Saint Laurent auction nets euro300 million -- so far

[February 25, 2009]  PARIS (AP) -- An auction of artworks and treasures collected by the late designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner has already brought in more than euro300 million ($382 million) and broken several world records -- and it's not over yet.

The exceptional, three-day auction at Christie's in Paris is to finish on Wednesday night in a finale that includes two disputed bronze fountainheads looted from a palace outside Beijing in 1860.

The Chinese government wants them back, and has asked Christie's to halt the sale of the bronzes. Christie's and Saint Laurent's partner, Pierre Berge, insist the auction should go ahead as planned.

The controversy -- and the world financial crisis -- threatened to overshadow the auction, but buyers seemed little deterred.

The first two days of the auction netted euro307 million ($391.8 million) -- already topping Christie's expectations of euro200 million to euro300 million for the whole event.

That is welcome news for a world art market worried that the crisis was cutting into art investments, and for Christie's, which was looking to the auction to boost flagging sales.

In the auction's second round Tuesday night, 19th century paintings and 20th century decorative artworks took in a total of euro101 million ($128.9 million), bringing the total so far to euro307 million ($391 million), according to Christie's.

The auction house said an armchair embellished with snakes and designed by Eileen Gray set a record for a piece of 20th century furniture, selling at euro21.9 million ($27.95 million).

Snakes fascinated Saint Laurent. A vase with a serpent by Jean Dunand was sold for euro270,000 ($344,600) -- nine times higher than the highest pre-auction estimate.

Another threshold was passed for a painting by Ingres, "Portrait de la comtesse de La Rue" (Portrait of the Countess of La Rue), which sold for euro2.081 million ($2.66 million), a record for the French neoclassical painter, Christie's said.

Saint Laurent's enormous collection, gathered over half a century, was put on public view in New York and London before coming to Paris. The designer died last year at age 71. A large portion of the proceeds is to go to a foundation to support AIDS research.

The items that caused the most attention were the two Chinese bronzes, which disappeared from the summer Imperial Palace on the outskirts of Beijing when French and British forces sacked it at the close of the second Opium War.

The fountainheads -- heads of a rabbit and a rat -- date to the early Qing Dynasty, established by invading Manchu tribesmen in 1644. They are expected to sell for up to $13 million each, according to pre-auction estimates.

China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage wrote to Christie's last week urging it to stop the auction, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Christie's issued a statement Tuesday saying it "supports repatriation of cultural relics to their home country and aids in the process where possible by sourcing and bringing works of art to the auction platform to give buyers a chance to bid for them."

[Associated Press; By RACHID AOULI]

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