OBITUARIES; Angus Fairhurst, 41, of Young British Artists

By KEN JOHNSON

Published: April 3, 2008

Angus Fairhurst, one of the group known as Young British Artists, or Y.B.A.'s, who stirred up the art scene in London and beyond in the 1990s, died on Saturday in Scotland. He was 41 and lived in London.

He committed suicide while walking in a remote area, according to an announcement by Bolton & Quinn, a public relations agency in London; no further details were given.

The Young British Artists were internationally famous in the 1990s for their brash, irreverent and sometimes deliberately vulgar works. Mr. Fairhurst did not achieve the degree of notoriety of some members, notably Damien Hirst. He avoided a signature style but was known for mordantly absurdist humor. Working in collage, sculpture, painting, installation and performance, he repeatedly returned to themes relating to popular culture, processes of creation and destruction, and tension between abstraction and representation.

He created collages by excising words and images of people from advertisements appropriated from bus shelters and subways and layering the results into semiabstract compositions. He also produced comical bronze sculptures representing gorillas in existential dilemmas, like ''The Birth of Consistency,'' in which a great ape gazes at himself in a reflective pool.

A bronze sculpture from 2004 titled ''Undone'' is a realistic, nine-foot-long representation of a peeled banana. One of his most famous works was a 1991 prank in which he networked together the phone lines of leading London art galleries so that they could speak only to each other.

Born in Penbury, Kent, England, in 1966, Mr. Fairhurst earned a fine arts degree from Goldsmiths College in London in 1989. Among his classmates were Mr. Hirst, Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas, who would go on to become some of the best known of the Y.B.A.'s, along with Tracey Emin, Dinos and Jake Chapman.

In 1988, with Mr. Hirst as chief organizer, Mr. Fairhurst helped mount a show of works by himself and 14 fellow Goldsmiths students in an empty London Port Authority building. The show, called ''Freeze,'' received much media attention, was visited by both Charles Saatchi, the British art collector, and Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate in London, and started the careers of many of its participants.

Since the early '90s Mr. Fairhurst's art has been exhibited in solo shows and major group shows in England and Europe. In 1995 he was included in '' 'Brilliant!' New Art From London'' at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In 2004, Mr. Fairhurst united with Ms. Lucas and Mr. Hirst to create a collaborative exhibition at Tate Britain called ''In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.'' In New York in the late '90s he had two solo exhibitions at the Anton Kern Gallery and, in 2006, one at the Paul Kasmin Gallery. His last solo show, at Sadie Coles HQ in London, closed on Saturday.

Mr. Fairhurst is survived by his mother, Sally, and a brother, Charles.

中國當代藝術被狂炒 某些"當代藝術"是惡搞

來源：文匯報

當下某些繪畫作品的畫面中充斥呆滯、媚俗、色情、變態、暴力或血腥，並且被冠以“中國當代藝術”的名義，被人狂炒。一些收藏者開始疑惑了，懷疑起自己的審美取向和藝術理解能力。在被忽悠了一段時期後，更多的人清醒：這是一場對藝術進行惡搞的遊戲。

“醜惡”和“媚俗”已成為某些中國當代繪畫的時尚和潮流

某些中國當代油畫作品中的醜態圖像表現為：形態醜陋或呆板、色彩媚艷或蒼白、趣味怪異或庸俗，以及運用圖式化的政治符號。這些作品採用醜化人物、反諷政治的方式來不適當地表現中國的社會與文化。這樣的作品根本不能真正反映中國的社會文化現實狀況，也沒有任何文化方面的反思意義，而只呈現出一種模式化、片面化、庸俗化的藝術形態，是一種文化無知和思想淺薄的表現。“醜惡”和“媚俗”已成為某些中國當代繪畫的時尚和潮流，並假扮成一種前衛的姿態，影響著中國當代繪畫的主流審美思潮，以所謂“當代”的名義對藝術進行著惡搞。

五分之四以上的“中國當代藝術”作品在海外藏家手中

有數據統計，目前五分之四以上的“中國當代藝術”作品是被海外少數收藏者所購買的，他們成為擁有大量“中國當代藝術品”的大莊家。海外投機者拉動這些作品的價格，使這些作品在短時期內升值巨大，並將他們的價值標準強加給國內的收藏者。國內的資本不得不被動跟隨成為跟風者，最後，真正獲益的是少數海外投機者。由于這一收藏鏈條中，缺少真正終端的專業藏家參與，所以，被惡搞了的“中國當代藝術”根本就沒有真形成國際藝術收藏的板塊。

　　前蘇聯也曾經出現過所謂的當代藝術熱現象

早在二十多年前國內“85美術新潮”時期，海外某些所謂的藝術品投資者(或叫投機者)已經在一些受西方文化影響較深的東南亞和港臺地區，設下了一個文化價值觀的圈套。那些被市場所吹捧的“當代藝術”，在相當程度上折射出西方的價值觀念，之後也在中國當代藝術界產生了一定的“戰略效應”。

現在中國“當代藝術”的這些所謂的現象，過去曾經在前蘇聯和東歐等地區出現過。上世紀80年代末90年代初，當時的前蘇聯也曾經涌現出一批所謂的“前衛藝術家”，並被西方媒體大肆炒作，他們的作品價格被某些西方炒家一手操縱，一路飆升。然而好景不長，如今，這些“前衛藝術”作品身價早已一落千丈，無人問津，那些原來被西方捧紅了的前蘇聯藝術家也沒人理了。

Hirst's fish in a chip shop may sell for £150,000

Maev Kennedy
Tuesday March 18, 2008
The Guardian


Fishy business ... the Damien Hirst artwork that has been hanging in a fish and chip shop. Photograph: Bonham's


A fish that escaped being battered, despite spending almost a decade inches from the deep fat fryer in a Leeds chippie, is to be sold - for up to £150,000.

A handful of customers at the Town Street fish and chip shop joked that the fish swimming in formaldehyde, sealed into a small glass tank, looked like a Damien Hirst. Fortunately art thieves never spotted that it really was a Damien Hirst - Darren Walker and his father couldn't afford to insure it.

"People just got used to seeing it there, nobody paid it much attention," Darren Walker, who has now graduated from the chip pan to working as a maintenance engineer, said. "It was pretty securely attached to the wall, so we reckoned you'd have to know what you were doing to get it off in a condition you could sell it." He added: "Besides, we knew that if it was stolen Damien would give us another one, he's that kind of guy."

Walker and his brother and sister were school friends of Hirst's younger brother Bradley, at Allerton Grange in Leeds. When they left Walker was working in his father's chippie, and his mate was at a loose end so he put in a good word and got him a job there too.

The artist's pickled animals were just beginning to make a big splash in cultural circles: the Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, aka the shark, was first shown at the Saatchi gallery in 1992.

In Leeds, when they saw publicity about another piece, Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purposes of Understanding - a whole shoal of fish each in its own small tank - they joked that their apprentice should get his brother to make something for the chip shop walls.

"Two weeks later our fish in formaldehyde arrived," Walker recalled. "At the time I remember thinking that must be at least £5,000 there."

That was in 1994: the scales shone even more brightly the following year when Hirst won the Turner Prize, and the Walkers boasted that theirs was the only Damien Hirst on public display north of London. As the artist's market price soared - passing £1m for his giant anatomical figure eight years ago and hitting £50m last year for his diamond encrusted skull - the chip shop closed after a new landlord's rent hike.

The fish swam on to the wall of Walker's lounge, until the day when, desperate to move with his wife and children, he realised it was now worth most of the price of a new house in Leeds. "I'll be sorry to see it go," he said, "but it wasn't really appropriate for me to have it at home. I hope it can go to somewhere where more people can see it and enjoy it."

