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Guhyasadhana Avalokitesvara, Ming Dynasty, Xuande period
Fall Asian Art Sales At Sotheby’s New York
September 16-19, 2008
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Sotheby’s is pleased to announce its Fall series of Asian Art sales in New York from September 16-19, 2008:Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art Including Chinese and Japanese Art from the Collection of Frieda andMilton Rosenthal on September 16th; Contemporary Art Asia: China Korea Japan on September 17th; Modern& Contemporary Art South Asia: India Pakistan on September 18th; and Indian and Southeast Asian Works ofArt, Including Miniatures on September 19th. The exhibitions will be open to the public on September 12th.
Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art Including Chinese and Japanese Art from the Collection ofFrieda and Milton Rosenthal– September 16, 2008
Sotheby’s sale of Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art in New York will feature a magnificent andextremely rare polychrome wood and gesso sculpture of Guhyasadhana Avalokitesvara, Ming Dynasty,Xuande period (estimate $1.4/1.6 million), shown above, picturing the four-armed bodhisattva engaged inmystical union with his consort, or prajna, who represents female wisdom. A circular plug on the underside ofthe sculpture seals an apparently undisturbed chamber, which according to CAT-scans holds scrolledconsecration material within. Very few early Ming dynasty wood temple sculptures depicting deities from theTibetan Buddhist pantheon have survived. A section of the sale will be devoted to Chinese and JapaneseWorks of Art from the Collection of Frieda and Milton Rosenthal, a superb selection of pieces of the highestquality featuring classical Ming and Qing furniture, Japanese 18th/19th century gold lacquer, and astriking pair of sancai-glazed pottery Earth Spirits, Tang Dynasty (est. $70/90,000). Leading theRosenthals’ offerings is a very rare limestone Buddhist Stele from the Northern Wei Dynasty (est.$120/160,000). Another highlight of the sale is a fine and rare embroidered five-panel throne-backfloor screen, Qing Dynasty, Qianlong period (est. $180/220,000). Also featured will be The HenricksenCollection of Chinese and Japanese Paintings, which is particularly strong inlandscapes and flower paintings. The sale consists of 312 lots, estimated tobring $6.8/9.1 million.
Contemporary Art Asia: China Korea Japan – September 17, 2008
Highlighting the Fall sale is Zeng Fanzhi’s Mask Series (est. $900/1.2 million),seen here, a work from the artist’s mature period. The figures in Zeng’s longtermMask series are crisply dressed and cheerfully colored, in near-empty setsthat echo the clean appearance of the figures. The series features well-offyoung urbanites, who easily acquire a polished and stylist veneer and suchaccoutrements as fashionable pets, but even when accompanied they look lostand uncertain. The sale will also feature Cai Guo-Qiang’s large-scale TwoEagles (est. $380/550,000) which exhibits his fully developed skill in the use of gunpowder as an artisticmedium and depicts two soaring eagles set against an expansive white sky. Also included is an innovativeinstallation by Yang Jiechang, Eye of the Storm (est. $400/600), inspired by the great storms thatdevastated Europe in 1999, and one of Wang Guangyi’s hard-hitting critiques of Western consumerism andpolitical propaganda from his Great Criticism Series: Kodak (est. $280/480,000). Also among the toplots are Tang Zhigang’s Children in Meeting Hong Kong No. 3 (est. $400/500,000) and Zhu Dequn(Chu The-Chun)’s Sommeil De La Matiére/The Sleep of Matter (est. $300/400,000). Other keycontemporary artists from the region in the sale include Liu Ye, Kim Whanki, Liu Xiaodong, Zhang Huan,Yayoi Kasuma, and many others. The sale comprises 211 lots, and is estimated to bring $11/16 million.
Modern & Contemporary Art South Asia: India Pakistan – September 18, 2008
The auction will include a diverse offering of paintings, sculpture andphotography. Leading the Modern portion of the sale, and the top lot, is ararely available Tyeb Mehta, Untitled, one of the latest examples from hisFalling Figure with Bird series (pictured at left, est. $1/1.5 million). Living in Indiaduring Partition and after World War II, Mehta experienced firsthand theviolence, anguish and distress of the period, to which experts attribute hisconsistent illustration of struggle in his works throughout his career, andpictured movingly in this work. The modern portion of the sale also featuresimportant works by F. N. Souza, M. F. Husain, Rabindranath Tagore, RamKumar and Raja Ravi Varma. The Indian Contemporary portion of the sale ishighlighted by Subodh Gupta’s One Cow (est. $600/800,000) andoutstanding example of the rural-to-urban, local-to-global dialogue thatdominates 21st-Century thinking about the art of India. Other contemporary South Asian artists highlightedin the sale include Thukral & Tagra, Atul Dodiya, G. Ravider Reddy, Meera Mukherjee, Sudarshan Shetty,and Nataraj Sharma. Sotheby’s has been at the forefront in bringing cutting-edge South Asian photographyto the market, and this sale is no exception, including intriguing works by Shilpa Gupta, Rashid Rana, VivekVilasini, Sunil Gupta and Tejal Shah. The sale includes 127 lots and is estimated to bring $7.6/10.6 million.
Indian & Southeast Asian Works of Art – September 19, 2008
This sale features an extraordinary selection of fine IndianMiniatures, highlighted by an extremely fine, museumqualityillustration from The Gita Govinda, Krishna andRadha in a Bower, pictured here (est. $200/300,000),It has been suggested that the paintings illustrating thispoem by the 12th century poet Jayadeva were executed bya first generation artist after the great masters Nainsukhand Manaku. The Works of Art section of the sale featuresa highly unusual offering from the sculptor HerbertHaseltine, a model of the monument to Jam Shri Rawalji(est. $120/180,000), a four-armed Male Deity, probably Vishnu, from the 9th century (est.$220/250,000), an andesite Head of Buddha, Central Java, 9th century (est. $200/300,000), a giltcopper Manjusri set with semi-precious stones from Nepal, 14th century (est. $60/80,000) and acopper Maitreya, from the late 7th/early 8th century ($40/60,000) from the famous Prakhon Chaihoard of bronze sculptures found accidentally by villagers in 1964 in Buriram province in Northeast Thailand.The sale includes 118 lots, estimated to sell for $2.3/3.2 million.
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