LuxArtAsia

THUKRAL & TAGRA Courtesy Bose Pacia/Nature Morte

© Takashi Murakami Courtesy Blum & Poe

The VIP Art Fair will be divided into three distinct exhibition halls:
• VIP Focus: comprised of 24 galleries, each presenting eight works by a single artist.
• VIP Emerging: comprised of 24 galleries, each presenting 10 works produced within the last two years by emerging artists.
A key aspect of the fair is that it is a live event. So, the gallery booths will be actively staffed and dealers are online for 12 to 18 hours a day to work with clients across the globe. VIP ticket holders have the ability to connect one-on-one with gallery staff through an integrated chat and messaging system. Once these conversations are initiated (and they can be seamlessly transferred to Skype or telephone, as preferred), dealers can discuss works being offered in the booth and can provide access to their back room inventory directly on the ticket holder’s computer screen. Here, works can be shared with clients discreetly through tailor-made “private rooms.”

The contemporary section saw global collectors responding in earnest to works from the established rock stars of the category including I Nyoman Masriadi and Handiwirman Saputra. That said, prices for Masriadi are still well below what they were in his heydays in 2007-2008, even if his top lot, Trombone, fresh from the easel, sold above its estimate.

Christie's HJK jewels racked in $78.9 million - highest total ever for a jewellery auction in Asia and the largest ever at Christie's worldwide.  Leading the sale was the Perfect Pink, a rare 14.23 carat Fancy Intense Pink diamond, which sold for $23.2 million, making it the most expensive jewel ever sold in Asia. It went to an anonymous buyer. A total of 88% of the lot sold with a remarkable 94% sold by value. Burmese rubbies and Kashmir sapphire also fetched top prizes

Mountain by Kim Whanki, a leading and pioneer Korean abstract artist, was the top-selling lot at today's Seoul Auction of Modern & Contemporary art, commanding $1 million after spirited bidding. Seoul Auction raised in total $4.5 million. From Point by another Korean master Lee UFan sold for $915,640.

Vacheron Constantin has unveiled a one of a kind creation inspired by Marc Chagall and his monumental fresco painting adorning the ceiling of the Garnier Opera House in Paris. The timepiece features a faithful reproduction of the entire Chagall ceiling, which the artist painted in 1964. Chagall’s work transformed the ceiling of the Opera House into a vast poetic sky whirling with opera heroes, brilliant musicians, entwined lovers and legendary characters, with an overall design of a flower.  Each of the five different coloured petals depict two famous musicians surrounded by some of the works they created. The blue one features Moussorgski and Mozart, along with Boris Goudonov and The Magic Flute; the yellow depicts Tchaikovsky and Adam, with Swan Lake and Giselle; Stravinsky and Ravel shine in red with The Firebird and Daphnis et Chloé; green lends a fresh touch to Berlioz and Wagner and the love stories of Romeo and Juliet and Tristan and Isolde; while white with a touch of yellow exalts Rameau and Débussy, along with the latter’s Pelleas and Mélisande. The works of Beethoven, Gluck, Bizet and Verdi are represented in the circle of the dome surrounding the central chandelier. Dotted here and there are some of the most famous Parisian landmarks: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc of Triumph, the Place de la Concorde with its obelisk, and of course the Garnier Opera House itself. Chagall described the ceiling as “the colourful mirror of silk dresses and jewellery lighting up the shoulders of the most beautiful women in Paris.”

The two-day wine sales at Christie's HK totalled US$10.35 million, and was 90% sold by lot, 96% sold by value. Nearly 80% of the lots sold over the high estimate. The sale demonstrated the continued strength of the great first growth Bordeaux and indicated a new interest in large format bottles and in older vintages, Christie's said. Burgundy values were also strong, particularly for Henri Jayer and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, and champagne prices remained bubbly, with the superlot from Krug representing the highest value ever consigned directly from the winery. This brought Christie's Hong Kong Wine sales to HK$169 million for the whole of 2010 with over 96% of all lots sold by value. Their next auction will be Mar 4-5.

Forever International Auction Company Limited, Christie's trademark licensee in China, recently concluded its two-day Autumn auction series on November 24, with total sales amounting to RMB169 million ($25 million), doubling its Spring auction total. The sale of fine Chinese jades and works of art raised $13 million with 72% of the lot sold andthe top lots achieving well above their estimates. The sale of Chinese 20th century and contemporary art raised $1.45 million with 73% of the lots sold, but the sale of fine chinese paintings and calligraphy was disappointing with only 49% of the 246 lots sold, though they raised $8.45 million. Demand was strong for Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian, whom together sold the top 5 lots.


This season marked the inaugural sales of Mou Tai, the Chinese national spirit and 92% of the 13 lots on offer sold raising $305,00. The result of the wine sales, titled Best Wines of the New Millennium, was a bit disappointing in light of the recent white gloves auctions in Hong Kong - only 66% of the lots were sold, providing that buyers prefer old vintages.

