A necklace set with a 102.56-carat yellow diamond - the biggest of its kind to appear at auction - is the highlight of a jewelry sale in Hong Kong today that Sotheby’s estimates will total HK$500 million ($64 million).
The necklace, with a top estimate of HK$74 million, is one of 320 jewelry lots on offer this afternoon in the fourth day of the auction house’s five-day autumn sale.
“There’s a historical love for jewelry in Hong Kong dating back to the Cultural Revolution, when those were the only things you could put in your pocket and start a new life somewhere else”, said Sandra Walters, a Hong Kong-based art consultant. “Art is subjective, but you have established rules on what makes a good diamond, a good ruby that preserve their intrinsic value”. (Bloomberg)

Indonesian artist I Nyoman Masriadi broke his two-day-old auction record for contemporary Southeast Asian art with a painting of bloodied boxers that sold for HK$7.8 million ($1 million) at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.
Masriadi’s 2000 triptych “The Man from Bantul (The Final Round)”, measuring 2.5 meters by 4.35 meters, had a presale top estimate of HK$1.5 million, according to Sotheby’s catalog. On Oct. 4, a smaller painting by the artist, “Sorry Hero, Saya Lupa”, showing a morose Batman and Superman sitting on adjacent toilets, fetched HK$4.8 million at the same five-day auction.
Sotheby’s sold 92 of the 96 pieces of contemporary Southeast Asian art offered this morning, totaling HK$40.6 million. Today is the third day of the event, which is offering 1,700 items that Sotheby’s expects to fetch a combined HK$2 billion. This afternoon, modern Southeast Asian works and Chinese ink paintings come under the hammer.
The auction gives the first glimpse of art buyers’ sentiment before sales by Sotheby’s and Christie’s International in London and New York, starting this month. Global stock markets had their worst month in a decade in September, after the Sept. 15 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and on concern the U.S. is headed toward a recession. (Bloomberg)

Only an extraordinary item would convince Chinese antique collector Cai Mingchao to buy at Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale this week as global financial markets decline. The auction house has just the thing.
Cai, who paid a record HK$117 million ($10.3 million) in 2006 for a Ming Buddha, said he may bid for the top lot, a 15.5- meter (51-foot) Qing scroll of Emperor Qianlong leading 16,000 troops. The 18th-century work, with a high estimate of HK$80 million, is one of four the ruler commissioned — two are missing and the other is in the Palace Museum in Beijing, said Sotheby’s.
“This item is beyond rare — it’s not just an antique, it’s a national treasure,” said Cai, 44. “I may buy it, but the risks are huge in this climate when sentiments are so bad.”
The scroll is among 1,700 lots that Sotheby’s estimates will fetch about HK$2 billion in a five-day auction starting Oct. 4. That may be a tough target as budget-conscious bidders pass on lesser items, said Cai.
The Sept. 15 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sparked a confidence crisis in banks, curbing credit and causing stocks to plunge. U.S. lawmakers’ failure to agree on a $700 billion bailout on Tuesday sparked the biggest global equity sell-off in 21 years.
Hong Kong, the third-largest art market after New York and London, hosts biannual auctions by Sotheby’s and rival Christie’s International that are considered barometers of industry sentiment. (Bloomberg)

One of the most sensational and shocking images in European art, Edvard Munch’s painting of a man locked in a vampire’s tortured embrace – her molten-red hair running along his soft bare skin – created an instant outcry when unveiled a century ago.
Some believed the Norwegian artist’s anguished 1894 masterpiece, Love and Pain – since known as Vampire – to be a reference to his illicit visits to prostitutes; others interpreted it as a macabre fantasy about the death of his favourite sister. Some years later, Nazi Germany condemned it as morally “degenerate”.
Vampire has become one of Munch’s most sought-after and reproduced images, despite remaining in the hands of a private collector for the past 70 years.
The painting will go on the open market, The Independent can reveal, and is anticipated to smash the $31m (£17m) auction record for a Munch work. Vampire, which is often seen as the sister of The Scream, completed just months earlier, will be sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York for an estimated $35m.
The painting was part of Munch’s seminal 20-work series The Frieze of Life, which included The Scream. It is the most significant version of four Vampires he completed in 1893 and 1894, and was first exhibited in 1902 in Berlin, where his works caused shock and awe.(THE INDEPENDENT)

Three weeks after Damien Hirst’s 111.5 million-pound ($206 million) auction at Sotheby’s, the artist will open a shop next door to the auction house in London.
The retail arm of Other Criteria, Hirst’s publishing and merchandising company, will start business at 36 New Bond Street on Oct. 6, said Robyn Katkhuda, projects director, in an e-mail.
Passersby will notice the black-painted facade of the shop to the left of Sotheby’s where the “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” auction was held.
“It’s a ’soft’ opening with no fanfare”, said Katkhuda. “The shop will have a selection of pieces from our Web site”. (Bloomberg)

A Francis Bacon painting of his friend Henrietta Moraes, one of the few women the artist painted, is expected to fetch as much as 7.5 million pounds ($13.9 million) when it comes up for auction in London.
The 14-inch-high (36-centimeter) head-and-shoulders portrait, showing the sitter turning to her left against a plain yellow background, will be included in Christie’s International’s Oct. 19 sale of contemporary art, the auction house said in an e- mailed statement. The sale takes place on the concluding Sunday of the Frieze Art Fair.
Moraes, a model, was a close friend of Bacon’s during the 1950s and 1960s, spending evenings drinking with him, Lucian Freud and other Soho bohemians at the Colony Room Club. Bacon included Moraes in a number of his paintings using photos taken of her by John Deakin.
Dating from 1969, “Portrait of Henrietta Moraes” has been put up for sale by fellow Colony Room regular Garech Browne, a member of the Guinness family, who bought the work in 1970. The painting is inscribed by Moraes on the back of the canvas.
“I remember well my years in Soho”, Browne said in the e- mailed release. He met Freud at the age of 12. “Lucian would take me to the Gargoyle Club where Johnny Minton, Francis Bacon and Stephen Spender were often to be found. I would not be allowed in by the bouncers so Lucian would put me under his long overcoat and I walked on his feet to gain entry”.
Browne went on to found Claddagh Records and oversee the formation of the Irish folk group the Chieftains, said Christie’s.
In July at Sotheby’s, in London a similar-sized 1967 “Study for Head of George Dyer” by Bacon sold for 13.8 million pounds with fees, said the saleroom result tracker Artnet.
Bacon is the subject of a retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain that runs through Jan. 4, 2009.
Moraes battled drink and drug addictions, had many lovers, once shared a flat with singer Marianne Faithfull and was sent to prison after an unsuccessful attempt to become a cat burglar. (Bloomberg)

Buyers from the former Soviet Union and the Middle East were more active than those from the U.S. at Sotheby’s 111.5 million-pound ($199 million) auction of new work by Damien Hirst in London, said art dealers.
Ninety-eight percent of the 223 lots in Sotheby’s Sept. 15 and 16 “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” sale found buyers, generating a total that, with fees, exceeded the estimate of 65 million pounds to 98 million pounds. Twenty-four lots by the U.K. artist sold for more than 1 million pounds, said the auction house, which has its main salerooms in New York. Unusually, it did not release a geographical breakdown of buyers, saying that at this auction it was “proprietary” information. (Bloomberg)