Asian Art Auction Sotheby's and Christie's brought 55.7 million dollars - 14 million more than the upper estimate

Last Thursday in New York ended with the Asian Art Week. Its results can be called good: auctions Christie's and Sotheby's brought 55.7 million dollars. This amount, of course, not so impressive as last year's 157.2 million, but still far exceeds the upper estimate (41.3 million dollars).

Christie's managed to sell works of art on 36,5 million dollars. Result Sotheby's modest - "only" 19.2 million. Quite good amount also earned the auction house Saffronart. Arranged them "Asian" auction brought 3.7 million dollars for the preliminary assessment of 3,4 million.

During the Asian art boom in the top lots were listed mainly works by contemporary artists such as Zeng Fanchzhi (Zeng Fanzhi) and Subodh Gupta (Subodh Gupta). Now, buyers prefer the traditional, "proven" works of art. Thus seladonovaya bowl era of the Qing, on auction Sotheby's, went for 926,5 thousand dollars, which is three times the upper estimate. Another vase, previously owned by well-known collector Gordon Getty (Gordon Getty), was sold for 902.5 thousand (upper estimate - 350 thousand). For this product have fought four buyers.

The success of Chinese ceramics is quite understandable: most of the bidders were natives of China. In addition, the auction halls attended by collectors from Indonesia, Korea and UAE. But Western collectors - whose activity, according to some analysts, has created five years ago, the boom in the Asian "kontemporari" - was not very much.

And Sotheby's, Christie's and presented works of art and design from the collection of a psychiatrist Arthur M. Sackler (Arthur M. Sackler), the founder of one of the museums of Harvard. At Sotheby's anonymous collector from Asia, laid out $ 1 million over two cabinet XVII century, formerly belonging to this collector. Their preliminary assessment amounted to 120-180 thousand dollars. And one of Christie's clients paid for a bronze vessel of the XII century 362,5 thousand dollars - 10 times the upper estimate. All items from the collection Sackler yielded 7.8 million dollars.

A big buzz at Christie's raised ink-pot in a wooden box with carved on it graffiti. A collector bought it for 1,4 million dollars. Specialists of the auction house estimated the object in the 20-30 thousand.

of Products actual artists were relatively few. This year, Christie's and Sotheby's began auctioning of contemporary Asian art in Hong Kong, and retook the city from New York, the title of the center of the market "kontemporari».

Material prepared Yulia Maximova, AI

Source: online.wsj.com , christies.com , sothebys.com , artinvestment.ru