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Discovering the Virata Collection of Asian Art

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Xin Li, Christie’s Deputy Chairman, Asia Pacific, explores the Marie Theresa L. Virata Collection of Asian Art — paired with sublime post-war works by the likes of Dubuffet, Albers and Kusama. Her guide is Chinese art specialist Michelle Cheng.
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Among many highlights in the March 16 sale of the Marie Theresa L. Virata Collection of Asian Art in New York are several outstanding pieces of Ming and Qing furniture. Virata, described as ‘larger-than-life’ by friends and family, acquired the pieces over the course of 50 years from some of the world’s top Chinese antiques dealers — Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, Nicholas Grindley and Grace Wu Bruce.
Michelle Cheng, a specialist in Chinese art at Christie’s New York, recently joined Xin Li, Christie’s Deputy Chairman, Asia Pacific, to tour a small exhibition of the furniture, which was displayed together with paintings by Yayoi Kusama, Sam Francis, Jean Dubuffet and others from Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art sales in May.
Li, who played basketball for China, left her homeland for Paris in 1996, where she became the only Chinese model on the runways. She then turned her focus to modern and contemporary art, both Chinese and Western. She was described in a W Magazine profile as ‘a bridge between China and the Western art world’, while the Hamptons home she shares with husband Lyor Cohen was the subject of a recent feature in Architectural Digest magazine. This is an edited transcript of her conversation with Michelle Cheng in New York.
Michelle Cheng: What is your initial impression of this classical Chinese furniture?
Xin Li: ‘I left China 20 years ago so I’m surprised to see, for the first time, how well Ming furniture works with contemporary art. I love how the colourful Sam Francis painting goes with the regal zitan bed. There is a lot of energy and movement in that painting. The bed gives you a base, a place for a quiet moment in a chaotic world. It doesn’t compete.’
MC: ‘This three-sided 18th-century luohan bed (couch bed) with the dramatic inward-curving legs is of the highest-quality zitan wood. Zitan is prized for its intense, purple colour, its weight and its luscious surface. It is more associated with Imperial use than huanghuali, which has amber tones and natural figuration and appeals more to scholarly taste.’
XL: ‘Personally, I like oak. My husband and I have a weekend house in Long Island furnished with mid-century Scandinavian pieces. But I recently spent two weeks in China on Hainan Island with my parents and my sister, who is a big fan of huanghuali, which grows on Hainan. We went to the markets to look for it. I learned a lot; now I’m thinking huanghuali Ming furniture might be my next collecting area.’
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