The three-session sale's top earner was Chu Teh-chun's "Vertige Neigeux," which brought in HK$45.46, setting a record for the artist.

Compared to the bubble years, there were few truly eye-popping results at Christie’s Hong Kong this week, but the biannual auctions did affirm the strength of the market for new Asian art, with evidence that the appetite for works by marquee names is healthy among Asian collectors.

With more judicious selections of works on offer and the participation of serious collectors instead of just speculators, overall auction proceeds continued to build on the impressive gains in similar categories in early 2009. The sale of Asian Contemporary Art and 20th Century Chinese Art, broken down into three sessions over Nov. 29 and 30, brought in a total of HK$389.31 million ($50.2 million), for sold rates of 93 percent by value, 74 percent by lot. The total amounts to 38 percent more than the last of Christie’s twice-yearly auctions, held here in April. Average values went up to HK$1.7 million per lot, a 26 percent rise from last season.

Buying power from the mainland is behind the upbeat mood. The number of bidders from China has more than doubled since the winter 2008 auctions, according to Christie’s.

The Nov. 29 evening sale of contemporary Asian art and 20th century works, a centerpiece of each season, delivered a 44 percent increase over results from earlier this year, which had already shown good double-digit improvement over the previous auction period in the winter of 2008. Of 40 lots on offer, 32 sold, for a total of HK$261.89 million (US$33.78 million) and sold rates of 80 percent by lot and 93 percent by value.

An Asian collector fought off rivals, forking over HK$3.62 million, the session’s top price, for Master Yoga by I Nyoman Masriadi. The Bali-born painter, who is only in his late 30s, is much loved for his humorous but incisive social commentary. A 78 3/4 x 118 1/8 in. acrylic on canvas, it portrays a muscular, bare-chested figure perched in a bridge pose atop two undersized, upended automobiles. Like many pieces in this category, it is a very recent work, dated September 2009.

Private Asian buyers dominated the evening session’s top 10 prices, half of which were for pieces by Paris-based artist Zao Wou-ki, who is widely thought of as the greatest living Chinese painter. But the evening’s top price was earned by Chu Teh-chun, another highly regarded France-based Chinese master influenced by Abstract Expressionism; an anonymous Asian collector paid HK$45.46 million for Vertige Neigeux, a 78 3/4 x 157 1/2 in. diptych oil on canvas made between 1990 and 1999, setting a new record for the artist.

After the Sunday night auction, Eric Chang, Christie’s senior vice president and international director, declared the day’s success to be proof of “a robust recovery of the art market in Asia.” He remarked on lively participation of international collectors, viewing it as “a reinforcement of the significance of Hong Kong as a center for Asian art.”

The following afternoon, the day sale of Asian Contemporary Art netted HK$54.48 million. More geographically eclectic than its evening counterpart, the most sought-after pieces in this round were not only Chinese. The category, as Christie’s defines it, includes art by Indian, Japanese, Korean, and other artists. The top 10 lots included works by one Japanese and three Korean artists.

Taiwanese sculptor Li Chen’s Pure Land (1998), a 61 7/8 x 20 7/8 x 35 in. bronze in an edition of eight, sold for HK$2.9 million, soaring past its high estimate of HK$600,000, becoming the most expensive piece in the category and setting a record for the artist, who was born in 1963. The work depicts a rotund figure in repose, balanced precariously on a hill.

The most thrilling bidding war of the sale was for Lot 1653, mainland artist Zeng Fanzhi’s Study for Mask Series 1998. It eventually went under the hammer for HK$1.7 million, nearly ten times its high estimate of HK$150,000 and a record for a work on paper by the artist. One of the sale’s most striking pieces, late Korean multimedia artist Nam June Paik’s Alexander the Great (1993), a funky wooden elephant sculpture laden with neon lighting and TV monitors, was bought for HK$2.66 million. A new record was also established for Japanese sculptor Showichi Kaneda when a buyer paid HK$1.22 million for Humans Own EV05-01 (2008), a large, sleek, shiny and very iconic specimen of his racecar-meets-menacing-sea-creature series.

Also on Nov. 30, the small but popular Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary Art section provided robust results. Of 97 lots on offer, 76 sold, for a total of HK$33.52 million and sold rates of 78.4 percent by lot and 95 percent by value. The total represents a 64 percent increase over spring. Though works by Vietnamese and Filipino artists performed well, as usual, Indonesian works led the way.