The fish will be auctioned - with the original crate with the stamp of Hirst's White Cube gallery - by Bonham's this autumn. Simon Mitchell, Bonham's regional director in Leeds, said: "the provenance is personal and impeccable. It's an amazing story about artistic generosity."

中共電影禁令 拿色，戒開刀

【聯合報╱特派記者汪莉絹、李春／北京報導】

2008.03.08 02:19 am

中共廣電總局本月三日向大陸各省、自治區、直轄市廣播影視局，各電影製片單位，中國電影合作製片公司，電影頻道節目中心通知，明定電影禁止有危害國家統一、主權和領土完整，煽動民族仇恨、民族歧視，破壞民族團結，侵害民族風俗、習慣等劇情；要求加強管理、淨化銀幕，堅決抵制「腐朽文化」。

「色，戒」成為第一部被拿來「開刀」的電影，因此片走紅的女主角湯唯，面臨被封殺的困境。而以後中外電影想在大陸上映，恐怕內容都得拍成「軍教勵志片」，大陸好不容易開放的電影環境，重新回到「封閉」時代。

廣電總局「關於重申電影審查標準的通知」，明定電影禁止有下列劇情：

．違反憲法確定的基本原則；

．危害國家統一、主權和領土完整；

．洩漏國家秘密，危害國家安全，損害國家榮譽和利益；

．煽動民族仇恨、民族歧視，破壞民族團結，侵害民族風俗、習慣；

．違反國家宗教政策，宣揚邪教、迷信；

．擾亂社會秩序，破壞社會穩定；

．宣揚淫穢、賭博、暴力、教唆犯罪；

．危害社會公德，詆毀民族優秀文化。

通知規定，電影有下列情形，應刪剪修改：曲解中華文明和中國歷史，嚴重違背歷史史實；曲解他國歷史，不尊重他國文明和風俗習慣；貶損革命領袖、英雄人物、重要歷史人物形象；篡改中外名著及名著中重要人物形象；夾雜淫穢色情和庸俗低級內容；夾雜骯髒低俗的台詞、歌曲、背景音樂及聲音效果；夾雜兇殺、暴力、恐怖、鬼怪、靈異等內容，顛倒真假、善惡、美醜的價值取向，混淆正義與非正義的基本性質；有強烈刺激性的兇殺、血腥、暴力、吸毒、賭博等情節；有過度驚嚇恐怖的畫面、台詞、背景音樂及聲音效果等。

此外，電影情節有宣揚消極、頹廢的人生觀、世界觀和價值觀，刻意渲染、誇大民族愚昧落後或社會陰暗面，都得刪剪。

倫敦設計到了「重新設計」的時候了！

【text／Stanley Huang；photo／Stanley Huang（黃俊銘，倫敦政經學院社會學研究所）】

「設計」也有「身分認同」的困難？倫敦設計博物館一項新的設計大獎，打破傳統取向，其分類的新趨勢，足以說明，英國引以為傲的所謂「設計」，是到了「重新設計」（redesigning）的時候了。

「設計」也有「身分認同」的困難？倫敦設計博物館在保險業者的贊助之下，宣布啟動一項新的設計大獎「Brit Insurance Design Awards」。它將獎項分為建築、平面設計、時尚、產品、傢俱、互動新媒體、交通等七大類，打破傳統取向。英國媒體分析，該獎分類的新趨勢，足以說明，英國引以為傲的所謂「設計」，是到了「重新設計」（redesigning）的時候了。

此話怎說？倫敦設計博物館從 2003 年開始頒發「年度設計師大獎」，設計過 iPod、iPhone 的 Jonathan Ive 是 2003 年首屆得主，可謂實至名歸。不過 2005 年選了設計監獄、學校管理系統的 Hilary Cottam，就被認為有點「離譜」了，保守派博物館董事甚至不客氣地批評：「如果 Hilary Cottam 都可以稱為「設計師」，我也許可以提名出版社老闆角逐布克獎（The Man Booker Prize，英國最重要的小說文學獎）」。

設計，究竟指涉一種「功能」；一種「服務」；還是設計本身就是一項產品？今年館方不再頒給「設計師」，改以就作品論作品，並將七大分類清楚列出，彷彿為過去如系統服務、虛擬建築等非「設計」類別，展開「正名」的工程。

入圍的一百件作品，除了 Herzog & de Meuron 的北京「鳥巢」，SANAA 的「The New Museum」及 Thomas Heatherwick 的「East Beach Cafe」等主流大作，名氣實在凌駕該獎項。也有像 Martino Gamper 的「100 Chairs in 100 days」等創意之作，他以「天下沒有完美的椅子」為概念，一百天改裝一百張椅子，由於取材限破舊椅子，部分組裝之後反而流露古典氣息，在展場相當受注意。另外，巴黎去年七月在街頭推出的流動自行車系統（Velib Communal Bicycles），取代公車及地鐵；倫敦在尖峰時段推出的塞車稅（Extension of Congestion Charging），還有為開發中國家孩童設計的超迷你 laptop，也都在入圍名單。

作品此刻正在設計博物館展出至 4 月 27 日；3 月 18 日將揭曉得獎作品，獎金為 25000 英鎊。

Guggenheim's master of the art of global branding steps down as museum director

Ed Pilkington in New York
Friday February 29, 2008
The Guardian

Thomas Krens, the man who helped turn the Guggenheim into a globally renowned art brand and expanded its reach through audacious projects around the world, is to step down from one of the top jobs in museum direction after almost 20 years.

His stepping aside brings to an end an era in the history of the Guggenheim and could have a big impact on both its future and that of art museum direction in general. He is seen as a pioneer of the model of global branding that has been echoed by other big institutions.

But Krens has also been a figure of controversy, with his reputation for an abrasive management style and for the priorities he brought to the Guggenheim.

A graduate of the Yale school of management, he was a representative of a new breed of museum directors whose expertise lies in business organisation rather than in traditional academic scholarship.

His term in office saw the Guggenheim expand, both in terms of its endowment, which increased six times to $118m (£52m), and in its global stretch. His flagship project was the Bilbao Guggenheim, the instantly recognisable titanium-clad building designed by Frank Gehry that has proven to be a huge success, attracting 1m visitors a year.

Under Krens' leadership, a new Guggenheim museum, again designed by Gehry, is to be completed in Abu Dhabi in 2012 which will embody his global ambitions by exhibiting art from all over the world.

But the worldwide empire-building also brought Krens criticism that he was failing to nurture the jewel in the Guggenheim crown - the Frank Lloyd Wright building in New York's upper east side.

Three years ago he was involved in a bruising struggle with the largest donor to the Solomon R Guggenheim foundation, Peter Lewis, who resigned after he accused Krens of losing sight of the main focus of the organisation - its New York flagship.

Many of Krens' most ambitious overseas projects failed to get off the ground, and though the model of branding and expansion has been mirrored by institutions such as the Tate in the UK and the Louvre in Paris, they have tended to be more modest in scale or have been achieved, as in the case of the Louvre, with government support.

Krens was also the subject of the mumblings of art critics who said his choice of shows on occasions fell short in terms of scholarship.

He staged a show of Armani suits sponsored by Armani itself, while The Art of the Motorcycle was in part paid for by BMW.

Under the terms of his change in job title, Krens will remain in charge of the Abu Dhabi project, which he said was "truly spectacular" in its scope and scale. "Our objective is to make something completely new, the best museum of modern and contemporary art in the world."

But his departure allows the Guggenheim to bring the New York flagship back under the same management umbrella as the foundation's other possessions: Bilbao, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin and the Guggenheim Hermitage in Las Vegas. It also opens the door to applications from top museum professionals who had been known to be hesitant to work beneath the dominant figure of Krens.

"We expect interest will be high and the candidates will be top tier," the foundation's chairman, William Mack, said.

Robin Cembalest, executive editor of ARTnews, said that by vacating the post, Krens had "opened the door to curators and directors from major institutions applying for the top job. Who the board picks will give a clear sign of where they want the Guggenheim to go."

