Displaying items by tag: buddhist

finely embroidered Buddhist thangka was sold for $1.5 million at Sotheby's, New York on Wednesday. Estimated to sell for between $80,000 and $120,000, the artwork fetched 15 times the expected price.

The 18th century Qing dynasty thangka hung in an Arizona home for decades. The artwork was bought by the collector Wilton D. Cole and his wife in 1971 and passed down to their children, who were reportedly unaware of the artifact's value.

Two 10^th century statues that were looted from jungle temples have been returned to Cambodia by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met announced in May 2013 that they would send the Khmer sculptures known as Kneeling Attendants back to Cambodia after being displayed in the museum’s Asian Wing for 10 years.

Hab Touch, director general at the Ministry of Culture, said, “The return of the statues is a historic event for us.” Seven Buddhist monks blessed the life-size statues during a religious ceremony attended by officials from the government and the Met at the airport. Upon their return to Cambodia, the sculptures will be put on display at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh and later kept at either the National Museum in the capital or at a museum in the northwestern city of Siem Reap.

The two statues were looted from the Koh Ker temple site in the early 1970s. At the time, Cambodia was being ravaged by a brutal civil war and looting was rampant. The works were donated piece by piece to the Met in the late 1980s and 1990s. Recent documentary research revealed that the statues were in fact looted from Cambodia.

On April 2, 2013, the exhibition Japanese Masterpieces will open in Osaka, Japan. The show, which was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston, is in the midst of a 15-month tour of Japan. Works on view include a 1,300-year-old Buddhist painting; rare folding screens; treasured Japanese scroll paintings; and many other rare works. While all of the objects are part of the MFA’s illustrious collection of Japanese art, the exhibition will not be shown in Boston. In fact, many of the works from the museum’s impressive collection remain out of the public’s view.

The MFA does present a selection of their Japanese art holdings on a rotating basis in their galleries, but limited display space and the works’ sensitivity to light means a large portion the collection remains in storage. While the museum did mount a new display of Japanese art in January 2013, when the works from Japanese Masterpieces return to Boston this summer, they will not be exhibited.

The MFA began working on Japanese Masterpieces over 15 years ago when a number of Japanese scholars traveled to the MFA to work with the museum’s curators. The team analyzed the MFA’s Japanese art collection and launched a significant conservation project, which was geared at the current show. Japanese Masterpieces was organized in collaboration with the Tokyo National Museum and has been on view at three venues so far. Attendance has already surpassed one million visitors. The show will be on view in Osaka through June 16, 2013.

Sotheby’s hosted a number of sales in Hong Kong this past week. On October 7^th, the Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian paintings sale achieved $15.5 million, soaring past the pre-sale estimate of $5.8 million. The sale achieved the highest auction total for this category and the painting Fortune and Longevity by Lee Man Fong, an Indonesian modern master, set a record for any Southeast Asian painting when it sold for $4.4 million. The final price for the painting was almost three times the pre-sale estimate.

The Contemporary Asian Art sale totaled $15.1 million and Tiananmen No. 1 by Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter, Zhang Xiaogang, was the top lot at $2.69 million. Liu Wei’s Revolutionary Family Series – Invitation to Dinner was the second highest sale at $2.24 million, a world record price at auction for the Beijing-based artist who works in various mediums including video, installation, drawings, sculpture, and painting.

The 20^th Century Chinese Art sale brought in $24.6 million and sold 90% by lot. Works from Europe, the United States, and around Asian sold well and many were above their pre-sale estimates. The top lot was Potted Chrysanthemums by the Chinese modern art pioneer, Sanyu, which sold for $3.99 million.

The following day, the Fine Chinese Paintings sale totaled $53.2 million, the highest of the four art auctions. Offering many works from private collections, the total sale was more than double the pre-sale estimate and sold 97.2% by lot. The two top lots at the auction, Zhang Daqian’s Swiss Peaks; Calligraphy in Xingshu and Fu Baoshi’s Lady at the Pavillion, both sold for $2,974,278.

Last year China beat out the United States as the world’s largest art and antiques market and the autumn sales reflect that power swap. There was a bit of controversy when a 60-year-old Taiwanese Buddhist sister demanded that a $1.65 million sale be halted at the Fine Chinese Paintings auction. Sotheby’s canceled the sale of a painting by Zhang Daqian after Lu Chieh-chien requested a court hearing to prevent bidding on Riding in the Autumn Countryside (1950) which she claims was the property of her family and had been consigned without consent.