Beijing
A delegation of Chinese artists, collectors, curators, architects and businessmen spent two days touring Art Basel at the invitation of the fair organisers. Their arrival in Switzerland is a sign of the growing importance attached to the cultivation of the Chinese market.
Sam Keller, director of Art Basel, confirmed that “Our goal is to bring Chinese artists, galleries, museum people and collectors to Basel”.
Three galleries from China or with Chinese outposts were showing at Art Basel. In total, there were 45 Chinese artists represented at the fair.
So who exactly is buying their work? The market for Chinese contemporary art used to be almost exclusively international, with foreign collectors and institutions, such as the Bern-based Sigg collection, buying. More recently, some of the rare but colossally rich mainland Chinese are showing the first signs of interest. “They are spending money like hell”, said Mr Meile, of CAAW/Urs Meile Gallery speaking to The Art Newspaper at Art Basel.
“Many of those interested in contemporary Chinese art have travelled extensively and so do not find it as challenging as the previous generation did,” said Laura Zhou of Shanghart. The gallery encourages its Chinese clients to come to fairs like Art Basel to develop their knowledge and taste.
There are also signs of increasing strength in the domestic market; the Beijing painter Liu XiaoDong (b. 1963) recently sold a series of nine paintings of Chinese and Taiwanese soldiers to a Chinese company in Xi’an for $500,000, through a Beijing gallery. Other sales of Liu’s work include a 1994 work which made $76,932 in May at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, while another work has recently sold to a Hong Kong collector, for $108,000.
Certainly, this is a booming market at auction: in May Christie’s made its highest ever total at its contemporary art sale in Hong Kong, racking up a sensational $16 million.
Many of the highest-grossing artists in these Hong Kong sales are established names such as Xu Beihong, Fu Baoshi or Lin Fengmian, which were bought massively by Asian private buyers, mainly from Taiwan. Another popular painter is Fang Lijun, the major proponent of cynical realism. Lorenz Helbling of Shanghart dismisses most of them as “salon painters.”
Mr Meile is concerned that the recent auction results can unsettle the market for contemporary Chinese art, disturbing the balance between artists and their galleries and pumping up expectations. As the market is so new, some Chinese artists are not accustomed to working within a gallery system and will sometimes bypass their dealer by selling directly from their studios. This could lead to problems in the case of multiples such as photography, when the dealer needs to know exactly how large the edition is.
The expanding market for contemporary Chinese art is underpinned by a dramatic reversal in official Chinese government policy towards new art.
Not so long ago Chinese authorities were in the business of closing down contemporary exhibitions. Curators and artists organised shows furtively: at the 2000 Shanghai Biennial, for example, the official State-subsidised exhibition was accompanied by a crop of impromptu “underground” shows in warehouses and basements, most of which were announced just a few days before they opened to avoid pre-emptive moves by the police. Now Chinese authorities have become enthusiastic champions of domestic contemporary art; in June they inaugurated the first Chinese pavilion at the Venice Biennale and there is talk of a permanent Chinese pavilion to be built in time for the next biennale in 2007.
So what accounts for this volte-face? To say that money is the driving factor would be simplistic. The sums being spent on art are still minimal and many of the sales are concluded in Hong Kong which allows dealers to bypass Chinese sales tax. The real reason for the shift is a desire to be taken seriously on the international cultural stage. “The Chinese want to be big in Venice and Basel. Compared to a few years ago, there is a generation of no less repressive but more subtle generation of leaders in power. They realise that contemporary art does not seriously threaten their authority,” says Jonathan Napack, a Hong Kong-based advisor to Art Basel.
He cites the example of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin who was embarrassed on an official State visit to France in 2002 by his inability to discuss paintings with president Jacques Chirac; no sooner had he returned to China than he promptly organised remedial lessons in modern art with Fang Di’an, now vice president of the Central Academy of Art in Beijing and commissioner of the Chinese Pavilion at the current Venice Biennale.
The coup de grace to the legacy of the Cultural Revolution was delivered shortly afterwards when the the ruling Communist Party changed its platform at the prompting of President Jiang and his allies: “The Party no longer represents the workers and peasants but the advanced forces of society,” he said. He was referring to entrepreneurs and other groups such as contemporary artists. “There is probably a desire to co-opt these people now,” says Mr Napack.
However, notions that this transformation of cultural attitudes and the market will happen overnight are hopelessly optimistic. There is currently only one major Chinese collector of contemporary art, Guan Yi, 39, son of a chemical manufacturing magnate. He has recently opened a private museum just outside Beijing, which is open to the public by appointment. The 1,500-square-metre space houses the Canton Express, the sprawling central installation in curator Hou Hanru’s exhibition at the 2003 Venice Biennale.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Banking on China'