Art auctions have been drawing out the headlines in the Malaysian art scene recently and the latest edition came through the Malaysian Modern and Contemporary Art Auction or MMCAA which was held on December 2nd organized by KL Lifestyle Art Space.
With so many auctions being run this year, there was bound to be some hits and misses and 5 records were set while some performed below their expectations out of the 108 pieces of artwork auctioned.
Out of the total, 18 of them were not sold while 40 went under the hammer below the low-estimated prices while 33 of them were sold at the opening prices.
Where Datuk Hoessein Enas’ work is expected to perform well, the ‘Gelora’ painting could not garner any bids at RM65,000, a far cry from his other paintings in previous auctions. The highest sale came for Latiff Mohidin’s ‘Rimba’ painting which was sold at RM715,000 which pretty much outlined his popularity at auctions these days.
Meanwhile, Datuk Ibrahim Hussein’s ‘Untitled (1996) piece came under the hammer at RM308,000 which was far from RM797,500, which is still very much the record for the highest price paid in an auction for a Malaysian painting. Yusof Ghani, whose most expensive piece was sold at the Henry Butcher October 2012 auction garnered RM93,500 broke the record when his Siri Tari II (1984-85) was auctioned off at RM190,000 while his 5 other artworks also did considerably well. Other works that also did well include Datuk Chuah Thean Teng’s ‘Harvesting (1991)’ piece that was sold off at RM77,000, Khalil Ibrahim’s Abstract at RM33,000 and Ismail Latiff’s ‘Lembah Bayangan Rembulan… Mahligai Kayangan’ which went off at a RM52,800 premium. In totality, the auction garnered RM2.47million.
