Hong Kong Sales Prove Chinese Contemporary’s Potency

HONG KONG—Based on the robust results from this year’s first major international auctions of contemporary Chinese art, the category continues to establish itself as one of the world’s most potent. Three sales at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on April 9 brought in HK$403,042,750 (US$51,734,568), surpassing the high estimate of HK$362.9 million (about US$46.5 million) and setting a new record for contemporary Chinese art for the house. In total, some 235 lots were offered, with more than 85 percent selling.

Evelyn Lin, Sotheby’s head of contemporary Chinese art, said in a post-sale statement that the result “clearly demonstrates the continuing strength in the market.” She also noted that the category appeared to be “gaining in sophistication as collectors move beyond paintings and sculpture to compete in categories such as video and installation works.”

The most important of the day’s three sales was the 127-lot evening session, which focused on the works of living, and often still highly productive artists from mainland China, earning a total of HK$167,225,000 million (US$21.46 million). By the 6 p.m. start, almost all of the 240 seats in the salesroom were already taken, with viewers standing five deep in the back. The predominantly Asian crowd was a typical Hong Kong auction mélange of determined buyers, art industry insiders, and assorted lookers-on, which explained the wide range of attire from well-cut business suits to sloppy jeans. Many of the most serious bids were made anonymously by phone.

Despite Lin’s claims about interest in new media art, oil-on-canvas paintings dominated the evening. The highlight was indisputably the HK$61,927,000 million (US$7,949,014 million) paid by an Asian private buyer in the room for Liu Xiaodong’s Battlefield Realism: The Eighteen Arhats (high estimate: HK$50 million). The price represented an auction record for the neo-realist painter and became the most expensive lot at the sale. Sotheby’s had aggressively promoted the group of 18 larger-than-life canvases, wrapping the hefty two-section catalog in a fatigue print and giving Liu’s paintings its own special area complete with military-costumed “guards” in the pre-sale preview that began April 5.

Battlefield is the most — if not the only — overtly political work Liu, a rising star in China’s art world, has created. It is the result of two three-week trips to army camps on both the mainland and in Taiwan to make nine pairs of soldier portraits. “It is a powerful indictment of the present nationalistic controversy raging across the Taiwan Strait,” Sotheby’s said of the work. Battlefield was made for a 2004 exhibit curated by auction-record-holding Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang on Kinmen, a group of islands controlled by the Taiwan military.

Another stellar performer was Yue Minjun’s Take the Plunge. The 2002 acrylic on canvas went to an Asian private bidder in the room for HK$20,487,000 million (US$2,629,776 million), just squeaking past its high estimate of HK$20 million. The 118-by-78-inch painting, which shows Yue’s signature pink-faced laughing men gathered around a swimming pool, was featured on the cover of the catalog for the session.

Some of the most frenzied bidding of the evening occurred for two 26-inch-square Feng Zhengjie paintings featuring female figures in neon colors. Lady (1996) fetched HK$427,000, more than five times the HK$80,000 high estimate. Chinese Portrait sold to a phone bidder for HK$1,447,500, nearly tripling its high estimate.

In the morning session, which focused on more established contemporary or postwar Chinese artists, the top seller was a 1946 oil on canvas, The Forbidden City by Guo Bochuan, which sold for HK$27,207,500 (US$3,492,355), setting a new record for the artist, who died in 1974.

The early afternoon session featured a group of works from the Estella Collection, “the most important collection of Chinese contemporary art ever to come to market,” says Sotheby’s, which, according to the auction catalog, “owns, in whole or in part, or has economic interest equivalent to an ownership interest in” the works. Assembled over several years by Manhattan dealer Michael Goedhuis and sold in August to stakeholders including Sotheby’s and New York dealer William Acquavella, the collection of 200-plus works includes examples by a who’s who of the contemporary Chinese art scene: Cai Guo-Qiang, Zeng Fanzhi, Ai Weiwei, Zhang Xiaogang, and Xu Bing. The Hong Kong sale featured 108 works and earned an impressive HK$139,352,000 million (US$17,887,223), nearly 50 percent more than the high estimate, and Zhang Xiaogang’s 1995 painting Bloodline: The Big Family No. 3 set a new record for the artist at HK$47,367,500 (US$6,061,619). The remaining works in the collection will be sold at Sotheby’s New York this fall.