For second Hong Kong sale, French auction house Artcurial narrows its focus
Last year’s sale featured a wide range of lots, including a vintage Mercedes-Benz, but next month’s auction will concentrate on street art and cartoons
ARTcurial, the French auction house, cast its net wide for its inaugural Hong Kong sale last year, reaching beyond the traditional categories to gauge the scope of local demand. Its two-day sale with local partner Spink had items familiar to Asia – contemporary works by Wang Guangyi and Yan Pei-ming, a Hermès Birkin bag – and those that are not: cartoons, 19th-century objets d’art, 20th-century design pieces and even a 1961 Mercedes-Benz roadster.
Diversity has served the 15-year-old auction house well at home, where it is no minnow. Artcurial is part of France’s Dassault Group, a privately held conglomerate with more than 18,000 employees and about €9 billion (HK$78 billion) in annual revenue that is best known for making fighter jets. The auctions subsidiary, still very young by industry standards, is housed in the elegant neoclassical Hôtel Marcel Dassault, smack in the heart of Paris. In the first half of 2016, Artcurial overtook Christie’s and Sotheby’s to claim the biggest share of the French auction market.
“They are very cross with us. Having seen the first-half results, they are like, oh my God, we have to strengthen our Paris operations,” says Isabelle Bresset, the Artcurial director leading the charge into Asia.
London remains the European capital of the art market – even though Brexit is likely to have an impact – but Paris, because of the presence of many old family collections, is not a market that auction houses treat lightly, according to Bresset.