Japan's art collections pay for excesses of bubble-economy

JAPAN'S recent financial turmoil has accelerated the sell-off of much of the art worth 1.13 trillion yen (about HK$69.26 billion) bought by Japanese investors during the bubble years, including some of the world's most famous paintings, according to art experts and financial industry sources in Tokyo.

Many paintings, however, might not be displayed in public again for many years.

Since the bubble burst, Japan's art imports have fallen to less than 5 per cent of their bubble level. The bulk of the business carried out by both Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses in Tokyo has consisted of auctioning off Japan's bubble era art to buyers overseas, usually the United States, according to Japanese art dealers. Neither Sotheby's nor Christie's would comment.

Much of the bubble art, however, is expected to remain on the walls of Japanese financial institutions or locked in warehouses, because of a complicated tangle of legal and accounting red tape.

Among the paintings that might not get public exposure for decades are Vincent Van Gogh's Portait du Docteur Gachet and Pablo Picasso's La Maternite and Au Lapin Agile.

The portrait of Dr Gachet was bought for US$82.5 million in 1990 by Ryoei Saito, an eccentric paper millionaire who had vowed to have the painting cremated with him. In the end, his relatives talked him out of this before he died last year. They also sold one of his paintings, Pierre August Renoir's Le Moulin de la Galette, last May for $50 million, or $28 million less than the deceased Saito paid for it.