Taiwan's National Palace Museum - Treasure island

Feb 14th 2008 | TAIPEI
From The Economist print edition
Beauty is truth, truth beauty. But make sure the law is watertight

IT IS the finest collection of imperial Chinese art anywhere. But Taipei's National Palace Museum rarely sends its treasures overseas. Indeed the exhibition that opens in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum on February 26th will be only the fourth big foreign loan it has made since it opened in 1965. Like everything else in Taiwan, the art collection is coloured by the tense relationship with China. The exhibition is possible only because Austria, like America, France and Germany, the three earlier destinations, passed legislation granting exhibits immunity from judicial seizure, to stop China staking a legal claim to them.

Of the Palace Museum's 650,000 items, 230,000 come from China's imperial collection, started in the Song dynasty in the 10th century. Partly as a badge of political legitimacy, and partly to protect the artworks from the advancing Communists, Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang shifted them from China to Taiwan in 1948 and 1949 before retreating there after losing the civil war.

For nearly 30 years the museum served as a fortress guarding these political symbols from Beijing's Forbidden City. As democracy took root in Taiwan, however, the museum became a diplomatic tool to help counter Taiwan's acute isolation. The president's wife, Wu Shu-chen, made an unusual trip to accompany exhibits to Germany in 2003.

According to Lin Mun-lee, the museum's director, Japan has lobbied for some 20 years to have a collection appear there, but its parliament has not passed the regulations needed. A loan to Taiwan's only diplomatic partner in Europe, the Vatican, has likewise not been possible because Italy would not offer artworks immunity from seizure.

An official from China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage suggests that Beijing has never considered reclaiming the objects from Taiwan because “Taiwan is part of China.” The island's independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party administration has realised that returning the treasures to China is not on, and has tried to use them to its own advantage. But Ms Lin says that, should Taiwan one day be forced to make a choice between its destiny and the treasures, it should be a democratic decision by Taiwan's people. China, of course, will do all it can to deny them the choice.

Rosenthal quits Royal Academy after 31 years of blockbusters

· Flamboyant exhibition head to be special adviser
· His shows popularised the ancient, obscure and new

# Martin Hodgson
# The Guardian,
# Thursday January 31 2008

Sir Norman Rosenthal, the flamboyant and sometimes controversial head of exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London, is to step down after 31 years. During his time at the academy, he helped transform it into one of the world's greatest exhibition spaces with blockbuster exhibitions, including the first show to introduce Britart to a wider audience, the Monet exhibition in 1999 and the current exhibition of 19th and 20th century masterpieces from Russian collections.

He will continue planning new exhibitions as a special adviser to the RA, but will also work as a freelance curator in the UK and abroad.

"It's quite a difficult decision. I've taken it after deep consideration and there's a certain sentimental sadness attached to it," he told the Evening Standard. "The Royal Academy is being very accommodating. I'm going to be special adviser on exhibitions and, hopefully, curate some without going to the endlessly boring meetings. At the risk of sounding vain, people have begun to identify me with this place. It may be objectively, subjectively, unhealthy."

The search for a replacement will start next month. But after so many years at one of the capital's most influential institutions, Rosenthal will prove difficult to replace, said Sandy Nairn, director of the National Portrait Gallery. "I doubt whether one person could possibly fill Norman's shoes. His contribution was really exceptional, both in terms of the important work he did, but also the range of work. It's extremely unusual to find an exhibition curator who has done fantastic cutting-edge contemporary art but also arranged brilliant historical shows of both European and non-western art," he said.

Although Rosenthal has no formal qualifications in art or art history, he is credited with mounting a series of landmark shows which popularised the ancient, the obscure and the new. Admired as he is for his curatorial talent, he also gained notoriety for his abrasive personality: he once spat at a critic at an opening.

Rumours that he would leave first emerged in 2004 after Lawton Fitt became the first woman to be appointed as the RA's secretary. She resigned after a year of crises, including a bitter feud with Rosenthal. More recently, there were reports of tensions with the current chief executive, Charles Saumarez Smith, although both insist they remain on good terms .

Rosenthal, 63, played a key role in organising the RA's current blockbuster, From Russia, spending three years negotiating with Russian authorities to borrow works from their collections.

張曉剛 卡夫卡式的藝術家

来源:人民日報海外版

位於北京城郊的酒廠藝術園，在烈日下燥熱而安靜。下午起來，穿著汗衫大褲衩的張曉剛，應聲出來開門——門外站著六七個人，分屬於日本、法國以及中國本土的3家不同媒體記者，禮貌而固執地要求採訪。

這還不是他的最高紀錄，最多時，他的工作室裡同時接待過5撥記者。這個少年時害羞、沉默、輕度自閉的畫家，現在可以流水作業般，從容應付那些內容相仿的提問。

畫室的四面，豎著他新畫的作品，隨著工作室越來越大，他的畫也越來越大了，整整一面牆的尺寸，畫了5個一字排開的小孩子，他們分別穿著工農商學兵的服飾，滿臉成人般井然、嚴肅的世故表情。

從去年開始，張曉剛的畫在拍賣會上屢創新高，《大家庭》系列中的一幅在蘇富比拍到了78萬美元。很快，他的《天安門》在經過一番激烈競投之後，被一位神秘買家以1800萬港元拍得，而這幅畫從他手中被買走時，價格只不過是1000多美元。他的名字很快飆進了全球當代最著名的畫家之列，並創下了活著的亞洲畫家的拍賣最高紀錄。“我的畫賣100美元的時候，心裡是實實在在的踏實，賣到100萬美元的時候，反而感覺很虛幻。這個市場瘋掉了。”

與名畫家同班

張曉剛4歲開始握畫筆。在機關工作的母親怕孩子們出去野，便教幾兄弟畫畫打發時間，最後只有老三張曉剛堅持下來。“小時候害羞，基本上不怎麼跟人來往，一個人呆在家，看書，畫畫，慢慢變成了一種習慣，一種精神寄託，同時，也是一個出口。通過畫畫，你可以和你創作的人物交流，就不用跟外面的人交流了。”

16歲那年，父親帶他去看望一個畫家。這位啟蒙老師把歐洲的繪畫技法和理念灌輸給了張曉剛。“我完全控制不了自己學畫的欲望，每天都跑到那位畫家家裡學畫畫，進步飛快。父母都認為我瘋掉了。”

在張曉剛的印象裡，從小到大，他幾乎就沒有從父母老師那兒得到過表揚，教畫畫的老師雖然認為他是自己最得意的門生，但也從不說一句讚揚的話。這種藝術上的自卑，在張曉剛考入四川美院以後，被放大到了最大。“別人跟我說我的人事關係被四川拿走時，我說：‘不可能，我這麼差。是不是招生的人弄錯了？’”

張曉剛所在的班級，是當時全國美術界的明星班，何多苓、程叢林、羅中立、高小華等，都是他當時的同班同學。初進校時，跑到同學宿舍一看，他就傻眼了，他們畫得太好了！“比我臨摹的範本都好很多，簡直跟國外的畫冊一樣。像何多苓的畫，我覺得跟謝洛夫沒什麼區別。”

太平間樓上

他們班的同學很快創作了一批傷痕題材的作品：程叢林的《1968年×月×日雪》、高小華的《為什麼》、何多苓的《春風已經蘇醒》、羅中立的《父親》都在全國引起了極大的轟動。傷痕繪畫的風格和語言主要是學習俄羅斯巡迴畫派，這與張曉剛從啟蒙老師那裡學習的歐洲繪畫模式有著很大的不同，也與他的天性相左，他試圖糾正和模仿，但始終覺得彆扭。一年級結束的時候，他寫信給哥哥說：整整一年都沒有進步，我想退學。

