The Art World's Newest Love: Contemporary Chinese Works
Patricia Tang has been an avid collector of master drawings for more than 30 years, and can quickly tick off 18th- and 19th-century favorites like Edgar Degas and John Constable.
But collecting drawings by these European masters simply lost its edge over time. "The artists at auction were the same over and over again," she says.
The artists Ms. Tang is most excited about these days are of a more recent vintage -- from late 20th-century China. "These people are alive, there's a lot of energy there," says Ms. Tang, a New Yorker who has invested just under $100,000 in works by conceptual artist Gu Wenda and multimediaist Xu Bing.
'The Sun,' by Yue Minjun, was painted in 2002 and recently sold for $185,000 at auction.
The art world's latest discovery is modern China. In Beijing and Shanghai, more than 30 galleries dealing primarily in contemporary Chinese artists have opened in less than a decade, selling to local and international clientele. In New York, Sotheby's auction house recently opened a contemporary Chinese art department. And the city's Max Protetch Gallery, traditionally associated with big-name architects, has added four edgy Chinese artists to its roster, including Hai Bo, a 43-year-old artist known for re-staged photos, and Zhang Xiaogang, 46, who paints wide-eyed portraits.
Recent sales at Christie's auction in Hong Kong also signal the shift in the market. In late May, the auction house sold $60 million worth of contemporary and modern Asian, predominantly Chinese, art -- almost triple the amount sold last year. The top lot, a triptych by China's East-West fusion specialist Zhao Wuji, sold for $2.3 million, setting a world record for a Chinese oil painting.
Just a few years ago, only a handful of China's artists were registered on the secondary international art market, according to Josh Eldred, vice president for marketing of online auction database Artfact. Today, he says, collectors around the world have discovered the works of some of China's most well-respected artists. In just five years, prices of canvases by modernists such as Zhu Dequn and Fu Baoshi have shot up as much as 500%. "This represents a dramatic growth over a short period of time," says Mr. Eldred. "It's growing faster than traditional [art] markets."
EYE ON CHINA
See a list of some of the best-known contemporary Chinese artists and how their works did at some recent sales.
While prices for many artists are rising steeply, one of the reasons for the interest is that much of the art is still relatively affordable compared with Western art. Works from 1980s U.S.-based artists such as Richard Prince and Eric Fischl sell in the $300,000 to $2 million range, but a painting or sculpture from a Chinese artist of the same era, such as Li Shan, can go for as little as $5,000. Another selling point: The images are pretty easy for art lovers outside China to relate to -- Mr. Li, one of the pioneers of the so-called "Mao Goes Pop" movement, is famous for depictions of the former Chinese chairman on Mark Rothko-like colorfields.
While there has long been an active market for antique Chinese furniture, the country's traditional art market -- notably delicate ink-brush paintings using techniques dating back thousands of years -- has had less appeal to foreign art buyers. But in the 1980s, as China began opening up and artists were publicly allowed to experiment for the first time, international collectors began taking note: Xu Bing distorted traditional calligraphy and inserted it into landscapes (he now does multimedia installations and is a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award winner); Wang Guangyi played on images of American consumer brands (becoming another of the "Mao goes pop" artists), while ink brush artist Li Jin turned out humorous, unflattering self-portraits.
Now, however, some gallery owners and collectors wonder if speculation is outpacing reality. When he moved to the U.S. from China in 1998, photographer and performance artist Zhang Huan could rarely find a buyer willing to pay more than $100 for one of his photos, which depict scenes like male bathers standing waist-deep in water. In May, Mr. Zhang's "Family Tree" series (showing the artist's face covered with Chinese characters) sold for $96,000 at Christie's contemporary auction in Hong Kong. Prices for such pieces at the spring auctions were high both for top-of-the-line works and "mediocre" ones, says Henry Au-yeung, director of Grotto Fine Art in Hong Kong. "There are some lesser artists who are getting triple their high estimate," he says.
Gu Wenda's 'United Nations-China Monument: Temple of Heaven'
Those kinds of hikes are making collectors such as New Jersey-based John Fernandez a little nervous. In the past three years, Mr. Fernandez and his wife Carmen have spent about $1 million on contemporary Chinese works, buying directly from galleries in China via the Internet or through galleries in New York and London. To finance the purchases, they sold off works in their collection by '80s artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. But at Christie's spring auction in Hong Kong, the couple lost out in bidding on every Chinese painting they were interested in, even though they often bid twice the high estimate. The owner of a commercial poster and printing company, Mr. Fernandez says it is like betting on a runaway train. "Keith Haring and Basquiat [were] moving at 50 miles per hour and I flipped it for something moving at 100 miles per hour."
