Mystery Clouds Belgian Collector’s Sale of Chinese Art

By Jason Chow

When Sotheby’s auction house said earlier this month that it was planning a sale of 106 works of Chinese art from the collection of retired Belgian businessman Baron Guy Ullens, the news caused a stir in the art world.

Mr. Ullens, along with his wife, Myriam, is considered a pioneering collector of Chinese contemporary art, and the works the couple have amassed include rare and early pieces by notable artists. Sotheby’s said it expected the sale to raise up to $16.7 million.

“These are significant pieces and they will attract major attention and should belong in a museum,” said Paul Tehan, an art consultant based in Hong Kong. “These are all early works from major artists and attached to the Ullens name, they all have good pedigree.”

So when Art Newspaper, the online and print publication, revealed Saturday that Mr. Ullens may in fact sell his entire Chinese collection, the buzz intensified.

But the chatter among art watchers prompted Mr. Ullens to send out a statement Wednesday to respond to the story. He didn’t confirm or deny that he was selling off his whole Chinese collection. The statement said, “[A]lthough he still loves Chinese art, his dream is to support and promote a younger generation of artists, as he did with the first generation 25 years ago.” In the statement, he went on to say that the Sotheby’s sale is unrelated with his involvement in the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, the Beijing gallery he founded in 2007, and he pledged his support for the center.

Prior to the publication of the Art Newspaper article, when asked by the WSJ why he was selling a large portion of his collection at Sotheby’s, Mr. Ullens said by email that it was time to “share some of the wealth of my collection with other collectors.”

“The current market is extremely strong, as manifested by the record-breaking sales in spring and autumn 2010, and it is therefore a favorable time for selling,” he said.

Whatever the reasons for, or the extent of, the sale, it represents a major shift for the collector. Mr. Ullens, the son of a Belgian diplomat, built a fortune in the food industry, and spent much of his money on art. He is well-known as a collector of works by British painter J. M. W. Turner, and during several business trips to Asia in the 1980s and 1990s, he became an avid fan of Chinese art, too.

Although his Chinese contemporary-art collection was dismissed by some art experts at first—the genre in the 1990s had none of the critical respect and cachet it enjoys today—he remained steadfast. By the turn of the century, the market for Chinese art had picked up considerably and Mr. Ullens was hailed as a visionary by galleries who picked up on the Chinese trend.

In 2002, Mr. Ullens sold a collection of watercolor paintings by Turner, the British artist, and used the proceeds to start the Ullens Foundation, which was set up to manage his art collection. In that same year, he organized an exhibition in Paris on contemporary Chinese art, the largest of its kind at that time in Europe, and it was a critical success. Mr. Ullens organized several big exhibitions in Europe and China throughout the decade.

But the most public display of his passion for Chinese art has been the Ullens Center in Beijing. Located in an old munitions factory in Beijing’s 798 art district—a neighborhood that is home to many artist studios and galleries—the center was designed to display his vast collection as well as showcase new artists. However, this never came to pass: Mr. and Mrs. Ullens shifted the mandate to have the center dedicated to the blossoming scene rather than simply a showcase for their collected works. And now, due to health issues, Mr. Ullens is looking to set up a board of trustees composed of local Chinese to manage the center.

Earlier this week, the Ullens Center became the focus of its own swirl of debate when it canceled—or postponed, depending on whom you ask—a planned retrospective of the controversial artist Ai Weiwei. The artist told Agence France-Presse that the cancellation was politically motivated. In response to that story, Mr. Ullens said in his statement Wednesday that the decision “to postpone… has nothing to do with politics or the future of UCCA” but instead, was because of “time constraints, the large-scale nature of the space at UCCA and the artist’s other commitments overseas.” He added that he was committed to hosting the show at the Ullens Center “in the near future and are working together to find the best time.”

Ai Weiwei made news earlier this year surrounding his “Sunflower Seeds” installation at the Tate Modern in London. The exhibit, of one million porcelain sunflower seeds, was designed to be interactive — museum-goers were encouraged at first to walk, lie and play in the seeds. But the museum closed access to the seeds after concerns arose over the potential harm that dust from the ceramic seeds might have on the public.  Last night in London, a 100-kilogram pile of the seeds sold at a Sotheby’s auction for 349,250 British pounds ($559,394).

The postponement of the Ai Weiwei show aside, the focus on Mr. Ullens now will center on the April Sotheby’s auction, which includes many early works by sought-after contemporary artists including Zhang Xiaogang, a painter best known for his haunting portraits of one-child families, and Mao Xuhui, another member of the early ’90s avant-garde known for his “Paternalism” series. Sotheby’s estimates that Zhang’s “Forever Lasting Love” will fetch $3.2 million to $3.8 million at the auction.

Michael Goedhuis, who owns a gallery in London that specializes in Chinese art, said the Ullens collection ranks as one of the world’s most important collections of Chinese art, and added that the works in the Sotheby’s sale deserve to be hung in a national gallery in China.

“I find it surprising the nation hasn’t made a bid for the collection [as a whole],” he said. “It would give the nation a flying start in collecting contemporary art. ”

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