The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 14

14 MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1997 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH ART SALES THE WEEK AHEAD Down to earth WITH the haute art world still languishing on extended Christmas holiday in the Alps, those less fortunate console themselves with a trot round exhibitions at the major auction houses and a sprinkling of speciality sales. TREASURES FOR ALL: Exam- ples of some of the best of British collecting are on view at Christie's in King Street in loan exhibition called Treasures for Everyone. It celebrates 15 years of works saved for the nation by the National Artie Collections wealth of Fund. works of art, from Picasso to Leonardo, that will spread over the auctioneer's silent salerooms include the Fitzwilliam Museum's Guercino St Sebastian Succoured by Two Angels, a Teke figure of a squatting man from the Museum of Mankind, the 15th-century Middleham Jewel Ring from the Yorkshire Museum and the Countess of Kildare's gorgeous toilet service. TRADE TREATS: Sotheby's in Bond Street has an equally impressive exhibition, A Tale Cities, laying on Oriental splendour in a timely look at three centuries of trade between Canton, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Europe.

On the eve of Hong Kong's return to China, British companies and institutions including the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and the Grand Lodge of England have loaned objects that chronicle trading journeys since 1600. Stacks of the hundred million pieces of porcelain which came from the Far East in the 18th century will be displayed, together with remains of some of the ships which foundered en route and shelves full of East India Company ledgers. Curated by David Howard, the halls will also be decked with enamels, silver, pewter, soapstone, lacquer, mirrors, silks, carpets, wallpaper, furniture, paintings, fans, jewellery and ivory ornaments. The exhibition will be complemented by a four-day symposium on Sino-British trade. DOGGY DAUBS: Bonham's opens the spring season, as with an auction devoted to Dogs and Art.

It includes Louis Wain's The Cats Chorus of 1889, depicting a litter of singing felines (est Samuel Raven's lovely Head of a Spaniel (est and social commentary through breeding in George Armfield's mutt and prettified spaniel in Aristocracy and the Common Man (est L. China's dragon stirs Godfrey Barker asks if there will be an art market in Hong Kong after July 1 HE MIST hanging lover Hong Kong's future this winter is as thick as that which shrouds the mountains at Hangzhou. No one knows whether Hong Kong under Chinese rule will be more or less a free-market state. No one knows whether free speech is a lost cause and democracy a dead one. Less obviously still, Sotheby's, Christie's and three dozen are clueless whether the flourishing art market in Hong Kong No 4 in the world by value is finished as we know it.

Yet the future must be planned for. What to do? Suddenly, there are grounds for optimism. The multi-millionaire Tung CheeHwa has been putting himself about town since his appointment as Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed chief executive from July 1. Mr Tung's line in conversation with business leaders, editors, art dealers and others is, to the intense reassurance of the colony's business community, that he wants to increase its clout and commercial success rather than diminish it. He wants (he mutters) Hong Kong to emerge over a decade as the Far East's No 1 financial centre, displacing Tokyo.

On art, he has been heard to say that he prefers no change in present rules which govern the export of antique works of art (eg. Ming and Qing porcelains up to the mid 19th century) and he has no wish to alter the taxation on the sale of art. When you CHRISTIE'S in New York most glamorous address auction house Park 59th Street but all good must come to an end. The this gilded HO runs out Christie's, having searched Manhattan for somewhere grand, is on verge of nious buy. It will convert a Dominic Winter Book Auctions PRINTED BOOKS MAPS WEDNESDAY, 29th JANUARY AT 11am Briefly: Brinkley, Japan China, 12 1901-2; Burckhardt, Travels in Syria, The Holy Land, 1st 1822; Le Chevalier, Voyages de Troade, Atlas only, 1802; Mapei, Italy, 1847; Allingham, Happy England, 1st 1903; King, Munimenta Antiqua, 2 1799-1805; Tombleston, Views on the Thames Medway, C.

1840; Gerarde, Herball, 1636; Mantell, Pictorial Atlas of Fossil Remains, 1850; Smith Sowerby, Exotic Botany, 2 1804-5; Step Watson, Favourite Flowers of Garden and Greenhouse, 1896-7; Holinshead, Chronicles, 3 vols. in 2, early printed Bibles, 15th-17th c. continental history, 19th c. literature, inc. Byron and a good copy of Dickens 'Christmas Carol', 1st 1843; Victoria Psalter, Illuminated by Owen Jones, 1861; Meyrick, Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour, 3 1824; Triggs, Art of Garden Design in Italy, 1906; Victorian and early 20th c.

childrens's books, art nouveau cloth bindings, antique maps prints, Approx. 700 lots in all. Illustrated catalogue £5.50 (by post). ACADEMIC BOOKS THURSDAY, 30 JANUARY AT 11am The Library of A.A Kassman, Hon. Sec.

of the Aristotelian Society, approx. 5000 volumes, mostly 20th on philosophy, from Ancient Greece to contemporary philosophers, plus classical studies, religion, science, politics and law. Books from the library of Rupert Bruce-Mitford, inc. Codex Lindisfarnesis Codex Durmachensis. Other properties inc.

economics, literary criticism and general reference. Approx. 250 lots in all catalogue £2.50 (by post). Saleroom Offices: The Old School. Maxwell Street.

