Christie's - Indian Art News

Indian Modernist masterpieces to go under the hammer at Christie’s auction in New York

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 08:48:00 +0000

Spanning more than 70 years of modern and contemporary art in South Asia, the sale features seminal works, led by artist V.S. Gaitonde, among many others.

Akbar Padamsee, Untitled (Mirror Image), Lot 424. Estimate: $600,000-800,000 Image Courtesy: Christie’s.

At Christie’s Asian Art Week, works by artists, including Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta, Adi Davierwalla, Akbar Padamsee, Jehangir Sabavala, Ganesh Pyne, Manjit Bawa, and others, will go under the hammer at the South Asian Modern + Contemporary art auction in Rockefeller Center.

Manjit Bawa, Untitled (Krishna and Cow), Lot 475. Image Courtesy: Christie’s. Estimate: $350,000-500,000.

The auction will offer a total of 76 lots led by an important work painted by Vasudeo S. Gaitonde (1924-2001) in 1996. ‘Untitled’ (Lot 414) is an incandescent painting from 1996; while immediately striking, it maintains the restrained balance of light, texture, colour, and space that the artist perfected over the course of his career.

VS Gaitonde, Untitled *1996). Image Courtesy: Christie’s. Estimate: $2,800,000-3,500,000.

Against a ground methodically layered in tones of vermillion, orange and yellow, Gaitonde inscribes a series of enigmatic hieroglyphic forms that seem almost like embers scorched into the translucent surface, pulsating with a unique meaning for each viewer (estimate: $2,800,000-3,500,000).An advocate of Zen Buddhism, Gaitonde saw painting as a spiritual endeavour and not something to be rushed, either in conception or execution. He painted, on average, just five or six canvases a year.

Maqbool Fida Husain, Untitled, Lot 452, Estimate: $200,000-300,000
The auction will take place September 13 at Christie’s, 20 Rockefeller Center, New York, 10 am.
Credits – https://www.architecturaldigest.in/content/indian-modernist-masterpieces-go-hammer-christies-auction-new-york/#s-cust0

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The Incredible Lahiri Collection at Christie’s Asia Week Auction on March 15

Wed, 16 Mar 2016 11:22:00 +0000

An important bronze figure of Maitreya, Kashmir or Western Tibet, Circa 1025, that is coming up for auction as part of The Lahiri Collection sale by Christie’s in New York on March 15. Estimate: $200,000–$300,000 (approx. Rs 1.34 crore – Rs 2.01 crore)

(Christie’s )

The incredible Lahiri Collection – a labour of love for art of the medico couple Prof Avijit and Dr Bratati Lahiri – goes under the gavel in New York on March 15. Though two lots from the total of 71 stand withdrawn after the Federal Agents in New York seized the two sculptures believed to be stolen antiquities, there’s nothing that diminishes the brilliance of the collection put together by the Lahiris over several years of their stay in London.

William Robinson, head of the World Art Group under which Indian Art department also falls, writes in the catalogue, “Professor Lahiri bought his first Indian antiquity when he was still a student. Not included in this sale, it was a Sunga terracotta figurine dating from around 2000 years ago. This set the tone of what was to become a fascinating collection. As a collector he very much followed his instincts buying principally from dealers in the London and Hong Kong markets. Over time what was assembled was a beautiful epitome of the history of Indian Art, with a strong emphasis on the Arts of Bengal, the Lahiris’ homeland, from early periods through the 20th century.” Professor Lahiri is a cardiologist, while his wife is a paediatrician from Kolkata who went on to become a GP in London.

The highest priced art works in the auction are lots 47, 59 & 69. Each is estimated at $250,000 – $350,000 (approx. Rs 1.67 crore – Rs 2.34 crore).

Lot 47 is a rare bronze figure of Maitreya from Nalanda, 7th century. Standing a little over 7 inches (19.3cm), the figure is in slight tribhanga pose and shows post-Gupta stylistic influences. This was the period when Nalanda was already an active Buddhist university and monastery, as recorded by Chinese pilgrims.