大學二年級的時候，學校圖書館買入了一些西方現代藝術的畫冊，當時還看不懂的表現主義和超現實主義把張曉剛弄得很興奮，他發現除了蘇聯式的繪畫語言之外，原來大有另外的道路可走。

臨畢業創作時，他去四川阿壩藏族地區體驗生活，回來後畫了一批藏族題材的創作稿。結果學校認為他的風格太粗野，草稿沒有通過，沒發給他畫布、畫框和顏料。張曉剛最後把畫畫在牛皮紙上，在四川美院成了一個眾所周知的事件。

時任《美術》雜誌編輯的栗憲庭來四川組稿、找新人。開會時，栗憲庭說了句，“除了別人的，張曉剛的這批也不錯。”就因為老栗這句話，學校通過了張曉剛的畢業創作。當期的《美術》發表了羅中立和張曉剛的作品，評價張曉剛有“近乎凡高的情緒”。這在很大程度上鼓舞了他的藝術自信。

畢業回到老家雲南昆明，張曉剛在地方歌舞團做過幾年舞美，“白天看很豔俗的東西，晚上畫一些恐怖的魔鬼”，主張在理性主義之外尋找神秘而原始的生命訴求。後來又轉到四川美院任教，“四川美院盛行的是鄉土藝術，只有我和葉永青兩個人喜歡現代藝術，校領導還勸教師不要跟我們來往。”

有幾年他幾乎是泡在酒桶裡，“每個星期大醉一場，小醉兩場”。喝得胃出血，被送到醫院住了兩個月，他病房的樓下，是太平間。

他要求醫生讓他看看人死的時候是什麼樣子，醫生同意了。這也許是他第一次觸摸到死亡。“生死關頭是一個體驗。當時又年輕，又有幻想，讀的書又比較多，受到的毒害比較深，加上身體不好，想的問題就比較大，比如死亡，比如宗教。”那段時間，他陸續畫了一批陰暗、晦澀的作品：肢解的手，殘缺的軀體，疑似人腦或羊腸的不明物體軟塌塌地堆成一團，而上帝的頭顱漂在水面上……

“出院以後我開始畫一些跟死亡有關的題材，精神上又孤獨又驕傲，覺得自己想要表達的東西和周圍已經有了距離，沒有辦法跟別人溝通。我們那幫人基本上都是過這種分裂的生活。”

血緣牢不可破，家庭不堪一擊

1993年，張曉剛從北京回到昆明老家，他發現了一套家藏的老照片，大時代背景下的小家庭，是不是可以作為一系列以“文革”為背景的創作素材？

那瞬間，他感覺到，“要出東西了”！似乎是某種更為強大的意志抓住他作為一件表達的工具。為了達到想要的效果，他花了兩年時間專門研究技法，把背景降到最低，把色彩降到最低，把一切學院教給他的東西降到最低。按照他的畫法，每一幅畫他都必須畫三到四遍以上，一層幹了，畫另一層。“我是一個追求原作感的畫家，我一定要讓人看了我的原作，覺得看印刷品不過癮。”

張曉剛似乎永遠也畫不出陽光明媚的畫來，他的性格決定了他的藝術作品永遠是陰性和憂鬱的。後來的《血緣大家庭》系列、《同志》以及《記憶與失憶》等系列，那些似乎是斑駁老照片中的人物，擁有被時代整齊劃一了的外型、衣著和表情，單眼皮的眼睛，眼仁微微凸起，冷漠而警覺，神態遊移。

“我就像家裡一個多餘的人，他們根本不需要我。下鄉時，臨走前我爸給我哥10元，只給我5元，哥哥分一些錢給我，我爸還跟他說：‘別給他，他又會亂花。’我每次從鄉下回家，一定要背一袋米回來，快吃完的時候，我爸就會跟我說：‘米吃完了，你該走了。’如果我不帶口糧回去，他會說：‘我們怎麼養得起你？’所以，我從小就沒有家的感覺，下鄉讓我精神愉快，我覺得我自由了，能夠靠勞動掙錢養活自己，離家越遠越好。”

曾經有一個法國人對張曉剛說，感覺他是一個“卡夫卡式的藝術家”——比較關注私密性；內向，相對地封閉自己；關注的都是個人的感覺，而且是不太正常的感覺；都有幻想的成分；都是日記式的表述方式，寫什麼都是我我我，而不是他他他。“我覺得他說得很有道理，而且我也很喜歡卡夫卡。”

1999年與唐蕾離婚後，他拎了個包從成都來到北京，41歲換個城市重新租房過單身漢的生活。上午睡覺，下午畫畫，晚上跟朋友們碰面、喝酒。之後的8年裡，他搬了好幾次家，還是沒找到紮根北京的感覺，他說：我是一條野狗。

一次在重慶，他跟方力均、王廣義一起辦講座，學生問他，對血緣和家庭怎麼看，他脫口而出：血緣牢不可破，家庭不堪一擊。

是的，掌握了血緣與家庭，就掌握了張曉剛的主線。他的畫裡永遠都是父母隱約浮現的面孔，他的工作室裡貼著女兒歡歡從小到大的照片。女兒13歲出畫冊《家有小狗》，他歡喜地為她寫序言，並暗自得意孩子繼承了他的稟賦。他辦公桌上的煙缸，是一隻張開的大手，每個手指頭上都刻著不同表情的人臉。女兒小的時候，他常把自己的手指頭畫上哭笑各異的人臉，他的大手就成了女兒的玩具。女兒大了，看見這樣的煙缸，憶起兒時的遊戲，就買下來，送給他。

Hirst exhibition makes £130m in sales

By Arifa Akbar
Monday, 16 July 2007

Damien Hirst has become Britain's highest earning living artist after sales from his recent exhibition reached £130m.

But the centrepiece of his show at the White Cube gallery - a diamond-encrusted skull - may be sold to a private international collector.

If this happens, the artwork could be taken out of the country and Hirst's desire to see it displayed for longer in a gallery or museum may never be fulfilled.

Sales from the exhibition at the London gallery, which closed earlier this month, included a £10m work entitled Death Explained, consisting of a shark split in two.

If the skull is sold for its asking price, the total sales from the exhibition are likely to double his £135m personal fortune, even after paying a 25 per cent commission to the gallery.

There has been much speculation about whether the work, For the Love of God, which is priced at £50m, will be taken out of the country. The human skull, encrusted with more than 8,000 diamonds, has attracted the interest of collectors in the Middle Eastern, Russia and America.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Tim Marlow, exhibitions director at the White Cube, said attempts were being made to find a buyer who would have it on public view for at least some period of time.

"We are trying to negotiate a deal with a museum or several museums so whoever buys the jewelled skull puts it on public display, or at least initially, rather than simply keeping it at home or in a vault away from the public gaze," he said.

But sources within the industry fear it may be sold to an individual collector rather than a gallery.

Charles Saatchi, one of Britain's biggest collectors of contemporary art, championed Hirst's work when it first emerged on the market in the 1990s. But he is not believed to be in the bidding for the skull.

In the past decade, Hirst has risen to one of the leading lights of the art world, and has come to distinguish himself from the Young British Artists movement of the 1990s. Last month, Sotheby's announced that a sale of Hirst's work had made him the most expensive living artist at auction. A pill cabinet, entitled Lullaby Spring sold for £9.6m.

His wealth is not only made up from the sales of artworks that can court record-breaking prices, but also from a highly valuable personal collection of works by the likes of Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons and Richard Prince.

The art of success: Saatchi buys student’s entire show

From The Times

June 19, 2007

Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent

Most contemporary artists dream of having a work bought by Charles Saatchi. James Howard, a student at the Royal Academy Schools, was shocked to discover yesterday that Britain’s most influential collector of contemporary art wanted 46 of his – an entire graduation show. Howard, 26, one of 19 students who have just completed the RA Schools’ postgraduate course, was fast asleep when Mr Saatchi popped into the academy last week.

