A Cultural Revolution

China's sizzling art market has a new darling: patriotic works that mark the founding of the People's Republic.

Revolution is sweeping China's art world. In recent months, paintings extolling the communist victory of 1949 have emerged as the hottest genre in one of the world's most exuberant art scenes. With an economy growing at some 11 percent a year and a society morphing radically day by day, fascination with the birth of modern China is growing fast. In recent years, international collectors and critics have been much taken by new Chinese pop and avant-garde works featuring such notorious emblems of communism as red stars, Mao Zedong and People's Liberation Army soldiers. But Chinese collectors and serious connoisseurs are now becoming far more interested in slightly older works surrounding the creation of the People's Republic.

Indeed, China's red-hot art market is not cooling, but its prime objects of desire are changing fast. Today's biggest draws are paintings done in the realist style between the 1930s and the 1970s, from the time of the anti-Japanese movement led by the peasant-based Red Army to the period before Deng Xiaoping's liberalizing reforms. And they are fetching record prices. Just a few years ago, Chen Yifei's 1972 "Eulogy of the Yellow River," an elegant and very large work depicting a rifle-bearing Red Army soldier on a mountain bathed in golden light, was considered dowdy and kitsch. But at auction in May, after a fierce fight among various bidders, the 297cm-by-143cm piece fetched an eye-popping $5.16 million— setting a record as the most expensive oil painting ever sold in China. By contrast, a painting of the Three Gorges dam site by fortysomething artist Liu Xiaodong set the record for contemporary avant-garde art at $2.7 million last November. "Patriotic art is a very important theme in oil paintings," says Liu Gang, director of contemporary art at China Guardian, the influential Beijing auctioneer that handled the "Yellow River" sale. "We will certainly have this kind of work at our autumn auctions. The main attraction of these works is their inspiring subjects, which reveal the artist's love of nation and the people."

While the patriotic paintings merit attention as historical objects, they are primarily beloved for the passions they arouse. With the typical age of buyers starting at about 40, Liu says the works "easily resonate among people who have experienced wars or the Cultural Revolution." They seem to be nostalgic for an idealistic old China. And they've increasingly got money to invest; nouveau riche Chinese have become highly visible at home and abroad buying all kinds of art. Evelyn Lin, Sotheby's contemporary Chinese painting expert in Hong Kong, explains that while the realist style "is not so fresh" to the Western-trained eye, Chinese highly value what it represents. "It is more emotional," she says. "We know the stories." "Put Down Your Whip," for instance, is a 1939 realist ink work by Xu Beihong that portrays a famous actress in a scene from a renowned anti-Japanese play of the same title. Xu, widely regarded as the greatest master of his generation, died in 1953, and surely never imagined that his picture would sell for $9.2 million—as it did in April at Sotheby's in Hong Kong, setting the world record for the sale of a Chinese painting. It was purchased by a non-mainland collector, though Sotheby's won't say who or where.

Technically, the works are quite accomplished. Figures appear lifelike, often cast in romantic light. European and Soviet influences are clearly discernible even when subjects were uniquely Chinese. Indeed, many of the country's biggest names trained abroad. Xu, for example, studied in France at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He and his creative peers in turn helped educate younger artists. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao's system marshaled the best artistic talents in China to serve politics. Many painters took on teaching jobs at state art institutes and lent their skills to glorifying communism, often in the form of propaganda material.

But little of it still exists as original paintings. Throughout China's history, artists and their works suffered during wars and political campaigns. In the case of modernist ink painter Lin Fengmian, soldiers ransacked his house and destroyed his works during the war with Japan in the 1930s. Then in 1966, just as the Cultural Revolution was beginning, Lin destroyed all his paintings—done on rice paper—by soaking them in water and flushing them down the toilet in an effort to avoid persecution as an intellectual; later he was jailed and tortured anyway. Surviving art from that period tends to be in notoriously poor condition, further heightening demand for the precious few that are well preserved—and jacking up prices.

