DUBAI—Staging its third sales season on October 31 and November 1, 2007, Christie’s Dubai posted impressive results: Its auction of international modern and contemporary art raked in $15.2 million, and its session of modern and contemporary watches and jewels realized $16.5 million, the highest grosses yet for the firm’s branch in the Persian Gulf.

With 169 of 182 lots finding buyers, the modern and contemporary sale exceeded expectations and set two key records: Ahmed Moustafa’s colorful Qu’ranic Polyptych of Nine Panels, 1995—based on the texts of the last three suras of the Koran—fetched $657,000, the steepest sum ever achieved at auction for an Arab artist, while Farhad Moshiri’s Swarovski crystal world map, One World/Yek Donia, 2007, snagged $601,000, a record for an Iranian artist at auction. Both sold to private collectors from the Middle East, suggesting that a region most often associated with violence and strife also harbors people with a penchant for art and the oil revenues to satisfy it.

European buyers were more active during the watches and jewels session. A diamond-fringe necklace by Van Cleef & Arpels was the top lot of the evening, attracting $1.55 million from a private European collector. Christie’s has yet to go head-to-head with Sotheby’s in the United Arab Emirates, but its Dubai sales were exactly one week after the latter’s inaugural auction of modern and contemporary Arab and Iranian art in London. Although Sotheby’s event was much more modest, reaping £1.54 million ($3.14 million) on the sale of 76 out of 86 lots, players in the category assert that the house unearthed far more cutting-edge, if less-expensive, fare.     

"Dubai Dazzler" originally appeared in the January 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's January 2008 Table of Contents.