For years, many of mainland China’s art students dreamed of working or studying in Europe. After hours spent poring over the works of the continent’s masters as part of their degree requirements, living where their pieces are preserved, displayed and appreciated would seem a natural fit. But with funding and hiring freezes striking numerous overseas…
A 1940 self-portrait by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold Thursday for $54.7 million at a New York art auction, becoming the top sale price for a work by any female artist. The painting of Kahlo asleep in a bed — titled “El sueño (La cama)” or in English, “The Dream (The Bed)” — surpassed…
A Gustav Klimt portrait painting sold Tuesday for $236 million, a record for a modern art piece, at an auction where a solid gold, fully functional toilet satirizing the ultrarich also fetched $12.1 million. The toilet, by Maurizio Cattelan — the provocative Italian artist known for taping a banana to a wall — went up…
The art market downturn continued to play out at Christie’s, Phillips and Sotheby’s regional headquarters in Hong Kong this past weekend, with the turnover from back-to-back art auctions loitering at an eight-year low. But a handful of records and some last-minute withdrawals – which improved the success ratio of the sales – helped inject long-missing…
A bidder here on Earth will soon shell out a lot of green for a piece of the red planet as Sotheby’s puts a Martian meteorite up for auction. NWA 16788, the largest piece of Mars on Earth, is expected to fetch up to $4 million during the July 16 auction in New York City,…
Sotheby’s has revealed plans for a dedicated wine shop and lounge in its bricks-and-mortar space in Hong Kong, which hosted its first live wine auctions in late March. Rebecca Lo reports. George Lacey, director and head of wine, Asia at Sotheby’s, has led countless sales prior to The Connoisseur’s Cellar at Sotheby’s Maison in Hong…
A 95-minute bidding war would have made headlines even when the Hong Kong auction market was at its frothiest a decade ago, so a recent protracted battle over a 14th century Chinese calligraphy scroll was all the more remarkable for coming four years into a market downturn. Rao Jie’s 700-year-old, six-metre long, cursive-script calligraphy of…