The art world will be watching closely this fall, when Sotheby's Hong Kong offers two unabashedly patriotic paintings as highlights of its October auction. Xu's 1935 "Crouching Lion" uses his signature animal symbolism to convey his belief in the Chinese nation's grand destiny over foreign powers; Sotheby's predicts the painting will fetch between $230,000 and $320,000. And "Father and Daughter," a 1939 work by Jiang Zhaohe that conveys the optimism of China's youth on the eve of the country's revolution, is estimated to go for somewhere between $10,250 and $15,400.

Though Sotheby's won't say when it expects the current records for patriotic art to be broken, collectors and critics outside China are clearly catching on to the trend. Catherine Kwai, managing director of Hong Kong's Kwai Fung Art Consultants, says some of her multinational investment-bank clients have begun asking her to look out for patriotic pieces to add to their corporate collections. In addition, she is in the process of helping an Italian museum stage an exhibit next year on Chinese realist masterpieces, which will include patriotism-themed paintings. She believes these kinds of paintings are among the most exciting for Chinese art collectors right now. "Behind these paintings there is so much to tell about the history of China," she says.

The fact that the works are straightforward and easy to understand only adds to their appeal. "Chinese still look at paintings for technique," says Kwai. "How lifelike is it? That is our training." As the mainland economy continues to prosper, novice collectors will keep rushing into the market, ensuring a bright future for the realist style. "This market will always be around," says Sotheby's Lin. "This will stay forever in China." That might be a particularly rosy prediction as tastes continue to evolve, but for now at least, patriotic art is enjoying its moment under the red, red sun.

SOURCE: Newsweek International

Works that mark the founding of the People’s Republic

Indeed, China’s red-hot art market is not cooling, but its prime objects of desire are changing fast. Today’s biggest draws are paintings done in the realist style between the 1930s and the 1970s, from the time of the anti-Japanese movement led by the peasant-based Red Army to the period before Deng Xiaoping’s liberalizing reforms. And they are fetching record prices. Just a few years ago, Chen Yifei’s 1972 “Eulogy of the Yellow River,” an elegant and very large work depicting a rifle-bearing Red Army soldier on a mountain bathed in golden light, was considered dowdy and kitsch. But at auction in May, after a fierce fight among various bidders, the 297cm-by-143cm piece fetched an eye-popping $5.16 million—setting a record as the most expensive oil painting ever sold in China. By contrast, a painting of the Three Gorges dam site by fortysomething artist Liu Xiaodong set the record for contemporary avant-garde art at $2.7 million last November. “Patriotic art is a very important theme in oil paintings,” says Liu Gang, director of contemporary art at China Guardian, the influential Beijing auctioneer that handled the “Yellow River” sale. “We will certainly have this kind of work at our autumn auctions. The main attraction of these works is their inspiring subjects, which reveal the artist’s love of nation and the people.”

While the patriotic paintings merit attention as historical objects, they are primarily beloved for the passions they arouse. With the typical age of buyers starting at about 40, Liu says the works “easily resonate among people who have experienced wars or the Cultural Revolution.” They seem to be nostalgic for an idealistic old China. And they’ve increasingly got money to invest; nouveau riche Chinese have become highly visible at home and abroad buying all kinds of art. Evelyn Lin, Sotheby’s contemporary Chinese painting expert in Hong Kong, explains that while the realist style “is not so fresh” to the Western-trained eye, Chinese highly value what it represents. “It is more emotional,” she says. “We know the stories.” “Put Down Your Whip,” for instance, is a 1939 realist ink work by Xu Beihong that portrays a famous actress in a scene from a renowned anti-Japanese play of the same title. Xu, widely regarded as the greatest master of his generation, died in 1953, and surely never imagined that his picture would sell for $9.2 million—as it did in April at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, setting the world record for the sale of a Chinese painting. It was purchased by a non-mainland collector, though Sotheby’s won’t say who or where.

