“There are good people here,” enthused a giddy, well-coifed flack. And wasn’t that Michael Milken? Fifteen minutes before the Contemporary Asian auction began, a dull roar of murmurs and ring tones echoed throughout the Sotheby’s auction chamber.
Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s senior curator for contemporary art, mounted the rostrum like a Teutonic throne. His sinewy body in the charcoal suit and pale blue tie, and the dangling forelock, all of it leaned forward, commanding the room to a hush.
Friday’s sale, in which India and Japan were represented but China predominated, was not another sale. It was more the opening bell for a very well-hyped—and, to some Western latecomers, an utterly new and alien—art market.
Mr. Meyer’s forelock snapped left and right with his torso; his arms, slicing left and right, looked something like Jane Fonda meets Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.
Whole lots sailed by, contested only by rival volleys between the phone-ins. They were direct lines to a new base of power in the collecting world. There is also a sense, as with the Asian families perched in the private booths overhead, of a foreign collecting bloc weighing in on the proceedings. “There are a lot of Asians here,” said an audience member.
Thirty-six lots were called before Mr. Meyer took a drink of water.
“Who are these people? Are they dealers?” asked someone on the floor. Well, some of the men, in various stages of disguise using dark sunglasses, looked better disposed to bid on warheads. A woman in a baby blue chubby fur and turquoise jewelry chewed gum, her jaw movements straining her skin taut.
Short, tanned and open-shirted, a vaguely California-louche man perfected his slouch in the front row. A blonde scissored down the aisle from the back to join him. His paddle whipped erect from his waist as the auction’s first big-name lot appeared, a Zhang Xiaogang painting entitled Bloodline Series: Comrade No. 4 (Yellow). The bid started at $50,000 and ended at $419,200. The next painting by Mr. Zhang went for $486,400. The blonde won one.
An hour later, a dizzying bid for the third Zhang piece (Bloodline Series: Comrade No. 120) had the audience in a clamor. The $350,000 estimate became a distant memory. People upstairs in the private booths stood up, one woman with a phone dangling limply off her hip, as if in defeat.
“Go, go, go, guys,” said someone in the crowd softly. “They’re already a bargain.” The piece fetched $979,200, from a private collector.
The short, tanned Californian and the blonde fell into a quick embrace. How much had he just made in an hour?
In the afternoon, a new crowd assembled.
An Oliver Stone–Jim Nabors type walked out of a Tide ad with his bright red corduroy blazer. A dolled-up Asian woman, all highlights and fly shades enveloping her forehead, consulted the catalog pages like a flipbook. A bearded Japanese hipster—iPod buds in, wraparounds on, cravat noosed tightly—parked himself in the front row. The third and final auctioneer sported an impressive head of hair and the requisite Sotheby’s forelock.
More big-ticket items moved. That day, Yue Minjun’s Lions climbed to $564,800 from its $150,000 estimate. A Xu Bing installation fetched $408,000.
Asian contemporary is on the march. You can have your $2 million vase and your $4 million jar. Asia Week’s fairs and sales have long trafficked in the mainstays: ceramics, calligraphy, jewelry, landscape painting. On Thursday, Christie’s had rung up $15 million for Indian modern and contemporary works. On Friday, Sotheby’s—expecting $6 million to $8 million—netted $13 million.
The auctioneer, nearing the end, reported that Lot 209 had been printed upside down in the catalog. “But I imagine the buyer can hang it any way that pleases,” he said.
—Jeff MacIntyre