Swindon. Wiltshire SN1 5DR Telephone: (01793) 611340 Facsimile (01793) 491727 details to: EROTIC PRINTS warned: it's not for prudes' (House Garden) Our 80pp illustrated colour catalogue: an introduction to a secret world limited edition prints of passionate art. Sexually explicit works by world-famous artists Send £5.00 cheque (to 'EPS') EPS, DEPT TAA PO BOX 10645 LONDON SW10 9ZT Tel: 0171 351 6957 or Fax: 0171 244 8999 Erotic Print Society ANTIQUES TRADE GAZETTE Don't miss out on a WEEKLY update of the art and antique market worldwide, with listings of auctions and fairs throughout the United kingdom Subscription £55 a year Send for a free specimen copy TODAY from: Antiques Trade Gazette (Dept. DT) 17 Whitcomb St. London WC2H 7PL Tel: 0171 930 4957 HARRY FANE wishes to buy old CARTIER jewellery, objects, watches Tel: 0171-930 8606.

SALVO AUCTION Prices 72pp Garden antiques etc, £9.95 01668 216494. Angst at ART 97 Laura Stewart wanders in the lonely On such word of mouth, and on a rising optimism that all will be well in Hong Kong if the city does not stupidly provoke Beijing, Sotheby's (which is opening a new HQ near the Macao Ferry terminal) and Christie's are planning sales as normal this autumn and "no The colony's art dealers, from the venerable Charlotte Horstmann Gerald Godfrey Ltd. downwards, are also staying put. All believe that there will be no Chinese threat at least to the market in jadeite, in type jewellery, in 20th-century Chinese painting and furniture and in stamps, which make up the majority of sales by value in Hong Kong. But there are tests ahead.

Most Hong Kong art collecvalue have Canada, Australia or America in recent years to avoid being trapped after July 1997 by any Communist clampdown on export. OWNERS repatriate to Hong Kong, not least for sale in the world's No 1 market for Chinese art, will there be a ban on their re-export? The guess is: probably not. Mainland China has never pursued illegally exported objects with the ferocity, say, of India; while the China Guardian auction house in Beijing already allows Imperial porcelains to go abroad if they have been imported for sale. clear is whether China will allow the Cat Street market in illegally gotta go has the Where to move any so ft parking garage things located Rockefeller lease on built from scratch 2002; with storage in the all saleroom on the as This Art Deco inge- Street Fifth Avenue 250.000 Manhattan's most of Marcus Coates's Cardinal Pulzoni, 'fearful that you might get too close' excavated and exported ceramics to continue. There is evidence that the Cultural Relics Bureau in Beijing is more angered by the "excavated" trade (whose continuance encourages ever more tomb robbers and site diggers) than by any of the overthe-counter trading in Han and Ming of the art dealers.

That said, Beijing has every reason encourage Christie's from New York's swishest at the ideally Center into a auction house, basement and mezzanine. landmark at 50th overlooks romantic mid- SALE Les soldes at Roche-Bobois. It is truly the ideal time to furnish one's home at dreamy prices. Leather or fabric sofas, bedrooms, and more! Go crazy for all the decoration which you love at prices you are going to adore! town spot the skating rink where, fur muffed New Yorkers skate beneath twinkling lights on the 100-foot tall Christmas tree. The Center's new art-loving owners (Jerry Tishman and David Rockefeller) see Christie's as ultimate "trophy tenant for the ago, British "School OMEONE, coined of art the 10 gazing phrase years at It was a misnomer.

It was a canopy erected over 50,000 artists all doing their own thing, without common style, or subject matter, or it seems purposerent. A walk round ART 97 last week (it's Britain's No 1 Contemporary Art fair, staged for artists by 80 dealers in Islington each January) threw up a common theme. What struggled to the surface from acts of self-portraiture, 1,000 spasms of private pain and 2,000 dream elucidations was a shared experience of loneliness and isolation. This is not just an emerging common mood. There's a common subject matter: personal unhappiness and the anguish of the individual.

There's an obsession with bodies and decay. It may sound as dark as Ibsen but, thank God, it's funnier and more sardonic. Is Contemporary Art telling us something about how it is to be alive in the 1990s that we never saw before? Is ours the decade of the anxious, sexually ambiguous and despairing individual? If yes, why? Is life summed up by John Kirby's title on a 1996 selfportrait, Is That All There Is? Or by Sarah Morris's tabloid headline blow-up, TRAGIC? Or by Julian Opie's painting of blank car windows, Do You Ever Think of Me? If life today is so lonely, it may in large part be due to the computer. In 20 years' time, it will be clear that the 1980s was the age when a computer went into every office and the 1990s when a computer went into every home (just as we now see that life since the 1950s has changed for ever because of television). The computer is the most from scratch in Manhattan Godfrey Barker explains at attract Rock a Center more without populist audience its losing planned upmarket shopping plaza Sotheby's, too, wants to move from its off -the flightpath HO at York Ave 72nd Street.

