any piece of contemporary Chinese art work.

A block of four Chinese stamps and a Chinese oil painting were also sold for record prices at the same and an earlier auction.

The former world record for a Chinese ink painting of birds by 12th-century Emperor Huizong was 23 million yuan (US$ 2.77 million) at a Beijing auction in April 2002.

The stamps, which were used in 1942 in areas controlled by the Communist Party of China during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), fetched 2.2 million yuan (US$ 277,000).

The stamps were for the use of newspaper reporters to send telegrams, according to He Xin of China Guardian Auction Co Ltd.

The previous world record for Chinese stamps 1.8 million yuan (US$ 222,000) was set at a Beijing auction in spring.

But it is much lower than the world record, set last Wednesday by a block of four US airmail error stamps, which went for US$ 3 million, according to the New York Times.

On Sunday, "Portrait of Ms Jenny," a 1939 oil painting by Chinese artist and art educator Xu Beihong (1895-1953), was sold for 22 million yuan (US$ 2.7 million).

The previous record in this category was set in May in Hong Kong "Juin-October 1985" by Paris-based Chinese artist Zao Wou-ki went for HK$ 18.04 million (US$ 2.31 million) at a Christie's auction.

"The market is a bit crazy. Of course, Wu is a master artist, but how could the price exceed that of the work by Emperor Huizong, who created one of the greatest works of art in Chinese history?" asked a researcher with the National Museum of China surnamed Shi.

But Li Da, general manager of the newly founded Beijing Poly Art Auctions Co Ltd, which conducted the auction, said that industry insiders expected the records.

Mainland buyers of Chinese art are mainly the nouveau riche, typically real estate developers, bankers and securities investors in their 30s and 40s, she said.

Many of them favour contemporary, rather than ancient, art, she added.

Guo, a Chinese Indonesian who bought Wu's painting, said collectors from across the world are flocking to Beijing in search of good art.

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The Times (London), November 8, 2005, Tuesday
Just the Qing for new collectors
Jane Macartney

Growing affluence in China and Taiwan has seem a boom in sales of previously despised 18th-century Chinese art
A tiny vase just 8in (20cm) high and decorated with a pair of pheasants sold for a world record £8 million in Hong Kong last month, testament to the soaring popularity of Qing dynasty porcelain. The vase was created during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, one of the three emperors whose golden age is the subject of the Royal Academy exhibition.

Even a decade ago such colourful 18th-century porcelains could not compete with the prices paid for bowls and vases from the 11th century. “Up to the Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722) it was still regarded as passable, but anything after that was vulgar beyond belief,” says the British fine-art agent William Hanbury-Tenison. However, the market is being revolutionised by the rising prosperity of Taiwan and China. Tsang Chifan, a Chinese ceramics specialist at Christie ’s in Hong Kong, describes the lure for newer collectors of the more show-off colours of pieces from the age of the three emperors: “I think it’s to do with education, it’s a social issue. People are more familiar with recent history.” Chinese television offers up an abundant diet of historical dramas set in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).

Experts say that Qing porcelains are prized for their perfection. The three emperors, particularly Yongzheng, took a personal interest in the creation of porcelain that would appeal to their aesthetic senses. The use of delicate powder enamels to create polychrome decorations was an extremely difficult and time-consuming process. Sometimes as many as 90 pieces out of 100 would be smashed because they contained some flaw. The creation of a single vase could involve as many as 40 people, and inside the Forbidden City a studio was set aside for the use of Jesuit priests from Europe who helped with the design.

The porcelains are prized not only for their scarcity. Hanbury-Tenison says: “The Chinese can say they exceed anything anyone in the world has ever done. They are a symbol of national technological prowess.”

Thus the soaring prices. William Chak is the Hong Kong art dealer who paid £8 million for the tiny Guyuexuan, one of only four similar pieces in the world. “New collectors are entering the market and they want pretty things,” he says. Westerners want more natural pieces but for Chinese collectors now this period is the prettiest.” Like other experts, he expects prices to go higher. “This is no bubble.”

Top five new Chinese artists

Xu Bing paints abstract pictures of people; sold a woodblock at auction last week for $34,000 (£20,000).

Wang Guangyi creates huge pastiches of socialist realist art (see above), selling for an average $80,000.

Zeng Fanzhi paints distorted faces. A recent series of mask paintings is selling for about $80,000.

Xu Ruotao paints abstract portraits that sell for about $12,000.

Qiu Xiaofei’s tiny autobiographical pieces go for as much as $5,000.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,266-1861576,00.html

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The Times, November 08, 2005
Dealers show off London's bounty of Asian art
By Conal Gregory

ASIAN art and artefacts enjoy an international following with much of the scholarship among auctioneers, curators and dealers based in London.

Asian Art in London is an annual event that celebrates the diversity and quality of this historic material. Most of the specialist dealers hold selling exhibitions, supported by major auctions and a series of lectures which, this year, started on Saturday and will run until November 12.

Roger Keverne will concentrate on Chinese ceramics from the Neolithic to the Qing dynasty. Among the bronzes exhibited is a rare wine vessel with a bird knop and characteristic notched, flanged handle, resembling a dragon’s backbone, dating from the Shang dynasty (1600-1050BC).