Lot 59 too is a rare and fine bronze figure of Maitreya, but is inlaid with silver and copper. The 4.75 in high (12 cm) figure is seated in rajalilasana on a lotus base with his right arm resting elegantly on his raised right leg while the left holds a lotus stem. It belongs to the Pala period, 12th century. The Pala dynasty flourished in the east and north-east part of India between 8th-12th centuries and was one of the last strongholds of Buddhism in India. It is considered one of the golden eras of the Indian sculptural tradition.

Lot 69 is an important silver-and-copper-inlaid bronze figure of Akshobhya from western Tibet, 13th century. Measuring 36 cm high (a little more than 14 in), the figure is seated in vajrasana and is clad in dhoti like the figures in the lots mentioned above. The catalogue states that it is likely that this work of a Tibetan artisan emulates a Pala image because following the destruction of the Buddhist institutions in Northeastern India at the end of the 12th century, artisans from the area fled north to Tibet and Nepal.

Besides exquisite bronzes, the collection also comprises stone sculptures, and paintings by important artists such as Jamini Roy, Nandlal Bose and Rabindranath Tagore to name a few. The breadth and range of the works that make up the collection displays varied interests of the Lahiris in works of art. From New York, Sandhya Jain Patel, who heads the Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art department, says, “I think it speaks to a level of sophistication to be able to collect across genres. People with sophisticated tastes collect smartly just like an investment portfolio with diversified works of art. This collection is important for those who don’t buy only for investment.”

Given the rising interest in classical arts from within India, one wonders if this genre has the same potential to rise up the graph just like the Himalayan works of art. Patel responds, “I think it would surpass. We have had amazing response in our December Mumbai sales and Indian antiquities continue to do well across auctions. The classical arts follow a slow and steady trajectory but we haven’t had a downward trend in this category in a decade.”

What would make a collector part with such an amazing range of works, especially when it has been collected with so much love and care? Patel feels that though the Lahiris were selling the works as an entire collection, they weren’t expecting the same person to buy. “I think the Lahiris believe that they are temporary custodians of the works of art, just as people in previous centuries must have been. They must be happy moving the works to the next collector/ next generation of collectors as they themselves acquired from somebody else years ago.”

What is important is that the rich history of Indian art continues to give pleasure to Indians and historically invaluable works are ready to touch the lives of newer generation of connoisseurs, bringing with them a hint of life in this country thousands of years ago.

The Lahiri Collection: Indian and Himalayan Art, Ancient and Modern will be held in New York at 20 Rockefeller Plaza on March 15, 1.30pm EST

Credits – BY Archana Khare-Ghose | March 14, 2016

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Auction Wars: Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and The Art of Competition

Mon, 22 Jun 2015 08:24:00 +0000

The two houses will do almost anything to outmaneuver each other, and the friction between them will likely only increase under new CEOs.

by Stephanie Baker and Katya Kazakina

Illustration: Greg Kletsel/Bloomberg Markets

This May, after billionaires had outbid billionaires in New York’s contemporary art auctions, something became immediately clear: Christie’s had just clobbered Sotheby’s with a gavel.

Over four days, Christie’s sales totaled $1.7 billion, its biggest week ever. On one of those evenings, frantic bidding inside its Rockefeller Center salesroom enabled the auction house to sell $706 million of art spanning the 20th century in less than two hours. An anonymous bidder even plunked down $179.4 million for Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger, smashing the record for the most expensive work ever sold at auction. “We’re in a fantasyland,” proclaimed collector Michael Ovitz, the former president of Walt Disney Co., as he left the room.

In contrast, Sotheby’s moved just $890 million of art in two weeks—a little more than half of Christie’s tally—underscoring just how far it had fallen behind its nemesis.

Together, Sotheby’s and Christie’s control 42 percent of the world’s art auction market. The storied houses—both of which recently named new CEOs (more on that in a moment)—have one of the longest-running rivalries in business history going back to when they were established in London in the 18th century.

And there’s even been some good scandal. In the 1990s, the U.S. Justice Department charged the two houses with colluding to fix sales commissions. They eventually paid a total of $512 million to settle claims by buyers and sellers that they’d been cheated, and Sotheby’s chairman at the time, A. Alfred Taubman, spent 10 months in jail.

