Sotheby's recent, specialized sale of contemporary Asian art — a first for the auction house in New York — proved that deep-pocketed art lovers covet a Zhang Xiaogang canvas for their walls or a Xu Bing installation for their portfolios. The New York auction led to works tripling and quadrupling their already high estimates.

Swiss über-collector Uli Sigg deserves credit for the auction's success. Sigg possesses arguably the world's best collection of Chinese contemporary art. Mahjong is not only the catalog for his collection exhibition, it could double as a textbook on China's history-making artists. The book includes essays by leading figures such as Ai Weiwei, a curator and founding father of Chinese conceptual art; international curator Hou Hanru; and Li Xianting, who is regarded as China's premier critic.

The art, of course, tells its own story. Organized into a dozen categories, including Power Play, Consumerism, and Body as Medium, the works from the exhibition are largely privileged with full-page spreads. In addition to Zhang Xiaogang and Xu Bing, auction favorites include Fang Lijun, whose pop paintings and woodcuts impress with their saturated palettes; also a standout, performance artist Zhang Huan is known for seminal works such as Family Tree, a stunning embodiment of Chinese attitudes toward lineage.

Sigg is on target elsewhere in his support for photography and video — a popular subject for curators. He picks up Lin Tianmiao's thread-and-fabric portrait, Zhang Peili's pioneering videos, and Liu Wei's uncanny photographic study of human limbs that evokes traditional ink landscapes. The collector's eye for emerging talent manifests itself through the inclusion of such rising stars as painters Li Songsong, Xie Nanxing, and Qiu Shihua, and video artist Cao Fei — names that will dominate future headlines. In that department, few can match Xiao Yu's grotesque installation, Ruan, which featured a preserved fetus' head grafted onto a bird's torso. The piece ignited international controversy over taste and decency when it was exhibited, but it is clear that whether critics approve or not, Chinese art has achieved enviable status.

-Andrew Maerkle