THE art world shook on May 11th when a painting by Pablo Picasso was sold for $179m at a Christie’s sale in New York to an unidentified bidder—the highest sum ever paid for an artwork at auction. But a Sotheby’s auction on May 5th, also in New York, caused a bigger tremor. At that sale, bidders from mainland China agreed to pay a combined total of $116m for works by Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and another by Picasso. It was striking evidence of China emerging as a new source of demand for the European masters, and of its buyers’ willingness to bid handsomely.
Two of the successful bidders at Sotheby’s were movie moguls: Wang Zhongjun, the chairman of Huayi Brothers Media, one of China’s largest film companies, who took Picasso’s “Femme au Chignon dans un Fauteuil” for $29.9m; and Wang Jianlin, the chairman of Dalian Wanda, a property conglomerate, who bought...Continue reading
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