The competition has become cutthroat: There’s simply never been so much money at stake. Sales of art worldwide surged last year to an all-time high of €51 billion ($57 billion), according to the European Fine Art Foundation. Both auction houses also saw record sales—$7.9 billion for Christie’s (privately owned by French billionaire François Pinault) and $6.7 billion for Sotheby’s. Because Sotheby’s is publicly owned, however, its missteps are harder to hide. Profit fell 9 percent to $117.8 million because of increased expenses.

Sotheby’s has also endured a bruising proxy battle led by hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb of Third Point, who accused the company of being “asleep at the switch” and falling behind Christie’s in Asia and online. “Sotheby’s is like an old master painting in desperate need of restoration,” Loeb fumed in a 2013 letter to then-CEO William Ruprecht.

For all Loeb’s bluster, he highlighted one of the biggest problems facing New York–based Sotheby’s and London-based Christie’s. In the hunt to capture market share, the auction houses often tank their own commissions. “Sotheby’s will think, ‘If we don’t do it, Christie’s will,’ and vice versa,” says Philip Hoffman, a former Christie’s executive who now runs the Fine Art Fund, an investment group in London.

It doesn’t help that it’s a seller’s market, one where collectors play the houses off each other to earn the best deal. In 2013, when newsprint magnate Peter Brant decided to sell Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog (Orange), he shopped the 4-foot-high (1.2-meter-high) stainless steel sculpture to both, hoping the sale would fetch as much as $75 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Christie’s made the winning pitch, they say, by offering to forgo most of its sales commission paid by the buyer. Yet expected bids from Qatar never materialized, and the piece went for $58.4 million. While that was the highest price ever for a living artist, people familiar say Christie’s made no money after marketing and installation costs. (Christie’s declined to comment.)

Similarly, Sotheby’s has offered lofty guaranteed prices so that sellers don’t decamp. Take its sale of Alberto Giacometti’s 1950 painted-bronze sculpture Chariot, the prize of Sotheby’s biggest-ever Impressionist and modern art sale in New York in November. The gavel went down after just a single $90 million bid from hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen. The sale accounted for about a quarter of the auction house’s total that night and was the most expensive work auctioned in 2014. But Sotheby’s had guaranteed the seller, Greek shipping heir Alexander Goulandris, that the work would collect at least $103 million and had agreed to cover any shortfall. Even after the buyer’s commission brought the final price to $101 million, Sotheby’s still lost $2 million or more, depending on marketing costs, according to people close to the sale.

Loeb finally got his way when the board announced Ruprecht’s departure in November. It installed Tad Smith, the former CEO of Madison Square Garden, in his place. Admitting he knows little about art, Smith, 50, says he’s focused on building the Sotheby’s brand, expanding the house in Asia, and boosting its Internet business. He’s also vowed to tread carefully with guarantees. “We will not roll dice in the auction room with shareholders’ money,” Smith told analysts on May 11. Since taking the helm in March, Smith—who sports salt-and-pepper hair and a Hollywood smile—has been meeting major clients, such as Ovitz; Don Marron, CEO of Lightyear Capital; and David Geffen, the billionaire entertainment executive, to determine how the auction house can improve its game.

With Smith’s appointment, Sotheby’s appears to be taking a page out of Christie’s playbook. In 2010, Christie’s also installed an art world outsider as CEO—Steven Murphy, former head of publishing company Rodale. Murphy invested $50 million into Christie’s online auction platform and expanded its presence in Asia. Then, in December 2014, just two weeks after Ruprecht left Sotheby’s, Christie’s announced that Murphy would step down, giving no reason for his departure. Patricia Barbizet, a 60-year-old Frenchwoman who had been chairman of Christie’s and a longtime Pinault adviser, assumed the role of CEO.

Art dealers and former auction house executives say Murphy left because he sacrificed profit for the sake of gaining market share through excessive use of guarantees. Murphy declined to comment. Barbizet, for her part, dismisses concerns about guarantees. “Our profit margin is good,” she says via e-mail. “Guarantees are risk management and offer an assurance to the seller.”

