Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 | 1 Comment
Two Ways of Seeing Oliver Stone’s HK Art Sale
To Art + Auction, the Hong Kong sale of Contemporary Chinese art was a disappointment:
Zhang Xiaogang’s Bloodline: Big Family, No. 2, was the session’s most expensive lot; the 1995 oil on canvas went for HK$26,420,000 to an anonymous phone bidder. Still, it was a disappointing result. The work had been expected to sell for about HK$30 million and boasted considerable star power: The piece has been exhibited prominently by U.S. museums and was from the collection of Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone. The director, who has been quietly buying and selling for years, even made a rare personal appearance on the Christie’s floor the day before the auction to be seen with the five Chinese contemporary paintings he had put up for sale.
But Colin Gleadell tells another story in the Telegraph:
Hollywood film director Oliver Stone, who recently completed the George W Bush biopic W, sold three contemporary Chinese paintings at Christie’s in Hong Kong on Sunday for £2.9million. Stone will have realised a handsome profit as the paintings, including Liu Wei’s Revolutionary Family, a portrait of the artist with his father which sold below estimate for £243,000, were bought in the early 1990s when contemporary Chinese art was barely a glimmer in the market’s eye. The contemporary Asian art sale was otherwise a lacklustre event in which nearly half the lots went unsold.
Has the Asian Contemporary Bubble Burst? (ArtInfo)
Oliver Stone Nets a Profit from Chinese Art (Telegraph)
Also of Interest:
- Oliver Stone: Not an Art Collector
‘That’s too much work,’ the director says. [youtube width="250" height="200"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRaZHdwe3tM[/youtube] Watch this quick interview with Oliver Stone in Hong Kong... - Hong Kong Comes in Light
Reuters carries the results from Christie’s sales of Contemporary Chinese art and 20th Century Chinese art. The two sales brought... - Three Ways of Seeing Chinese Art
Bloomberg covers Christie’s sales in depth finding weakness in the market for antiquities but Contemporary Asian art is still hot:... - Jing Daily Picks Top 10 Cont. Lots in HK Sale
Sotheby’s Asian sales in Hong Kong are less than a month away. Already the world of Chinese collectors is buzzing... - Sotheby’s HK Sale Estimated at $77m
Reuters has the estimate on Sotheby’s Spring sales in Hong Kong. Last Spring they sold almost three times that amount:...
An Oliver Stone provenance isn’t one that inspires a bidding war. In fact, I think it’s a detriment. Who cares if some Hollywood hack owned a piece of art? Especially one who isn’t renowned for their art connoisseurship (from the collection of, say, Steve Martin or Billy Wilder, would have been a different story).