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| CUI RUZHUO (BORN 1944) Lotus |
The top lot Lotus, a set of exceptional modern scrolls by Cui Ruzhuo, realized $15.9 million, far exceeding its estimate and breaking the world auction record for the artist.
The top lot Lotus, a set of exceptional modern scrolls by Cui Ruzhuo, realized $15.9 million, far exceeding its estimate and breaking the world auction record for the artist.
Bonhams Hong Kong set a new record for a Chinese snuff bottle at the auction of the celebrated Mary and George Bloch Collection: Part IV in a ‘Golden Gavel’ sale. A ‘famille-rose’ enamelled glass snuff bottle from the Imperial Qianlong palace workshops sold for $3.32 million. The tiny ‘European-subject’ snuff bottle measures only 8.07cm high and sold for over five time its pre-sale estimate to an Asian collector who bid on the telephone.
British artist Billie Achilleos has been creating small animals out of Louis Vuitton small leather goods, with each animal highlight an element inf the design of the products (see previous post). She's
Christie's day sale of Asian 20th Century and Contemporary Art raised $39.4 million, with 76% of the lot sold but 90% by value. Zao Wou-ki was again the top lot of the sale, firmly establishing himself as the leading modern Chinese artist at auction right now, with 21.10.66 selling for $1.66 million. The second top lot was Zu Jiang's Twelve View of a Sunflower Field XII selling for $1.44 million and then Zeng Fanzhi's Mao+Calling at $1.157 million, Contemporary works that were fresh to the market and well-estimated did particularly well
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| Zao's 21.10.66 |
The last day of Christie's wine auctions (Nov 28) has helped the auction house raised its final tally, with now a companied $8.3 million solds, with 84% sold by lot and 79% sold by value - better that in the first two days. The series of sales ended with 100% sold at the single owner sale Fine and Rare Wines: The Property from a Gentleman, which had an exceptional range of top Château of Bordeaux such as Latour, Lafite, Mouton, Margaux, Haut-Brion and Pétrus which remains in favor with Chinese buyers. However, the market is seeing "a re-evaluation on certain wines," as Christies put it, as buyers favored the finest Bordeaux and Burgundy
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| Yu Minjin's the artist and his friends |
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| This Zhang Xiaogang painting was unsold |
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| This Liu Ye painting didn't sell |
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| Zao's Cerf volant et oiseaux |
Yu Minjin's the Massacre of Chios also sold for $4.1 million, while portrait of the artist and friend sold for $2.9 million.
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| Photp: Nick Welsh, Cartier Collection © Cartier |
In 1973, the chairman of Cartier Paris, Robert Hocq, bought an old Portico “mystery clock” at a Christie's auction. The clock, made by Cartier in 1923, was shaped in the form of a Shinto shrine gate with the clock serving as a gong, and was topped by a small carved crystal Billiken, a figurine with pointed ears that had been patented by an American teacher and was much sought after at the time as a good-luck charm.
The purchase led to the establishment of the Cartier Collection, officially founded in 1983, which now holds nearly 1,400 Cartier pieces, including 400 timepieces. The Portico clock will be one of the highlights of a traveling exhibition called “Cartier Time Art” that will open at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore on Dec. 14 after a show this autumn at the Museum Bellerive in Zurich.
Mechanical curiosities were all the rage in China during the 18th and 19th centuries, as the Qing emperors developed a passion for automaton clocks and pocket watches, and the “Sing Song Merchants,” as European watchmakers were called, were more than happy to encourage that interest.
In the last couple of years, elaborately decorated pocket watches and clocks made especially for the Chinese market have increasingly appeared at auction, attracting strong buying interest from collectors. More unusual are miniature pieces that were made in the shape of rings or fanciful objects like perfume guns.
In an industry dominated by men in Switzerland, the independent watchmaker Eva Leube stands out. Based near Sydney, she is also one of the only two women — with Saskia Maaike Bouvier — to have been nominated for membership in the prestigious Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants, an association set up in 1984 to preserve excellence in mechanical watchmaking at a time when the industry was threatened by the quartz wave.
Sandro Fratini’s passion for watches started when he was 8 years old and was given a modest steel Longines watch for Communion. “For me, it was love at first sight,” Mr. Fratini, 58, said in an e-mail. “I was fascinated with the mechanism that allowed the movement of the hands and the subsequent measurement of time.”
