Vogue for Treating Art as Stocks Comes to China

By Louise Chen

Originally published on artinfo.com, July 16, 2010

http://fr.blouinartinfo.com/features/article/35237-vogue-for-treating-art-as-stocks-comes-to-china

In the latest sign that money is continuing to flow rapidly into the Chinese contemporary art market, a financial corporation has gone public with China's first openly traded art portfolio, on the Shenzhen Cultural Assets and Equity Exchange (SZCAEE).

Issued by the Shenzhen Artvip Cultural Corporation, the art portfolio comprises 12 paintings by contemporary artistYangPeijiang in the form of 1,000 shares, which sold out on the first day of trading, netting $354,480. As the artworks are traded by Artvip, which is managing the 12 works, profits are dispersed to shareholders.

Established in 2009 by the Chinese government, SZCAEE functions as an alternative platform for the trading of a wide range of cultural assets — including artworks, luxury goods, and films — as part of the Chinese government's attempt to commercialize, diversify, and regulate the public exchange of such cultural properties. SZCAEE plans to offer a second 1000-share portfolio, featuring 40 works by Yang Peijiang, sometime in the future.

Companies packaging art as an alternative-investment vehicle have struggled over the past year. In December 2009, Artistic Investment Advisers, a London-based group established in 2007 that billed itself as the world's first "art hedge fund," closed. At the time, the consulting group Fine Art Wealth Management estimated that the number of global art funds had declined by 40 percent since the September 2009 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.

 

Tagore Works Lead Sotheby's South Asian Art Sale to $8.2 Million

Published by Louise Chen

Originally published on artinfo.com, June 19, 2010

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/market-news/article/34923-tagore-works-lead-sothebys-south-asian-art-sale-to-82-million

Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore headlined the South Asian Art Sale in London last night, not with his famous manuscripts, but with 12 paintings that fetched £1.6 million ($2.37 million), massively exceeding their £250,000 ($370,000) estimate. The evening sale, which also featured works by prominent South Asian artists Raza, Souza, and Chandra, managed a 78 percent sell-through rate and brought in £5.5 million ($8.2 million) for the house.

Other highlights of the auction included Haider Raza's Rajasthan,which went for £527,250 ($780,000). Last week, Christie's London sold Raza’s Saurashtra for an artist-record $3.4 million.

Of the 12 Tagore lots on offer from the Dartington Hall Collection of Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst,Portrait of a Woman went for £223,250 ($330,000), resetting the artist record achieved when his Death Scene sold for £144,500 ($214,000) at Sotheby's in 2008. The ink-on-paper work Lady with a Fan — purportedly a portrait of Lady Ranu Mukherjee, a famed Indian socialite and a close friend of Tagore in his twilight years — earned £103,250 ($153,000).

Originally a gift from Tagore to the Elmhirsts 71 years ago, the paintings had been kept in their Dartington Hall Trust in Devon since then. The announcement of the sale generated political tension, due to the belief of some Indian art organizations that the paintings should be returned to India. Before the sale, a senior official from India’s Culture Ministry went to London to press the issue, but Sotheby's officials argued that the Indian government had no legal claim on the paintings. The Indian government did not bid in the auction.

A prominent family with a 300-year history in the country’s culturalrealm, the Tagores played a significant role in the Bengal Renaissance, a social reform movement that began in the late 19th century and ran through the early20th century. A quintessential polymath, Tagore produced 2,000 paintings, composed 2,230 songs, and penned the national anthems for both Bangladeshand India.

After dropping out of law school at University College London, Tagore returned to India, founding the publication Sadhana while managing his family's estate between 1891 and 1895. After achieving success in the arts, he traveled the world as a cultural emissary, influencing authors from Japan's Yasunari Kawabata to France's Andre Gide.

India is currently staging a yearlong celebration of Tagore's 150th birthday, which has triggered a surge in sales of his literary worksin India. In New York, meanwhile, his family name continues on in the form of the Sundaram Tagore gallery in Chelsea, whose eponymous owner, a former director at PaceWildenstein (now Pace), is a descendant of Rabindranath Tagore.

MENASA Fair Debuts in a Crowded Regional Art Market

By Louise Chen

Originally published on artinfo.com, July 15, 2010

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/contemporary-arts/article/35219-menasa-fair-debuts-in-a-crowded-regional-art-market

Building on the early successes of fledgling Middle-Eastern art fairs like Art Dubai and Abu Dhabi Art, the inaugural edition of MENASART Fair opened in Beirut on Tuesday — the latest attempt to promote the region's artists and cultivate the growing interest in contemporary-art collecting among wealthy buyers in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. 

The fair, which was sponsored by Lebanese financial groups MENA Capital and Al-Mawarid Bank, concluded yesterday at the Pavilion Royal in Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure Center. Among the 30 exhibitors the fair attracted were the U.K.’s Waterhouse & Dodd and Beijing-based nonprofit Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, which presented Zhang Huans large-scale stainless panda sculptures, previously seen at the Shanghai World Expo.

The fair also hosted conferences for dealers, collectors, and curators to address issues such as recent trends for contemporary art inSouth Asia and challenges for emerging Middle Eastern artists in light of globalization.

The board of the fair includes Laure d’Hauteville, who created Beirut's first contemporary art fair, ArtSud, in 1998, and helped the ArtParis fair expand to Abu Dhabi, and Jean-Marc Decrop, who is a former French cultural attache in Paraguay. "This fair is designed to represent art from the cradle of civilization," said MENASART artistic director Pascal Odille in a statement, "and boost the political, social and artistic representation in the region."

Art Dubai Names Antonia Carver as Director

By Louise Chen

Originally published on artinfo.com, July 30, 2010

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/34911/art-dubai-names-antonia-carver-as-director/

Leading Middle Eastern art fair Art Dubai has appointed Antonia Carver, a journalist and curator who has most recently led Bidoun Projects, as its new director. Prior to the appointment, she worked as editor-at-large for Bidoun magazine (the publishing side of the Middle Eastern cultural outlet) and the Art Newspaper (which first reported her appointment), as well as the Dubai International Film Festival, where she served on the board.

The Dubai Art Fair is partly owned by the Dubai International Finance Center, a conglomerate of financial companies that is a major patron of the arts in the Middle East. Last year, Abaraaj Capital, an equity company that is part of the DIFC, presented the first annual Abraaj Capital Art Prize at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, awarding three emerging artists — from Iran, Algeria, and Turkey — with $200,000 and showing their works at the museum and the Dubai Art Fair.

Officials from the fair say that they plan to work closely with the Sharjah Biennale to raise the international awareness of artists from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia as they expand into those regions. Recently there has been a surge in contemporary art in the Middle East, as wealthy locals have flocked to international and regional art fairs, snapping up works along the way.