London's new East End:
Asian Art in London ranges from Indian miniatures to
Chinese ceramics—and now there is more contemporary
work. In New York, meanwhile, Rothko leads the
modern sales
by Susan Moore
Asian Art in London is more than an art and antiques
fair without the claustrophobia. Launched eight
years ago as an initiative to promote London's
pre-eminence as a marketplace for Asian art--the
city boasts far more specialist dealers than
anywhere else--and to focus attention on its many
peerless museum collections, it offers a ten-day
feast of gallery and museum shows, auctions,
seminars and lectures--and parties galore for those
who have the stamina. In fact, this great sprawling,
eclectic event offers something for just about
anyone interested in Asian art of any region, medium
or period (visit www. asianartinlondon.com for the
full programme). This year, 3-12 November, it is
blessed by a spectacular centrepiece in the form of
the Royal Academy's blockbuster 'Qing' show--'China:
The Three Emperors 1662-1795', which opens on 12
November.
As one might expect, the dealers in Chinese art are
fielding impressive displays. Eskenazi, for
instance, is offering forty-seven pieces of Song
ceramics from the distinguished collection of the
late Hans Popper. It was during the Song period
(960-1279) that Chinese potters effectively
transformed stoneware from the rough and haphazard
to the precisely potted, smooth-textured and
brilliantly glazed vessels that take a bow here.
Their understated beauty lies in a combination of
balanced form and subtle surface decoration, be it
jade-inspired glazes from the palest cream or
bluish-green to strong olive, unusual cracklure,
elegant relief or an abstract splash of colour.
S. Marchant & Son celebrate the firm's eightieth
anniversary with a show of 'Chinese Jades from Han
to Qin'. Sydney L. Moss, meanwhile, presents Chinese
paintings and calligraphy; Ben Janssens, early
Chinese and South-East Asian sculpture; Robert
Kleiner, snuff bottles; and Jacqueline Simcox
presents later Chinese textiles. Speelman's show
even includes a pair of imperial lacquered wood
elephants. Contemporary pieces play an increasingly
large role. Cohen & Cohen's 'Now & Then' show
contrasts major Chinese export porcelains with a
one-man show devoted to the seemingly flawless
contemporary porcelain sculptures by a
Taiwanese-American neurosuregeon-turned-ceramist:
Cliff Lee has spent seventeen years working out the
recipes for 1,000 year-old Song glazes (Fig. 1). New
exhibitors Marlborough Fine Art similarly present a
tribute to the painter Chen Yifei, who died earlier
this year.
That contemporary theme is also picked up by the
likes of Malcolm Fairley, who presents Meiji warrior
costumes and recent Japanese ceramics, and Rossi &
Rossi, whose show of fifty Tibetan paintings spans
an impressive 900 years. The whole Indian
subcontinent is well represented too. John Eskenazi
offers characteristically impressive early--fifth
and sixth century--Kashmiri and Gupta period stone
and terracotta sculptures (Fig. 3). Francesca
Galloway presents thirty-five miniatures from the
Muslim and Hindu courts of India from the famed
collection of Mildred and W.G. Archer, while Sam
Fogg unveils 'Jain Painting 1450-1850'. In all,
forty dealers take a bow.
In contrast to the offerings unveiled in New York
this month, Asian art looks like small change. For
this month sees the annual fall sales of big-buck
Impressionist, modern and contemporary art. It also
sees a choice single-owner collection of furniture
and decorative arts, not unreasonably heralded as
the one of the greatest collections of the twentieth
century. This is the property of Lily and the late
Edmond Safra--over 800 lots drawn from their various
residences in London, Geneva, Paris and New York and
offered by Sotheby's on 3 and 4 November. This is a
collection that began with Faberge and Tula-Russian
metalwork- and evolved to include furniture and
paintings. It is the furniture, however, that steals
this particular show.
Most of the great eighteenth-century French
cabinetmakers are represented in this collection.