Technically, the works are quite accomplished. Figures appear lifelike, often cast in romantic light. European and Soviet influences are clearly discernible even when subjects were uniquely Chinese. Indeed, many of the country’s biggest names trained abroad. Xu, for example, studied in France at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He and his creative peers in turn helped educate younger artists. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s system marshaled the best artistic talents in China to serve politics. Many painters took on teaching jobs at state art institutes and lent their skills to glorifying communism, often in the form of propaganda material.

In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism

SHANGHAI, Jan. 3 — After the peppered beef carpaccio and before the pan-fried sea bass there were raucous toasts and the clinking of wine glasses in the V.I.P. room of New Heights, a jazzy restaurant in this city’s most luxurious location, overlooking the Bund.

Wang Guangyi, one of China’s pioneering contemporary artists, was there. So were Zhang Xiaogang, Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Zeng Fanzhi and 20 other well-known Chinese artists and their guests, many of whom had been flown in from Beijing to celebrate the opening of a solo exhibition of new works by Zeng Hao, another rising star in China’s bubbly art scene.

“We’ve had opening dinners before,” said the Shanghai artist Zhou Tiehai, sipping Chilean red wine, “but nothing quite like this until very recently.”

The dinner, held on a recent Saturday night in a restaurant located on the top floor of a historic building that also houses an Armani store and the Shanghai Gallery of Art, was symbolic of the soaring fortunes of Chinese contemporary art.

In 2006 Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the world’s biggest auction houses, sold $190 million worth of Asian contemporary art, most of it Chinese, in a series of record-breaking auctions in New York, London and Hong Kong. In 2004 the two houses combined sold $22 million in Asian contemporary art.

The climax came at a Beijing auction in November when a painting by Liu Xiaodong, 43, sold to a Chinese entrepreneur for $2.7 million, the highest price ever paid for a piece by a Chinese artist who began working after 1979, when loosened economic restrictions spurred a resurgence in contemporary art.

That price put Mr. Liu in the company of the few living artists, including Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, whose work has sold for $2 million or more at auction.

“This has come out of nowhere,” said Henry Howard-Sneyd, global head of Asian arts at Sotheby’s, which, like Christie’s, has just started a division focusing on contemporary Chinese art.

With auction prices soaring, hundreds of new studios, galleries and private art museums are opening in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Chinese auction houses that once specialized in traditional ink paintings are now putting contemporary experimental artworks on the block.

Western galleries, especially in Europe, are rushing to sign up unknown painters; artists a year out of college are selling photographic works for as much as $10,000 each; well-known painters have yearlong waiting lists; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Pompidou Center in Paris are considering opening branches in China.

“What is happening in China is what happened in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century,” said Michael Goedhuis, a collector and art dealer specializing in Asian contemporary art who has galleries in London and New York. “New ground is being broken. There’s a revolution under way.”

But the auction frenzy has also sparked debate here about whether sales are artificially inflating prices and encouraging speculators, rather than real collectors, to enter the art market.

Auction houses “sell art like people sell cabbage,” said Weng Ling, the director of the Shanghai Gallery of Art. “They are not educating the public or helping artists develop. Many of them know nothing about art.”

But the boom in Chinese contemporary art — reinforced by record sales in New York last year — has also brought greater recognition to a group of experimental artists who grew up during China’s brutal Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

After the 1989 government crackdown in Tiananmen Square, avant-garde art was often banned from being shown here because it was deemed hostile or anti-authoritarian. Through the 1990s many artists struggled to earn a living, considering themselves lucky to sell a painting for $500.

That has all changed. These days China’s leading avant-garde artists have morphed into multi-millionaires who show up at exhibitions wearing Gucci and Ferragamo.

Wang Guangyi, best-known for his Great Criticism series of Cultural Revolution-style paintings emblazoned with the names of popular Western brands, like Coke, Swatch and Gucci, drives a Jaguar and owns a 10,000-square-foot luxury villa on the outskirts of Beijing.

