The Asian art auctions in New York this autumn produced a number of predictable results. Once again, the Chinese works of art that appeal to Asian buyers and notably mainland ones, did best. As always, works from collections did well. Christie’s continued to outperform Sotheby’s, by a large margin. Other sectors, such as Japanese and South Asian art, remained patchy.
What also emerged, and is probably a worrying aspect for the auction houses, is the apparent failure of the “premium lots” system at Sotheby’s. Bidders on these high-priced lots (over $500,000 in the US, over $1m in Hong Kong) are only allowed to go for them after registering their interest in advance and paying a deposit. They can’t bid online. The reason? There have been a number of cases of Chinese buyers defaulting on auction purchases, and Sotheby’s inaugurated this system in Hong Kong in 2007—before the aborted sale of two bronze Zodiac heads at Christie’s Yves St Laurent sale in Paris in 2009.
This autumn, Sotheby’s New York’s auction of Chinese works of art on 14 September included five “premium lots”; four failed. Only a Northern Wei votive stele found a buyer at just over $1m (est $500,000-$800,000), going to Eskenazi. But the stars of the sale, two archaic bronzes (one estimated at $2.5m-$3m) and two pairs of 17th-century Huanghuali chairs (estimated at up to $1.5m) were bought in.
It looked like a rerun of April’s Meiyintang sale in Hong Kong, when Sotheby’s designated 22 of the 77 lots as “premium”, but half of them, including the two most important pieces, were bought in (both subsequently found the same private buyer).