Arguably the most important piece of its kind is a
Louis XVI ebony bureau plat and cartonnier of around
1770 and attributed to Joseph Baumhauer, as imposing
a neoclassical piece as one is likely to find on the
market (estimate $5m-$7m). Here, too, is the
peerless Andre-Charles Boulle, represented by a
sarcophagus-shaped coffre de toilette or casket
whose entire surface--inside and out--is veneered in
marquetry in brass and tortoiseshell, its lid
cornered by ormolu lions' masks and the whole
resting on lion's-paw feet. It is expected to fetch
$700,000-$1m.
Perhaps even more wonderfully expressive of the
Safras' taste for bold pattern and design and
luxurious materials are the best of the English
pieces--if one counts the work of the prolific
emigre Pierre Langlois as such. Here, for instance,
is a spectacular pair of George III serpentine
commodes, their tops and sides exquisitely--not to
mention ingeniously--veneered with coromandel
lacquer depicting brightly coloured figures and
pavilion scenes, flowering trees and birds (Fig. 2).
Attributed to Langlois, they appear to have been
commissioned by the Earl of Hertford for Ragley Hall
around 1765 (estimate $600,000-$800,000). Notable,
too, is a pair of ormolu-mounted Blue John
wing-figure candle vases of much the same date,
attributed to Matthew Boulton ($500,000-$600,000).
Needless to say, the ormolu retains its original
gilding, and the Blue John body is richly hued and
striated. There is even a quantity of Anglo-Indian
pieces, inlaid with elaborately ornamented ivory.
As for the Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary
sales, I whet your appetite with just one sublime
Rothko. Homage to Matisse (Fig. 4) was painted in
1954 and its tall, slender format--it measures 268
cm by 129 cm--suggests that its particular
inspiration was the late cut-out designs Matisse
made for stained-glass windows, most particularly
the Nuit de Noel illustrated in Life magazine in
1952 and displayed in the Time Life Building in New
York the following year. Acquired by the collector
Edward R. Broida for less than $1 m in 1984, it now
comes to the block at Christie's on 8 November with
an estimate of $10m-$15m.
New York looks positively Old Money when compared to
the burgeoning--and potentially exceedingly
lucrative--markets of China, Russia and India. Of
course, as soon as one writes any such sweeping
statement, the inherent contradiction immediately
presents itself. While there is no doubting the
explosion of an enormous local market in China--vast
auctions are now taking place not only in Hong Kong
but also in Beijing and Shanghai, and new salerooms
are popping up all the time--it is interesting to
see just how international this market remains.
Revealingly, the most expensive lots sold in the
September sales in New York went to non-Chinese
buyers--as did both the 15m [pounds sterling]
blue-and-white Yuan dynasty jar sold at Christie's,
London, in July and the 2.6m [pounds sterling]
double-gourd vase sold three days later by Woolley &
Wallis.
High prices inevitably winkle out more stellar
pieces, and Sotheby's sale on 22 September unveiled
another exceptional piece of early blue and white
from an old family collection. This particularly
large and refined Ming meiping (Fig. 5), from the
estate of Laurence S. Rockefeller, came with an
estimate of $300,000-$400,000 and sold--to a client
of London dealer Eskenazi--for ten times the amount,
$3.9m. Similarly, a fourteenth-century hanging
scroll by Wang Meng sold for a record $1.696m to an
American buyer at Christie's on 20 September. That
said, both sales were dominated by Chinese bidding
and buying. Christie's sale realised the highest
total of any various-owner sale of Chinese art in
New York--$14.5m.
Christie's Indian and Southeast Asian sale on 21
September similarly notched up another record
auction total, $11.3m. Both houses did roaring
business in the hot, hot market for modern and
contemporary Indian painting and auction records for
individual artists fell like ninepins. Christie's
pioneered these contemporary sales in London in
1993, moving their location to New York and Hong
Kong in recent years. It is a market fuelled by the
huge Indian diaspora--even so, Christie's has just
appointed a full-time representative in Mumbai. A
neat indication of how the market is moving is
provided by Tyeb Mehta. In 2003, his Celebration
surpassed the $100,000 mark, selling for a record
$317,500. Three years later, Mahisasura (Fig. 6)
broke through the $1 m barrier, selling for $1.58m
and becoming the most expensive contemporary Indian
painting ever sold at auction. It was acquired by an
Indian collector living in North America. The two
sales found twenty-five new artist's auction
records.
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