By Walker Simon NEW YORK (Reuters) - A dream-like painting of children releasing kites by Brazil's Candido Portinari sold for $1.4 million at Christie's Latin American art sale and set a world auction record for the artist. Portinari's 1941 "Meninos Soltando Pipas" was the top seller at the Wednesday evening sale, which totaled $16 million and set benchmarks for other Latin American artists. "The strength of the Brazilian market reigned supreme," said Virgilio Garza, Christie's Latin American art chief.

SEOUL, May 20 (Yonhap) -- Local industries linked to the government's new economic vision, dubbed the "creative economy," took up 31.2 percent of South Korea's economy in 2012, data showed Monday, falling behind global peers. The "creative economy," one of President Park Geun-hye's key economic policies, aims to boost the economy by creating new business opportunities and jobs through the fusion of information technology, cultural and other realms.

Works by Andy Warhol topped the list of auction sales in 2012, as the global art market thrived thanks to high sales in New York and in China, the French watchdog Artprice told AFP Tuesday. After a bumper rise in sales of 21 percent in 2011, the global market grew more than 6 percent last year, found a joint report by Artprice and the group Artron seen by AFP, to be published on Thursday. Auction sales of art works around the globe -- which include paintings, sculptures and photographic prints -- totalled $12.27 billion (9.42 billion euros) last year.

India's art world has converged on New Delhi for the industry's biggest annual event where upbeat talk and parties are likely to disguise a market that is still in the doldrums since crashing in 2008. Indian art auction prices are down 70 to 75 percent from their peak, when speculation driven by new prosperity in cities such as Delhi and Mumbai pushed them to "unsustainable levels", says art analyst Anders Petterson.