Western Art Down, Chinese Art Up at Christie’sBy ARTINFO
Published: October 15, 2007
LONDON— Western art prices dropped while Chinese values soared at Christie’s international auction in London last night, reports Bloomberg.
Several Western works sold at or below their low estimates, including four of five works on offer by Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Elizabeth Peyton, and Cindy Sherman. Francis Bacon’s oil sketch Study From the Human Body, Man Turning on the Light, which the Royal College of Art sold to raise money for a new campus, brought in £7.2 million, significantly less than its £9 million estimate. Fifteen percent of the auction’s lots didn’t sell at all, including two Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings, as well as works by Kai Althoff, John Currin, Andy Warhol, and Martin Kippenberger. Meanwhile, some Chinese works took several times their high estimates, such as Liu Ye’s The Happy Family, which earned more than five times its top estimate of £90,000. The auction brought in a total of £39.8 million, within its estimated range of £34 to 46.6 million. |
advertisements
|