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NEW YORK - Many strange stories can be heard in the small world
revolving around the art market. But none quite matches that of the
Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture collection scattered to the winds
at Christie’s when its 107 lots sold for an aggregate $11.2 million,
lifting Chinese Ming furniture as a whole to unheard of heights.
Its improbable beginnings go back to the mid-1970s when a schoolteacher
called Robert Burton founded a spiritual community, the Fellowship of
Friends, in Oregon House, in Northern California. According to Curtis
Evarts, curator of the defunct museum who became a member in 1975, its
aim was “the spiritual enhancement of the individual parts through a
system of psychological development, ” inspired by the writings of
George Gurdjieff and Piotr Ouspensky.
One of the basic tenets of the psychological system, Evarts says, “is to
bring refinement to the moment. ” Hence the attention they brought to
“the dining experience. ”
One thing leading to another, a large collection of 18th-century
porcelain was built up at the instigation of Burton, followed by silver
plate. Eventually, both collections were sold off.
Burton then turned to Old Masters. Some very substantial pictures were
bought, including such works as a “stable scene ” by Terborch now in the
J. Paul Getty Museum, “Jesus as the Man of Sorrows ” by Morales, or the
portrait of Countess Kaganek painted in 1792 by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun.
The Old Masters, too, were resold in order, Evarts says, to release
funds for the acquisition of Chinese furniture.
This abrupt change of orientation came about as the community remodeled
the Renaissance, California, vineyard house in which it had its
headquarters. French domestic architecture of the Louis XVI period
served as a model. In order to match the 18th-century whiff of the
interior design, they bought porcelain commissioned to Chinese
manufacturers by 18th-century French merchants, the so-called “Compagnie
des Indes ” or “China Trade ” porcelain.
Burton was looking for porcelain in 1987 when he walked into a Paris
shop and caught sight of two Chinese armchairs. Burton who, by all
accounts, has a remarkably good eye, was struck by the beauty of the
smooth linear structure and the toned wood with purplish hues called
zitan. After consultations with the board of directors of the Fellowship
of Friends, Evarts assures, Burton bought them and took them back to
Oregon House.
The armchairs, which they later found out were of the 18th century, were
greatly admired. Evarts, who was running the architectural workshop
producing the interior designs for the Neoclassical decor in progress,
was ecstatic. It was decided that a matching table was needed. One was
found.
Burton, the born art hunter, began to look hard for Chinese pieces. He
bought a wonderful 17th-century carved table in Jichimu wood, which sold
at Christie’s on Thursday for $44,750.
Enthusiasm grew rapidly within the Fellowship. Evarts, in earlier days,
had mastered the skills of joinery after dropping out of school (he
could not bear the tedium of his engineering studies). He became
fascinated. He restored the furniture and gazed at it at length in the
studio where he directed the photography required by the installation of
the works of art for which he was responsible.
It was decided to set up a Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture. In
January 1990, Burton asked Evarts if he would consider becoming the
curator of the collection in the making. He would, indeed.
Whereupon, Burton dispatched him on a world tour of museums holding
significant groups of Chinese furniture - the Philadelphia Museum of
Art, the Metropolitan, the Boston Museum of Fine Art in America, the
Victoria & Albert Museum and British Museum in London, and a few
more. Evarts returned with a rich store of visual and tactile knowledge
and proceeded to learn Chinese in order to gain direct access to
literary sources.
The Fellowship of Friends was dead serious about its Chinese collection.
A Classical Chinese Furniture Society was founded in 1990 and a
quarterly Journal of the Classical Furniture Society launched in the
winter of 1990. Over the next four and a half years, pioneering research
work was published in the superbly laid-out magazine, illustrated with
outstanding photography - it was the first and only one of its kind in
the Western world.
The systematic buying campaign entrusted to Evarts began.
Part of it was inevitably a process of learning through trial and error.
The Fellowship of Friends probably acquired three times as many pieces
as the 107 lots included in Thursday’s sale. The timing was good. A
relatively large amount of the Ming furniture that had escaped the
destruction of the Cultural Revolution tumbled on to the Western market
between 1990 and 1993.
One of the first acquisitions made by Evarts was a pair of 17th-century
drum stools in the hard wood called huanghuali. Often seen in woodcuts
and hand scrolls of the period, few such stools have survived. Evarts
had some qualms when he found the first stool in Hong Kong, but felt
reassured by a technical detail when he succeeded in finding the second
piece in the pair a year later. His craftsman’s instinct had served him
in good stead. Estimated to be worth $30,000 to $50,000 in Christie’s
catalogue, the pair soared to $190,000 - $211,500 with the sale
premiums.
Soon after, he laid hands on a table with low cabriole legs, also of the
17th century. On Thursday the table exceeded by half its high estimate
as it brought $51,750.
But all that pales into insignificance by comparison with the large
screen on stand carved with openwork panels to serve as a monumental
frame for a marble slab - the natural veins of the marble suggest a
mountainous landscape.
Again, while the type of screen can be seen in hand scrolls, set behind
the seats of dignitaries, only one other example is known to survive, in
the Palace Museum in Beijing. Evarts at first received photos of the
dismantled panels, with accompanying dimensions. He made drawings which
he assembled to have an idea of its appearance. The screen looked
fabulous. Evarts flew out to Hong Kong where the splendor of the carving
confirmed his first impression. The Fellowship rallied to his views.
So did the New York attendance on Thursday. At $1.1 million, the screen
has become the most expensive piece of Chinese furniture in the world.
It will shortly grace the Minneapolis Institute of Art through the
generosity of a benefactor of many years, Bruce Dayton.
For Evarts, the Chinese furniture saga should have culminated with the
exhibition of Chinese Classical Furniture held from June 1995 to March
1996 in the Pacific Heritage Museum in San Francisco.
It was accompanied by a catalogue that will stand as a reference book
for years to come. Written jointly by Evarts and the great Beijing
scholar Wang Shixiang, now in his 80s, the catalogue is referred to
throughout in the Christie’s sale catalogue.
Alas, in 1994, the Fellowship, advised by Burton, decided to part with
the collection in order to switch to French decorative art. The journal
abruptly ceased publication in the winter of 1994. A planned exhibition
project at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum in Washington had to be dropped
after the decision to proceed with the sale became known.
Mysteriously, trade sources report, a Taiwanese businessman called
Johnny Chen appeared, bought the collection en bloc, and consigned it to
Christie’s. The estimate given by Christie’s before the sale, $6
million to $8 million, implies that Chen’s investment was $6 million at
the most. The difference with the end result primarily reflects the
phenomenal marketing campaign conducted by Christie’s.
The Far East, they say, is good at learning fast. It apparently excels at playing the Western art market.
But of the two, it is the Western party that comes out as the most
inscrutable. Bets are still open on the real reasons that led to the
sale of the delightful, if short lived, “museum” collection.
Souren Melikian
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