The Chinese love of miniature landscapes is well known, and Keverne’s late 18th-century hardstone tree in a cloisonné enamel flower pot is similar to examples found in the rooms of the imperial palaces. He also shows the skill of the jade craftsmen who brought out the best features of the stone, as evident in a beautiful figure of a bird in flight, dated Song (960-1279) or Yuan (1279-1368).

John Eskenazi is displaying a double-sided portable shrine from 5th-century Kashmir. One side depicts the powerful four-faced form of Shiva and his wife Parvati playing a game of dice, while the other shows the sun god Surya in his chariot. A dramatic Indian terracotta sculpture from the Gupta period, 16cm (6in) high, from the same dealer, originated in Bengal. Its bulging eyes, raised brows and full lips are most expressive.

Miniature is the theme at both Prahlad Bubbar and Francesca Galloway for Indian and Gerard Hawthorn for oriental works, together with Chinese and Japanese sculpture.

Japan is the speciality of several dealers: 17th to 20th-century screens at Gregg Baker, textiles at Brandt Oriental Art, metalwork and netsuke at Grace Tsumugi and works of art including contemporary lacquer by Tomizo Saratani at Malcolm Fairley.

The contrast between outstanding 18th-century Chinese export porcelain and 21st-century ceramics by the Chinese-American artist, Cliff Lee, will be made at Cohen & Cohen.

Among the more unusual are the photographic images of Western China at Ben Janssens, snuff bottles at Robert Kleiner, old Chinese paintings and calligraphy at Sydney L. Moss, Buddhist wood at Priestley & Ferraro and Mogul jewellery at Samina.

There are several specialist auctions. Imperial and export porcelain, as well as Korean, and works from the Japanese Mingei movement will be sold at Bonhams. Chinese ceramics and textiles, including court robes and rank badges as well as Japanese art and design, feature at Christie’s. There are five sales at Sotheby’s, including the Katchen collection of netsuke.

Several gallery talks and lectures are planned, from Arts of Korea at the British Museum The Dawn of Mughal Painting at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Gloriously decorated Chinese silks from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) will be explored by Jacqueline Simcox at The Olympia Fine Art & Antiques Fair while Rose Kent will explain 12th-century life in China at the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art.

For the first time, artists from Lhasa will be available to discuss their work at Asia House, which is also to host an exhibition by the photojournalist Steve McCurry. The Bhavan Institute of Indian Art & Culture will show Rajasthani paintings by Namita Jain. The Museum of London is to offer Indian dance-based storytelling performances and workshops.

The Japanese Embassy is holding an exhibition of three Japanese artists based in London who graduated from the Royal College of Art — a painter, a printmaker and a sculptor.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,61-1861730,00.html

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SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), November 06, 2005
Modern Chinese Art art sales
BY Catherine Milner

Chinoiserie is back. We are not talking lacquerware boxes or pagodas, but photographs of strippers on the Great Wall, or woodblocks of Chairman Mao holding a Big Mac - and investors are loving it.

Five years ago, a work by one of the Big Four Chinese contemporary artists - Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun, Fang Lijun or Wang Guangyi - would have cost pounds 15,000. These are the "cynical realists" - a group of men in their forties who were schooled in social-realist propaganda art and now poke fun at it in pictures of grey emotionless families and madly smiling workers. Their work might verge on the bitter and bored, but it is increasingly expensive: the pounds 35,000 asked for Zhang Xiaogang's A Girl is modest - Big Four prices are usually above pounds 60,000.

A portrait of a family of four by Xiaogang sold for pounds 120,000 at an in-ternational art fair in Paris this autumn - four times its price five years ago.

"The British have been very slow off the mark where contemporary Chinese art is concerned, but they are catching up," says Ludovic Bois, the director of the Chinese Contemporary art gallery in London. "It is hard to believe that prices of the Young British Artists (YBAs), for example, can go much higher, whereas Chinese art is still valued pretty low. But, judging by what some of it has been selling for recently, I don't believe that is going to last long."

One reason why Chinese artists' work is so popular is that they know how to paint. Austere, old-world art schools set up after the Cultural Revolution drummed into a generation of artists sound technical skills.

Of course, the prices - and styles - of the established Chinese artists are not for everyone. Many potential buyers find their work too overtly political: what hedge-fund plutocrat would want a picture of a ranting revolutionary from the Yangtze Delta? But if he were willing to venture off-piste, he could scoop up a porcelain plate (left) featuring a Chinese Ophelia drowning in rose petals, by Liu Jianhua, for a mere pounds 8,900 (The Red Mansion Foundation). Or beautiful, gossamer-like human figures by Lin Tianmiao, whose works, sewn together from spun silk and cotton, are commanding increasing critical attention. For an average price of pounds 10,000 (Contemporary Chinese Art Gallery), they're a snip compared with anything by one of the British avant-garde set.

Sale of Modern and Contemporary Chinese paintings, Christie's Hong Kong, November 27-28 (020 7839 9060); China: The Three Emperors, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, November 12 until April 17, 2006 (020 7300 8000); Between Past and Future, New Photography and Video from China, Victoria and Albert Museum, until January 15, 2006 (020 7942 2000) [SS]

 

 

__________________

with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

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

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