Pursuits
Zhang’s $6.7 Million Baby Boosts Sotheby’s Mixed Hong Kong Sale
This article is for subscribers only.
Waving paddle 3008, a woman in a black dress at the center of Sotheby’s Hong Kong saleroom saw off all comers to win a 1992 Zhang Xiaogang painting that set an artist record of HK$52.18 million ($6.7 million), as Chinese buyers competed for works by established artists.
The Zhang painting of a baby, “Chapter of a New Century -- Birth of the People’s Republic of China II,” was the most expensive lot in yesterday’s auctions of modern and contemporary Asian art that tallied HK$471 million. Works by artists such as Zhang, “Mask Series” painter Zeng Fanzhi and gunpowder-on-paper specialist Cai Guo-Qiang drew strong bidding, more than compensating for patchy interest in lesser-known names.