The young artist found out later that his digital prints – each one a collage of photographic images made up to look like a typical internet advertisement – had caught the collector’s eye.

Mr Saatchi, who made his multimillion fortune in advertising, particularly related to images bearing logos for Visa and other brands.

When he was overheard asking a member of staff for the artist’s telephone number, there was a flurry of excitement.

Receiving such a call was the “last thing I was expecting”, the artist told The Times yesterday. “I was completely shocked. It’s a great encouragement for a young artist starting out.”

Such is Mr Saatchi’s standing as a collector that he can make or break an artist, raising profiles and prices. Having made the names of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and other young British artists whose works now command six and seven figures, his activities are viewed as a barometer of the market.

He paid £4,500 for Howard’s 46 works, but their value will have risen instantly. He likes to buy whole collections at a price that is relatively insignificant for him, allowing him to control an artist’s market – and pushing prices beyond the reach of most public institutions. If a “product” is unsuccessful, his loss is negligible. Mr Saatchi also unnerves the market by selling in bulk. Critics dismiss him as a glorified dealer.

Three years ago he sold almost his entire collection of Hirst’s work back to the artist and his dealer. Relations between them had soured after Hirst described his patron as a “childish” businessman who “only recognises art with his wallet”. But both made a considerable profit from the deal.

Hirst’s rotting cow’s head was said to be worth up to £1.4 million. It would have cost a few hundred pounds to make.

Previous picks

Damien Hirst Saatchi began collecting Hirst long before anyone else, buying up most of the artist’s oeuvre. In 2003, Saatchi sold most of his Hirsts back to the artist and his dealer amid a feud between the two over how the works were displayed

Jenny Saville one of Saatchi’s early protégées: he bought her entire degree show in 1992: her work has subsequently sold for more than £2 million.

Tracey Emin Saatchi bought My Bed, which featured soiled sheets, for a reported £150,000. Within six years, it was valued at £1 million. This year she is representing Britain at the Venice Biennale

Natasha Kissell Saatchi bought two of her huge landscape paintings at her degree show in 2003. The interest kickstarted interest in her and her prices rose way beyond the “student” rate paid by Saatchi

Saatchi causes a new online sensation in China

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing
Tuesday, 22 May 2007

Britain's Saatchi Gallery marked its latest expansion in China's booming contemporary art market yesterday with the launch of a Mandarin-language website, which will allow artists to display their work online and interact with their peers around the world.

The launch of a Chinese version of the Your Gallery website - the world's largest interactive art gallery with 20 million hits a day - shows how hot the Chinese art market is. Your Gallery was launched last year to provide a free global platform for artists.

There are more than 20,000 artists in China and a further 1,000 students graduate each year from art school, but English is not widely spoken, making international communication difficult, plus there are still no more than 200 contemporary art galleries to show their work.

Annabel Fallon, the spokesperson for Saatchi, said the global interest in Chinese contemporary art meant artists in China needed a platform from which to show their work and learn about contemporary art practice in other countries. Meg Maggio, the director of Pekin Fine Arts, said the chatroom function of the site was particularly important.

"This is a wonderful way to introduce Chinese artists to as many other artists and curators and students as possible around the world," said Ms Maggio.

Chinese artists will be able to post their profiles and have them translated into English."It's very exciting for us to be one of the first fully interactive sites on the Chinese internet," Charles Saatchi said at an official launch in the trendy Danshanzi art district of Beijing.Mr Saatchi was an early champion of young British artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, who have have a strong influence on China's rising stars.

An exhibition of avant-garde Chinese art at the Tate Liverpool features work by 18 artists, including Ai Weiwei and Zhuang Hui. And contemporary Chinese artists have set records at auctions in Hong Kong and New York.

Zhang Xiaogang's 1993 work, Tiananmen Square, sold for £1.2m at Christie's in Hong Kong in November, a record for the artist. Other names include Wang Guangyi, Yue Minjun, and Zeng Fanzhi. All are being wooed by galleries and collectors all over the world.

An Auction Season of High Estimates, and Even Higher Risks

Left, Sotheby’s; Christie's

Lyonel Feininger’s “Jesuiten III” (1915), left, and Paul Signac’s “Arrière du Tub” (1888) are among the works up for auction.

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: May 3, 2007

This spring auction houses are touting stunning images by masters like Rothko and Warhol, Bacon and de Kooning. Price estimates are equally stunning, reflecting the fight for market share between the archrivals Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Their competition has never been deadlier, riskier or more expensive.

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Sotheby’s

“Study From Innocent X” (1962) by Francis Bacon.

Christie's

Warhol’s 1963 artwork “Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I).”

For several years Sotheby’s has been lagging as Christie’s has consistently won the most coveted property. So in putting together this season’s big evening sales, which begin on Tuesday, Sotheby’s has been even more aggressive than usual, offering sellers supergenerous guarantees — undisclosed minimum prices paid to the sellers regardless of a sale’s outcome — that are in many cases higher than records for the artists. Christie’s too has estimated many prized artworks at new price levels.

According to recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sotheby’s has promised sellers nearly $300 million in guarantees for property being sold this spring and summer. Since Christie’s is privately held, it is not required to disclose such financial information, but executives there say it has about the same amount of money tied up in funds it has committed for sellers.

Were some unforeseen event to happen during the next two weeks to depress world markets and scare off buyers, the auction houses could be stuck with warehouses filled with expensive art. But if buyers’ hefty appetite for great paintings, sculptures and drawings continues, both companies could turn some tidy profits, though not nearly as much as they would have were there not so many other financial strings attached. Still, they could lose tens of millions of dollars as a result of overambitious financing.

Both companies are reacting to pressure from sellers who, having seen how prices have escalated, are demanding sweet deals. In addition to guarantees Sotheby’s and Christie’s are routinely giving consignors a percentage of the fees it charges buyers, significantly cutting into potential profits.

“The market has moved significantly over the last six months, and our expectations have risen with it,” said Brett Gorvy, a co-head of postwar and contemporary art for Christie’s worldwide. “We have had to take a leap of faith in our belief that we have reached a new price threshold.”

Both Mr. Gorvy and Tobias Meyer, director of contemporary art for Sotheby’s worldwide, said they took into account recent private sales, in particular the much-publicized deals that the entertainment magnate and art collector David Geffen made six months ago. A gifted collector with a sure eye and deep pockets, Mr. Geffen sold several modern masterpieces, including paintings by de Kooning, Pollock and Jasper Johns, so rare that many of today’s richest hedge fund managers paid top prices, realizing that works of such stature would not be for sale again.

This same now-or-never psychology is driving the back-to-back auctions over the next two weeks. What distinguishes this spring from past seasons is how definitively tastes have changed. The spotlight is not on pricey Impressionist and modern paintings, as it has traditionally been, but on postwar and blue-chip contemporary art.

Sellers this season, betting on the market’s upward spiral, include seasoned collectors like David Rockefeller, the philanthropist and chairman emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art; Mr. Geffen; the advertising mogul Charles Saatchi; and the filmmaker Oliver Stone.

Sotheby’s has two staggering paintings. By far the most talked about is a seminal abstract canvas by Mark Rothko: “White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose),” a dreamy pink painting from 1950 that is considered a prime example of his abstract works. Its provenance is every bit as rare as the painting itself. The seller is Mr. Rockefeller, a prolific donor who, when he realized how much his Rothko was worth, decided to cash in on a rising market to use the money for other philanthropic projects.

