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.