Gazette Drouot INTERNATIONAL NUMBER 18 UPDATE CLICK HERE TO FIND THE LATEST NEWS W BID AT WWW.DROUOTLIVE.COM FREE SERVICE AND WITHOUT EXTRA FEES BID AT DROUOT ANYWHERE ! DROUOT TRANSPORT DROUOT OFFERS A NEW DELIVERY SERVICE THROUGHOUT FRANCE AND INTERNATIONALLY OBTAIN AN ESTIMATE At the Drouot Transport Department or at www.drouot-transport.com RECEPTION Open Monday to Friday 11am - 12.30pm and 2pm - 6.30pm at l’Hôtel Drouot auction house. CONTACT 9, rue Drouot - 75009 Paris Tel: 01 48 00 22 49 - [email protected] YOUR PURCHASES DELIVERED WITH EASE the BASEL ANCIENT ART FAIR the ancient art event BAAF November 2-7, 2012 Wenkenhof, Riehen/Basel On our website you will find information about: participants, opening hours, location, museums. Partner Hotel Our partner Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois will offer an of BAAF attractive cultural package. www.baaf.ch SO USEFUL gazette-drouot.com the benchmark site for auctions of cultural items including sale dates and digital catalogues drouotlive.com bid online in real time drouot.com all the news from Drouot and daily tours in pictures of the auction rooms mobile.gazette-drouot.com sales schedule in your pocket drouotonline.com buy exclusively online moniteur.net No . 1 for public auctions of industrial goods and equipment GALERIE DIL ADAGP, Paris 2012 Paris ADAGP, An Evening at ART MIROMESNIL 11 October 2012 ART ÉLYSÉES from 18 to 22 October 2012, stand 108A 15, rue de Miromesnil - 75008 Paris - Tél. + 33 (0)1 47 63 06 14 www.galerie-dil.fr THE MAGAZINE CONTENTS CONTENTS ART MARKET - MAGAZINE 12 UPCOMING A Chinese autumn: major international Asian art sales from London to Hong Kong. In the schedule of events, Paris hosts the dispersions of the Jacques Germain and Charles Bouché collections and Barcelona stages the sale of Man Ray photography from the Camillo d’Afflito collec- tion. New York versus London; Kandinsky versus Richter: two of the leading artists in contemporary art sales this month. RESULTS 40 New success for house sales “à la française”: the Château de Plancy L’Abbaye. Trends-wise, Burgundies have shown constant popularity these last few months with prices to match. In Paris, the French section of the Marcel Brient collection received a warm welcome. 52 EVENT Ni Hao Beijing! It's official: China now dominates the global art market scene. An update "in situ" on the various players in the market of the Chinese capital. CONTENTS THE MAGAZINE PROFILE 66 During the latest Biennale des Antiquaires, jeweller Wallace Chan made quite a splash in the Paris luxury world. 80 MEETING From the Impressionists to Van Gogh and the Fauves and Kandinsky to Sam Francis, colour makes the Merzbacher collection a positive metaphor of joy. LUXURY88 Founded in 1830, Christofle is the leading silversmith company in France. All that glitters is definitely silver - or nearly all! From left to right p50 © Courtesy of Yishu 8 - p64 @ Wallace Chan p78 © Peter Schälchli - p86 © Vincent Thiebaut/Christofle THE MAGAZINE EDITORIAL In this issue: not only key events in Paris, arty venues in the capital and its main autumn sales, but also the new art districts in Beijing, major fairs in Shanghai and exclusive interviews with Chinese artists like the jeweller Wallace Chan, the star of the latest Biennale des Anti- quaires de Paris… Because everyone is talking about China, because not a day passes without the Middle Kingdom making the economic, political and even cultural headlines, because over the past few years the place of the world's second largest economy has DR become predominant in the art scene, forging ahead of both New York and London, and, finally, because Europe seems to have Stéphanie Perris-Delmas become the last Eldorado for China, La Gazette Drouot, now a grand EDITORIAL MANAGER old lady of 121, is opening out to Asia. Our magazine now publishes another international issue in Mandarin, entirely dedicated to art and the art market. Bonne lecture! Editorial Director Olivier Lange I Editor-in-chief Gilles-François Picard I Editorial Manager Stéphanie Perris-Delmas ([email protected]) I Distribution Director Dominique Videment Graphic Design Sébastien Courau I Layout-artist Nadège Zeglil ([email protected]) I Sales Department Karine Saison([email protected]) I Internet Manager Christopher Pourtalé Realization Webpublication I The following have participated in this issue: Sylvain Alliod, Virginie Chuimer-Layen, Alexandre Crochet, Anne Doridou-Heim, Bertrand Galimard Flavigny, Anne Foster, Joanna Laverock, Molly Mine, Xavier Narbaïts, Geneviève Nevejan, Claire Papon, Yichun Feng I Translation and proofreading: 4T Traduction & Interprétariat, a Telelingua Company 93181 Montreuil. I La Gazette Drouot - 10, rue du Faubourg- Montmartre, 75009 Paris, France Tél. : +33 (0)1 47 70 93 00 - [email protected]. This issue of La Gazette Drouot