Asia Week

Sotheby’s
Contemporary Art Asia: China, Korea, Japan
291 lots offered
$23,210,525 sold total
18.2 percent unsold by value
19.9 percent unsold by lot
Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art
294 lots offered
$11,091,263 sold total
46.9 percent unsold by value
36.4 percent unsold by lot
Indian Art
88 lots offered
$5,106,875 sold total
21.2 percent unsold by value
26.1 percent unsold by lot
Indian and Southeast Asian Works of Art
152 lots offered
$7,026,751 sold total
17.6 percent unsold by value
30.3 percent unsold by lot

Doyle
The Regal Collection and Asian Works of Art
369 lots offered
$1,700,700 sold total
7 percent unsold by value
18 percent unsold by lot

Bonhams
Fine Japanese Art
245 lots offered
$546,600 sold total
17 percent unsold by value
15 percent unsold by lot

Christie's
Japanese and Korean Art
462 lots offered
$20,854,813 sold total
6 percent unsold by value
30 percent unsold by lot
The Imperial Wardrobe: Fine Chinese Costumes and Textiles
154 lots offered
$1,800,963 sold total
47 percent unsold by value
27 percent unsold by lot
The Meriem Collection: Important Chinese Snuff Bottles, part II
114 lots offered
$4,281,700 sold total
0 percent unsold by value
0 percent unsold by lot
Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art
370 lots offered
$20,216,925 sold total
13 percent unsold by value
23 percent unsold by lot
South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art
125 lots offered
$10,974,600 sold total
13 percent unsold by value
11 percent unsold by lot
Indian and Southeast Asian Art; The Scholar's Vision: the Pal Family Collection; The Ideal Image: Eight Masterpieces of Indian and Southeast Asian Art
519 lots offered
$21,939,488 sold total
2 percent unsold by value
37 percent unsold by lot

Francis Newton Souza Cai Guo Qiang Miyao Eisuke Ram Kumar Sayed Haider Raza Sotheby’s Sees Strong Sales in Hong Kong Who Is Ai Weiwei? Beijing City Symphony

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The week’s highlight was a wooden likeness of the Buddha Dainichi Nyorai from the 1190s, attributed to the famous sculptor Unkei (est. $1.5–2 million), which was offered in the Japanese and Korean Art sale at Christie’s on March 18. The seller, a Japanese collector of Buddhist art, had bought the statue in a small rural antiques shop for an undisclosed sum. X-rays done at the Tokyo National Museum, where it was exhibited, revealed that the figure encased three Buddhist dedicatory objects—a wooden placard with a pagoda-shaped finial, a crystal ball and a crystal pagoda—making it incredibly rare and desirable. Ten bidders drove the price up to $3 million, and six continued fighting up to $7 million. The sculpture eventually sold for $14,377,000—a record both for Japanese art and for an Asian work of art in New York—to the department-store company Mitsukoshi Ltd., acting on behalf of the Buddhist group Shinnyo-en. (Department stores in Japan run galleries and act as advisers.) Shinnyo-en’s founder, Ito Shinjo, is a sculptor whose work was on view during Asia Week at Milk Gallery, in Chelsea. The Buddha will be on loan to the Tokyo National Museum for five years during the construction of Shinnyo-en’s own museum.

The majority of works in Sotheby’s March 17 Contemporary Art Asia session sold but failed to reach their high estimates, perhaps because of the drop in the Asian financial markets that day. Zeng Fangzhi’s Mask Series No. 11, a well-known 1996 triptych portraying the 1990s transformation of Chinese society through the evolving visage of one individual (est. $800,000–1 million), was the only work to fetch more than $1 million, going to a European buyer on the phone for $1,217,000. Cai Guo-Qiang’s gunpowder drawing Escalator: Explosion Project for Centre Pompidou (Two Panels), carrying an overoptimistic estimate of $500,000 to $700,000, was passed, although sources say it sold privately afterward.

The house’s Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art sale, held the next day, fared better. Chinese bidders vied for pieces from Walter and Mona Lutz’s bamboo holdings, amassed by the California-based couple after their 1947 wedding in Japan. A new collector bought several, including an 18th- or 19th-century Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) carving of the eight Taoist immortals (est. $40–60,000) for $217,000. The sale’s top grosser was an early Ming Dynasty (14th–15th century) Jun purple-splashed narcissus bowl (est. $400–600,000). Even though such wares have recently been reassigned to that period from the earlier Northern Song Dynasty (12th century), an Asian phone bidder bought the bowl for $869,800, substantially more than the $hk1,230,000 ($158,900) it fetched in 1993 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong.

Also on March 18, Doyle drew a capacity crowd for its auction of the Regal Collection, 18th- and 19th-century Chinese porcelain accumulated by the Gilded Age businessman Arthur Regal; his wife, Florence; and their son, Vernon R. Regal, whose heirs were the consignors. The cover lot, a Qianlong (1736–95) famille rose porcelain “boys” vase, which gets its name from the figures climbing up the sides (est. $100–150,000), was acquired by a Hong Kong buyer for $361,000.

The response to Bonhams New York’s inaugural Japanese-art auction, on March 19, was overwhelmingly positive. Of the 20th-century prints, netsuke, sword fittings, ivories and metalwork on offer, a Meiji period (1868–1912) patinated bronze jardiniere with gold accents from the workshop of Miyao Eisuke, of Yokohama (est. $40–50,000), fetched the top price: $42,000.