Dozens of those artists are surfacing in auction catalogs in Hong Kong and China. China Guardian, the nation's largest auction house, says sales of Chinese paintings have almost tripled since 2003, with spring sales hitting a record high of $44.5 million. (More than 60% of these artworks are from artists who worked in the 20th century). In the past year in Shanghai, two new private museums and one public museum opened solely for contemporary art -- generally works produced after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 -- while Beijing's art districts, which didn't exist a decade ago, now include about 22 registered galleries. Many are betting that newly-flush Chinese will soon move on from buying luxury items like designer handbags and fancy cars to collecting works of art.
Beijing entrepreneur and collector Zhang Haoming has been so active snapping up works by local artists, local curators refer to him as "the Chinese Saatchi," after Charles Saatchi, one of the United Kingdom's leading contemporary art collectors. Mr. Zhang recently opened "Beijing Art Now," a gallery and restaurant, next to the Workers' Stadium, which is aimed at attracting a crowd of hipsters. To get his hands on two paintings by artists Guo Wei, 45, and Guo Jin, 41, Mr. Zhang recently bought out an entire gallery -- 21 works -- in Chengdu in Sichuan Province. It was worth it, says Mr. Zhang. "These are important artists."
Undervalued Art
Collector Christopher Tsai also thinks that the Chinese art market is still worth pursuing. A hedge fund manager in New York, he has spent over $250,000 on Chinese artists since 2002, and believes the investment already has appreciated. He points to the $19,500 he spent last year on a series of photos by Zhang Yuan. A similar, though larger, series sold at Christie's in June for $100,000. "I'm trying to build a portfolio of Chinese art like I manage my clients," says Mr. Tsai, 30, who believes Chinese art is undervalued -- especially compared with markets such as Mexico. "Some contemporary Mexican artists sell for $1 million," he says. "Yet the GDP of Mexico is half of that of China."
One of Zhang Xiaogang's 'Bloodlines series'
Such interest has helped transform the Chinese cultural landscape. Today, the flow of talent has reversed: Rather than fleeing China in search of freedom of expression, many Chinese artists are heading back to the mainland in search of commercial recognition.
In China in the 1980s, for example, conceptual artist Gu Wenda's bold ink paintings playing on the slogans of the Cultural Revolution landed him on the government's blacklist. Fearing the young artist was trying to push a political message, propaganda officials closed down several of his shows. Tired of the persecution, Mr. Gu following the path of many oppressed artists -- he emigrated.
Since then Mr. Gu's fortunes have changed along with that of China's modern-art market. In 1998, Mr. Gu sold a panel, featuring calligraphic work constructed from hair, at auction for $16,000. Today, collectors from New York to Shanghai pay upward of $50,000 for similar pieces. "I can't keep up with commissions from collectors," says 50-year-old Mr. Gu. The artist divides his time between a comfortable brownstone in Brooklyn that he shares with his wife, interior designer Kathryn Scott, and studios in Shanghai and Xian.
"From the early 1980s to the early '90s many artists immigrated to the U.S. but now I don't see many," says Mr. Gu, who spends at least two to three months a year in China. "That's because so many curators, critics and buyers go to China to buy art and visit artists, it makes [no sense] for them to move to the U.S. or other countries."
Next Wave
The hype around the '80s pop artists also is inspiring a younger generation of Chinese artists like Zhang Xiaotao, 35, and Zhang Fazhi, 29, to try their hand, too -- though many are addressing issues of urban decay rather than politics in their work. The 35-year old Mr. Zhang, for example, is known for colorful canvases of rotting strawberries or discarded condoms -- and is already getting $20,000 a painting. The younger Mr. Zhang, who graduated from university three years ago, paints garish pictures against the backdrop of opera model sets, and sells the largest pieces for $10,000. These artists are now being featured in galleries from Oakland, California, to Beijing.
These emerging talents are likely to get support from collectors such as Howard Farber. With Western heavy weights like Georgia O'Keefe and Max Weber forming the bulk of his collection, Mr. Farber, 67, switched tracks in 1997 while wandering through a gallery in Hong Kong. He not only decided to collect Chinese (selling off Americans to finance the move) he started a business advising companies on purchasing Chinese works.
It's "another way to play China," says Mr. Farber, a New Yorker, who is still amazed at the turn of events. "I never thought my Georgia O'Keefe would be replaced by a Gu Wenda."
