Chinese fury at Yves Saint-Laurent art sale
China’s art historians have launched a fierce attack on a sale of relics from the collection of Yves Saint-Laurent, claiming that the country’s treasures are being plundered for the second time.
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
Last Updated: 8:18AM GMT 04 Nov 2008
The two controversial sculptures from the private art collection of the late Yves Saint-Laurent Photo: CHRISTIE’S
Two pieces of work in particular from Saint-Laurent’s collection have provoked Chinese anger: bronze animal heads from the “Zodiac Clock” at the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing.
All 12 heads disappeared during or after the sacking of the palace by French and British troops during the Second Opium War in 1860.
A number before now have come up at auction in the west and Hong Kong. All five of those have been bought by Chinese benefactors or a government art fund and returned to the country in the last eight years, but as their historical importance to China has become clear, the price has risen.
Saint-Laurent’s pair – the rabbit and the rat – have had estimates of pounds 6-8 million each put on their value by Christie’s, which has put them up for auction with much of the rest of the late designer’s collection in Paris in February.
The fashion designer died in June, and his companion, Pierre Berge, is selling their substantial art collection to raise funds for HIV-Aids research.
Although the circumstances under which relics from the Summer Palace, including the zodiac heads, left the country have never been clear, officials say they were looted by French or British troops.
Popular opinion in China, where the Opium Wars are taught by history books to be the start of a century-long decline in national fortunes only revived by Communist victory in the civil war in 1949, is unequivocal.
The whereabouts of the remaining five heads – the dragon, the snake, the sheep, the cock and the dog – remains unknown.