Ahead of the May sales in New York, Barbizet floated through the exhibition rooms at Christie’s, Pinault at her side. She exuded the house of Pinault, wearing a necklace by Bottega Veneta (a Pinault brand) and a black-and-white striped jacket by New York designer Joseph Altuzarra (in whose company Pinault owns a stake). Barbizet has been a key figure in Pinault’s empire since 1989, when she became chief financial officer of his holding company. Though Christie’s technically falls under Groupe Artemis, where Pinault’s son, François-Henri, is chairman, Barbizet says she talks to 78-year-old François every day. The two paused the longest in front of Giacometti’s 1947 sculpture Pointing Man. Later, the work sold for $141 million, becoming the most valuable sculpture in the world—and trouncing Sotheby’s disappointing Giacometti sale in November.

“It’s a superaggressive, supercompetitive business,” says Thomas Seydoux, founder of private art dealer Connery, Pissarro, Seydoux and a 15-year Christie’s veteran. And in that sense, Christie’s appears to have the edge.

This story appears in the July/August Rivalry Issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine.

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As China’s Appetite For Art Grows, A Private Bank Helps Collectors Feed Their Passion

Wed, 17 Jun 2015 09:20:00 +0000

Shattered sales records have become standard fare in recent years, so something extraordinary was afoot when even industry veterans did a double take last month. Christie’s sold a Picasso in New York for $179.4 million – the highest price paid for a single work of art at auction.

That heady news capped a furious two-week spree in which Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips notched over $2.7 billion in combined sales, marking a 23% spurt from last year’s results. With art sales now regularly equaling or bettering pre-auction estimates and more people investing in works they fancy, who doesn’t want a piece of the action?

Auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen takes bids on the Picasso masterpiece ‘Les Femmes d’Alger (Version O)’ at Christie’s in New York City on May 11. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

Nowhere is the urge to buy art more pronounced than in Asia, where Christie’s just concluded its spring auctions encompassing everything from Chinese contemporary ink paintings to vintage handbags. Robust results were again tallied, particularly in Asian 20th century and contemporary art, whose evening sale brought in more than $77 million. Two day sales accounted for another $28 million. In a reflection of Asian art’s deep appeal, all the Korean 20th century art was sold, and modern Vietnamese artists broke four sales records.

Momentum has been building.“It’s been very clear the last five years that the art market has shown unprecedented strength,” said Jonathan Stone, chairman and international head of Asian art at Christie’s Asia. “Something we’ve particularly noticed in Asia is that you have people who come into the market at a very significant level.”

Stone believes the rising number of wealthy people going to auctions, fairs, galleries and exhibitions signals a swelling appetite for art. “All of that provides a foundation to achieve the kinds of results that you’ve seen recently,” he explained.

Mainland Chinese buyers are the new heavyweight collectors. From 2010 to 2014, the number of Mainland Chinese bidding for non-Chinese art at auctions by Sotheby’s doubled and this year they spent $116 million on works by van Gogh, Monet and Picasso on May 5 alone.

With so much money flying about, concerns arise. The sea of online information can be disorienting and potentially costly. Last week it was reported that a Hong Kong businessman lost $1.1 million in a van Gogh painting scam.

Seasoned insight can therefore be valuable. One major financial services institution has seized the initiative. To date, it offers Asia-Pacific’s only full-time, in-house art specialist working for a bank.

Edie Hu, 40, is an art adviser for Citi Private Bank, which has been advising clients and offering lending for over 35 years. She is an expert in Chinese ceramics and antiques, previously working for 13 years for Sotheby’s in both New York and Hong Kong.

“The bankers felt there was a need for someone to be based here to be able to talk to their clients and engage them and to be able to help them find new clients,” said Hu of her Hong Kong-based role created last year. “A lot of people who buy art are our target-market clients.”

