NEW YORK—After a summer of predictions of an inevitable art-market correction, it seems safe to say that the demand for contemporary Asian art, at the very least, is as strong as ever. A jubilant Sotheby’s reported at the end of Asia Week (September 18–21) that of the $61,931,226 total generated by its five sales, $38,448,575 were in contemporary work. This latter number was $10 million over the high estimate, and 225 of the 275 lots were sold, or, by value, 97 percent. The auction house’s September 20 “Contemporary Art Asia: China, Korea, Japan” sale, just its fourth in this field, was a particular success, with eight of the top ten lots going for more than $1 million. It is interesting to note, however, that in an area that has been dominated by Western buyers, eight of these top lots went to Asian collectors.

Contemporary Chinese art continues to be the most highly coveted genre in the Asian market, including all ten of the top lots. Christie’s holds its Chinese contemporary art sales in Hong Kong in November, so last week Sotheby’s had the buoyant field all to itself.

Record Setters
As he was at Sotheby’s in March, when five of the top ten lots were his, Zhang Xiaogang continues to be China’s most sought-after contemporary artist. Last week, he broke his own record twice. Bloodline Series: Comrade (1985), a work from a cycle of stylized portraits inspired by old family photographs, set a new record when it sold to an anonymous buyer for $2,505,000 (est. $400,000–$600,000). But the very next lot, Zhang’s Chapter of a New Century—Birth of the People’s Republic of China (1992) went for $3,065,000 (est. $1.5 million–$2.5 million), selling anonymously after attracting attention from a number of bidders. The painting depicts a red baby lying on top of a closed chest before a background comprising photographic reproductions of 20th-century Asian political figures.

Several other artists also set records at Sotheby’s. Fang Lijun’s seminal 98.10.1 (1998) made $1,721,000 (est. $600,000–800,000). As in most works by Fang, a founder of the Cynical Realist style in China, the painting contains bald-headed figures; however, 98.10.1 is unusual for the artist in that here the figures are joyous, rather than aggressive, surrounded by clouds and flowers.

Liu Ye’s The Little Mermaid, which depicts a doll-like, blue-eyed, female figure with long black hair poised in a sea of blue, sold for a record price of $1,385,000 (est. $1 million–$1.5 million). And a series of six works executed in gunpowder on paper and mounted on wood panels by Cai Guo-Qiang entitled Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky: Eyes brought a record $1,273,000 (est. $500,000–700,000). Cai’s market was no doubt helped by the fact that the Guggenheim Museum is mounting a retrospective of his work in early 2008, the first solo show that the museum has ever devoted to a Chinese-born artist.

South Asian Contemporary Art
Although it lacks the sexiness, not to mention the Western appeal, of Chinese contemporary art, interest was also high for Indian and Pakistani art. Buyers, most of them Asian collectors, were attracted to work in all mediums, from paintings and sculpture to photography and video installations.

The Indian figurative painter Atul Dodiya brought strong prices at both Christie’s on September 20 and Sotheby’s on September 21. At Christie’s, Dodiya’s Three Painters (1966), which depicts the artist and a friend standing before a Magritte painting titled La Reproduction Interdite (“Not to Be Reproduced”), soared over its pre-sale estimate of $150,000 to $200,000 to go to a collector for $541,000, a record auction price for the artist. But as with Zhang’s, the record was short-lived. The following day at Sotheby’s, Dodiya’s Father (2002), a large painting on the theme of personal and historical ancestry, sold for $601,000 (est. $230,000–$280,000) to a Chinese collector. The same buyer also bought Dodiya’s Man from Kabul (2001) at Sotheby’s, for $313,000 (est. $100,000–$150,000).  

A record for Chintan Upadhyay was also set at Sotheby’s when his New Indians, an installation with 33 sculptures, sold for $529,000 (est: $400,000–$500,000) to an Indian collector.

At Christie’s, cutting-edge contemporary artists such as Rameshwar Broota, Rashid Rana, Ravinder Reddy, and T.V. Santosh brought much higher than expected prices. Santosh’s oil painting Across an Unresolved Story (2005), for example, made $217,000 (est. $30,000–$40,000). At Sotheby’s, a large untitled oil by Santosh brought $205,000 (est. $20,000–$30,000).