On a day when an overcast spring sky cast a gray pall over Hong Kong, the outlook inside the sales rooms at Sotheby’s was much less gloomy. The house held the year’s first major international auctions of 20th-century Chinese art and contemporary Asian art, and many works elicited spirited bidding in the room and on the phones. On a surprisingly successful day, a number of record prices were established.

The morning session, devoted to 20th-century Chinese art, proved the strength of the category, with 44 of 55 lots selling, most of them by “modern” masters. The auction brought in an impressive HK$92,693,750 (US$11,862,019), well above its pre-sale high estimate of HK$51.12 million.

Five of the top ten items at the session were by the French-educated, mainland-born painter Lin Fengmian, who was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and forced to destroy many of his works. He died in Hong Kong in 1991. An educator as well as artist, Lin is considered a pioneer of a school of Chinese art that blends traditional aesthetics with European compositions and use of color. In 2007, the Hong Kong Museum of Art honored him with a large retrospective.

An Asian private collector paid HK$16,340,000 (US$2,091,030) for the artist’s Fishing Harvest, setting a new auction record. The work was sold by the estate of Lorenz Petersen, a Danish former ambassador to China, who acquired it directly from the artist in the 1960s, when the worst years of the Cultural Revolution were still to come. Sotheby’s gave the work a modest estimate of HK$3–3.5 million.

At the afternoon sale of contemporary paintings, photography, video, and sculpture from China, Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan, the dour economy and the diminished appetite for “new” Asian art was more palpable. The sale netted HK$66,434,000 (US$8.5 million), which was within the scaled-down pre-sale estimate range of HK$59.1–82.9 million (US$7.5-10.6 million). But with bids coming not only from Asia but also Europe and the U.S., Sotheby’s head of contemporary Asian Art, Evelyn Lin said: “We are very pleased and encouraged by today’s results. Top-quality works by all the leading Chinese artists found buyers and sold well, and we also saw some exciting prices for conceptual Art and Japanese, Korean, and Hong Kong artists.”

The session’s brightest spot, literally and figuratively, was a record-setting sculpture by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Pumpkin, a yellow plastic pumpkin about one cubic meter in size and adorned with the artist’s signature polka dots, surpassed its pre-sale estimates of HK$1.5–2 million to earn HK$2,720,000.

Records were also set for Chinese artists. Sixty-Year Cycle Chariot, a conceptual piece by Huang Yongping, brought in HK$3,380,000, more than double its high estimate of HK$1.5 million. Legacy Mantle, a rusty, roughly 10-foot-tall iron sculpture of a Mao jacket by Sui Jianguo, sold for a solid HK$3,140,000 (est. HK$2.5–3.5 million).

In total, 74 percent of the lots sold, a respectable showing in the credit-crunch era. The top lot was an untitled painting by Zhang Xiaogang, which sold for HK$4,820,000 (est. $HK4–5.5 million). Second was Hat Series — Armed Forces by Yue Minjun, at HK$4,580,000 (est. HK$3.5–5.5 million). Yue remains an auction favorite, and his Archeology was snapped up for HK$2,060,000, nearly tripling its high estimate of HK$700,000.

Despite these results, though, several works by big names that just a year ago would have inspired an instant buying frenzy failed to meet the reserve prices. Among the notable casualties were pieces by the crowd-pleasing Pop artist Wang Guangyi and Cai Guo-Qiang’s wall-sized gunpowder painting Project for Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig – Drawing for Ascending.