Hu covers all of Asia with two primary duties: to help bank clients acquire art by steering them into well-informed decisions, such as avoiding fakes, and to offer lending by using clients’ existing art collections as collateral if they wish to invest in other markets or fund other projects.

Coupled with her close ties to auction houses and dealers, Hu retains a sharp eye for gauging a collection’s value. Lending decisions are based on a careful appraisal of each work of art, from Western to Asian pieces.

Prior to Hu’s joining Citi Private Bank, her New York-based art advisory colleagues would visit Asia to meet collectors twice a year. But with auctions and sales proliferating in the region and many Western dealers opening galleries here, Asia’s growing importance in the global art scene could not be neglected. Clients’ doors are opening and relationships are cementing.

Hu describes clients as routinely enthusiastic when she views what they’ve collected. “If you engage them in talking about their passion, their projects, opening up a museum or their latest acquisition of a painting, they get really excited,” said Hu. “They really want to share that knowledge with someone that’s as interested and as excited about it as they are.”

Source – Forbes –

Bong Miquiabas

Contributor

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Manet’s ‘Le Printemps’ poised to reach record auction price

Sat, 02 Aug 2014 06:14:00 +0000

By Patricia Reaney

NEW YORK Fri Aug 1, 2014 4:08pm EDT

A Christie’s employee looks at Edouard Manet’s 1881 celebrated portrait ”Le Printemps,” at Christie’s in New York August 1, 2014.

(Reuters) – Edouard Manet’s 1881 celebrated portrait “Le Printemps,” which has been owned by the same family for a century, will be auctioned for the first time this year and could fetch up to $35 million, Christie’s auction house said on Friday.

The rare profile painting of the young Parisian actress Jeanne Demarsy, one of Manet’s most famous works, will be among the highlights of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art sale in New York on November 5.

The sale follows Christie’s best spring auctions in years and a boom in the global art and antique market – sales last year rose 8 percent to $65.9 billion, the highest level since 2007, according to the latest report from the European Fine Art Foundation.

If sold for $35 million, the high pre-sale estimate, “Le Printemps” would surpass the record $33.2 million paid for Manet’s “Self Portrait with a Palette” in London four years ago.

Adrien Meyer, international director at Christie’s, said the painting is one of the last museum-quality works by Manet to come to auction.

“The way it is painted and the way the woman stands out from the painting is breathtaking,” he said.

Manet is considered one of the giants of Impressionism and was known for his portraits. “Le Printemps,” which depicts Demarsy as an allegory of spring wearing a floral outfit, gloves, bonnet and lace-edged parasol against a background of rhododendrons, is considered among his best known and most widely-produced works.

It is one of two paintings, along with “Un bar aux Folies-Bergere” the artist submitted to the Paris Exhibition of 1882 that led to success and recognition. “Le Printemps” has had only a few owners, including the unnamed American family selling it after a century of ownership.

“This was a celebrated work of the exhibition and widely reproduced afterwards, and it is so rare to find a work that was so important and widely celebrated in its own moment in history and still available to be acquired by a private collector today,” Brooke Lampley, the head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s, told Reuters.

Manet had intended to paint his depiction of the four seasons, but “Le Printemps” and a nearly finished L’Automne are the only ones he managed to achieve before he died in 1883 at the age of 51.

“His work is incredibly rare to the market. It is scarce,” said Lampley.

“Le Printemps” has been on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and has also been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Meyer said the painting is in extremely good condition because it has been in the same private collection for a century and has no retouching to its surface.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

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Husain’s paintings fetch $4.7 million at New York auctions

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 04:48:00 +0000

A collection of over 20 paintings by legendary artist M.F. Husain fetched $4.7 million at auctions held at the prestigious Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York.

An auction held on Thursday at Sotheby’s of 11 masterpieces by late Husain fetched a total of $557,500 with one of his paintings Man with Sitar selling for $146,500.

However, proceeds from the Sotheby’s auction paled in comparison to those generated at Christie’s two days ago, where a single Husain work was sold for $1.14 million.

At the Christie’s sale, Sprinkling Horses went under the hammer for $1.14 million, one of the highest amounts ever paid for the late master’s work.

