 "The billion-dollar brush stroke")
It’s been a very good month for Chinese art. Its artists, its fashion and even its terracotta soldiers have been all over the international news the past few weeks. Perhaps it’s all just fallen together serendipitously (or not), but there it is.
Thousands saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi posing in front of China’s best art treasure, the 2nd century Terracotta Warriors. The rest of the modern world saw Beyonce, George Clooney, Rihanna and many others sashay in China-inspired fashions to celebrate an exhibition on The Impact of Chinese Aesthetics on Western Fashion at the annual Metropolitan Museum Gala, New York.
As if this wasn’t enough, China 8, a massive exhibition of contemporary Chinese art with 120 artists and 500 works, is touring nine museums across eight German cities from May 14 till September. Since there’s never been an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art of this magnitude earlier, the main question the audiences asked was: Just how much influence did Chinese officials exert over the entire process?
“Almost none,” say the organisers. Walter Smerling, chairman, Foundation for Art and Culture in Bonn, says he and his team visited the ateliers of more than 200 artists in China, whom they selected without assistance from the government or any official restrictions.
To add to the fun, there’s always the Venice Biennale. Unlike India, which had a national pavilion in 2011, the Chinese have had a pavilion every year since 2003. In fact, it’s evolved into one of the most important sites for China to articulate a vision of itself in the (art) world, even though it has rarely received positive reviews.
Art critics are intentionally vague about why this is so. The unspoken “variety of reasons” is the recurring conflicts between the Chinese government’s demand to control this venue and China’s contemporary artists, who are arguably the hardest people to control in China.
The dichotomy remains that China’s pavilion officially represents the nation, and, therefore, must be politically correct. In fact, when invited to the Venice Biennale in the 1980s, the Chinese government had sent traditional paper-cuttings and tapestries. But by 1999, 20 Chinese artists exhibited their works at the Biennale. Cai Guoqiang became the first Chinese artist to win the award for best artist that year. Ai Weiwei, now one of the world’s most famous artists, also exhibited that year. After these milestones, the Venice Biennale became a hot topic in China, and the artists who achieved acclaim there became role models for artists back home.
Visitors look at the installation called “Bang” by Ai Weiwei at the German pavilion during the 55th La Biennale of Venice in 2013
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As an artist-activist (he just won the Amnesty award, along with singer-activist Joan Baez and was named by ArtReview Magazine as the most powerful artist in the world), Ai has never had his work included in China’s pavilion. But nonetheless, Ai has had a strong showing at this year’s Venice Biennale. His work is on display at the German pavilion. He also has two other large pieces on display at his solo exhibition, Disposition.
He’s not the only “unofficial” face of Chinese art in Venice. An estimated 2,000 Chinese art workers flooded Venice this year with 14 exhibitions across Venice. One of these exhibitions features works of some 150 Chinese artists.
The reason for this is that modern art is seen in China as not only a good investment and a status symbol, but also a symbol of defiance for both artist and collector. After the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in 1989, visual art moved with surprising velocity from the underground to becoming a recognised cultural form. Most of the artists from that “first” generation have become part of the elite International Art scene. Their works sell for millions of euros.
By 2013, according to a study by the European Fine Art Foundation, China had a market share of 24 per cent of world art sales, which meant $65.9 billion, placing it just behind the United States.
But it doesn’t stop there. Auction houses are trying to promote new young Chinese artists in recent years. In the second half of 2014; Sotheby’s Hong Kong, for the first time, held evening auctions for works by young artists. Soon afterwards, Poly International Auction stepped up the promotion of its young artists segment, and held a series of special auctions. Multiple young artists set price records for their personal works.
The unveiling of the steel sculpture titled “China Scene No. 4?” by Chen Wenling at Dusseldorf Airport as part of China 8
All of this has left India far behind. As Chennai gallery owner Sharan Apparao says, “India has been through a recession. The contemporary art market here is just getting out of its infancy, so hopefully it will also rise with the next economic tide.”
The current worth of the Indian art market is around $500 million and the buyers, mainly affluent Indians abroad, focus on international art. Roshini Vadehra, director, Vadehra Art Gallery, says, “The recent increase in the Chinese market is driven by the increased sales of works worth that are more than $500,000, which account for approximately 60 per cent of the overall Chinese auction market. There are only a handful of Indian buyers who have the confidence to spend over $100,000 on a single artwork.”
According to her, the other difference is that the Chinese government is extremely ambitious with its cultural policy. “There are a few thousand museums in China, with about 100 museums being added every year. Both Beijing and Shanghai boast wonderful art districts that have galleries, museums, artist studios and art cafes.”
The galleries also bear the burden of the Indian tax structure; VAT of 12.5 per cent and import duty of nearly 15 per cent discourage Indian residents from purchasing Indian art from abroad or holding exhibitions of international art. In contrast, the Chinese government has exempted the art industry from all taxes for a period of five years. China has hundreds of small and large auction houses, while India has less than 10 domestic auction houses.
“The big difference between these two groups of emerging collectors is that the Chinese collectors put top priority on the thrill (and ‘face’) of bringing back trophy pieces of traditional art that have been in Western collections,” says Avery Booker, editor, Jing Daily. “There’s a cultural aspect to this, since many Chinese collectors feel that these pieces had been smuggled or secreted out of China in previous centuries and they’re ‘repatriating’ these items. There’s a sort of patriotic pride in this. But more Chinese collectors are starting to feel the same way about contemporary art by ‘blue-chip’ Chinese artists.”
The other side of the coin is the artists. While individual artists in China are consistently fetching prices of over $5 million in auctions, there are only a couple of Indian artists who have managed to fetch prices in the range of $1-3 million. Artprice’s Top 500 for 2013-2014 includes just three contemporary Indian artists: Subodh Gupta, Raqib Shaw and Jitish Kallat.
Chinese art has, in just 26 years, learnt to connect with the world. The story it tells is so strong that it has managed to make itself critical to the economy. It has forced even the Chinese government to give it the freedom that makes exhibitions like China 8 possible — as long as it doesn’t, like the works of Ai, become too critical of China itself.