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Christie’s Hong Kong to Sell Works from Oliver Stone Collection

By Alexandra A. Seno

Published: October 8, 2008
HONG KONG—Hollywood filmmaker and contemporary Asian art aficionado Oliver Stone has arranged to sell several works from his personal collection through Christie’s auction house this fall. Five paintings by some of the biggest names in Chinese art could fetch a total of more than HK$46 million (US$5.5 million) for the director. The works will be sold in Hong Kong at the Christie’s November 30 Asian contemporary art evening session and at the December 1 day sale.

The highlight of the Stone lots is Bloodline: Big Family No. 2 by Zhang Xiaogang. The 1995 oil on canvas features two parental figures in gray on either side of a yellow-faced baby and is considered a fine early example of Zhang’s iconic series began around 1993. The work was included in the ground-breaking “Inside Out: New Chinese Art” exhibit organized by the Asia Society and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which began touring North America in 1998. The auction house estimates that the 70-7/8-by-90-½-inch (180-by-230-cm) piece will earn in the region of HK$30 million.

Stone will also sell two paintings by Liu Wei, China’s bad boy of Cynical Realism who has made his reputation with portrayals of hedonism. Like the Zhang, these pastel-hued works will go into the Nov. 30 evening session. Swimmers 1994, depicting a man and a woman frolicking in a pool, was shown at the 1994 São Paolo Biennale and has a price tag in the range of HK$4.6–5.4 million. A pair of smiling men in Mao suits are the central figures of Revolutionary Family (est. HK$3.2–4 million).

Christie’s has put the two other Stone pieces into the Dec. 1 day sale. Children in Meeting Series by Tang Zhigang (est. HK$1.6–2.4 million) humorously shows two communist officials as kids at play. In Gu Wenda’s Pseudo Script Series (HK$500,000–700,000), the artist attempts to adapt the traditional Chinese genres of ink-based calligraphy and landscape painting to more contemporary times.

In October and November, the pieces from the Stone collection will travel to Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei for pre-auction viewing.

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