Introduced in 1947, the Vulcain Cricket was the world’s first mechanical alarm wristwatch, with a sound so strident it could wake a heavy sleeper from the deepest slumber. It established Vulcain as an innovative watchmaker and soon the timepiece got endorsements that many watchmakers could only dream about today: several U.S. presidents started wearing it in public. President Harry S. Truman, who had been given one by the White House Press Photographers’ Association in 1953, often praised it and wore it regularly. His successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, also wore a Vulcain Cricket, and so did President Lyndon B. Johnson. The watch became known as the Presidents’ watch and was so popular that the Swiss manufacturer churned them out by the thousands and could barely meet demand. Nevertheless, like many other Swiss brands, it fell victim to the rise of Japanese quartz watches in the 1970s and by the mid-1980s, Vulcain and its Cricket had fallen into oblivion after the manufacturer stopped production. It was resurrected in 2002 by Bernard R. Fleury, the founder and chief executive of Production & Marketing Horloger, after he acquired the patent on the Cricket movement. While the Vulcain brand has struggled to regain its place in the heart of U.S. buyers, it has made some headway in Asia, having come up with new technical innovations, like a self-winding alarm movement, and it is the first alarm watch with a flying tourbillon. Now, with a new marketing campaign harking back to its former presidential endorsements, Vulcain is hoping to recover its past glory in the United States. Read the whole story in the IHT.

Vacheron Constantin

The complex Japanese lacquering technique known as maki-e is often found on luxury pens, but only a few companies have applied it to watch dials. Nevertheless, this year Vacheron Constantin, Van Cleef & Arpels and Chopard have all teamed up with Japanese maki-e masters to release limited-edition watches. Maki-e, which translates as “sprinkled picture,” is a traditional multilayered lacquering method in which fine colored or precious metal dust, often silver and gold, is sprinkled to form a design or picture on a lacquer surface while it is still wet. This decorative technique uses a rare varnish-tree lacquer that acts as a protective, clear glue between each successive layer, giving the finished scene depth and perspective.

While watchmakers have been using enameling techniques like cloisonné and champlevé on their dials to great effect for decades, they have largely stayed clear of lacquer until fairly recently. This year, Chopard introduced its first “L.U.C. XP Urushi” collection. Van Cleef also released a limited edition of eight maki-e watches, “Midnight Extraordinary Japanese Lacquer,” inspired by traditional Japanese landscapes. Read the whole story in the IHT.

Last year proved to be hard on small independent watch brands, as retailers generally stopped buying on consignment to lower their inventory costs, requiring small watchmakers to wait until a watch was sold to be paid. Max Büsser, founder and chief executive of the independent watchmaker MB&F, found himself traveling around the world to keep sales ticking. This year, things have turned around. Mr. Büsser is still traveling as much as before, but he does not have to deliver the hard sell any more. By introducing four new models in one year, instead of just one as before, increasing the number of retailers he deals with from 12 to 19, and still keeping the overall number of watches the company releases unchanged, MB&F has put the pressure back on retailers. Next year, Mr Büsser plans to increase production to between 165 and 175 pieces, and to open the watchmaker’s first-ever concept store in September with a local partner in Beijing. “One of my dreams will be coming true: that our machines will be sold in an art gallery, because let’s face it, they’re closer to kinetic art than to what is known today as a watch,” he said. “So we are opening a gallery that will present our pieces along with traditional kinetic art. Right now, I’m scouting around the world for artists working in this very rare form of art.” Read the full story in the IHT.

The same real-estate Chinese tycoon who broke the world record when he paid HK$9.28 million for a snuff bottle on his first day of collecting them at the Part I of the sale held in May was again a big buyer his time around. Part III of the Snuff Bottles from the Mary and George Bloch Collection will take centre stage at the Bonhams Spring 2011 Auctions to be held in May 2011

Southeast Asian artists have often found inspiration in the turbulent socio-political environments of their nascent democracies, and the tense political environment in Thailand in recent years has provided plenty of fodder. Natee Utarit is best known for his work questioning the nature of images, in particular photographs, through the medium of painting. But in recent years he, too, has felt the need to comment in subtle ways on his country’s complex political and social landscape.. "I think the recent political context has influenced many artists in Thailand. I cannot deny, it is influencing me,” the 40-year-old artist said last month. “But my work is not really about politics, it’s more about the social changes.”


The clear evolution in Mr. Utarit’s work is now on display in a mid-career retrospective, “Natee Utarit: After Painting,” at the Singapore Art Museum through Feb 20. Mr. Utarit started his career painting abstract works, but he quickly moved toward a representational approach to explore Western established modes of painting, such as figuration, landscape and still life. Behind many of the works are references to historical works by European masters such as Caravaggio, Courbet and Titian. In his “Pictorial Statement” series in 2000, Mr. Utarit superimposed monochromatic paintings of Thai landscape photographs onto exact reproductions of paintings by the Old Masters, establishing a dialogue between the classical masterpieces and photography. His 2005 series “Last Description of the Old Romantic,” features floral still lifes, copied from classical paintings, which he stained to dim their splendor as a reflection on the notion of beauty.