From that moment, Mr. Fratini started collecting, albeit at first with rather modest means. The president of Super Rifle, the company behind the Rifle Jeans brand, and the owner of Whythebest Hotels group, Mr. Fratini has built up his collection to more than 3,000 watches, and his passion has even inspired the interior design of one of the group’s six luxury boutique hotels in Florence: Hotel L’Orologio.
François-Henri Pinault’s PPR, the owner of a number of high-fashion brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, increased its stake in the Sowind Group to 50.1 percent from 23 percent over the summer, gaining a controlling stake in the Swiss family-owned watchmaker group.
For Sowind, which owns the high-end watch brands Girard-Perregaux and JeanRichard, the benefits of coming into the PPR fold were “huge” in terms of growth capacity and marketing, said Stefano Macaluso, managing director of Girard-Perregaux and son of the founder of Sowind, Luigi Macaluso, who unexpectedly died last year.
At the turn of the 20th century, pocket watches were de rigueur and served as status symbols, but starting in the 1920s they gave way to more practical wristwatches. Production of pocket watches has never completely stopped, and many brands have continued to come up with vintage-looking limited editions, often in a bid to remind customers of the device’s heritage.
James Cohan Gallery Shanghai will open on Nov 26 a solor exhibition by Shanghai-based sculptor, Wang Xieda. Sages’ Sayings is the title of the exhibition which refers to the artist’s rigorous study of ancient Chinese pictograms or ideograms and, in particular, fourth century Chinese calligraphy. On view will be Wang Xieda’s cast bronze sculptures, ink drawings, and his recent sculptural works made of rattan that are suspended from the ceiling and evoke drawing in space.
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| Bondages od Desire |
Malaysian artist Eric Chan has a new solo exhibition at Chan Hampe Galleries with a new series of work exploring the artist's personal relationship struggles. Anchoring the show is a large installation of one of his childhood toy, a rocking horse , pulled dozens of little taxidermied ducklings (a very Trojan horse image, though have no idea what the ducklings symbolize, because Chan's own symbol is usually the rabbit! )
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| Photos credit -Dominic Khoo |
There is a larger-than-life mural on one of the busiest shopping streets in Singapore by France's renowned graffiti artist, Kongo. His explosive work entitled "Graffiti made by hand" is covering the wall of the upcoming Hermes boutique.
Seoul Auction, Korea's leading art auction house, will hold its Modern & Contemporary Art sale on November 28 at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, presenting about 50 works by leading Western, Korean, Japanese and Chinese artists with a total estimate of $25 million. The top lot of the sale is Smooth Egg with Bow by leading American artist Jeff Koons. This monumental piece is from the artist’s acclaimed 'Celebration' series and is appearing at auction for the first time.
In recent years, collectors of Chinese artworks have piled into Imperial porcelain from the Ming and Qing dynasties, rhinoceros horn carvings, jade objects and Imperial Chinese furniture, and as a result prices have doubled or tripled in many of these categories.
But prices for Chinese glass have trailed behind, often overlooked by collectors because they are less familiar with a category that appears regularly at auction but in very small quantity.
Over the centuries, tea has been poured from pots made of materials ranging from humble clay to precious jade and enameled gold. The design of the pots is equally wide-ranging — from whimsical Victorian follies shaped after animals or flowers to Art Deco futurist models conjuring up race cars and airplanes, or the back-to-earth functionalism of th Great Depression But when it comes to serious tea drinking, many connoisseurs swear by Yixing teapots: nothing else will do.
Short of buying him a new watch, here are two possible presents you could five a watch aficionado this Christmas: If you’re on a small budget, then TWG Tea has just released Timeless Tea, a black tea with a hint of blackcurrant, blackberry and vanilla with a strong hibiscus note, in a beautiful packaging. At the other end of the spectrum TF Est. 1968, a French-Swiss watchmaker, has launched a pair of tourbillon cufflinks crafted in rose gold and set in rubies cufflinks especially for Christmas. The gold diamond set versions is priced at $11,900, the gold version is priced at $6,900 while the one with rubies, emerald or black diamonds retails for $9,500.
