Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai

The Third Line of Dubai sold "Love Letter" (2008) by the Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri for $175,000.

May 2008 In Brief

Breaking Ground

Carpet Samples

Gerhard Richter Hiroshi Senju Natvar Bhavsar Ai Weiwei S N Banerjee Farhad Moshiri Thriving Arts Districts Threatened With Demolition in Beijing German Parliament to Return Nazi-Looted Portrait

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Sales at the 70 participating galleries were decent, if not spectacular. British megacollector Charles Saatchi reportedly made one of the fair’s first purchases: Arabian Delight, 2008, a stuffed camel inside an open suitcase by the Pakistani artist Huma Mulji, priced at $8,000.

“This fair is about building relationships,” says New York gallerist Sundaram Tagore. In addition to selling several contemporary works by Indian artists such as Natvar Bhavsar and Subhankar Banerjee at the event, Tagore presold a painting by Japanese artist Hiroshi Senju for $280,000 to a New York collector, who wanted it because it would be shown in Dubai and therefore had a certain cachet.

The artist Ai Weiwei dropped by the Berlin dealer Michael Schultz’s stand and helped persuade a Chinese collector to buy a small 1988 abstract painting by Gerhard Richter for €280,000 ($435,000).

Local art did the best overall. The Third Line of Dubai sold Love Letter, 2008, above, by the Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri for $175,000 to “a Europe-based collector from the region,” says director Claudia Cellini. Weeks earlier, at Bonhams’s debut Dubai sale, Moshiri’s Eshgh (“Love”) became the first piece by a Middle Eastern artist to exceed $1 million.

"Dubai or Not to Buy" originally appeared in the May 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2008 Table of Contents.