It was among the 13 paintings that were auctioned at Christie’s sale of South Asian modern and contemporary art.

The 13 paintings were sold for a total of $4.2 million.

Eleven Husain paintings were on sale at Sotheby’s, which presented Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art including Indian Miniature Paintings as part of its week of Asian art auctions.

A legendary artist, whose work often landed him in controversy, Husain passed away in June this year. He was among the first and few artists from India to be in the ‘one million dollar club’

His Empty Bowl at the Last Supper was sold for $2 million in 2005, which was at that time the highest sum ever paid for a work of modern Indian art.

In 2008, Husain’s Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata fetched $1.6 million, setting a world record at Christie’s South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale.

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Auction house gears up for week of Asian art sales

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:30:00 +0000

By Reuters Sunday, 4 September 2011 5:02 PM

Precious jade, modern masterpieces, museum-quality furniture and rare ceramics and porcelain are among thousands of art objects on offer during Christie’s Asia week sales in September.

The four days of auctions, which are estimated to take in in excess of $50m, begin September 13 with the South Asian modern and contemporary art and the Indian and Southeast Asian art sales.

The Indian sale is led by a Maqbool Fida Husain’s “Sprinkling Horses,” a large oil-on-canvas painting estimated to sell for about $1m.

The auctions conclude with a $19m sale of rare Chinese ceramics and works of art.

In between, there will be sales of Japanese and Korean art, jade carvings, and property from the collection of Xu Hanqing, a prominent Chinese banker and government official who became known as an accomplished calligrapher.

Asian art, which officials say is a key driver in the global market, has seen strong activity in the past half-year, and the market – and collectors’ – enthusiasm for Asian art has only grown.

Tina Zonars, Christie’s international director of Chinese ceramics and works of art, said the auction house held high expectations for the series of sales featuring art from China, Japan, Korea, India, the Himalayas and South East Asia.

Its most recent Asian art week in March realised its highest total ever in New York, which she called a testament to the “remarkable strength of this market.”

Christie’s president of Asia, Francois Curiel, recently affirmed that its long-term strategy was to continually reinforce its presence in Asia.

Other highlights of the sales include Emperor Qianlong’s Chunhua Ge Tie rubbing, two sets of boxes containing five albums each of rare ink-on-paper Chinese calligraphy, estimated to sell for about $1.2m at the Xu Hanqing sale, which is expected to total some $7m.

The two-day sale of Chinese ceramics and works of art is led by a Ming dynasty bronze figurine of Vairocana, expected to fetch $1m to $1.5m.

A large, rare white jade covered vase from the Quinlong/Jiaqing period is estimated at $750,000 to $1m, while Kim Whanki’s “Landscape in Blue,” the top lot of the Korean art sale, carries a $2m estimate.

Highlights from the sales will be on view at Christie’s Rockefeller Center headquarters in New York for one week starting September 9.

Sotheby’s Asian art sales are schedule for September 13-15.

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Tyeb Mehta, Souza lead auction stakes at Christie’s

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:06:00 +0000

Source: News One

New Delhi, May 26 (IANS) The early masters of Indian contemporary art and the progressive group of artists like Tyeb Mehta, F.N. Souza and Akbar Padamsee are high on the auction stakes at the Christie’s sale of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art in London June 9.

The most significant work which will go under the hammer is an untitled painting by Mehta of a figure sitting on a rickshaw painted in 1984. Estimated at 1,200,000 pounds (Rs.88,630,184), it is one of the key works to have come to the market in this decade, Christie’s said in a statement Thursday.

The sale also includes another rare and early work by Mehta dating to 1961, which was exhibited in a seminal show of Indian Art in 1962, curated by the English art critic George M. Butcher.

The work estimated at 250,000 pounds (Rs.18,468,410) posts the well-known influence that post war master Francis Bacon had on Souza. The demand for Mehta was highlighted this spring when ‘Bulls’, a diptych painted in 2005 set a world auction record at 1.7 million pounds (Rs.125,569,391) at Christie’s in New York.

A selection by paintings by F.N. Souza is another high point of the auction.