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| Fountain of Light, 2007. Steel and glass crystals on a wooden base |
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| Forever, 2003 |
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| Last year's fair had a huge installation of Ai Weiwei, courtesy of M.A.D. gallery |
Some art critics were quick to write off the chances of Art Stage Singapore to attract big names, after ARTHK tied up with Art Basel for its next fair in May 2012. However, White Cube, Lehmann Maupin, and Malborough Fine Art are some of the new ‘Western’ guns that have signed up to participate Art Stage Singapore 2012, proving the Singaporean fair’s appeal and relevance. Now in its sophomore year, the fair will be running from 12 to 15 January 2012 and has an exciting line up of collectors’ talks.
Off the Wall is a new exhibition organized at Helutrans by Fortune Cookie and French gallery Wallworks that brings together 18 street artists from France and Singapore.
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| Andre Tan |
The Affordable Art Fair in Singapore has just opened and will be running until Sunday. There is plenty to chose from with nearly 80 gallereries offering works by 700 artists and with a Children Art Studio at the back running workshops for children, there is even something to keep the kids occupied while you go and shop!
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| Rodel Tapaya (Cane of Kabunian, numbered but cannot be counted) |
Baston ni Kabunian, Bilang Pero di Mabilang (Cane of kabunian, numbered but cannot be counted) inspired by his native folkore. Clearly influence by the works of Henri Rosseau, Tapaya has already made a name for himself at auction with his paintings mining the oral cultural heritage of the Philippines. Here the work references a Tagalog tale of a greedy man who was turned into a frog, and in the foreground, one can see a masked man chopping down a tree that has a face of a man instead of a crown of leaves, foretelling environmental disaster (.. I'll admit not my cup of tea)
Christie’s Hong Kong will auction Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art on Nov 30. The sale, estimated in excess of $80 million, brings together over 400 works of high quality, wth special collection 15 exceptional jade, ivory and rhinoceros horn carvings from an renowned European connoisseur put together.
Among the leading lots in the season is an important early Ming blue and white bianhu moonflask from the Yongle period (1403-1424) that showcases an elegant blending of Chinese and Central Asia style (photo above) with an estimate of $3.7-$4.5 million. While its sophisticated decoration was the invention of Chinese potters, the distinctive shape of this early 15th century blue and white porcelain moonflask with its flaring foot was ultimately directly influenced by Islamic glass or metalwork
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Rolex has announced the names of its six next Mentors, each of whom will select a talented young artist for a year of creative dialogue and exchange. They inlude Canadian author Margaret Atwood, French theatre director Patrice Chéreau, Brazilian singer/songwriter Gilberto Gil, South African visual artist William Kentridge, Taiwanese choreographer Lin Hwai-min and American film editor and sound designer Walter Murch.
“Ancient Chinese Bronze Mirrors from the Lloyd Cotsen Collection” is now showing in an exhibition at The Huntington, in San Marino, California. The collection will be donated to the Shanghai Museum next May.
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| SEEN - The Mighty Thor |
Sotheby’s biannual sale of Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art today brought the total of $19.8 million , just within estimate. Headlining the sale was a large ‘famille rose’ ‘landscape’ dish, Yongzheng mark, which sold after a four-way telephone bidding battle for $1.2 million, compared wiht an estimated at £20,000-30,000. Decorated in blue, green, turquoise and sepia enamels, the dish’s interior depicts a landscape with cliffs and a craggy mountain range shaded by pine trees.
ArtTactic has released its latest Chinese Art Market Confidence Survey. While the overall Chinese Contemporary Art Market Confidence Indicator remains strongly positive, despite the drop in confidence in the international contemporary art market, market confidence is likely to be tested in the next 6 months as experts are showing concern about the sustainability of the current growth rate, the report stated.
Ronald Ventura was wearing a highly personalized Mickey Mouse T-shirt. By using an airbrush technique similar to the graffiti style in some of his artwork, the Filipino artist had subverted the classic cartoon image with red and black paint, transforming the smiling mouse into something slightly menacing.
This artistic statement is typical of what Mr. Ventura, who has risen to prominence on the Asian contemporary art scene, is known for: well-crafted, complexly layered images and styles that range from hyperrealism to cartoons, graffiti and surrealism.
Cambodia’s most internationally prominent contemporary artist, Sopheap Pich has just opened Morning Glory, a solo exhibition of his new works, ath the Tyler Rollins Fine Art gallery in New York. The show centered on a large-scale sculpture of the morning glory plant.
Public fascination with the Titanic began long before her ill-fated maiden voyage, and it continues to this day as artifacts from her wreck give a new poignancy to the tragedy of the sinking
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| Christophe Josse - SOLD! |
