Buy Islamic Art Biography
Source:- Google.com.pkNasser David Khalili stands in an exhibition hall in St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace, gazing at an 18th-century painted enamel of flowers that’s one of 25,000 works of art he owns. “I’d have paid anything for it,” he says, appraising this miniature by Frenchman Philippe Parpette. “There’s no way I’d have let anybody else buy it.”
Khalili, 64, an Iranian-born billionaire who lives in London, has come to Russia to unveil his fifth art collection: On this overcast December afternoon, 320 of his 1,200 enamel treasures will go on display at the State Hermitage Museum, home to the collection of Catherine the Great, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its May issue.
Having flown in on a chartered plane, Khalili is relishing a private preview, peering through tinted eyeglasses at such possessions as a gilded clock with matching candelabras that once adorned the home of U.S. railroad tycoon William Vanderbilt. Khalili, who says he has a photographic memory, recalls paying $16,500 for these three pieces 34 years ago. He estimates that they’d now cost $600,000.
In all, Khalili says the enamels he has lent the museum are insured for more than 100 million pounds ($150 million). Even so, they are a trifle compared with the obsession that’s consumed him for four decades: his 20,000 pieces of Islamic art. “His collection is certainly the best in private hands,” says Edward Gibbs, Sotheby’s London-based head of Middle Eastern art. “He is the man who has everything. He’s come to define the market.”
Signs of Revival
Khalili is revealing his latest collection just as the $43 billion global art market is showing signs of reviving -- with an Alberto Giacometti sculpture selling for a record 65 million pounds in February to a buyer later identified by dealers as London-based billionaire Lily Safra. In the Islamic art world, prices for the best pieces have been buoyed by a new generation of Middle Eastern buyers, including museums in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
“There’s fierce competition for anything unique, rare, beautiful or important,” Gibbs says, noting that an Islamic textile Sotheby’s estimated would fetch $250,000 to $350,000 in a March 2009 auction went to Qatar’s Museum of Islamic Art for $3.4 million.
The limited supply in this niche within the art market has made Khalili’s collection all the more precious, says Claire Penhallurick, an Islamic art consultant for Bonhams auction house. She says it’s impossible to guess what his entire collection is worth.
“How could you value something that’s unique and irreplaceable?” Penhallurick says. “If you had all the money in the world, you couldn’t assemble his collection now.”
Shrouded in Secrets
When an exhibition of 471 of Khalili’s Islamic pieces opened at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris in October, they alone were insured for almost 600 million pounds.
The story behind how Khalili built his fortune has long been shrouded in secrets. As a property developer, he shunned publicity and didn’t slap his name on buildings or the company that is his main investment vehicle. He has also operated under the radar when buying art.
“During the collecting, I don’t say anything,” Khalili says. “When it’s done, then I speak.”
His elusiveness has fueled much speculation, often revolving around how he financed his collecting. Khalili, who left Iran in 1967 with $750, says he’s since spent $650 million on art. London’s Sunday Times, which estimated his fortune at 5.8 billion pounds in 2007, gave up guessing his worth the following year and removed him from its annual rich list.
Top Collector
Khalili, whose works are held in a family trust, says he used subterfuge to amass his Islamic collection, pretending for several years to be an art dealer so he could acquire pieces at wholesale prices. While his stealth has often obscured the scale of his buying, the magazine ARTnews says Khalili is one of Britain’s top collectors, along with Safra and private museum owner Charles Saatchi.
The Iranian says he’s aware of whispers within the art trade that he grew rich buying Islamic works for Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. Sitting in his office in London’s Mayfair neighborhood, where the treasures on display include an 8th- century bronze camel and a 7,000-year-old stone sculpture, Khalili beats his chest with his hand when asked about the rumors.
“I didn’t buy anything for anybody. Nobody, right?” he says. “I bought for myself. This is all bulls---, all right?”
The questions surrounding Khalili stem in part from his emergence in the 1980s as a trailblazer in Islamic collecting.
Press Speculation
“There was this sudden transformation,” says William Robinson, director of Islamic art at Christie’s International. “In the late 1980s he was the No. 1 buyer.” Robinson and others thought he was buying as the exclusive agent for a powerful client. “It was assumed that the Sultan of Brunei was behind it,” Robinson says. “I really don’t know.”
Brunei’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Britain’s press also fueled speculation about the source of Khalili’s riches. “He spends on a scale no art collector has done before,” London’s Independent wrote in 1994. “Yet no one knows where his money comes from. … (Khalili) vehemently denies the suggestion that he has been secretly investing the sultan’s money rather than his own.”
Khalili says he met the Sultan of Brunei around 1984, after the U.K.’s Foreign Office asked him to advise the monarch on creating an Islamic gallery at the Brunei Museum.
Sultan’s Artworks
“He had about 10,000 pieces,” Khalili says. “I chose about 1,000 pieces and said, ‘Throw the rest away. They’re junk.’”
As a favor, he says, he selected several items for the Sultan to buy at auction and the Khalili family trust sold him a dozen pieces from its Islamic collection, including Qurans, metalwork and textiles, for about 4 million pounds.
Khalili dismisses rumors that he sold art to the Sultan at inflated prices, pointing out that he later convinced him to donate 10 million pounds to the University of London for an Islamic gallery.
“If you rip somebody off, would they turn around and give you 10 million pounds to build a gallery?” he asks.
It’s now obvious he was buying for himself, Khalili says, since his Islamic collection is cataloged in 19 books written by an army of scholars he has hired to document its provenance and authenticity.
Khalili, who has also built collections of Japanese Meiji art, Spanish metalwork and Swedish textiles since 1975, says the value of his artworks is irrelevant, because he will never sell them.
Offer to Britain
“All five collections are priceless: 2 billion pounds, 3 billion pounds, 4 billion pounds, it doesn’t make any difference,” he says. “These collections cannot be replaced.”
His Islamic treasures include a 14th-century Iranian world history by Rashid al-Din Fadlallah, which he says cost him 12 million pounds in 1990. “It’s one of the greatest illustrated manuscripts in the world,” says Tim Stanley, senior curator for the Middle East at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
Khalili, who holds both U.S. and U.K. passports, offered to lend his Islamic collection to the British nation in 1992 if the government provided a museum to house it. Khalili says he stipulated that the loan would become a gift after 15 years if the collection was exhibited to his satisfaction; if not, he could take it back.
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
Buy Islamic Art Islamic Art Calligraphy And Architecture Designs Patterns Wallpapers Desktop Wallpapers Hd Calligraphy Wallpapers Calligraphy Canvas Wallpapers Canvas
No comments:
Post a Comment