Date: Fri 10-Apr-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: LAURAB

Quick Words:

Asian

Full Text:

International Asian Art Fair

w/cuts

BY LAURA BEACH

NEW YORK CITY -- Mies van der Rohe may have known his way around a drafting

table but he didn't have an inkling about the workings of the art market,

where too much of a good thing is hardly enough.

His theory that "less is more" was disproved in New York in late March, where

Asia Week activities -- shows, sales, auctions, receptions, and lectures --

had buyers from all over the world whirling in their Burberrys overcoats. It

was as if the China Trade of Spoilum's time had been revived. One could almost

picture the flags of merchant vessels flying in New York's harbor while

international traders haggled along the hongs.

Sotheby's and Christie's Asia Week sales totaled $25 million on 2,000 lots.

It's a guess that gross receipts from all venues were $75 million or more. A

good portion of the sales were at Brian and Anna Haughton's International

Asian Art Fair, which opened for six days at the Seventh Regiment Armory on

Thursday, March 26, with a benefit for Asia Society, a cultural institution

with a complex agenda and Rockefeller backing.

The preview night party attracted more than 1,300 supporters and raised more

than $350,000. Attendance was on par with a year ago. "I think you find that

with single-subject shows. Our ceramics fair is 17 years old and the gate

never varies more than 200 or so," Anna Haughton said.

The aristocratic following included Anouska Hempel, HRH Princess Marie-Chantal

and Prince Pavlos of Greece, James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, Princess Michael

of Kent, Sotheby's owner Alfred Taubman, and Princess Firyal of Jordan. "There

were a lot of glamorous women in saris and Chinese costumes," observed Anna

Haughton, noting the show's growing reputation in the diplomatic community.

Of all the Haughton fairs, this one may be the most beautiful. The poetry,

restraint, and sculptural dynamism of Asian art is well suited to the London

promoters' rigorous yet spare presentation style. With only 60 exhibitors,

each stand is by definition, and necessity, a high-impact affair.

In sheer sumptuousness, nothing surpassed John Eskenazi Ltd's oversized booth,

organized into a series of intensely meditative alcoves of devotional

sculpture. Spink created a crimson-red Rajastan palace, into which it set a

pierced marble window and a burbling fountain. At Mallett, the rich clutter of

trade porcelains and export furniture gave the look of a traditional emporium.

It has been said that this is a sculpture show, one whose greatest strength is

in Indian and Southeast Asian material. As the fair's signature motif, one

might have chosen the slight, almost tentative figure of a bronze Mitrayea

that stood silent sentry at Robert Ellsworth. The New York dealer was asking

$5.5 million for the Six to Seventh Century, BC, bronze masterpiece.

"This city is stacked like guns with people who've got plenty of money and

love collecting," said London dealer Dominic P. Jellinek of Carter Fine Arts

Ltd, noting that critical mass had been achieved by linking Asia Week events.

"Collectors around the world have focused their attention on these sales,

shows, and auctions," agreed Greg Luay of Kagedo. The only West Coast dealers

in the presentation offered four early Twentieth Century Nihonga School

paintings on silk depicting the four seasons, $45,000.

The International Asian Art Fair, which has benefited from a relaxed dateline

and broader geographic definition, now includes contemporary art and ancient

Near Eastern artifacts. "Assyria was just the other end of the Silk Road,"

mused Robert Haber. New to the show, the New York dealer offered an

archaeological icon: a portrait fragment excavated by Henry Layard at Nimrod

in the 1850s, $1.75 million. A double-relief fragment from the same excavation

fetched $11 million at Christie's in 1994.

Interest in Asian-subject photography is booming. Exhibiting at the

International Fair for the first time was A.O.I. Gallery of New York. Dealer

Frank Aoi's Nineteenth Century albumen prints of Tibet by John Claude White

were arresting -- remote, ethereal, and only $4,500.

Uptown and down, Asian textiles were hot. Perhaps as a nod to "When Silk Was

Gold," an exhibition of Chinese silk tapestry now at the Metropolitan Museum

of Art, Sotheby's and the Arts of Pacific Asia antiques show organized

lectures on Chinese, Central Asian, and Korean textiles. The Textile Gallery

of London set up a Chinese silk display in the New York gallery of M.D.

Flacks, and noted London specialist Francesca Gallery brought a rare

Thirteenth Century silk tapestry panel, offered at an undisclosed price.

