S. Korea's top art auctioneers record highest sales

South Korea’s top two artwork auction houses, Seoul Auction Co. and K-Auction Inc. set new records in auction sales this year, which amounted to 174.6 billion won ($149.0 million) in total, driven by burgeoning demands in monochrome paintings.

Seoul Auction, the biggest artwork auction company in South Korea, surpassed 100 billion won in total bids, the highest ever in its history. The total bidding amount surged 136 percent from 45.6 billion won last year to 107.8 billion won this year, with an artwork sale of around 10.5 billion won in the last auction round on Wednesday. It marks the first time Seoul Auction’s total auction sales have exceeded the 100 billion mark since its founding in 1998. Even in 2007 when the fine art market was booming, the company’s total sales were 96.3 billion won.

K-Auction also saw its total bids more than double, recording 66.8 billion won this year up from last year’s 30.3 billion won. It is also a record high for the company which started business in 2005.

Market experts presume the surging bids were ignited by collection frenzy over mono-color paintings that started overseas. Monochrome paintings in the abstract art which began to emerge in the 1970s gained attention from the western art community, and this led to higher prices of those paintings amid notably increasing transactions. What is geographically noteworthy is that sales spiked in Hong Kong. Seoul Auction said overseas contributions exceeded 60 percent of the total successful bids this year. The corresponding figure for K-Auction is over 40 percent. The top two auctioneers of Korea competed for leadership by holding several rounds of auctions in Hong Kong this year.

Many new firsts were achieved. During the 16th Seoul Auction Hong Kong sale held in October, Kim Whan-ki’s oil painting from 1971, “19-ザ-71 #209” (253x202 cm) was sold at 4.72 billion won, the most expensively sold piece of Korean art. “The Washing Place” by Park Soo-keun was the predecessor sold 4.5 billion won at Seoul Auction in 2007. Kim’s another piece “The Echo of Morning” sold at 3.52 billion in the 138th round held in Seoul Wednesday broke the previous record in Korea.

The remarkable performance of two Korean art auction houses represents a boost in the standing of Korean art, as evidenced in Im Heung-soon winning the Silver Lion at Venice Biennale in May and numerous invitations to Lee U-Fan and Park Seo-bo from prestigious art galleries worldwide. Other big name artists like Yang Hae-gue, Choi Jeong-hwa and Kim Soo-ja also contributed to the awareness of Korean art from overseas.

Major overseas media outlets applauded Korean artists. In September, the New Yorker magazine reported a group of Korean octogenarians who comprise a movement known as Dansaekhwa are at the top of the art world.

[ㄏ Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]