Attracting spirited bidding from around the world, the nine live and online auctions of Asian Art Week totalled $35,097,088. The biannual sale series was kicked off by the Japanese and Korean art auction, led by Hokusai’s classic print of ‘The Great Wave’, which sold for $1,260,000. Major collections of influential art dealers were a theme this season, with the top lot of the series coming from the trove of Mineo Hata, a Southern Song-dynasty Longquan celadon kinuta vase that achieved $1,381,000. Other highlights included a Qianlong-period finely carved archaistic white jade rhyton, which sold for $756,000 from the LJZ Collection; and The Keswick ‘hundred deer’ jar, which fetched $693,000 in the Marchant: Eight Treasure for the Wanli Emperor sale.
In the South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art sale, Maqbool Fida Husain’s Untitled (Naga), a sprawling East-meets-West portrait painted at the peak of the modern master’s fame, realized $1,260,000. Concluding the series in New York, the Important Chinese Ceramics and Fine Art auction took place over two days, totaling $10,075,464 and selling 93% by value.
Some of our favorite items from the Art Week were:
Longquan Celdon Kinuta Vase ($1.4mm)
The vase is robustly potted with a mallet-shaped body with angular, sloping shoulders. The tall neck is flanked by a pair of handles in the form of dragon-headed fish, below the widely flared, dish-shaped mouth. The vase is covered overall with an even glaze of soft sea-green color, which ends in an irregular line above the unglazed foot rim.
‘Hundred Deer’ Jar ($0.7mm)
The jar is boldly decorated in underglaze blue, iron-red enamel, and green, yellow, and aubergine glazes with the auspicious ‘hundred deer’ design. The deer are depicted resting, grazing and at playful leisure in a continuous landscape, all below a ruyi border on the shoulder beneath the neck decorated with floral sprays.
Maqbool Fida Husain – Untitled ($1.3mm)
Images courtesy of Christie’s