is a publication of @uctionspress. All rights reserved. It is forbidden to place any of the information, advertisements or comments contained in this issue on a network or to reproduce same in any form, in whole or in part, without the prior consent of @uctionspress. © ADAGP, Paris 2012, for the works of its members. PRICES INCLUDE BUYER’S PREMIUM Photo: Niklaus Bürgin Niklaus Photo: An Exceptionally Large Snake Armlet. Dm. 10 cm. Weight 295g. Gold. Formerly Kofler Collection, Lucerne, Switzerland. Egypt, Roman Period, 1st century A.D. StartingPeriod, 1st centuryEgypt, bid CHF 25’000. A.D. Switzerland. Roman Lucerne, Collection, Kofler Formerly 295g. Gold. Weight Dm. 10 cm. Armlet. Large Snake Exceptionally An Ancient Art Auction 7 Basel A Name in the cahnauktionen.ch Ancient Art Trade since 1863 3 November UPCOMING AUCTIONS FIND THE CALENDAR OF UPCOMING AUCTIONS W UPCOMING AUCTIONS THE MAGAZINE For distinguished Egyptologists his shawabti, a funerary figurine that accom- panied the deceased into the after-life to carry out farming tasks in their place, HD belonged to the Pharaoh from the 19th T dynasty, who reigned from 1294 to 1279 BC: Seti I. He was the first important sovereign of the Rames- side period, and the father of the famous Ramses II. His tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1817, and his mummy was found alongside other pharaohs in the royal cache at Deir el-Bahari. This Shawabti, in sili- ceous blue ceramic highlighted with details in black, comes from the collection of Charles Bouché (1928- 2010), a Parisian antiquarian who specialised in militaria of the Empire period, and over sixty years built up an Egyptian archaeological collection of the first order – as proved by the fact that the six other extant examples of this shawabti belong to famous institutions like the Musée du Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the British Museum in London. A total of two Shawabti in blue faience with black highlights in the name hundred items from the Bouché collection will be up for of Seti I. Egypt, reign of Seti I, 1294-1279 BC. H. 22.9 cm. Estimate: €150,000/200,000. sale; 140 of these are shawabtis, estimated between USEFUL INFO €2,000 and 30,000, all represented as mummies of Osiris Where ? Paris - Drouot carrying ploughing tools. Also worth noting: a bronze statuette of Horus as a child, Harpocrates, the form in When ? 24 October which the god was worshipped in the Graeco-Roman world, shown emerging from a lotus (Late Period, Who ? Thierry de Maigret auction house €30,000/40,000) and a curious miniature funerary set in stucco and alabaster. This consists of two vats, one being How much ? €1/1.5 M anthropomorphic, and a ushabti (New Empire, See the catalogue : www.gazette-drouot.com > €50,000/60,000). All witnesses of a mysterious and fasci- nating Egypt… Claire Papon N° 18 I GAZETTE DROUOT INTERNATIONAL 13 THE MAGAZINE UPCOMING AUCTIONS Louis Cretey: a visionary Louis Cretey was contemporary with Noël Coypel and Charles de La Fosse, two major figures in French 17th century painting. And yet the work of this Lyon- born artist was light years away from the canons of Classicism, with his vigorous touch and violent subject matter. The painter, who shared his time between France and Italy, was recently rediscovered through the exhibition at the Lyon Musée des Beaux-arts presenting sixty- four of his paintings. A recogni- tion reflected in the market by six- figure bids, like the "Christ moqué par les soldats" sold at Saint Étienne in 2011 (€176,400). This "Saint Jérôme et le lion", to be presented during the sales sessions of 7, 8 and 9 October in Lyon (Chenu, Bérard, Péron auction house), can be compared with a Saint Jerome in the Lyon Musée des Beaux-arts, painted in around 1683 with the same chia- roscuro style (€50,000/60,000). Stéphanie Perris-Delmas 14 GAZETTE DROUOT INTERNATIONAL I N° 18 UPCOMING AUCTIONS THE MAGAZINE A life devoted to artists At Drouot on 8 October, the auction houses Le Mouel and Rois are selling the collection of René Bleibtreu, the younger brother of Denise René, founder of the eponymous gallery, who launched artists in the kinetic and conceptual movements. A member of the Resis- tance during the war, René Bleibtreu worked nights as a proofreader for the “Journal officiel”; during the day, he assisted his sister at the gallery in Rue La Boétie. The gallery was a success, and could thus guarantee him a salary. René was in charge of mounting exhibitions, producing silkscreen prints and copies and compiling catalogues. Over forty years he developed friendships not only with numerous artists at the gallery, including Vasarely, Dewasne, Soto, Tomasello and Mortensen, but also with great names in abstract art like Sonia Delaunay, Josef Albers and Alexander Calder. René Bleibtreu died in April 2011, a year before his sister.