艺术世界的新宠：当代中国作品
2005年07月12日16:11
30多年来，PATRICIA TANG一直在狂热地收藏大师们的画作，她能够迅速鉴别出德加(Edgar Degas)和康斯塔伯(John Constable)等18、19世纪画家作品的真伪。
但收集这些欧洲大师的作品正在逐渐丧失魅力。她说，这些艺术家的作品在每次拍卖会上几乎都一成不变。
住在纽约的Tang女士这些天对中国当代艺术家的兴趣陡然增加。她说，这些人依然健在，因而潜力非常大。她最近用不到10万美元的价格购买了后89艺术家古文达和多媒体艺术家徐冰的画作。
艺术世界的最新发现就是现代的中国。在不到10年的时间里，北京和上海有30多家主要从事中国当代艺术作品交易的画廊开张，面向国内外客户出售作品。在纽约，苏富比拍卖公司(Sotheby's)最近成立了当代中国艺术部。纽约的Max Protetch Gallery一般只和知名建筑师打交道，现在也新增加了4位中国前卫艺术家，其中包括43岁的摄影家海波和46岁的肖像画画家张晓刚。
从最近佳士得拍卖公司(Christie Group PLC)在香港举行的拍卖中也能看出市场发生的变化。5月末，该拍卖行共售出了6,000万美元的亚洲当代和现代艺术品，其中以中国艺术品为主，几乎是去年拍卖金额的三倍。融合了东西方艺术的中国画家赵无极的一幅三连画作拍出了230万美元，创造了中国油画的世界纪录。
网上拍卖数据库Artfact的营销副总裁埃尔德雷德(Josh Eldred)说，仅仅几年前，国际艺术品拍卖市场上登记的中国艺术家还屈指可数。但现在，全球各地的收藏家已经发现了部分中国最知名的艺术家的作品。短短5年的时间，朱德群和傅抱石等当代艺术家的作品价格就飙升了500%。埃尔德雷德说，如此短的时间内有这么大的涨幅确实不同凡响，高出传统的艺术品市场。
尽管许多艺术家的身价大幅上扬，但其中一个原因在于他们的许多作品同西方作品相比仍处于较低水平。上世纪80年代美国艺术家李查?品斯(Richard Prince)和埃里克?费谢尔(Eric Fischl)的作品能够卖到30万到200万美元，但李山等同期中国艺术家的绘画或雕刻最低只有5,000美元。另一个卖点是，这些绘画很容易让中国之外的艺术爱好者产生联想，作为所谓的“Mao Goes Pop”运动的先锋之一，李山以其马克?罗斯柯(Mark Rothko)风格的绘画而闻名。
尽管中国的古旧家具市场一直非常活跃，但中国的传统艺术品市场，尤其是用有著数千年历史的技巧绘制的水墨画对海外艺术品买家始终缺乏吸引力。但到了80年代，随著中国的对外开放和公开允许艺术家大胆尝试，国际收藏家开始将目光转向了中国：徐冰改变了传统的书法，将其融入到山水画中（他是多媒体派的代表人物，麦克阿瑟基金会(MacArthur Foundation)天才奖获得者）；王广义以美国消费品品牌为背景绘画（成为另一个“Mao Goes Pop”艺术家），而水墨画家李京创造了幽默的自画像。
但现在，部分画廊的所有者和收藏家怀疑其中的投机成分可能超出了实际水平。当摄影家、行为艺术家张洹1998年从中国来到美国时，他发现几乎没有买家愿意出100美元以上的价钱购买他的摄影作品。今年5月份，他的《家谱》系列（显示的是这位艺术家的脸为汉字所覆盖）在香港的佳士得当代艺术品拍卖中拍出了96,000美元。香港嘉图现代艺术(Grotto Fine Art)的负责人欧阳宪(Henry Au-yeung)说，春季拍卖会上的此类作品，无论是佳品还是平庸之作，都拍出了不菲的价格，部分艺术家的作品甚至比他们的最高预期还高出了两倍。
如此幅度的上涨令新泽西州的费尔南德斯(John Fernandez)等收藏家感到有些紧张。过去3年中，费尔南德斯和他的太太卡门(Carmen)投资了大约100万美元购买中国当代艺术品，主要通过互联网直接从中国的画廊购买，或是通过纽约和伦敦的画廊购买。为了筹集资金，他们卖出了所收藏的80年代艺术家哈林(Keith Haring)和巴斯奎安(Jean-Michel Basquiat)的作品。但在香港的佳士得春季拍卖会上，他们没能竞拍到任何一件感兴趣的中国绘画，尽管出价经常达到了最高预期价格的两倍。