Yue Minjun, who makes legions of colorful smiling figures, has a walled-off suburban Beijing compound with an 8,000-square-foot home and studio. Fang Lijun, a “Cynical Realist” painter whose work captures artists’ post-Tiananmen disillusionment, owns six restaurants in Beijing and operates a small hotel in western Yunnan province.

If China’s art scene can be likened to a booming stock market, Zhang Xiaogang, 48, is its Google. More than any other Chinese artist Mr. Zhang, with his huge paintings depicting family photographs taken during the Cultural Revolution, has captured the imagination of international collectors. Prices for his work have skyrocketed at auction over the last two years.

When his work “Bloodline Series: Comrade No. 120” sold for $979,000 at Sotheby’s auction in March, many art insiders predicted the market had topped out and prices would plummet within months.

But in October, the British collector Charles Saatchi bought another of Mr. Zhang’s pieces at Christie’s in London for $1.5 million. Then in November at Christie’s Hong Kong auction, Mr. Zhang’s 1993 “Tiananmen Square” sold to a private collector for $2.3 million. According to Artnet.com, which tracks auction prices, 16 of Mr. Zhang’s works have sold for $500,000 or more during the past two years.

Are such prices justified? Uli Sigg, the former Swiss ambassador to China and perhaps the largest collector of Chinese contemporary art with more than 1,500 pieces, calls the market frothy but not finished.

“I don’t see anything at the moment that will stop the rise in prices,” he said. “More and more people are flocking to the market.”

Mr. Goedhuis insists that this is the beginning of an even bigger boom in Chinese contemporary art.

“I don’t think there’s a bubble,” he said. “There’s a lot of speculation but no bubble. That’s the paradox. In China there are only a handful of buyers — 10, 20, 30 — out of a billion people. You only need another 10 to come in and that will jack up prices.”

He added: “Another astonishing fact is there is not a single museum in the West that has committed itself to buying Chinese art. It’s just starting to happen. Guggenheim, the Tate Modern, MoMA, they’re all looking.”

Representatives from those museums, as well as others, have made scouting missions to China. A growing number of international collectors are looking at Chinese art too.

“After the 2005 Sotheby’s show I just jumped in,” said Didier Hirsch, a French-born California business executive who has long collected American and European contemporary art. “People said the next big run-up in prices would be at Sotheby’s in March so I said, ‘Now or never.’ ” Mr. Hirsch purchased nearly his entire collection — about 40 works — by phone after doing research on the Internet. He said he went first for what he called the titans — the original group of post-’79 painters — including Wang Guangyi and Liu Xiaodong.

Some critics here say the focus on prices has led to a decline in creativity as artists knock off variations of their best-known work rather than exploring new territory. Some are even employing teams of workers in assembly-line fashion.

Christopher Phillips, a curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, has become a regular visitor to China, scouting young artists for the center and other places. On a recent trip “I went to visit the studio of a well-known Beijing painter,” Mr. Phillips said. “The artist wasn’t there, but I saw a group of canvases being painted by a team of young women who seemed to be just in from the countryside. I found it a little disconcerting.”

There are also complaints that some artists are ignoring international standards by selling works directly into the auction market, rather than selling first to collectors. And many experts here say that some gallery officials and artists are sending representatives to the auctions to bid on their own works to prop up prices, or “protect” the prices of some rising stars.

But Lorenz Helbling, director of the ShanghART Gallery here, said Chinese artists continue to produce an impressive array of works, and that talk about the market being overrun by commercialism is exaggerated.

“Things are much better than they were 10 years ago,” he said. “Back then many artists were commissioned to simply paint dozens of paintings for a gallery owner, who went out and sold those works. Now these artists are thinking more deeply about their work because they’re finally getting the recognition they deserve.”

SOURCE: New York Times