digital digest asia
Pride and
Prejudice
a new base of local collectors grows in China
– but discontent with all the hype grows too
words Thomas J. Berghuis
one night last september i was walking on a country road on the outskirts of beijing, looking for a
taxi after an opening at the Arario Gallery, in a remote art district called the Liquor Factory. Behind me I heard
the revving engine of a large four-wheel drive, and a gold Hummer pulled up next to me, throwing up a cloud
of dust and sand. The window at the driver’s seat rolled down. The car, as it turned out, belonged to an artist
who’d been at the opening, and he kindly offered me a lift back into the city. Five years ago he wasn’t able to
afford the 5p bus, and now he drives a £100,000 car. “I am doing well these days,” he said. “Next week I am
off to Berlin, then to London. I also have an exhibition in New York, but I am not sure if I will go – long-haul
flights are so tiring.”
Scenes like these are symptomatic of the ‘bling’ of Chinese art now. At the turn of the millennium there was
scepticism about whether Chinese artists would continue to maintain their prominent position in the
international artworld. Several Europe-based curators suggested that Chinese art would soon be over, and
that the artworld’s focus would shift towards contemporary art in other regions of the developing world. They
were hinting at curatorial strategies for some of the world’s leading biennial and triennial art exhibitions –
Venice, São Paulo, Yokohama, Sydney – which needed to move beyond China in order to maintain their
purchase on the discussion of global art. Five years on we now know that the market for Chinese art is hotter
than ever: a growing number of collectors are driving up the demand for more, bigger and more-dazzling
Chinese contemporary artworks; and artists are often employing production teams in order to supply the
market and galleries with paintings that are practically still wet when exhibited.
Up until 2000, most of the international exposure of Chinese contemporary art relied on the work of
independent curators who organised major exhibitions of experimental art practices overseas. The works they
brought were still considered to be part of an underground art scene in China – the so-called Chinese avant-
garde – which developed during the 1980s and 90s. Last year’s auctions at Sotheby’s in New York and Hong
Kong caused a tremendous hike in prices for the masters of this scene, with more speculations sure to follow
throughout 2007. Most of the bidders at these auctions are based in Europe and the US, but from 2005
reports started appearing which spoke of an increasing number of mainland Chinese collectors entering the
market. These collectors were also said to have been involved in 30 per cent of the purchases at the Sotheby’s
spring auctions of 2006. However, a detailed analysis by the late Jonathan Napack for the Asia Art Archive in
Hong Kong (Diaaalogue, May 2006) mentioned that ‘the media exaggerated the extent of the Mainland role’.
Nevertheless, in March of this year I was told that there would be phone bids from mainland China in Sotheby’s
upcoming New York auction. One collector was said to have stocked up on bottles of VSOP Cognac to help
him get through the night’s bidding from his loft apartment in Beijing.
ArTrevIeW 150
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