Christie’s Paris sale of the Collection Yves Saint Laurent-Pierre Bergé on Feb. 23-25, 2009, has now the become political, clouded by disputes over colonialism and human rights, and what appears to have been a calculated attempt to embarrass the auction house. As has been widely reported, Cai Mingchao, the collector and auctioneer who submitted the pair of $18-million winning bids for the two Qing dynasty bronze heads, was making a political gesture, and never in fact intended to pay for the lots. "I did this on behalf of all Chinese people," he said at a press conference in Beijing on Mar. 2. Cai serves as an advisor to the National Treasure Funds of China (NTFC), an organization that works to repatriate looted Chinese artifacts. According to a report by China’s Xinhua news service, Cai had specifically sought to disrupt the sale of the two bronzes. It was "an extraordinary method taken in an extraordinary situation," the news service stated, "which successfully stopped the auction." Cai had solid standing in the auction world, having purchased a for a Ming dynasty bronze Buddha for close to $15 million at a Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale in 2006. He had registered as a bidder on the same day of the Saint Laurent auction, and made the winning bids by phone. It seems unlikely, however, that either major auction house will welcome Cai at future sales.
The disputed works were part of a set of bronze heads based on the Chinese zodiac from an antique water clock, ca. 1750. As for their history, the heads disappeared during the Second Opium War, when the Summer Palace was looted by British and French troops in 1860, an unpleasant fact that makes the two objects particularly volatile symbols.
A Christie’s spokesman said that the house had offered to sell the works to the Chinese government in advance at a discount, but had been rejected because the price was "too high." The colonial provenance led to sharp rhetoric leading up to the sale. A group of Chinese lawyers sued to try to stop the sale, calling the plunder of the Summer Palace an "unhealed scar, still bleeding and aching." China has little claim to the objects under international law, however, and the legal efforts failed. Following the auction, Chinese authorities vowed to make it more difficult for the auction house to operate in China.
Meanwhile, Pierre Bergé has done little to calm the situation, stating that he will now keep the two sculptures. Before the sale, he had offered to return the heads to China if the People’s Republic would "observe human rights and give liberty to the Tibetan people and welcome the Dalai Lama.
In recent years, China has been aggressively trying to repatriate looted objects. According to the New York Times, the state-run China Poly Group acquired tiger, ox and monkey heads from the zodiac fountain in 2000, while the NTFC brokered a deal to buy a bronze pig from the set in 2003, with a $1 million donation from Macao's Stanley Ho. The whereabouts of the remaining five zodiac heads from the Summer Palace are not known.
