Wealthy art connoisseurs gather at Basel auction
An $8m (€5.1m) Takashi Murakami sculpture was among early sales on Wednesday as Switzerland's Art Basel opened to invited guests, including Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and his partner Daria Zhukova, according to a Bloomberg report.
Sellers at the 39th fair are hoping the rich remain as eager to spend money as they were at contemporary-art auctions last month in New York at Sotheby's, Christie's International and Phillips de Pury. Those sales raised a record total of $971.5m with fees as buyers from emerging markets shrugged off the credit crisis.
“Business is perfectly lovely,” said Timothy Blum, co- owner of Los Angeles art dealer Blum & Poe. The gallery sold Murakami's 18 1/2 foot-high aluminum and steel sculpture, “Oval Buddha”, to a western European collector who Blum wouldn't name.
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