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Owner happy to keep disputed Chinese bronzes

By Alfred de Montesquiou | AP

In this 21 February 2009 file photo, a Chinese bronze rabbit head, right, and bronze rat head, which are part of a collection owned by the late French designer Yves Saint Laurent are seen at the Grand Palais in Paris. Chinese auction house owner Cai Mingchao said on 2 March 2009 he was the mystery collector behind winning bids for the two imperial bronzes auctioned at Christie’s over Beijing’s objections, and that he made bogus offers to protest any sale of the looted relics.File photo/AP/Remy de la Mauviniere/France

The longtime partner of late designer Yves Saint Laurent said Tuesday his criticism of China’s human rights record prompted a Chinese buyer to sabotage an auction of two disputed bronze fountainheads.

Pierre Berge also said he would be happy to keep the bronzes if the buyer doesn’t pay up.

The bronzes, heads of a rabbit and a rat, were looted from a summer palace outside Beijing in 1860. A century later, Saint Laurent and Berge bought them from a French gallery.

Last week, the pieces went on auction at Christie’s in Paris as part of Saint Laurent’s estate — but China’s government complained, and said it wants the bronzes back. Berge refused, saying China should improve its human rights record first.

Legal efforts to halt the auction failed. A Chinese art collector made the winning bid, but admitted Monday that the bid was bogus and said he wouldn’t pay the $36 million.

“It’s definitely a maneuver targeting the positions I have taken vis-a-vis human rights in China and Tibet,” Berge told The Associated Press by telephone from Marrakech, Morocco.

Berge said he must now send a letter to the Chinese buyer — auction house owner Cai Mingchao — who has up to a month to respond.

And if he doesn’t pay “I have no problem keeping them,” Berge said.

Asked whether he thought the buyer was acting privately or on behalf of the Chinese government, he said, “I can’t say. Both are totally possible.”

China and other countries such as Greece and Egypt are trying to recover cultural objects plundered in war or stolen.

The Chinese bronzes disappeared when French and British forces sacked and burned the imperial Summer Palace outside Beijing in 1860 at the end of the second Opium War. Chinese view the devastation of the palace as a national humiliation.

Copyright © 2009 AP

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