After the landmark success of the sale of works from the Francis Newton Souza Estate (an archive of works managed by the family of the artist) in 2010, Christie’s has put 54 selected works by Souza on sale, including 45 from the family archives. The most valuable lot of Souza’s work offered for the first time in over half a century is from the private collection of an English gentleman.

‘Landscape’, painted in 1958, is the most crucial of the lot painted during the high point of Souza’s career.

The work, a large format painting, illustrates the inherent tension between nature and civilization using savage brushstrokes and a fiery palette. It is estimated at 500,000 pounds (Rs.36,932,174).

Another important lot on sale is an untitled work by Akbar Padamsee painted during the artist’s tenure in Paris in 1955. Sourced from the private collection of the famed contemporary art dealer Yvon Lambert, it is estimated at 400,000 pounds (Rs.29,551,882).

The auction house said ‘international appeal of this category (early contemporary artists) continues to grow with participation from buyers in Singapore, Hong Kong, UAE, US and Europe’. The sale as a whole expects to raise in excess of 4 million pounds (Rs.295,518,823).

Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary South Asian Art at Christie’s, said the focus was on Indian art this year in the international market.

‘This sale presents one of the most exciting groups of contemporary South Asian Art ever to be offered in a auction,’ Mehta said.

‘The international art world continues to deepen its interest, understanding, appreciation and support of South Asian artists, with this year’s Venice Biennale featuring the first-ever Indian Pavilion and institutions like the Centre Pompidou currently showing ‘Paris-Delhi-Bombay…’, featuring three Indian artists while Musee Guimet is holding a solo show of artist Rina Banerje.’

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Sotheby’s, Christie’s Contemporary-Art Sales Total Drops 75%

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:08:00 +0000

Annual sales of contemporary art slumped 75 percent at the two largest auction houses’ evening sales in 2009 after they abandoned price guarantees to sellers.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s International made a combined total of $482.3 million with fees from their five regular “Part I” sales of high-value art in New York and London this year, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg News. In 2008, the same group of flagship auctions made $1.97 billion. That compares with a record $2.4 billion in 2007, and $1.1 billion in 2006.

Worldwide auction sales of contemporary art grew more than eightfold between 2003 and 2007, according to France-based database Artprice. Demand contracted in the fourth quarter of 2008, after the September collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., with Sotheby’s and Christie’s losing at least $50 million and $40 million respectively as artworks failed to achieve prices guaranteed to sellers. Phillips de Pury & Co. also stopped providing guarantees before its fall series of sales.

“As soon as guarantees were taken off the table, sellers became uncertain,” said Philip Hoffman, chief executive of the London-based Fine Art Fund. “Clients don’t want to see big- ticket works go to public auction and fail. A lot of people turned to discreet private sales at the auction houses.”

Private sales of contemporary art raised more than auctions at Christie’s in the first half of 2009, said the London-based auction house. Sotheby’s would not comment on private sales.

Demand Declines

Demand declined at smaller evening auctions in London and New York during the first half of the year. Christie’s February sale in London raised only 8.4 million pounds ($13.6 million), the lowest total at an evening event in the U.K. capital since 2004.

During the first six months of 2009, no single work sold for more than $10 million. The top price was the $7.9 million paid at Christie’s, New York, in May for David Hockney’s 1966 painting, “Beverly Hills Housewife.”

“At the time, people didn’t know what the art was worth or what they themselves were worth,” Francis Outred, Christie’s European head of contemporary art, said in an interview. “They were looking at each other in the saleroom and waiting for someone else to bid.”

As the slump continued, auction houses cut estimates by 50 percent or more from 2008 levels to shore up selling rates.

Richter Low

At Christie’s London in July — where 88 percent of the reduced 40-lot offering found buyers — a 1974 Gerhard Richter color-chart painting sold for 1.4 million pounds, at the low end of estimates. Another version from the same series fetched $4.1 million at Sotheby’s New York in May 2008, also near the lower estimate.

Following reports of improved levels of business at contemporary-art fairs such as Art Basel in June and Frieze in London in October, selling rates and prices increased at evening auctions in the final quarter of this year.

