US$13.85m

Agence France Presse is keen on the upcoming SouthEast Asian Art sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction on Monday. They took a little time to talk to a few of the buyers, like leading Indonesian collector Oei Hon Djien:

Twenty-nine-year-old businessman Daniel Joseph, said he buys artworks for “investment and personal enjoyment”.

“Art will be a good investment as long as you buy top artworks,” he said, adding he has bought more than 50 paintings at foreign or domestic auctions.

Joseph, who has been going to art galleries since he was nine, said he admires the work of late Indonesian artists such as S. Sudjojono, Affandi and Hendra Gunawan.

“There’s a certain charisma about their works. You can see the artists’ passion,” he said.

[...] Collector Djien said the art industry in Indonesia could be making bigger strides if the government provided necessary art infrastructure and supported local talents with funding.

Southeast Asian Art Rides New Popularity at Auction (AFP)

Larasati’s Singapore auction was held over the weekend and though the S$1.77m total was slightly lower than the previous sale, the greatly reduced number of lots on offer meant that average prices are rising in this market. The top lot of the sale was Hendra Gunawan’s Buffalo Cowboy (above) which sold for S$288,000.

Strong prices were achieved for Arie Smit, Lee Man Fong and Takashi Murakami who had a several prints in the sale make prices in the five figures. Indonesia’s Straits Times covered the sale which confirmed the continuing importance of the Indonesian market:

More than 100 people attended the event, and S$1.8 million in sales were generated. In August last year, Larasati sold 135 lots for almost $2 million. [...] Art collector Martha Gunawan, 58, flew in from Jakarta for the auction. [...] She said she likes to attend auctions in Singapore as they often feature works which are hard to find in the market.

“Auctions like this one by Larasati are also a good platform to spot market trends. As a collector, I tend to focus on works by masters. I feel many contemporary art works are over-priced, while some works by old masters such as Gunawan are still under-valued,” she said.

Indonesian Master Leads the Way at S’pore  Art Auction (Jakarta Globe)

Ever wonder why Indonesian art seems so ubiquitous these days? The Jakarta Globe points out that Indonesian companies have an incentive to support the arts. They cite Haryanto Adikoesoemo as an example of a private interest in Indonesian art dovetailing with a government incentive:

He said companies should invest more of their state-mandated corporate responsibility budgets in the arts. Recently, a change to the CSR rules mandated that companies spend at least 2 percent of those budgets on promoting the arts.  Haryanto invested $450,000 of his own money into organizing and hosting the one-month exhibition in Shanghai in conjunction with the World Expo.  [Read more...]

Daniel Komala’s Larasati was a pioneer in the field of Indonesian Contemporary art. With Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale this weekend brimming with Indonesian painters, Le-Min Lim talks to him about his role in establishing the category:

Europeans and Americans began buying Chinese contemporary art a few years back and are only just waking to Southeast Asian culture, says Sandra Walters, a collector who runs a namesake Hong Kong art consulting company. Masriadi’s works don’t receive as much exposure as those of Damien Hirst and therefore they fetch less money, she says.

Masriadi and Agus Suwage made their auction debut at Komala’s company a few years back and their works were going for a pittance before Larasati’s bigger rivals Sotheby’s and Christie’s International began selling them, says Komala, 47. [Read more...]

The Jakarta Globe takes great pride in the growing prominence of Indonesian contemporary art. Here’s their exploration of the upcoming Sotheby’s sale in Hong Kong of Indonesian art:

On April 5, the Sotheby’s Hong Kong spring sale is set to feature a group of artists from Indonesia. According to Mok Kim Chuan, head of Sotheby’s Southeast Asian Paintings Department, 78 of the 145 artworks that are to be auctioned off are by Indonesian artists.

“We will continue to introduce to collectors a wide array of exceptional Indonesian art, including the very rare Lee Man Fong’s ‘Bali Life,’ which boasts excellent provenance as it was originally given by the artist to a friend in the early 1960s,” Mok said. “It is one of the outstanding examples in Lee’s acclaimed Balinese series.”  The chosen works of modern and contemporary pieces, previewed at Sotheby’s Jakarta office in early March, include Affandi’s “Cuenca,” I Nyoman Masriadi’s “I’m Still Lucky” and Agus Suwage’s studies of human psychology, “I See, I Hear, I Feel” and “Don’t Be Amazed, Don’t Be Entitled.”

The sale of these works offers a glimpse of how far Indonesian artists have come in making a name for themselves in the global market. For example, while modern works by the likes of Affandi, Lee Man Fong, S Sudjojono and Hendra Gunawan continue to appeal to collectors, it was I Nyoman Masriadi’s “The Man from Bantul” that set a world record for a contemporary Southeast Asian painting when it sold for $1 million in 2008. [...] According to Mok, it was in 2006 that Southeast Asian contemporary art “began taking an upward swing in recognition and sales.” [Read more...]