The year 2007 marked a shift in the artist’s practice, as he started using children’s toys to comment on Thai society. In the 2009 painting “Tales of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” he features an arrangement of toys, loosely referencing the complex and enigmatic composition of “Las Meninas,” by Diego Velázquez. The Spanish court characters of Velázquez’s 1656 painting have been replaced with characters well-known in the Thai context, such as the politician or the soldier, Mr. Utarit explained. To reinforce the meaning of the painting, he uses colors that have symbolic meaning for the Thais, such as blue and yellow, which are associated with the king and royalty.

In “The Prince,” painted in 2008, the year former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was charged with corruption, Mr. Utarit shows a small toy prince facing the Thai flag, yet with his feet pointing in opposite directions, thereby betraying his actual stance. Next to the toy are two yellow rubber ducks, a visual pun for lame-duck politicians.

Read the whole story in IHT.

The Gwangju Biennale Foundation has appointed Seung H-Sang, a Korean architec,t and Ai Weiwei, as co-directors of the 4th Gwangju Design Biennale. The 4th Gwangju Design Biennale will be held at the Biennale Exhibition Hall and throughout the metropolitan city of Gwangju from September 2nd to October 23rd 2011

Another highlight of the sale will be Bouquet de Fleurs by Marc Chagall, circa 1937. It’s a typical example of Chagall’s imaginative and very personal style. Strong colours combined with more subdued hues portray the world with a dreamlike, non-realistic simplicity. The painting celebrates love and portrays the artist and his muse Bella, whom he had married in 1915, in a rapturous embrace amidst a rich bouquet of flowers.

The stamp, titled “The Whole Country is Red,” depicts a group of workers holding Mao’s “Little Red Book,’ with a red map of China in the background. It was pulled from circulation on the day it was issued, however, officially because the map omitted the Xisha and Nansha Islands, although probably a more important omission was Taiwan. Some of the stamps had been sold before the order to pull them came.  Read the whole story in the IHT.

August Media will be one of the first tenants of Mediapolis, a 19-hectare, or 47-acre, high-technology media park, when the first building opens there in December. The park will take as long as 10 years to be fully developed but is envisaged as a self-contained media ecosystem, with soundstages, digital production and broadcast facilities, and media schools. Read the whole story in the IHT.

Pink Man series

Horror in Pink No.1

Bloodless War No. 3

Not all of Mr. Manit’s series include the Pink Man. His Bloodless War series (1997), transports iconic photographs from the Vietnam into a Thai context. Bloodless War No.3 uses the iconic Vietnam war photograph ‘‘napalm girl’’ taken by Nick Ut, but Manit’s characters are dressed as office workers carrying luxury-brand shopping bags.

An 19th century roiro lacquer four-case inro by Shibata Zeshin has made the world record price at Bonhams for on inro in an international sale, selling for £162,000 in Part 1 of the Edward Wrangham collection, one of Europe’s most important and comprehensive private collections of Japanese Gentleman’s accessories. The overall sale raised £2million with 94% of lots sold by value. Many of the coveted inro and netsuke sold for over ten times their pre-sale estimates to major international collectors, including some from the USA and Japan, who were all vying for the collection. Four out of the top ten lots comprised works by Shibata Zeshin, one of the most famous painters and lacquerers of the Meijii Period. A small lacquered fubako (document box and cover) skilfully rendered in a variety of textures sold for £74,400, over ten times the pre-sale estimate . A rare grey and silver lacquer and kiri-wood four-case inro depicting a crescent moon amongst swirling clouds, sold for £66,000 against the pre-sale estimate of £2,500 – 3,000. The final work by Zeshin to be included in the top ten lots was a large single-case inro and kozuka (a handle that holds a small blade) that sold for £38,400.

While the idea might be ingenious, it is not new. The fair is based on the concept launched in 1999 by gallery owner Will Ramsay in London, which soon gained popularity. Similar annual fairs have since sprung up in Bristol in the UK, and in Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, New York, Sydney, and Melbourne. The success of these fairs is built on “dispelling the myth” that collecting art is only for the rich, explains Hewitson. The AAF Singapore will showcase paintings, original prints, photography and sculptures, and is set to be a highly promising affair with 60 galleries participating out of which 50 are international ones. A few like the Korean Jay Gallery have already participated in fairs of this kind in other countries around the world.  It runs 19-21 November at the F1 Pit Building, Marina South. Read full story in Fah Thai this month

Salvatore Ferragamo has launched “The Merlion Tie” to celebrate its presence in Singapore. Its main motif is oviously the Merlion, flanked by the Vanda Miss Joaquim and the Traveler’s Palm. The half lion, half fish is a pure invention of the Singapore Tourism Board, which was looking for a marketing icon in the 1960s. It was created by sculptor, Lim Nang Seng, and while many consider it tacky it has become a symbol of the city-state, with tourists often making the trip to its location on the Bay to take photos. The animal symbolises the legend of the rediscovery of Singapura, as recorded in the "Malay Annals". In ancient times, Singapore was known as Temasek, a Javanese word for sea. In the 11th century A.D, Prince Sang Nila Utama of the Sri Vijaya Empire rediscovered the island. When the Prince first landed on Singapore's shores, he sighted a mystical beast which he later learnt was a lion. The Prince then decided to name the island "Singapura" which in Sanskrit means Lion (Singa) City (Pura).