On Nov. 11, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed at a 13-month high. Three hours later, Sotheby’s held a $134.4 evening auction of contemporary art in New York at which only two of the 54 offered lots failed. The total beat both a high estimate of $97.7 million and the company’s $125.1 million tally in November 2008.

Warhol Bills

Andy Warhol’s 1962 painting “200 One Dollar Bills” became the most expensive contemporary work sold this year, when five bidders pushed the price to $43.8 million. Entered by London-based collector Pauline Karpidas, it had been attractively estimated at $8 million to $12 million.

“It was the most significant event of the season,” Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s worldwide head of contemporary art, said in an interview. “Up until then, nothing was trading above $20 million in the market.”

The policy of lowering estimates to generate high success rates had proven to sellers that the market for contemporary art “was alive and well at a recalibrated level,” Meyer said.

The success of the Warhol, together with a general stabilization of prices, is encouraging collectors to offer works publicly, said auction-house specialists.

“It’s balancing from private toward auctions again,” said Outred, of Christie’s. “It’s like the difference between night and day. The phones are ringing and people are interested in selling.”

The auction houses are aware that the market remains acutely price-sensitive.

“We need to continue to be conservative with estimates,” said Meyer, of Sotheby’s. “The market will be completely determined by supply at the right level. If sellers become overconfident, it will freeze again.”

By – Scott Reyburn

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg)

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Classical paintings shine at Christie’s in Hong Kong

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:46:00 +0000

Sales of traditional Chinese paintings and old masters notched up firm results at Christie’s autumn sales in Hong Kong, outshining Chinese contemporary art.

Christie’s, hit by anemic spring sales due to the financial crisis, had been banking on the current autumn sales in Hong Kong, now the firm’s third biggest arts hub after New York and London, for a reversal of fortunes.

In the fine Chinese modern paintings sale, 84 percent of lots were sold including a world auction record for Chinese artist Fu Baoshi, whose “Landscape inspired by Dufu Poetic Sentiment” was hammered off for HK$60 million ($7.7 million), a price market experts said was around four times higher than its 2006 price.

“The market has been quite good,” said Hangzhou based Chinese dealer and collector Tao Xiaomin, who was bidding at the sales.

“In the first half of the year, (traditional) Chinese paintings have experienced a boom and records have fallen.”

In recent sales in Beijing by leading Chinese auctioneers Poly International, several works exceeded or neared the 100 million yuan mark including Wu Bin’s “18 Arhats” that sold for nearly $25 million, a world record for any Chinese artwork.

“The classical Chinese paintings market is dominated completely by Chinese buyers now,” said Taiwan collector and dealer Michael Wang.

“The best works are now being sold in China, with the Chinese auction houses having overtaken Christie’s and Sotheby’s for traditional and classical works.”

In Hong Kong, another highlight was “Vertige Neigeux” of a snowscape in the Swiss-Alps by Chinese 20th Century artist Chu Teh-Chun that made $5.8 million, an auction record for Chu.

A clutch of abstract works by established Chinese master Zao Wou-ki also achieved firm prices including “19-11-59” that went for $3.9 million, almost three times its pre-sale estimate.

However, in a possible sign of the broader market’s continued fragility, one in five paintings went unsold in the evening sales of Asian contemporary and Chinese 20th century, including Chen Cheng-po’s Alishan, a stirring landscape of Taiwan’s famous peak with giant cypresses and a sea of clouds.

For Chinese classical paintings, meanwhile, 24 percent went unsold, but, as has been the case throughout the downturn, there were strong results for exceptional works including Ren Renfa’s “Five Drunken Kings Return on Horses” that made $6 million.

Chinese contemporary art, whose feted artists like Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Minjun once trailblazed the rise of Chinese art before the crisis, saw few outstanding results in Christie’s sales.

Japanese artist Masami Teraoka was a rare standout for Asian contemporary art, whose Cloisters/Venus and Pope’s Workout” sold for US$622,000.

(Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
HONG KONG (Reuters Life!)
Source – Thomas Reuters

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