Hong Kong Sets the Tone for Asian Market

Georgina Adam sums up the action in Hong Kong which was stronger than expected but still down from previous years. Sotheby’s came through well, managing their sales to a 85% sell through rate, including some stand out sales like the Gutai group:

works from the Japanese avant-garde “Gutai” group, from the collection of its co-founder Yoshihara Jiro, did extremely well. The 22 works all found buyers and made a total of HK$26.7m (US$3.4m).

Other houses looking to get a foothold in Asia had mixed results. But the real winner was Hong Kong which remains the acknowledged center of the art trade in Asia:

Artcurial was also relieved by the result of its inaugural sale in the territory, which while coming in slightly under expectations at HK$63m (US$8.2m), saw a Tintin comic strip by Hergé, “The Blue Lotus” (1936) make HK$9.6m (US$1.25m) in a mixed sale that was headed by a 1961 Mercedes-Benz Roadster. Curiously, six of the top ten lots went to European buyers.

But Bonhams had a really rocky ride with its inaugural modern and contemporary art sale in Hong Kong. Of the 88 lots offered, only 36 found buyers, giving a punishing buy-in rate of 48 per cent, and a sale total of about HK$20m (US$2.5m), a far cry from the pre-sale estimate of HK$40m-HK$60m. The top lot, Cai Guo-Qiang’s “Escalator: Explosion Project for Centre Pompidou” (2003), estimated at US$1.2m-US$1.9m, crashed out, although an alluring Romualdo Locatelli nude did make HK$7.2m. “It was a tough first sale,” admitted Magnus Renfrew of Bonhams, “particularly for the mid-range material.”

The Art Market: Slowdown? What slowdown? (FT.com)