Which name — Rothko or Rockefeller — carries more magic is anyone’s guess, but Sotheby’s is relentlessly marketing the painting. Top clients have received special white hardback catalogs. And super-rich collectors who were given private viewings of the painting were presented with special gift bags, compliments of Sotheby’s, that included catalogs of a 1998-99 traveling Rothko retrospective, during which the painting was on view at institutions like the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Its $40 million estimate is nearly twice the previous auction record for a Rothko painting, $22.4 million paid at Christie’s in 2005. Its guarantee is more than that; experts familiar with the negotiations say Sotheby’s has promised Mr. Rockefeller $46 million, not to mention giving him a lion’s share of the buyer’s premium.

Mr. Rockefeller bought the painting in 1960 for less than $10,000.

“Nothing like this has come on the market,” Mr. Meyer said. Asked about the aggressive deals he has made with sellers this spring, he added: “This is the market with the biggest growth factor, so you have to be aggressive about it. Why not?”

The other star work in Sotheby’s sale on May 15 is “Study From Innocent X,” a 1962 painting by Francis Bacon. The first in his series based on Velázquez’s “Portrait of Pope Innocent X” (1650), a rich red canvas with a full-length version of one of Bacon’s signature contorted characters. It is estimated at $30 million, more than the record $27.5 million for a Bacon paid at Christie’s in London in February. Christie’s has its share of standouts, and it too has produced separate catalogs for some of its big-ticket items. Among the best is Warhol’s “Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I),” from 1963. A rare example of the famous “Death and Disaster” series, it depicts a photo from a 1963 issue of Newsweek that showed a man whose car had crashed, impaling him on a telephone pole. Christie’s estimates it will bring in $25 million to $35 million, another record estimate.

Younger artists are conspicuously absent from the Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales; that market is now dominated by Phillips, de Pury & Company, the smaller Chelsea firm. But even its sale on May 17 is somewhat tamer than in years past, offering a smattering of mostly well-known names whose work has been seen on the walls of Chelsea galleries. (Michael McGinnis, head of Phillips’s contemporary-art department, said about 30 percent of the material in the auction is being sold by dealers.)

Dealer property can also be found in the Impressionist and modern sales; Christie’s auction on Wednesday has several works that have been on the market recently. But it also has a few paintings and watercolors with star potential, among them Signac’s “Arrière du Tub” (1888), named for a boat whose stern is in the foreground of the painting. It is expected to bring $6 million to $8 million.

Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern sale on Tuesday is bigger and more expensive, and it has fresher material. Highlights include a colorful 1915 painting by Lyonel Feininger; a group of Cézanne watercolors; and an important Giacometti sculpture being sold by Mr. Geffen.

Putting together the Impressionist and modern art sales hasn’t been easy this season, since no big estates came on the market, nor were any big restitution cases settled. For the most part collectors are holding on to their art.

“People still expect the market to keep rising,” said David Norman, Sotheby’s director for Impressionist and modern art worldwide. “Had they been fearful of a market decline, we would have seen a rush to sell. And this spring that didn’t happen.”

Let 10,000 Young Artists Bloom

Among the young artists whose work can be seen on Charles Saatchi’s new Chinese Web site are two who posted self-portraits: Huiyuan Sun, who posted a series of photographs called “A Little Matter and My Face,” above.

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: March 11, 2007

Correction Appended

LONDON

PERUSING the student art on his Web site recently, as he does somewhat obsessively throughout the day, the British collector Charles Saatchi happened upon an entry from a painter named Liu Yang. This artist had posted images of seven of his works, including a painting of a factory set against a haunting gray background and a work on paper depicting a woman’s elongated torso.

But unlike European, American or Australian users of the site, who use their Web pages there to tell the world everything about themselves — their favorite artists, what movies and books inspired them, their convictions about art or politics — Mr. Liu, a student at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, simply wrote: “I can’t speak a lot English. Sorry. But love. ...” His message trailed off in a few lines of Chinese that read in part: “I admit that my knowledge of art is limited at present. However, I am sure I can learn quite a bit from your Web site.”

Soon Mr. Saatchi began to notice that Mr. Liu was not alone. Every day more art students from China were posting their work at Stuart (short for Student Art), a popular nook of Mr. Saatchi’s recently reinvented Web site, saatchi-gallery.co.uk).

Known a decade ago for spotting talent and turning his discoveries into superstars, as he did with so-called Young British Artists like Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread, Mr. Saatchi is fixated these days on Chinese artists, the hottest sector of the global market. And when he saw these shyly tentative Web postings, something clicked.

“There are so many artists in China who want their work to be seen,” he said in a recent interview at his London home, pausing every now and then to scan the large computer screen on his desk. “These students, like all the others, want to know what’s going on around the world.”

So in January he decided to create a Chinese version of his Web site to cater to that audience. Working in a warren of makeshift offices in the basement of his Eaton Square home, 16 experts now oversee both the popular Saatchi Gallery site, which is getting more than six million hits a day, and a site in Mandarin, accessible from the home page, that went online two weeks ago.

“Our goal is to break down language and cultural barriers,” said Neeraj Rattu, who is leading the site’s technology team. Having compiled a considerable amount of data, the team estimates that 20 to 30 art schools operate in China; that about 10,000 students will graduate from such schools this year; and that some 14,000 artists in China are represented by galleries.

“That leaves roughly 10,000 unrepresented artists,” said Kieran McCann, who is in charge of the site’s content and creative development.

About 300 art galleries operate in Beijing and about 300 in Shanghai: a relatively small number, Mr. Saatchi said, considering the surge in interest in Chinese work. China also has 100 to 200 auction houses, many of which sell contemporary works.

Like Stuart, the Chinese site is designed to be as navigable as possible, so that posting work will be as easy as opening an e-mail account. So far 23 Chinese students have posted work on the site.

Each has a distinct personality. Kang Can, a serious-looking young man photographed in sunglasses, writes, in perfect English, that he was born in 1982 in Chongqing and graduated from the Sichuan Fine Art Institute, and that he has already shown his work at Art Basel Miami. Among the 15 images he has posted are a series of paintings in which a sleeping infant is variously depicted in a chewing-gum wrapper, on top of a gun, on the rim of a KFC plastic cup and in other poses.

“Babies as a symbol of human purity came to this world simple and unadulterated,” Mr. Kang writes.

Some of the pages are more cosmopolitan than others. Stephanie Hueon Tung, a student at Peking University, writes that she recently graduated from Harvard. “Now living and working in the wonderful city of Beijing,” her posting says. “Fan of adrenaline and adventure. Olé!”

Ms. Tung shows six images from her “light writing” series, in which she scrawled in light on photographs ranging from a still life of a park bench to an image of a closed-up shop that she embellished with a heart-shaped graffito. Another student, Huiyuan Sun, has posted a work called “A Little Matter and My Face,” a series of 10 photographic self-portraits in which he depicts himself in many guises.

In a few weeks the Saatchi team hopes the new site will be as interactive as the English-language one, with a chat room in Mandarin and a forum encouraging artists to debate current issues. The team’s eventual goal is to make its chat rooms seamlessly international, so that students from all over the world can talk to one another in many languages.

As it did for Stuart, the Saatchi team is reaching out to art schools in China to let them know that their students can post pages at the site. “It’s all been word of mouth,” Mr. Rattu said.

One looming concern is potential censorship by the Chinese government. In recent months China has aggressively brokered controversial accords with Google and Yahoo to filter the search-engine services they offer in China and blocked access to some material offered by the Chinese version of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Mr. Saatchi’s team knows it may encounter problems if work posted on the site is overtly political or directly critical of the Chinese leadership. Its pioneering effort is likely to be closely monitored by Western dealers and auction houses in the months ahead.

Pressed on that possibility Annabel Fallon, a spokeswoman for the Saatchi Gallery, played down the potential for conflict. “After discussions with the Chinese Embassy here we don’t believe censorship will be too much of a problem,” she said in a written statement. “According to the dealers and artists in China we are in contact with, government interference in the arts seems to be at a very low level in the last 10 years.”

