Works by modern Chinese artists are now commanding millions in the auction rooms. But is it a bubble that might burst? examines China’s art boom
The art world gasped when a painting by the Chinese artist Zhang Xiaogang sold for just short of $1 million (£511,000) at Sotheby’s last March. But that was merely the start. In October, Charles Saatchi paid £770,000 for another of his Bloodline Series of Cultural Revolution portraits and in November his 1993 Tiananmen Square went for £1.17 million at an auction in Hong Kong. That same month a Chinese restaurant entrepreneur bought a painting by the cynical realist Liu Xiaodong for £1.4 million.
That dizzying run of records has led to rumblings of a bubble.
If there is a bubble in the market for contemporary Chinese art, gallery owners, curators and collectors are not expecting it to pop just yet.
Karen Smith, a British woman, arrived in China in 1993 planning to stay a year and research a book on Chinese art. Some 14 years later she is a leading authority, working from an office a stone’s throw from the Forbidden City and co-curating The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China, which opens at the Tate Liverpool on March 30. She is of the view that, bubble or no bubble, modern Chinese art is finally being plotted on to the world map.
“Even if it does crash, everything goes in cycles, and out of that will come something new. Chinese art is not going away,” she says.
Indeed, contemporary artists are laying solid foundations. An East German-built former military components assembly plant has now become known among art cognoscenti as the 798 Factory. The collection of 400 galleries, cafés, bookshops and restaurants housed in disused industrial buildings has even received an official stamp of recognition from the Beijing city government as one of six cultural and creative centres in the capital. Avant garde and counter-culture artists who once revelled in their disdain for the authorities have found themselves almost mainstream.
Receipt of a government imprimatur is likely only to fuel demand and to support prices. Chinese buyers who may have been wary of investing in artworks by painters on the fringes of society are starting to enter a market so far dominated by international buyers. These collectors discovered the contemporary art scene mainly because of the headline-grabbing prices paid at last year’s auctions. A breed of newly rich Chinese who ten years ago were dealing in coal and then discovered property have now found modern art.
Strolling among the hangar-like grey concrete buildings of the 798 Factory are more and more young Chinese, eager for a taste of this most hip and chic of Beijing quarters. Chinese film stars rub shoulders with Shanghai designers, foreign diplomats and overseas businessmen at the latest vernissage on a weekend afternoon. The occasion was a solo show by Chang Zongxian at the Xin Dong Cheng Space for Contemporary Art. The walls were lined with portraits of fellow artists — including the small but expanding group who now command prices
in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Cheng Xindong, who owns the gallery, says there’s no doubt that prices, at least for a tiny group of artists, suddenly skyrocketed in 2006. “Last year was crazy,” he says. But Cheng has been collecting and curating since 1992 and feels that the very slow and steady rise in prices in the intervening years was even more of a conundrum – given the quality of the work by the very best painters – than the sudden discovery that there were some great contemporary artists in China. “These prices apply only to a very small group of star artists and their works are still not really expensive,” he says.
In 1995, a painting by Zhang Xiaogang, one of his portraits of vacant-faced families, could be bought for as little as £5,000 but now – after 11 years of work – the minimum price is £300,000.
“This is just the beginning,” says Cheng. “Before the prices were all about the same. There was no big difference. Now a huge gap has opened up between this very small group of stars and the rest.”
Among that select group is Zeng Fanzhi. His works already feature in the Saatchi collection. Zeng, like many of those involved in the Chinese contemporary art scene, voices concern at the role of auctions in pushing up prices – possibly artificially.
He says he was shocked when he sold a painting to a buyer who presented himself as a collector and almost immediately sold the piece at auction for a much higher price. “Are people buying my works for pleasure or for busi-ness? We didn’t understand at first that people were starting to speculate and not to invest. Now there’s a bit of a question mark around auctions and I try to be careful that I am selling my paintings to people who genuinely like them. Otherwise people might think we are trying to manipulate the market.”
Sotheby’s and Christie’s sold £97 million of Asian contemporary art, mostly by Chinese artists, last year, compared with £11 million the year before. Zeng says it is not the international auctions that worry him but speculation at sales in China. Some artists and gallery owners
have been suspected of sending representatives to auctions to bid up the prices.
This has some gallery owners worried. They say that as a result of the heady sums achieved in auctions, some higher-priced painters are producing works almost to a formula. Reports have even surfaced of artists employing students to paint a piece to their design. Critics worry that the more established names may be becoming increasingly unwilling to experiment because they have found a style that can guarantee them enough money to live more than comfortably in China.
Brian Wallace, owner of the Red Gate Gallery and the first foreigner to open a gallery in Beijing, in 1992, believes that most of the painters now commanding high prices will stand the test of time. “Some have painted themselves into a corner, but the hope is that they’ll realise that and step back.”
In Zeng’s studio outside Beijing, a huge, almost abstract work resembling tangled bushes against flames stands against the wall. It is a far cry from the Mask series that won him renown.
He says he can’t stay still in his work. “When I change it’s because I feel I have done everything I can in that style and I have no feeling left in me. If I don’t feel excited then I can’t press ahead and find a new way to paint.”
It is an approach that critics hope will sustain the market in case of a bubble.
Wallace believes that some air may escape but is unconcerned. “I see a good couple of years yet and this is going to give the market time to mature. When prices do settle there will be a stronger body of work in collections – both domestic and international.”
There is no denying that some younger artists are trying to leap on the bandwag-on, excited by the 2006 price explosion and eager for a piece of the action.
One of the few who is convinced that a bubble is already in the making is Huang Rui, founder of the Dashanzi International Art Festival, which drew as many as 160,000 people in its fourth year in 2006. One of the first members of that artist community, Huang occupies an austere space at 798 with his paintings on the wall and vase of lilac roses at the centre of a huge wooden table.
He is a founder of “The Stars” – the first independently creative artists to emerge in China after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Serving fragrant tea out of exquisite porcelain cups little bigger than thimbles, he remains an unafraid member of China’s counter-culture.
“Artists are just creating for the bubble and this affects their creative ability. They will lose confidence and this will affect their ability to paint. Many painters now face this crisis. The market is too commercialised.”
He is anxious lest these works are picked up by buyers who lack experience. It may be at this level that the “China factor” will come into play.
Are collectors buying because of the quality of the work or because of the excitement surrounding all things Chinese?
The mystique surrounding China cannot be denied. “In the past six months people do seem to have struggled at spotting talent. There’s a blurring of the senses, as if entering a dark room from sunlight. It takes time for the eyes to adjust.”
Wallace, speaking in his gallery housed in an ancient city gate, says he is thrilled by the amount of new talent, but also notes that some artists have tried to cash in. “This is where the market has to respond by saying we want good art, not just Chinese art.”
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