It is bidding for an unbuilt site at Columbus Circle, closer to the known world at 59th Broadway. Are these good moves? Christie's will world of Contemporary cachet. Sotheby's, American: owned and in touch with the more American clientele, if this deal goes to the spot where East Side meets West Side and downtown meets uptown. all looks upside for both houses. British Art anti-social invention of the century.

And artists, along with everyone else, are becoming less social. They seem not to share watering holes or live the Bohemian lives of the last fin de there seems increasingly less bonhomie. In today's art, there are no joyous scenes of drinking and flirting, as in Renoir's Au Moulin de la Galette. There were at Islington visions of nature or the external world. ART 97 was full of disturbing images of solitary figures in compressed blank spaces, in unfurnished rooms or in metaphoric prison cells.

Many paintings were of nudes who gave no clues to their sex, class or identity. Emotionless eyes stared inwardly. Lips parted in silent screams. Take the Balthus-like alienated visions of John Kirby (Flowers East) or Marcus Coates's crouching Cardinal Pulzoni with menacing stare (left, at Jibby Beane Gallery), fearful that you might get too close. the freest possible trading in art rather than to stand firm on its "cultural Mainland millionaires will, without doubt, be the world's top buyers of Chinese art in the 21st century.

On a free market, they will 1 take back from America, Japan and Europe much of what has gone there these past 90 years. we All that holds them back now is exchange controls. Once these are removed, new Chinese wealth will attack the market in art with the fury that Korea has shown since controls were lifted there. Many rich and powerful men in China will have this argument to President Jiang Zemin. The best guess in Hong Kong is that their interests will prevail.

00K Moore's also paranoiac at Sally SelfPortrait, her hand on throat and her eyes hunted (Martin Tinney Gallery). See Don Brown's matchbook-sized figures walking alone on deserted London streets, viewed as if through the sight of a sniper's rifle. What is one to make, at White Cube Gallery, of Angus Fairhurst whiting out human figures from postcard scenes and labelling them: "All Evidence of Human Beings Even children are not immune from angst. There are no pink-cheeked Gainsborough cherubs to be seen, protected in their innocence. Children in art are jaded and haunted.

The Entwistle Gal- lery shows candy-coloured little girls with the eyes of hookers (Nicky Hoberman). Nicola Hicks at Flowers draws her daughter with a cat's tail and an 1 expression of profound adult pain. Not all are resigned to this depressing fate. Some artists, cut off, seem to cry out for contact as does Tracey Emin's £4,750 hot-pink neon sign (White Cube) which pleads: "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Cover My Body in I hope someone is listening. A $50m Cezanne starts the year the year THE YEAR opens with the highest art price since 1993.

Ronald Lauder, New York cosmetics tycoon, has paid $50m for a 1900 Cezanne Still Life with Flowered Curtain and Fruit the the biggest sum lavished on art since Walter Annenberg wrote a cheque for $57m for a glowing 1889 Van Gogh, Wheatfield with Cypresses. This little-known Cezanne surfaced in France. Paris dealer Daniel Malingue "took a commission" on it; at LauNew York dealer Paul Herring sealed it up. The price is awesome, but not even close, to that allegedly being for another Cezanne, the 1890s Card Players. Malingue claims that its owner, Georges Embiricov, hopes for $150m and has turned down $75m.

Hmm. FIERCEST competition between Sotheby's and Christie's in 1997 promises to be for the $100m-plus collection of John Loeb, the veteran Wall Street financier who died in New York on Dec 9. He leaves blue-chip Impressionist, Modern and other paintings. The last Lehman family auction, in 1990, went to Christie's, by a direct relation with Stephen Lash, the firm's vice but lawyers will have the final decision on Loeb's pictures. CHRISTIE'S rings in the New Year with news of an encouraging rise in sales in 1996, up 9 per cent to £1,016 million; 80 cent of all lots were sold.

Booming business in the Far East from where?" a bemused Chinese asked C. M. Davidge, the firm's chief executive, last year) and a 43 per cent leap in Contemporary Art sales were the top two contributors to this good fortune. Sotheby's, "'Hertz' to Christie's "Avis" by size of sales, reports its results next month. Some wonder FAIR whether 1996 will be the year when the positions switched.

More news of revival comes from Phillips, whose turnover soared 16 per cent to £113-5m in 1996. It celebrated its 200th year by buying a Geneva saleroom and a freehold on East 79th Noon) St in Manhattan, and obtaining its highest ever price for the Excelsior I diamond. ROUND-UP Godfrey THE BEST false rumour of 1997 claims Sotheby's to be planning a sale of objects from the Duchess of Windsor's home in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. That grace Barker and Laura Stewart and-favour residence is now under lease to Mohammed Al-Fayed, owner of Harrods. Al-Fayed, who has converted two large rooms of the house into a private museum overflowing with the Windsors' furniture and private possessions, "denied absolutely" last week that he plans a sale.

But has not Sotheby's visited the house, at length? Yes, said his spokesman, Michael Cole, but only "to assist with cataloguing and 8 to 25 january. From TO ROCHE PARIS EUROPEAN INTERIORS London NW3 6HJ. Phone: 0171 431 14 11. 10 AM 7 PM (open sundays). Free parking.

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