The Chon Auction House has emerged as a destination for foreign tycoons and rich Vietnamese people who want to invest in local arts, a trend expected to grow in future.

On March 19, an auction session at the Chon Auction House saw the presence of Christopher, chief executive officer of Playboy Vietnam, who bought the “Bunny Girl” painting by Nguyen Phan Bach at a record bidding price of US$25,000.

Christopher said he could feel the depth of this work of art, an intersection of western and eastern cultures. He added that the work bears the cultural symbol of Playboy and it must belong to the Playboy brand.

In addition to the representative of Playboy Vietnam, the Chon Auction House’s second auction session also attracted nearly one hundred participants who are banking and financial tycoons, arts investors and arts collectors from both at home and abroad. 

All 15 works at the auction were sold successfully with a total value of nearly US$60,000.

“Bunny Girl” is one in a series of six works painted by Nguyen Phan Bach, a son of the celebrated writer Nguyen Huy Thiep, who is well-known for his short stories set in post-war Vietnam. And such a background has had a special influence on Bach’s paintings.

The painting depicts an Asian girl, her right hand placed on a lamp, which, in Eastern semiology, represents light illuminating a path or an element of time. With the passage of time, some traditional beauties are retained, but it also gives rise to new ideas. That is why we still keep Confucian values in the 21st century while using the cutting-edge iPhones.

“Bunny Girl” poses a question: why is the new symbol, the symbol of Playboy, placed on an Asian girl. In this era of globalisation where different layers of culture clash with one another, Nguyen Phan Bach paints a symbol for each of us to find our own answer. This is a work that carries a contemporary breath and tells today’s stories, which are the conflicts and struggles in women’s thoughts about themselves and men’s prejudices against Asian women.

Investment in arts is not new to Vietnam and is certainly not something unfamiliar to the world. But a professional auction session at the Chon Auction House attracting many painting collectors and tycoons was the first of its kind in Vietnam.

The trade in paintings in Vietnam, an attractive but quite risky business, is being redefined in a professional way by the Chon Auction House’s two young co-founders Vu Tuan Anh and Tran Quoc Hung.

Vu Tuan Anh said the world has been a hundred years ahead of Vietnam in using the arts as an investment channel, and that Vietnam could not lag further behind.

Tran Quoc Hung, Chief Executive Officer of the Chon Auction House, said that his company is not the first and only auction house in Vietnam, but that it is the first to focus on increasing the value of local artwork.

With experience living abroad and doing the art trade at home, the two are determined to build the Chon Auction House to the standards of the world’s leading auction houses, such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

VOV