Merlion
04-02-2006, 09:03 AM
Just found this from the New York Times.
China: The New Contemporary-Art Frontier
Sitting in the back row among a crowd of 400 people at Sotheby's York Avenue salesroom yesterday morning, a Singapore collector unknown to even the most knowledgeable of experts on Asian art spent nearly $1 million on a dreamy portrait of a dazed-looking comrade. The work, "Bloodline Series: Comrade No. 120" (1998), by the Chinese figurative painter Zhang Xiaogang, brought the highest price yesterday at New York's first auction of Asian contemporary art.
"It was a market waiting to happen," said Henry Howard-Sneyd, Sotheby's managing director in Asia and Australia, after the first session of the all-day event. "It was amazing to see bidding from virtually all over the globe."
[snip]
"This sale is certainly proof that New York is a vitally valuable platform for Chinese contemporary art," he [Michael Goedhius, a longtime dealer in Chinese contemporary art] said yesterday. "It also shows that the market has broadened beyond the boundaries of just the brand names, and inevitably that's going to take prices up for the next decade."
For some collectors it already has. Sue Stoffel, a Manhattan collector who has been buying Chinese contemporary art since 1990, said that yesterday she watched her holdings appreciate by 10,000 percent.
"And it's just going to keep going," she added.
Click here (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/01/arts/design/01auct.html?_r=1&8hpib&oref=slogin) for the full article published April 1, 2006 (but not an April fool story)
China: The New Contemporary-Art Frontier
Sitting in the back row among a crowd of 400 people at Sotheby's York Avenue salesroom yesterday morning, a Singapore collector unknown to even the most knowledgeable of experts on Asian art spent nearly $1 million on a dreamy portrait of a dazed-looking comrade. The work, "Bloodline Series: Comrade No. 120" (1998), by the Chinese figurative painter Zhang Xiaogang, brought the highest price yesterday at New York's first auction of Asian contemporary art.
"It was a market waiting to happen," said Henry Howard-Sneyd, Sotheby's managing director in Asia and Australia, after the first session of the all-day event. "It was amazing to see bidding from virtually all over the globe."
[snip]
"This sale is certainly proof that New York is a vitally valuable platform for Chinese contemporary art," he [Michael Goedhius, a longtime dealer in Chinese contemporary art] said yesterday. "It also shows that the market has broadened beyond the boundaries of just the brand names, and inevitably that's going to take prices up for the next decade."
For some collectors it already has. Sue Stoffel, a Manhattan collector who has been buying Chinese contemporary art since 1990, said that yesterday she watched her holdings appreciate by 10,000 percent.
"And it's just going to keep going," she added.
Click here (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/01/arts/design/01auct.html?_r=1&8hpib&oref=slogin) for the full article published April 1, 2006 (but not an April fool story)