Tired of record auction prices for art? Well, another record, this one for a work by a contemporary Asian artist, was set Saturday evening at Christie's in Hong Kong, when Mask Series 1996 No.6, by Zeng Fanzhi, sold for $9.5 million.

Zealous Canadian patriots will, no doubt, remind us that Zeng Fanzhi's enormous painting, 2 x 3.6 metres, sold for only $131.94 /cm²; whereas, Tamarack Swamp, by dead Canadian artist, Tom Thomson, which measures 21.6 x 26.7 cm, sold last week for $1,150,000, or $1994.04 /cm². They'll also want to point out that not even Lucian Freud can touch Thomson. Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, which is 151.3 x 219 cm in size, and sold for $33,641,000, comes in at a paltry $1015.28 /cm².

Who, aside from Canadian zealots, says art is all about money?