She added, “We don’t foresee our site becoming a platform for anti-government propaganda, but we do of course aim to be respectful to the wishes of our host nation if our site starts being abused.”

In remaking his Web site nine months ago to appeal to artists and students and to be more interactive, Mr. Saatchi says, he resolved to buy nothing posted there for the site’s first year. Nonetheless he has already bought works elsewhere by popular Chinese artists like Wang Guangyi, Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang. And when his new gallery, a 50,000-square-foot space on Kings Road in the Chelsea section of London, opens in the fall, its first show will be devoted to contemporary Chinese artists.

In the meantime he and his Internet team spend their days pondering ways of attracting more artists to the site. In addition to Stuart, for art students, and Your Gallery, a separate area where artists of all ages can post their work and sell it directly without relying on a dealer or other middleman, the site offers links to museums around the world and a magazine with art world news and feature articles.

It is also sponsoring a six-month competition called Showdown, the art Web equivalent of “Pop Idol” in Britain or “American Idol” in the United States. Artists registered at the site can enter works on which the Internet public will vote; the winner will get £1,000 (about $1,930) and a chance to show his or her work at the Saatchi Gallery when it opens. The runner-up will get £750, or about $1,450.

After posting its first call for submissions last week, the site reported nine million hits over a 24-hour period. The team will soon post the contest instructions in Mandarin so that Chinese artists can compete.

But Mr. Saatchi says he won’t stop with China. Over the next six months his team hopes to draw in artists from India, Russia, Spain and South America.

“My aim,” Mr. Saatchi said, “ is to do everything I can to maximize the site’s exposure.”

In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism

Chang W. Lee /The New York Times

Yue Minjun with some of his smiling figures in his Beijing studio. One of China’s new breed of financially successful artists, he lives in a large walled-off compound. More Photos >

By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: January 4, 2007

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.”

Leading article: A contemporary view of the world

Saturday, 7 October 2006

Charles Saatchi could be forgiven for wondering if much has changed in our attitudes to contemporary art in the past nine years. The opening of his new show, USA Today, at the Royal Academy has been greeted by the same moral outrage that was hurled in the direction of his Sensation exhibition in 1997. Despite the depressingly familiar nature of the latest controversy, though, the truth is that we are much more willing to engage with new work today. And Mr Saatchi deserves a good deal of the credit for that transformation.

Many of the artists featured in Sensation - among them Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman - have gone on to become respected figures on the international art scene. Neglected media such as installation, video and performance have entered the mainstream thanks to Mr Saatchi's sponsorship. Artistic institutions have also benefited from his patronage. His philanthropic donations have swelled the coffers of several art schools.

Mr Saatchi is not universally loved, of course. Peter Blake has argued that his commercial influence is such that those new artists who do not catch his eye - or fall from favour - can suffer unjustly. Others note that Mr Saatchi's adeptness in generating publicity (using the presentation skills learnt as a advertising executive) has significantly boosted the value of his own art acquisitions.

But similar accusations could be levelled at many wealthy patrons throughout history. And despite the huge public interest in his personal life, he has always put the art first - and it is here that his real achievement lies.

Mr Saatchi has helped to make contemporary art part of our culture. People think about, debate - and, most importantly, view - contemporary art in a way they simply did not before he began collecting. He has also made Britain a world centre for contemporary art. Witness the growing popularity of the Frieze Art Fair, which opens next week. Tens of thousands of visitors come - not to buy but just to enjoy. Regardless of your opinion of contemporary art, it is impossible to deny that there is now a substantial public appetite for it.

He may be no artist himself, but Mr Saatchi has helped to change the way we see the world.

'Prop idol' Pete begins hunt to fill Saatchi space

By Oliver Duff
Monday, 25 September 2006

* When the pop baron (and landlord) Pete Waterman evicted Charles Saatchi from his prestigious gallery at London's County Hall in 2003, it was assumed that Waterman would seek more conventional replacement tenants.

A difficult relationship had become fraught as Saatchi scattered nuisance modern art exhibits about the building - a bronze sleeping bag in a corridor corner; an unloaded builder's skip in the main entrance hall; a mini suddenly parked halfway down the stairs.

Waterman now wants to turn the 300,000 square feet he runs over to young artists and creative businesses, however, to create an "ideas village" championing upcoming home talent. The British Phonographic (record) Industry has already moved in.

"We will have recording studios, artists and people who want to make bars of soap," he tells me. "Estate agents are cynical and want us to rent it as office space to some boring IT departments. The agents think we have lost the plot because we turned them away and tore up the rules.

"But Britain is a small country on a world map and I want us to still have the best ideas in the future. We are looking for about 30 or 40 businesses."

Waterman credits Saatchi's "beautiful" gallery for drawing crowds to the South Bank of the Thames but says: "It was becoming a nightmare. You'd walk around the building scared to touch anything, because you're not sure if it is a crisp packet someone has left on the stairs or Charles's art."

* When Touching the Void mountaineer Joe Simpson was stranded on a peak in the Andes - starved, dehydrated, and alone with a broken leg - he prepared to die.

There was no bright light, soothing calm, or vision of his family. Instead, he found the cheddar-tastic 1978 song Brown Girl in the Ring flying around his mind on a loop. "I remember thinking," Simpson recalls, "Bloody hell. I'm going to die to Boney M."

So should the West End's Shaftesbury Theatre - where the Boney M musical Daddy Cool has finally premiered - plan to sell Kendal Mint Cake during the interval, alongside those funny little pots of ice cream?

"No!" exclaims a lady in Simpson's office when I call. "Absolutely no way is Joe going. He hates Boney M."

Apparently he never particularly liked the record in the first place, and would rather go back up the mountain.

* Giorgio Armani's £1.5m party, sponsored by Peroni, was the most lavish to have graced London Fashion Week. Guests included Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyoncé, Bono and Andrea Bocelli.

Bryan Ferry and Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes spoke earnestly to me about Aids in Africa. I loitered by Armani's table, but he doesn't speak English and "Dov'è la stazione?" seemed out of place. So it was funnier to embark on a mercy mission to our eclipsed C-list celebs.

Calum Best, son of George, first: what did he think of the genocide in Darfur, asked my colleague Johann Hari? A boggle-eyed Best squeaked: "It's all right."

It-girl Lady Victoria Hervey told us she arrived late and missed 50 Cent. "My Maltese Terrier had an accident everywhere. I spent ages clearing it up.

"That's not very glamorous, is it?" No.

* What secret might Lembit Opik have squirreled away? Pandora reported last week that when the amiable Lib Dem, engaged to weatherwoman temptress Sian Lloyd, was asked if he had hidden demons akin to those which destroyed the careers of three frontbench colleagues, he replied that he was "as flawed as the next person".

A reader writes: "I have got to know and to observe Lembit well. If there is a skeleton in his closet, it is that he was an inveterate charmer of young female researchers in a group, rather than individually, and got on reasonably well with the blokes too.

"He is highly (and successfully) sociable. His 'people skills' are definitely in the top quartile. I know of no concealed negative attributes whatever."

* Halt your mortgage repayments, buy a speedboat, and bulk buy tinned food, gin, tonic and lime: the end of our so-called civilisation may be nigh.

Montezuma's Aztecs had it coming when Hernan Cortés and his conquistadors rang the temple doorbell, while Rome's corrupt elite should have realised that their gluttony for banquets and young boys was fatal. For us, the warning sign is surely that the 2007 calendar starring Page 3 model Keeley (20, from Kent) has reached the top-10 bestsellers on Amazon's book chart.

Keeley does contribute "news in briefs" to the red-tops - for instance berating the "rush" of immigrants; or "soft-touch judges".

I have ordered a copy of the literature, in case I am rushing to judgement on this. Expect a review.

