Off the Charts

By: Bobbie Leigh

April 2007

With world records being broken almost as soon as they are set, Chinese artists are a hot commodity in the global market. Artists who began their careers in the 1980s and struggled against political and financial odds are now realizing their dreams of success on the international stage—and watching their pictures sell for millions of dollars.
 
That the People’s Republic is flush with contemporary art should be no surprise, as China has always had an extraordinarily rich visual arts tradition. But instead of Buddhist influence, social, political and personal issues now dominate. Art academies and universities offer courses in all media, old (sculpture, painting, calligraphy) and new (photography, film, video), like any art school curriculum in the United States. As it was in the days of the Imperial court, entry requirements are stiff and only the most talented are admitted. After graduation, scouts spot the talented unknowns and propel them into the art scene. With luck, they join an elite who have the skills and imagination to interpret an incredible era of change in their homeland, where the economy has nearly doubled in the last five years.
 
Auction figures best tell the story of China fever. In 2006 Sotheby’s sold $70 million worth of contemporary Asian art, most of which was Chinese, five times as much as the previous year. Last November, at Christie’s Hong Kong sale of Asian contemporary and 20th-century art, the 1993 painting “Tiananmen Square,” by Zhang Xiaogang (b. 1958) sold for more than $2.3 million, a world record for Chinese contemporary art at the time. Devoid of any human presence, the painting’s sole focus is a bright- yellow Tiananmen Gate, the symbolic landmark of Chinese state and culture, surrounded by an ominous gray square and sky. Thin red lines suggesting blood connect the gate with the two sides of the square, symbolically linking the country with the people or perhaps hinting at the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Zhang is an immensely successful artist who is best known for his iconic “Bloodline Series,” a group of family portraits set during the Cultural Revolution.

“The Hong Kong sale was pretty spectacular,” says Ingrid Dudek, Christie’s Contemporary Asian art specialist and former manager of Beijing’s Courtyard Gallery, who describes the atmosphere as “electric,” with intense bidding from Asian as well as Western collectors. Some of the best-selling paintings were biting social commentaries. For example, Zeng Fanzhi’s (b. 1964) “Mask 1999, No. 3,” sold for $816,400. It depicts two dapper gentlemen dressed in beige suits and shiny black shoes, seated on a pink bench. Each wears a white mask with exaggeratedly wide eyes staring at each other. One smiles, the other seems to smirk. Yue Minjun’s (b. 1962) “Kites” sold for $962,000. Yue’s figures evoke advertisements with their bright colors, but his gleeful figures, all with Yue’s face and a caricatured toothy smile, seem to mock the viewer and hint at what it is like to live in an overly controlled society.

In late November, before the art world had a chance to digest the significance of these astonishing works, figurative painter Liu Xiaodong’s (b. 1963) “Newly Displaced Population” topped the previous world record for Chinese contemporary art at $2.7 million in a sale at Beijing Poly Art Auction. The monumental (33 feet long by 9 feet high) panorama depicts, against a backdrop of desolate miles of concrete, people who were forced to give up their homes and farms along the Yangtze River at the Three Gorges Dam construction site.
 
The huge rise in prices and international recognition of Chinese contemporary art did not happen overnight. As Pearl Lam, owner of three galleries in China puts it, from 1949 on, “China was in darkness.” Soviet-style Socialist Realism was the only acceptable approach until the late 1970s, when art schools reopened and artists in the People’s Republic were suddenly exposed to all the latest trends in Western art. By 1985 a definite avant-garde had developed. It was a time of great experimentation, unofficial exhibitions and a medium new to China—performance art.
 
A defining moment was the groundbreaking 1989 exhibition, “China/Avant Garde” at the China National Gallery in Beijing, which twice was shut down by the authorities. In the aftermath of the ill-fated Tiananmen Square demonstration, artists were disillusioned and turned to cynical and mocking styles. By the mid-1990s, as China moved toward a market economy, artists in general became less constrained and freer to criticize and experiment. Several landmark shows in the West, including Asia Society’s “Inside Out: New Chinese Art” in 1998 and the Venice Biennale of 1999, began to generate international acclaim. Add to that the 2004 International Center of Photography–Asia Society exhibition “Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China” in New York, which demonstrated not only the artists’ mastery of the media but also how they had evolved from imitating Western styles to developing their own original and dynamic character.Consequently, some leading avant-garde artists, including Zhang, Yue and Fang Lijun, to name just a few, are said to have accumulated great wealth. Fang, best known for his red, bald figures, now employs numerous assistants in a large studio and owns six restaurants in Beijing. “What we have now is export art for the export market,” says Lam, who suggests that Chinese artists need to follow their own ideas and not be subjugated to the demands of the marketplace.

“This new wealth can be a trap,” says Melissa Chiu, director of the museum at New York’s Asia Society. “Some artists feel forced to reproduce the work from their early days. For others, success has allowed them to be more ambitious, to do all the work they always dreamed of,” she says.

No one is more pleased about the successes of Chinese contemporary artists than Ethan Cohen. A curator of the March–April 2007 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art special project “We are Your Future” and director of Ethan Cohen Fine Arts gallery in New York, he is gratified that Chinese contemporary artists are at long last being recognized both in this country and overseas. Unlike 10 years ago, he says, “Chinese artists are invited to participate in each Documenta and almost every biennale worldwide.” However, he warns, “there is a danger that the explosion of interest in the market could lead to excessive speculation based on short-term hopes for profit.” According to Cohen, in this environment it is critical to focus on those artists who are able to produce truly significant work that will endure in market value and aesthetic satisfaction.
 
