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Friday 8 August 2008

Cult of the masterpiece

Susan Moore on the art market

Location, location, location. On the morning that Christie’s prepared to launch the art market’s latest high-profile, big-buck season of Impressionist, modern and contemporary sales in New York — a series beadily scrutinised by the throng of art-world Jeremiahs who have long predicted the end of this particular art-market bubble — the auction house announced that it was offering by private treaty sale one of the most highly valued works of art of this or any season — a colossal $120 million Warhol portrait of Chairman Mao. Not in New York but in Hong Kong.

The announcement speaks volumes about the nature of today’s newly truly global art market. Most obviously it offers vendors — in this case, a private European client — and auction houses the opportunity to place a work of art where it should excite the greatest interest and generate the highest price. Given the uncertainties of the Western financial markets, the vast fortunes of Asia, Russia and the Middle East appear increasingly alluring. Whereas around five years ago, Asian buyers accounted for 1 per cent of Western postwar and contemporary sales, now, according to Ken Yeh, Christie’s deputy chairman in Asia, they account for 5 to 10 per cent. Reassuring no doubt was the purchase two years ago of a considerably smaller Mao by the Hong Kong property tycoon Joseph Lau for what was then a world record auction price for a Warhol — $17.4 million.

The consignment acknowledges another reality of this new world order: like it or not, art dealers are obliged to co-operate with their traditional business rivals and are collaborating with increasing frequency. Only the auction houses have the resources, the marketing machinery and the client databases to invest in and develop these emerging markets. It was the London dealer James Mayor who brokered the deal for Christie’s to show the Giant Mao in China; the proviso was that this monumental version, over 14-feet-high, and one of only three remaining in private hands, was set in context — that is, seen to be the biggest. (Scale is particularly relevant here because Asian paintings are traditionally valued according to size.)

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