Sale-rooms
Oriental allure
Peter Watson
There was a time, strange as it may seem, when art dealers sat below the salt. In 17th-century Rome and 18th-century England they were about as popular as a clamping brigade is now, and had as much social clout as a Sun 'journalist'. Not any more. Now, a dealer probably sold you the salt-cellar in the first place. This is the age of the dealer, with his green loden coat, his strongroom in the Geneva Freeport and his beautiful wife (often an ex-secretary but now bumped up to become either an interior decorator or a jeweller).
It is as well to remember the humble, not to say shady, origins of art dealing every time June comes round. For it is in this month above all others that art threatens to take us over. In June it is as if the habit of collecting had followed the habit of homosexuality: once enjoyed in relative peace by a few dilettanti, it is now wide- spread and virtually compulsory. June sees many of the big sales, nearly all the major fairs, scores of exhibitions and, this year with a venom, the lectures. No fewer than 24 of the damn things at the International Ceramics Fair (the Dorchester, 12-15 June) and almost as many at the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair (10-20 June). These lectures prove what one had always sus- pected, that the art world loves nothing so much as the sound of its own voice. No wonder some people go looking to find themselves far away in Scotland.
Despite these gimmicks,i the truth is that, for the most part, the bilk sales and art fairs are much the same from year to year. As with Ascot or Wimbledon, there are different names in the frame but the 'feel' is just the same. But only for the most part. This year there is a distinct oriental flavour to the art season and that is worth a word or two. Eskenazi, the Piccadilly dealers, are leading the way. Their exhibition (9 June-9 July) features 42 objects from the Tang Dynasty, none of which has been through the sale-rooms, quite an achieve- ment which has taken them some years to amass.
They are not alone, however. At the ceramics fair, fully a third of those lectures are on oriental topics. Christie's, in one of the three sales they are holding in London, have a spectacular china vase, which is the missing one to a pair still at Versailles and which bears the arms of the Duc d'Orleans, the Regent of France, whose bedroom was as crowded as a British prison. At Sotheby's, where they are basking in the success of their T. Y. Chao sale of Chinese ceramics and jade in Hong Kong a fort- night ago (it raised £7 million), they have some lovely, rare, celadon vases and fig- Tang silver and gilt bronze censer at Eskenazi ures and two of the late Mona Bismark's glazed horses — brown, dark brown, bronze and ochre.
The enormous popularity of oriental art in the West — which far outstrips the popularity of Western art in the East — has always seemed to me to be one of the great unexplored questions in art. Does it mean that there is some quality of oriental art its colour, form, texture — which is not tackled by Western artists? At one level, and especially with porcelain, the answer is easy. Chinese porcelain is older, much older, and finer than European porcelain and so quite apart from any pure aesthetic qualities it has an historical interest which very much appeals to people (witness the success of the Nanking sale last year: the historical associations of that meant much more than the quality of the objects).
But that doesn't entirely explain the magnetism of oriental art which, it seems to me, owes its enduring appeal to four factors. The first two are related, being the simplicity of much oriental art and its peaceful nature. Nothing could be more different than the religious arts of the Far East and those of Christianity in Europe. The latter are often complicated, ornate, full of movement, vigour, not to say violence (all those Judiths holding the head of Holofernes, all those grisly martyr- doms). Oriental art appears to be as much a product of religious meditation as Christ- ian art is an expression of religious passion.
A third factor is the importance of nature and its observation in oriental art. Here there is a great similarity, superficial- ly at least, between, say, English water- colours and Chinese and Japanese paint- ing. There is the same concern with deli- cate washes, the same attempt to capture the fleeting moment. The techniques pro- vide a link between the two types of art, though of course the visible form which nature takes in the Far East is very different from that in Europe.
The final factor may he the most impor- tant. This is texture. Oriental art, so restrained and traditional in subject mat- ter, so simple and clean in form, is perhaps because of all this — amazingly Rare early Ming copper-red glazed vase, sold by Sotheby's Hong Kong for £863,000.
inventive and promiscuous when it comes to texture. What could be more sensual than lacquer, or silk, or ivory, or jade, or shell inlay or fish-skin coverings? The substances used by oriental craftsmen are each different yet share at the same time a richness, a lustre or body which draws attention to their tactile as much as their visual properties. The same is equally true of the best porcelain. For me, Western art does not come close in the tactile values, which is why oriental art will always retain a unique, a mouth-watering appeal.
The high level of the yen at the moment means that oriental wares are hardly at their cheapest just now, if you are paying in English pounds (the high hundreds get you started on something decent but clam- ber into the low thousands as soon as you can). Like everything else, the best stuff is selling very well, while the middle-of-the- road objects are not. But if you do decide to succumb to the love of lacquer, or the seductions of silk, the next weeks are a perfect probation period. Start at the Toshiba gallery at the V & A, which opened last December and, as the Califor- nians would say, gives great silks, ivories and lacquers. Move on to Eskenazi (the Tang dynasty, 618-906 AD, was the golden age of Chinese art), then take in some of the lectures at the Dorchester. It will mean mixing with dealers but, once you know a thing or two, you'll be surprised at how unpompous they can become. They often have their wives in tow at this time of the year, too, and many interior decorators and jewellers are just as tactile as lacquer. And even more expensive.
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