Christopher Phillips of the International Center of Photography in New York takes a dim view of the current explosion of Chinese art. “I have never seen such a big, booming, blossoming bubble as is underway today, and at some point it will end,” he says. “You never know what the trigger will be. It’s clearly not sustainable and not good for the artists.”
 
Although many experts like Phillips are forthright about their concerns and question the long-term value of contemporary Chinese art, others, like New York collectors Larry Warsh and Sue Stoffel, are far more positive. What has attracted them to this work is that it is “fresh, new, exhilarating as well as historically important,” says Warsh, an early collector of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. He also was an early admirer and collector of works by Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun, Fang Lijun and Ai Weiwei, and has at least a dozen wood sculptures by Wang Keping. “My plan is to build an important historical collection of the Chinese artists from the post-1989 era to the present,” says Walsh. “That level of energy and quality will never happen again in the same way.”

Although Sue Stoffel collects in various media, she is primarily interested in all aspects of contemporary Chinese photography—straight, computer-generated and digitally manipulated work. “What I have found is that the artists have excellent academic training, what they choose to do with that training is extraordinary,” she says. “What appeals to me is the way the artists are trying to make sense of their own personal histories.”
 
The post-1989 work that garnered such high prices in Hong Kong and elsewhere mainly falls into three categories. Political Pop tends to have bold outlines, bright colors and collage effects with easily accessible political commentary. One protagonist of this style is Li Shan, whose “Rouge Series, No. 8” features a black-and-white Mao painted against a flat red background with a pink flower dangling from his lips. A second style is Cynical Realism, work that portrays mostly human figures, often frozen in pain or horror, exemplified by Zhang’s “Bloodline” series. A third, Gaudy Art, is a Chinese version of kitsch, in response to Western consumer culture’s effect on nouveau-riche Chinese. A typical example is Xu Yihui’s porcelain sculpture “Money” a ceramic work that represents a $100 bill nestled on a bed of too-bright red roses.“Six years ago, it was easier to identify specific movements and trends,” says Chiu, emphasizing that since then, the world of Chinese art has developed greater diversity and depth. “Many young artists are producing viable, vibrant work, but they have not been part of the so-called economic miracle.” Working in the full range of media from painting, sculpture and mixed-media installation to video, film and photography, the more recent work is as compelling as what preceded it. Many of these young artists offer insights into the growth-above-all mentality gripping China—and the growing pains it has induced.

According to New York dealer Michael Goedhuis, there are artists who did good work in Cynical Realism, but that movement’s time has passed. “We look for painterly qualities, artists who are not derivative and have something fresh to say,” says Goedhuis. He considers oil painter Yu Hong, whose work evokes the classic ink-and-brush tradition, to be one of the best artists working in China today.

Cao Fei might also be considered a rising superstar. Her videos and photography are in several international museums and private collections. In “Whose Utopia,” part of a project commissioned for the 2006 Sydney Biennial, Cao reviews the daily work of factory workers in a docudrama style and then segues into their fantasy lives as dancers and rock musicians.
 
Liu Ding is another “up-and-coming” artist, says Phillips. It’s not just the scope of his imagination and enormous productivity that the curator admires, but “his real determination to stay true to his vision.” Phillips also cites Li Songsong, who is in his 30s, as one of the most talented young painters today. His canvases are less illustrative than those of many Chinese artists, and his vigorous brushwork suggests the influence of Gerhard Richter.
 
Liang Shuo, a sculptor who works in bronze, is also known for forceful work. One of his major pieces is a group of figures called “Urban Peasants.” According to Marc Benda, director of New York’s Barry Friedman Ltd., his “brutally realist works with great patina” represent years of thought and conception.
 
Reflecting on where we are now in this highly hyped field, Dudek says, “A lot of media attention has been centered around market activity, but it’s important to keep in mind this is really the tip of the iceberg for some of the most exciting and interesting developments in contemporary art in a long time.”

Today, the challenge for curators and collectors is to separate contrived and derivative work aiming for instant celebrity from what is truly insightful and original. As artists in the People’s Republic continue to interpret and comment on such global issues as gender, communication, the environment and rapid urbanization, their work will surely find an appreciative audience.

Bobbie Leigh is an Art & Antiques New York correspondent specializing in Asian art and culture.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Chambers Fine Art, New York. 212.414.1169. www.chambersfineart.com
Sperone Westwater, New York. 212.999.7337. www.speronewestwater.com
Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York. 212.625.1250. www.ecfa.com
Goedhuis Contemporary, New York. 212.535.6954. www.goedhuiscontemporary.com
Walsh Gallery, Chicago. 312.829.3312. www.walshgallery.com
Tilton Gallery, New York. 212.737.2221. www.jacktiltongallery.com
Max Protetch, New York. 212.633.6999. www.maxprotetch.com
China 2000 Fine Art, New York. 212.588.1198. www.china2000fineart.com
China Institute, New York. 212.744.8181. www.chinainstitute.org
Marc Richard Galleries, Los Angeles. 323.634.0838. www.marcrichards.com
Made in China–Chinese Art Now! Edited by Michael Juul Holm and Anders Kold (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, 2007).
Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection edited by Bernard Fibicher (Hatje Cantz, 2005).