"You can still have an adventure with textiles," explained Mary Hunt

Kahlenberg, an International Fair exhibitor and former Los Angeles County

Museum of Art curator who now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. With considerable

flair, Kahlenberg mingled a Fourteenth Century printed Gujarat cotton wrap

(She sold a nearly identical piece to the Victoria and Albert Museum), $3,500,

with meticulously woven Japanese baskets by contemporary masters.

Mixing old and new is an approach the Haughtons have pioneered in New York.

Among others, London dealer Michael Goedhuis and The Chinese Porcelain Company

of New York combined classic sculpture and bronzes with contemporary Chinese

painting. "It makes the show more vital," explained Khalil Rizk, the first to

suggest the practice. His back wall was lined with a 20-foot ink landscape by

Liu Dan, born 1953.

As stimulating as the new material is, it is perhaps also the answer to a

market rapidly being depleted of fine, old things. "When I traveled as a young

man to Asia with my father, we came back with 40 wonderful objects at a time,"

said Allan Chait, a venerable New York dealer of Chinese art. "Now we're happy

if we find six."

Analysts have yet to take full measure of the Asian stock market collapse.

Sotheby's acknowledged that it has suspended its Korean sale and said that

decreased bidding from Taiwan contributed to the high buy-in at its recent

auction of Chinese paintings. On the other hand, most International Show

exhibitors said business had not been much affected by the decline.

"Our client base is broad," noted Kagedo's Greg Luay. "Not that we haven't

felt any effect -- collectors are sensitive to change -- but the market at

this level is really in New York and London." "We buy from the East and sell

to the West, and have done so for a long time," Dominic P. Jellineck agreed.

"The Japanese economy has been in recession since the early 90s, so nothing

has changed," Joan Mirviss said with a laugh. A New Yorker who deals in old

Japanese prints and paintings, and contemporary ceramics, Mirviss sold well.

For about $25,000, The Saint Louis Art Museum acquired her abstract porcelain

sculpture, "The Moment".

Another Japanese specialist, Flying Cranes Antiques Ltd of New York, arrayed

oversized Meiji bronze and cloisonne vases, $24,000 to $37,500. Their

centerpiece was the extraordinary, four-foot bronze sculpture, "Fukurokujiu

Seated Upon His Stag," $125,000.

John Eskenazi sold 16 works, most to American collectors. The star attraction

of his display was a bronze figure of the Siva Natarajah, Chola Period, Ninth

to Thirteenth Century, priced in excess of $500,000. A Third/Fourth Century,

AD, carved schist frieze depicting the Buddha's First Sermon, Gandhara Region,

northeastern Pakistan, sold for around $250,000.

Gisele Croes' spare stand was stocked with six bronzes tendered at more than

$1 million each. The Belgian dealer is said to have parted with a Han Dynasty

bronze lamp in the form of a tree for more than $2 million; and three Waring

States bronze and silver vessels (475-221, BC), one alone of which was priced

around $1 million.

With its simple lines and lustrous surfaces, Ming furniture is a new favorite

of American tycoons. London dealer Nicholas Grindley sold well throughout the

show, adding first-time customers. Hong Kong dealer Grace Wu Bruce, who got

into the mood during set up by dressing in cowboy boots and a Chinese vest,

sold 12 pieces of furniture to European, American and Far Eastern buyers,

including a bed for around $500,000.

New exhibitor John Berwald sold beyond expectation across all of his fields,

including Han and Tang pottery. A rare Sui Dynasty pottery horse and rider

left his stand for around $80,000. All of his buyers were new customers and

American private buyers. Michael Gillingham sold more than 30 items of Chinese

antiques in all categories, and an Eighth to Ninth Century standing bronze

Buddha from Thailand left Alexander Gotz' stand for about $500,000.

"Asia Week is expanding the market, no doubt, but the question is, is it

expanding it enough for all the players in the field?" asked New York dealer

Edith Frankel, who sold a Sixteenth Century Ming lacquer Lohan, $80,000, not

long after the fair opened.

So far the answer seems to be yes. Arts of Pacific Asia, the Lexington Avenue

Armory show organized by California promoters Bill Caskey and Liz Lees, drew

its own broad contingent of buyers, including some from the uptown fair. And

the slew of shows around town -- at J.J. Lally, Yoshii, Jan Krugier, Lehmann

Maupin, and Ariadne galleries -- was well received. "There were 104 museums in

attendance. That's a major number," Khalil Rizk boasted of the International

Asian Art Fair. Added Anna Haughton, "It's gratifying that our fair has become

so international so quickly."