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Singapore Holds an Art Sale

February 18, 2009 by Marion Maneker

According to Singapore’s Straits Times, art dealers in the city state are ready to compromise on price to move their inventory:

Art galleries like ArtMosaic in the MICA Building, Hill Street and Indigo Blue Art in Neil Road, which specialise in contemporary Indian art and Utterly Art in South Bridge Road, which specialises in Filipino art, have had one-off art sales with prices of selected artworks cut anywhere from 10 to 30 per cent.

And even as auction houses gear up for the auction season, which begins next month and stretches till May, they are bracing themselves for lower takings.

Auction Houses Take a Hit (Straits Times)

Rabbit Punch Up

February 18, 2009 by Marion Maneker

Rabbit HeadAs the YSL sale approaches the sabre-rattling over the two heads from the Summer Palace Zodiac clock increases. Even though there were reports earlier that the Chinese government had been offered these two relics, the posturing certainly seems like a negotiating tactic. Or that’s how David Barboza played it in the International Herald Tribune:

Liu Yang, a Beijing lawyer who is helping to organize the lawsuit threatened in France, said he had located a descendant of China’s imperial family to serve as plaintiff in the case.

“The Old Summer Palace, which was plundered and burned down by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860, is our nation’s unhealed scar, still bleeding and aching,” Liu said. “That Christie’s and Pierre Bergé would put them up for auction and refuse to return them to China deeply hurts our nation’s feelings.”

Liu also asserted that the sale would violate a 1995 UN convention governing the repatriation of stolen or illegally exported cultural relics.

But Patty Gerstenblith, a professor of law at DePaul University in Chicago who specializes in cultural-property issues, said that France never ratified the convention and that even if it had, the agreement does not apply retroactively to objects looted decades before.

“My view is this was looted, but it would be difficult to get that legally back,” she said by telephone on Monday. “But it’s got great historical significance and ought to be returned.”

Gerstenblith suggested that one solution might be for the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé Foundation to negotiate with China and offer the bronze heads at a reasonable price. “It would probably be in the best interest of everybody if they made a deal privately with China,” she said.

Over the last decade Chinese entrepreneurs and businessmen with close government ties have acquired a large number of historic items at auction and donated them to Chinese museums and institutions.

China Pressures Christie’s to Hand Over Sculptures (International Herald Tribune)

The Influencers of Art Asia

December 11, 2008 by Marion Maneker

Masriadi Speaks

November 10, 2008 by Marion Maneker

The retrospective Masriadi’s work at the Singapore Art Museum closed yesterday. But the show coincided with the artist’s work achieving new records in the Hong Kong sale. Here, in a short film created by the museum, the artist talks about his work:

Asia Looks Southeast

October 14, 2008 by Marion Maneker

Singapore’s Small Sales Disappoint Amid Financial Panic

Indonesian Art is a Bright Spot

Local auctions held during the ArtSingapore fair were not big money affairs but they were part of a bid to win the Asian art market to Singapore. Altogether, the sales brought in less than $10 million, less than 2/3 of the estimates. John Andreas, founder of one of the houses, Borobodur, gave Bloomberg his observations:Continue Reading

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