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.