有数十位这类艺术家出现在香港和中国大陆的拍卖名录中。中国最大的拍卖行嘉德国际拍卖有限公司(China Guardian)称，自2003年以来，中国国画的销售额增长了近两倍，春季拍卖会上创出了4,450万美元的最高销售额。（其中60%以上的艺术品出自20世纪的艺术家之手）。过去1年中，上海新开了两家专门面向当代（1976年文化大革命之后）艺术的私人博物馆和一家公共博物馆，而在北京的艺术区，现在共有约22家登记的画廊。许多人相信，刚刚富余起来的中国人很快就将从购买精美的手袋和高级轿车转向收藏艺术品。
北京的企业家、也是收藏家张豪明(Zhang Haoming, 音译)一直在积极网罗国内艺术家的作品，当地的收藏界人士将他称作是'中国的沙奇'，沙奇指的是查尔斯?沙奇(Charles Saatchi)，英国著名的当代艺术品收藏家。张豪明最近开了一家北京现在画廊(Beijing Art Now)，它既是画廊也是餐馆，坐落在北京工人体育场附近，目的就是要吸引那些对艺术感兴趣的时尚人士。为了获得郭伟和郭晋的两幅作品，张豪明最近还在四川成都买下了一家画廊的所有21幅作品，张豪明表示，这样做是值得的，他们都是非常重要的艺术家。
收藏家Christopher Tsai也认为中国的艺术品市场值得追踪关注。他是纽约的一位对冲基金经理，2002年以来他对中国艺术家作品的投资超过了25万美元，他认为这些作品都已经升值。去年他花19,500美元购买了张元的一个系列摄影作品，而今年6月，类似、只是规格稍大的作品在佳士得(Christie)卖出了10万美元的价格。现年30岁的Tsai表示，像为客户管理投资帐户一样，他自己也在努力建立一个中国艺术品的投资组合。他认为中国艺术品的价值被低估了，特别是和墨西哥这样的市场相比。他说，墨西哥一些现代艺术家的作品已经卖到了100万美元，而墨西哥的国内生产总值(GDP)却只有中国的一半。
像类似这种对中国艺术品的兴趣让中国文化界发生了悄然的改变。如今大量的艺术人才开始将目光转回到国内，而不像过去那些跑到国外寻找自由表达的机会，许多中国艺术家正回归中国市场，寻求获得商业的认可。
比如，上个世纪80年代，概念艺术家古文达利用文化大革命的口号大胆创作了水墨画作品，这让他上了政府的黑名单。由于害怕这位年轻的艺术家散布政治内容，政府宣传官员关闭了他的几次画展。古文达不堪忍受这样的迫害，和许多艺术家一样走上了移民的道路。
从那以后，古文达的命运就和中国当代艺术市场紧紧联系在了一起。1998年，古文达的一件用头发创作的书法版画作品拍卖出了16,000美元。如今，从纽约到上海的收藏者们对类似作品的出价涨到了50,000美元以上。现年50岁的古文达称，收藏家们的需求让他应接不暇。如今，这位艺术家把自己的时间分成了几大块，在纽约布鲁克林舒适的家中陪伴妻子、到室内装饰公司Kathryn Scott上班、并且还打理在上海以及西安的工作室。
古文达称，从80年底初期到90年代初期，许多艺术家移民到了美国，不过现在这样情况不多了。因为许多收藏家、评论家和买主都来到中国购买作品，拜访艺术家，因此没有必要移居到美国或世界其他地方。古文达每年至少有两、三个月要在中国国内渡过。
80年代流行艺术家受到热捧也激励了年轻一代，像35岁的张小涛和29岁的张发志，他们也在跃跃欲试、一试身手，虽然他们的许多作品更多反映的是城市的衰败而不是政治主题。比如，35岁的张小涛比较有名的油画作品描写的就是腐烂的草莓以及被丢弃的避孕套，如今他的一幅作品的价格也已经达到了2万美元。张发志三年前才从学校毕业，他的作品以歌剧模型为背景，颜色鲜明耀眼，其中他最大的一幅作品售价1万美元。如今从奥克兰到北京，各地的画廊都能看到这些艺术家的作品。
这些冉冉升起的艺术新秀或许会得到像霍华德?法伯(Howard Farber)这样的收藏家的支持。在现年67岁的法伯大量的收藏品中，不乏乔治娜?欧姬芙(Georgia O'Keefe)、马克斯?韦伯(Max Weber)等重量级人物的作品。1997年法伯在参观完香港的一家艺术画廊后，改变了收藏的路线，他不仅决定收藏中国的作品（为了筹集资金，他卖掉了美国的艺术作品），还开设了一项业务，为那些购买中国艺术品的公司提供咨询意见。
法伯表示，这是涉足中国市场的又一种方式，“我以前从来没有想到欧姬芙的作品会被古文达取代。”
