The Collector | The Hong Kong art dealer and a missing US$1.4 million Yayoi Kusama pumpkin
In the opaque and multi-tiered world of high-end art sales, it pays to remember the adage caveat emptor – ‘let the buyer beware’ – as a French businessman recently discovered
Unlike most of the French in Hong Kong, Mathieu Ticolat did not heed the call of an August shutdown. Instead of taking his summer holiday, the art dealer has been trying to get back the nearly US$1.4 million he paid for a Yayoi Kusama pumpkin that never arrived.
The convoluted drama surrounding the deal serves as a reminder of just how secretive the high-end art market can be. The case, which involves at least three Asian parties, is not unusual in that both buyer and seller were unaware of each other’s identity. They dealt through third parties who were also kept in the dark about who the other was acting for.
The art market is ripe for the kind of technological disruption that would see blockchain supported digital ledgers of ownership. That, though, would not help those caught up in this dispute, which pitches the Hong Kong businessman against Angela Gulbenkian, a London-based dealer who married into the Gulbenkian family, a branch of which owns an extensive art collection in Portugal. Gulbenkian denies any wrongdoing.
Ticolat, who runs Art Incorporated with co-owner Kyoko Tamura from an office in Duddell Street, Central, transferred US$1.375 million in May last year to Gulbenkian’s London bank account to buy the 2012 sculpture by Kusama, a Japanese contemporary artist.
“I had not dealt with [Angela Gulbenkian] before but I was assured by the family name,” Ticolat says. (The well-known Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in Lisbon, has since denied having links with her.)