Asia Week auction, WTF20: Cambodia – a bronze Khmer Siva from ‘an old German collection’. How old? Who knows?

Buddhist Art also has a bronze, Bayon-period Khmer Siva ‘[f]rom an old German collection’.

Asia Week auction, WTF19: Cambodia – temples’ statues are easier to transport without arms…

Buddhist Art has a sandstone Khmer deity.

Asia Week auction, WTF17: is a ‘Tibeto-Chinese’ Bodhisattva one from Chinese-occupied Tibet?

Robert R. Bigler has a ‘Tibeto-Chinese‘ bronze Bodhisattva.

Was it acquired in Tibet, or in China, or in Chinese-occupied Tibet?

Asia Week auction, WTF16: India – river goddess temple carving?

The Xanadu Gallery has a carving of the river goddess Yamuna in a (temple(?)) door jamb from India.

Asia Week auction, WTF15: Afghanistan(?), Pakistan(?) – the logistics of exporting a Gandharan Bodhisattva

The Nancy Wiener Gallery has the head of a disembodied Gandharan Bodhisattva.

Asia Week auction, WTF14: China – no-longer-standing Buddha – tragic accident or commercial decision?

Wei Asian Arts have a ‘[s]tanding Buddha’ from China. Ironically, it can’t stand, because it has no feet; it also lacks hands and, much like any potential buyer, it has lost its head.

Asia Week auction, WTF13: Afghanistan(?) – severed Bodhisattva head (yes, another)

Jonathan Tucker and Antonia Tozer have a ‘Hadda style’ head of a Gandharan Bodhisattva, which lacks a provenience as well as a body, though the style would suggest that it was from Afghanistan.

Asia Week auction, WTF12: Afghanistan – severed Buddha head – but seriously, wtf?

Yet again, it’s frustrating to note, the Dalton Somaré Gallery allegedly ‘offer[s] collectors and connoisseurs precisely documented objects of art of high aesthetic quality’, but demonstrably offers no such thing. And it’s infuriating to find that the gallery offers no information whatsoever about the severed head of a Buddha from Afghanistan.

Asia Week auction, WTF11: ‘Kashmir’ (again). Does the seller know whether this Buddhist terracotta is from India, Pakistan or China? Does the buyer care?

As I mentioned, the Dalton Somaré Gallery claims to ‘offer collectors and connoisseurs precisely documented objects of art of high aesthetic quality’, but it doesn’t actually offer any such information.

Asia Week auction, WTF10: Afghanistan – bronze rhyton ‘precisely documented’, except for who, when, where, how…

The Dalton Somaré Gallery claims that it is ‘able to offer collectors and connoisseurs precisely documented objects of art of high aesthetic quality’. It is, thus, unfortunate and curious that it does not offer any information about the origins of any of its three flagship pieces, one of which is a more-than-2,200-year-old bronze rhyton from Afghanistan.