The 2005 Poly Shanghai China Spring Auction, one of the most worth-waiting-for art auctions this year, is expected to up the temperature of the country's already prospering art collecting and auction market.
When the hammer rises at the Shanghai Jing An Hilton International Hotel on July 3, a total of 323 traditional Chinese paintings and calligraphy works by 274 artists and 213 Chinese oil paintings by 150 artists will be auctioned.
"These are all first class pieces, selected from more than 1,500 artworks," said Hong Pingtao, general manager of Poly Shanghai Arts Auction Co Ltd.
Previews in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and Shanghai precede the actual sale, with the Shanghai viewing opening today and running through to Saturday.
Integration
The oil painting lots, say the organizers, are the auction highlights.
Introduced to China in the early 20th century, oil painting experienced three stages of development: Pre-1949 when the People's Republic of China was founded, pre-1980s and post-1980s.
According to Hong, the oil paintings they have selected this time include works by important artists from all three generations of oil painters on the Chinese mainland. The works provide a simple but complete overview of that period in history.
Just a glance at a few of the artists Lin Fengmian, Wu Zuoren, Zhang Chongren, Liu Haisu, Pan Yuliang, Lu Sibai, Lin Dachuan and Wu Guanzhong, tells of the auction's quality.
Among all of the works in the more Western artistic vein up for auction the organizers consider the most eye-catching is not an oil painting, but a colored ink on paper by the late master painter Lin Fengmian (1900-1991).
Entitled Xiaowei, it features a young girl in blue-and-white Young Pioneer uniform and wearing red scarf, sitting in front of a potted blossoming flower.
It is unique compared to Lin's other paintings, in terms of artistic value and its special historical significance, said Hong.
With a length of 93 centimeters and a width of 67.5 centimeters, it is also larger than most of Lin's works.
Lin was famous for successfully combining Chinese and Western painting skills.
He was deeply influenced by Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism. He tried very hard to learn from the inner structure of Paul Cezanne and the unrestrained brushstrokes of Picasso and Henri Matisse. In this sense, he was considered a leading Chinese artist of the Modernist school.
But he stuck to the tools of traditional Chinese painting such as rice paper and the paintbrush.
Instead of using traditional Chinese brushstroke techniques, he applied expressionist techniques to achieve an oriental painting effect and interpretation.
At the prime of his creativity, Lin was very much appreciated. It was in the 1950s that realism from Russia swept art circles in China and became the dominant ethos, while Impressionism and Western Modernism were considered too bourgeois to reflect the socialist spirit.
Due to his disagreement with this shift, Lin was forced to resign from his teaching post at the Hangzhou Vocational Art School in Zhejiang Province and moved to Shanghai.
There he had close contact with Shanghai artists, and his paintings were subtly influenced by them, and did display a trend of realism.
His works between the late 1950s and early 1960s, for example Xiaowei, as well as Fishermen (Yufu) and Harvest (Shouge), though accounting for only a small proportion of them all, are witnesses of the period.
The model for Xiaowei was the daughter of Lin's close friend Lu Meng, who was then the secretary-general of the Shanghai branch of the China Artists Association.
"It reflects not only the friendship between Lin and Lu, but also Lin's change in painting style," commented art critic Shang Hui.
Hong said the starting sale price of Xiaowei will be 2 million yuan (US$240,000), but he estimates it will sell for between 2.5 million yuan (US$300,000) and 3.5 million yuan (US$420,000).
In addition to Xiaowei, five more of Lin's paintings will be up for sale.
Venice, a painting by famous contemporary painter Chen Yifei, who died aged 59 of gastrorrhagia in April, is also in the catalogue.
Hong estimates it will sell for between 600,000 yuan (US$72,300) and 800,000 yuan (US$96,400), the untimely death of the artist helping promote the price.
Classical works
Like most other auctions nowadays, a large part of this weekend's sale includes traditional Chinese paintings. And one of the highlights of this section is Zhang Daqian's Watching Clouds in Dusk Mountains (Wanshan Kanyun Tu).
Created in 1946 when the artist was doing his best work, the painting has long been acclaimed and wooed by collectors.
This will be the second time for the painting to be auctioned in Shanghai. In 1993 it was sold to a buyer from Taiwan at the then record price of HK$1.3 million (US$167,000).
"It is an interesting coincidence that after 12 years Zhang's painting is coming back to Shanghai. It also represents the rapid development of the mainland art market," said Hong, who came from Taiwan to the mainland in the early 1990s when restrictions on dealing in artworks were relaxed and the private art market started to boom.
Since then auction houses have mushroomed. At first it was buyers from outside the Chinese mainland who were most prominent, said Hong. Mainland buyers did not measure up to their overseas counterparts in terms of economic strength or artistic connoisseurship at that time.
As a result, many works by Chinese masters went overseas. But now that trend is being reversed and Chinese artworks are returning and being sold back to mainland buyers.
Today mainland collectors are becoming the dominant force in both the domestic and international Chinese art market.
According to Hong, most of the works going under the hammer at the weekend are from collectors in the United States, Britain, South Korea, Malaysia as well as from regions such as Taiwan and Hong Kong.
"Twenty years ago, Taiwan Province had a strong purchasing power for cultural products when its economy was booming," said Hong, "now I think it is the mainland that excels."
(China Daily June 30, 2005)
