Christie’s 20/21st Century Autumn sale in Hong Kong last month (26 September) made $72.6m, down 46% from last year's equivalent sale and around the same as its sale in March. The evening marked the first anniversary of Christie’s Asia headquarters in Central’s Henderson building.
Still, the auction asserted that the city’s market remains solid despite regional and global economic doldrums. Picasso’s 1944 Buste de Femme set his Asia record price, hammering for HK$196.75m (US$25.4m) after a protracted competition between two bidders.
“I think what we've learned over the course of this year in an ever evolving market is the importance of presentation of pricing, of making sure we bring fresh property to the market,” said Christie’s chief executive Bonnie Brennan after the sale, “and the market tonight responded, you saw that very clearly.”
Brennan stressed that with remote bidders from around Asia as well as the US and Europe, the sale illustrates the complex flow of interest and influence of Asian and Western art and their buyers. Every sale worldwide now includes Yayoi Kusama, and Zao Wou-ki now enjoys global popularity as well, Brennan says.
The sale included Kusama’s painting Pumpkin [TWAQN] and Zao’s 17.3.63, respectively selling for HK$34.66 mln (US$4.475 mln) and HK$85.2 mln (US$11 mln). The Zao and Picasso works joined with May's sale of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Sabado por la Noche as the most valuable 20th and 21st Century sales in Asia this year. Brennan also highlighted how the work of Walter Spies was influenced by his years in Indonesia; his Pagodenlandschaft (Landscape with a Pagoda by a Lake) sold for HK$26.1m ($3.3m).
Christie’s Asia Pacific head of 20th and 21st century art, Cristian Albu, described the sale’s composition as “trying to tell a story, and trying to give respect to the region,” with “chapters about Korean art, about Japanese art, about Asian art. But of course, we're trying to build bridges between the Western art and the Eastern Art, because there's no such a thing as boundaries between artists,” with “a great dialogue between Picasso and Zao Wou-ki, and between Korean art and between New York modernism and New York minimalism”.
Later that weekend in Hong Kong, Sotheby’s autumn sales totalled HK$335.7m ($43m), topped by Yoshitomo Nara's Can't Wait 'til the Night Comes for HK$79.9m ($10.2m). And Phillips’s Modern and contemporary art evening sale achieved HK$160m ($20.5m), lead by Nara’s Pinky selling for HK$56.6m ($7.2m).
“The art market is not down,” asserted Albu. “It's never been down. The art market has been alive for 1,000 years. It's alive now. It's going to be alive and powerful for the next 1,000 years, art is powerful, and art is playing a huge role in humanity. The market has recalibrated for the past two years. But people with knowledge, people with passion, people with possibilities, they chase a painting, and what you saw tonight, it's real.”
