Breakthrough by Chinese shakes up art market, Yazzy's www.williaimverdult.com

Christie's Images

Recent art sales included Fang Lijun's "Untitled" picture, which brought £782,100.

LONDON: The sales of contemporary art at Sotheby's on Oct. 12 and at Christie's last Sunday may come to be hailed as the historic events that sealed the entry of high-powered political dissent against totalitarian regimes into the world of art auctions.

Everything was unusual about the two sales, starting with their timing. Sotheby's session, which turned into a roaring success with 57 works selling for a total £34.86 million, or $70.69 million, was scheduled on a Friday night when capitalists are supposed to be away in their multimillion-dollar country houses, dachas and the rest.

Christie's, which crammed more than twice as many works and took in a tidy £39.81 million, had its session on a Sunday afternoon. It further defied received wisdom by starting the proceedings with what its specialists described as "important contemporary art & design from a private collection." This involved the risk of drawing attention to the increasingly blurred lines that separate manufactured products offered under the label "design" from other items also mechanically produced but retailed under the label "art."

After all, the aluminium and plexiglass cases manufactured to Donald Judd's specifications that Christie's described as his "art" were not fundamentally different in their inception from interior design elements sold at a fraction of the price. Luckily, contemporary art buyers are not given to theorizing, and the manufactured cases realized a decent £1.35 million. If anything, the similarity of some contemporary "art" to manufactured wares helped to send a rather uncomfortable-looking piece of furniture soaring sky-high.

The sofa-like device, designed in 1985 by Mark Newson, who called it "Lockheed Lounge LC-1" and had it executed in an edition of seven, stamped "Basecraft Sidney," looks like a bloated ectoplasm. Aluminium sheets are riveted to its rounded plexiglass body. A certificate of authenticity signed and dated accompanies the piece. The marketing teams must have felt it advisable to reassure potential bidders that this is not just some product cheaply tinkered in Chinese backyards. The certificate makes all the difference that separates a highly praised piece of contemporary design from disposable ersatz. Hence the bill, which was a cool £748,500.

All this is nothing, however, compared with the real extravaganza that made these days historic.

At Sotheby's the first eight lots in the Oct. 12 sale that included 68 paintings were done within the last few years by Chinese artists. At Christie's, another contingent of Chinese works appeared, several of which were by the same painters. Few were widely known in the West. True, Christie's Chinese pictures were prudently shoved in at the end. Should the experiment have turned into a flop, the effect would not have rebounded on the entire session.

But there was no flop. The Chinese works were the Asian tiger in the auction houses' engines.

The very first lot at Sotheby's was symbolically the most astonishing. The oil painting, 200 by 170 centimeters, or 79 by 67 inches, done by Shi Xinning in 2001 at age 32, is such a painstaking imitation of a photograph that it takes a few seconds to realize that the scene could never have taken place. The late Chairman Mao and Chinese dignitaries, some in black robes, others in uniforms à la Mao, stand in a row smiling or grinning broadly in front of the Beijing Temple of Heaven. The Buddhist structure is wrapped in white fabric in the manner of Christo.

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