A new sensation: Saatchi's return to Royal Academy sparks pornography row

By Louise Jury, Arts Correspondent
Friday, 22 September 2006

The last time Charles Saatchi showed his art at the Royal Academy, four Academicians resigned, protesters attacked a portrait of the child-murderer Myra Hindley and one room had an unprecedented "adults only" warning.

Bur judging by a first glimpse of his new exhibition, nine years after the groundbreaking Sensation show, Saatchi has made no efforts to censor his second venture into the distinguished 238-year-old institution.

His new show, USA Today, will feature more than 150 works by 40 young Americans, many never seen before in Britain.

Among the exhibits will be some guaranteed to upset those who previously took offence at Chris Ofili's dung-covered Virgin Mary or the Chapman brothers sculptures of children augmented by distorted genitalia.

Several works by Gerald Davis, a 32-year-old artist born in Pennsylvania, explore childhood fantasies in a way that may disturb while 37-year-old Lara Schnitger's "I want kids" sculpture, with its giant phallus invites controversy. Schnitger denies any suggestion of paedophilia and sees it as a "sort of fertility symbol".

But Davis admits paintings such as Monica, in which a young girl with pompoms on her socks is seen performing oral sex, stemmed from his own fantasies at the age of 12.

"I don't think I fully understood a lot of these things at the time and that's why it's interesting to meditate on them with an adult perspective. It's an adult telling a story from a kid's point of view," he said.

Asked whether he worried about how it might be regarded, he said: "I can't think too much about how people may interpret a work because that can lead to serious artist's block.

"I realise that childhood sexuality is a taboo subject and can offend some people and be exciting to others. But if someone has a particular fetish, they bring that to the image, not vice versa."

Norman Rosenthal, the exhibitions secretary at the Royal Academy, admitted he was "a little fearful" when the show was first suggested. Some Academicians - the artists elected to run the Academy - quickly expressed concern about inviting Saatchi to return.

But Mr Rosenthal said: "I went to the States, met a lot of the artists and dealers and collectors and there's no question that what Charles is doing - rather as he did with Sensation - is epoch-making."

Now Mr Rosenthal is describing USA Today as "the next great show". He insists that the artists are engaging in topical aspects of the world, not setting out to shock.

"It doesn't mean any artists condone paedophilia, but it doesn't mean to say you shouldn't confront it, [just] as one confronts issues of the environment or global politics and so on."

Saatchi said:Although they are largely unknown outside a small group of enthusiasts in America, I think their work is going to grab people by the throat, and the fact that they're not household names anywhere yet only makes it more exciting."

Asked whether he expected to upset visitors, he said: "Well, there's no head made of George Bush's blood... there are no portraits of child-killers, but those who are in the business of being offended shouldn't be too disappointed."

USA Today runs from 6 October to 4 November at the Royal Academy, Burlington Gardens.

Saatchi's new sensation: the Peeing Madonna

By Anthony Barnes, Arts and Media Correspondent
Sunday, 17 September 2006

Charles Saatchi, the art collector who has exhibited works such as Tracey Emin's unmade bed and Damien Hirst's pickled shark, is to display one of his most outrageous works yet.

As the centrepiece of a new display of recent acquisitions he will unveil a sculpture in which more than a dozen religious icons of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary have been fitted with penises and gathered around a urinal.

The "offensive" artwork, Medusa by Terence Koh, will show at "USA Today", a new exhibition of young American artists due to open at the Royal Academy of Arts next month.

Mr Saatchi ranks Koh as one of the most gifted sculptors in the US, and many of Koh's works feature his own blood and semen.

Mr Saatchi said: "Terence Koh's work is as nasty as you like. He has the face of an angel but the soul of a sewer rat. He and Banks Violette are the two most exciting new sculptors in America." Violette is another artist featured in the month-long exhibition.

Chinese-born Koh, 29, lists his own urine as one of the components in Medusa, a steel urinal inside a water closet which also contains a shelf crowded with the religious figures, each with a crudely fashioned phallus.

This exhibition comes almost 10 years after Mr Saatchi's Royal Academy exhibition "Sensation" caused widespread outrage, featuring massive images of the child murderer Myra Hindley by Marcus Harvey as well as Chris Ofili's depiction of the Virgin Mary, which contained pornographic magazine images.

Nathan Paine Davey, secretary-general of the Society of Mary, which is devoted to honouring the Virgin, said: "If the artist has attached phalluses, I think most people would find that grossly offensive."

Portrait of an ex-husband's revenge

The vicious feud between artists Charles Thomson and his former wife, Stella Vine, has spilled over on to canvas. Anthony Barnes reports

Sunday, 3 September 2006

As an act of naked revenge, it is a work of art. The artist Stella Vine, who found fame when Charles Saatchi took her under his wing, is laid bare by her former husband in a series of explicit, humiliating nude portraits at a major exhibition.

The artworks will reignite a simmering feud between Vine and Charles Thomson, which has seen them trading verbal salvos in media interviews without actually exchanging a word with each other. Thomson - co-founder of anti-conceptual art movement the Stuckists - himself concedes the works will leave her "pissed off" and "angry".

His paintings, to be exhibited at the Stuckists' first major central London exhibition, are titled simply Stripper and Strip Club, though it is clear who inspired them. The publicity material for the show, which opens next month, even spells out that they are "explicit images of his ex-wife".

They will be seen by many as an act of revenge for the brevity of their marriage. Thomson, 53, said the works were not intended as a public attack, more a way of privately dealing with his own emotions through his art after their relationship crumbled.

Vine, 37, who formerly worked as a stripper, found notoriety when her painting of Diana, Princess of Wales, daubed with the words "Hi Paul, can you come over I'm really frightened", was exhibited by Saatchi.

As a former member of the Stuckists, her association with the collector infuriated her former compatriots who claimed she had taken their ideas and sidled up to the enemy. She achieved further notoriety when she created a work depicting Rachel Whitear, who had died of a heroin overdose, to the anger of the dead girl's parents.

Vine, who opens her own solo show at the Modern Art Oxford gallery next month, developed her skills attending classes at Hampstead School of Art, and after falling in with the Stuckists exhibited her work for the first time at a small display in Brixton, south London, in 2001. Within weeks she had married Thomson at a ceremony in New York's City Hall, but they separated within two months.

Thomson told The Independent on Sunday: "I did these paintings after we broke up - the sort of consolidation period. For me it was a way of working through the emotional after-effects. Basically she had told me a lot of stories about her time in the sex industry and really they were quite gutting. It wasn't very nice hearing them and it left a bit of an emotional scar on me. It was a way of getting them out of my system. I found it quite gruelling to do them."

The Stuckists emerged from a group of artistic friends who once counted Tracey Emin and her then boyfriend Billy Childish among their number. Their devotion to painting as an art form, instead of moving into other experimental areas, led to Emin condemning Childish as "stuck, stuck, stuck", hence the group's name.

Thomson, who stood for Parliament in 2001 against the then Culture secretary Chris Smith, has not spoken to his former wife for four years, although they have traded vicious barbs in newspaper interviews. She has claimed he "exploited" her and is "full of shit", while he has branded her "a mercurial character who thinks nothing about he pain she puts others through".

Thomson said it was the gallery that chose to exhibit the nudes, but he was unapologetic about showing them in public. "She will probably be very pissed off. She'll be angry and very upset because it is one rule for her and another for everyone else. She expects people to understand when she does it. She does Diana with blood coming out of her mouth and looking traumatised and it's fine, but that woman is a mother and her children are still alive.

"She claims it comes from deep within her and it is the same with my pictures. It comes from deep within me and it is important. If she does feel upset, it can't be half as upset as the parents of Rachel Whitear or Diana's sons."

Vine was keeping her counsel about the exhibition when she was informed by The Independent on Sunday. She said: "I have no comment. I've had my dealings with them [the Stuckists] over the past couple of years and I don't want to say anything more."