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Asia
Magazine August
16-18, 1996
Illustration
of the pictures:
Cover:
The Square, No.9 by Zhu Wei
P10-11:
Stephen McGruinness with his Zhu Wei collection
P12:
The art of Fang Lijun
P13:
Painting by Zhang Xiaogang
P14:
Lishan's 7 Days of the Week (top) and Wang Guangyi's Great Criticism
Art
Attack: Will Contemporary Chinese Art Survive?
After
the first flush of success - and excess - demand for contemporary
Chinese art has softened, leading cynics to quesry its artistic value.
Scarlet Cheng Reports
Whatever
happened to the art attack of the early 1990s? For a while, it seemed
that Asia's nouveau riche had decided to collect all seriously along
with diamond-crusted Rolexes and Italian sports cars. Hong Kong, always
on the scent of the rich and famous, saw galleries mushrooming
overnight. Art openings and auctions became chic gathering spots for
yuppies and socialites.
But
after that first flush of excess, the hangover is taking its toll.
The
first major international art fair in the region was Art Asia, held in
Hong Kong in November 1992. Seventy-two galleries from around the world
participated: the exhibition attracted 40,000 visitors and made an
estimated US$40 million in sales. Between 1992 and 1994, record prices
were set for works by hitherto unknown mainland artists. The most
spectacular overnight success story was that of Liu Yuyi, whose oil
painting Song of the Goddess Nuwa fetched a record HK$8,888,888 (US$1.15
million) at Art Asia '94.
What
is staggering -- or outrageous, depending on your point of view - is
that mainland artists who have burst on to the international art scene
only in this decade are commanding price tags the equivalent of David
Hockney or Jim Dine, artists who have had international careers spanning
several decades. Indeed, this explosion of interest in contemporary
Chinese art has led many art experts to caution buyers against being
taken in by the sizzle rather than the steak,
"There's
a great deal of interest in contemporary Chinese art, but it tends to be
trend-driven," admits Stephen McGuinness, director of the Plum
Blossoms Gallery of Hong Kong and Singapore. "People tend to go hot
and cold very quickly."
Auctions
give a good reading of the volatility of the market -- Christie's Hong
Kong autumn 1995 auctions were dismal, with total sales for contemporary
Chinese art fetching only HK$4.38 million - a third of the amount
achieved during its spring auction in 1992, the beginning of this
Chinese art boom. However, this year's spring sales have seen the market
bounce back, with a total of HK$7.63 million generated from contemporary
Chinese paintings.
Industry
observers regard the cooling down of art fever as a positive
development. "We were on a binge, with prices that were highly
inflated for less than outstanding art," says a gallery owner. This
slowdown, he says, will sort out the wheat from the chaff.
Stones
abound of struggling mainland artists with an eye to the main chance who
have tried to cash in on the frenzy. American artist Janis Provisor
tells of one mainland artist who wanted to sell his works on paper (as
opposed to canvas) for US$6,000 because he had heard that was what
people abroad were getting. Although the artist produced good work, he
had never established a reputation or a market outside China -- and
certainly had never got anything close to US$6,000 for any of his
paintings.
Even
other Asian artists and critics find the mainland art attack a
distortion. Hong Kong artist Yank Wong says: "Mainland Chinese
artists have become so commercial. They've just doing what sells - or
maybe what their dealers tell them sells."
While
the word "contemporary" is broadly used to describe art that
is being produced today, some use it more specifically to designate art
that employs not only contemporary styles but expresses contemporary
sentiments. This more stringent definition would exclude those
academy-trained Chinese artists who paint in a Realist manner, such
artists as Chen Yifei and his romanticized paintings of Old Shanghai and
Old Suzhou, Wang Yidong and Jiang Guofang and their nostalgic
portraitures, While technically well-executed, some critics would say
these paintings have no soul and do not express the new China -- and
thus are not truly contemporary at all.
Contemporary
Chinese art is not a recent invention -- an earlier generation of
mainland artists, now in their 60s and 70s, traveled abroad in their
younger days and picked up Westernised -- and highly personalised --
styles of artistic expression. This group -- artists such as Zao Wou-ki
and Walasse Ting -- has been producing contemporary art for decades. Yet
the market for contemporary Chinese art in Asia is a recent development.
Half of the dozen or so galleries in Hong Kong which specialise in
contemporary Asian art have been set up since 1992.
Alongside
the increasing affluence and sophistication of the region, observers
credit the Chinese art market boom to improved access to the mainland,
thus helping to expose the works of Chinese artists to a wider audience.
This is significant because in China these works -- unsanctioned though
not illegal - are rarely shown publicly and have virtually no market.
Director
of Hanart TZ Johnson Chang, is one of Hong Kong's gallery owners who has
helped establish an awareness of cotemporary Chinese art abroad. In
1993, Chang and mainland art critic Li Xianting, staged a landmark
exhibition featuring 200 works by 51 mainland artists. The show, China's
New Art Post-1989, took place in Hong Kong and attracted an avalanche of
attention.
"What
prompted me to do this show was that I thought Chinese contemporary art
on the mainland had reached a maturity," says Chang. "Even if
some were using borrowed language [Western styles of arr, they were
using it in a way which is significant and coherent."
For
Chang, who has become both aesthetic champion and commercial promoter,
significance comes from "some rich living experiences",
resulting in creating works relevant to one's society or environment.
Among
the younger generation of mainland artists, "Political Pop"
emerged as the style that seemed most coherent and accessible. These
prints and paintings interweave images of Mao Zedong, PLA soldiers and
revolutionary ballets with Western consumerist icons such as product
logos, video games, women in bikinis, Coca Cola cans, and Mickey Mouse.
Wang
Guangyi, for example, took Cultural Revolution posters of heroic workers
and soldiers and placed them alongside logos for Nikon cameras and
Swatch watches. Yu Youhan painted portraits of Mau Zedong against a
backdrop of kitsch floral patterns.
Works
of Political Pop - which include also Feng Menbo, Qi Zhilong, Zhang
Gong, and Zhu Wei -- have sold well. Today, small works start at
US$1,000 with medium-sized paintings selling for US$5,000 to US$30,000.
Because of their bold colour and line, these works have a strong graphic
appeal. They also carry a satirical edge.
Chang
has campaigned energetically to get his artists into major international
art shows and museums, helping to organize exhibitions in Europe, the
United States and South America. Last year he took three Chinese artists
-- Gu Wenda, Liu Wei, and Zhang Xiaogang -- to the Venice Biennale. Last
June a number of his artists were included in "Fifteen years of the
Chinese Avant-Garde" at the Santa Monica Art Centre in Barcelona,
Spain. This year Chang was adviser to a show of contemporary Chinese
painters, "China Awakes!" at the Kunste museum of Bonn,
Germany.
Other
dealers are also increasingly aware of the need for wider exposure.
Angela Ho of Ho Gallery is establishing a gallery on prestigious Madison
Avenue in New York. "It's important that Chinese artists become
international and get known by museums and so on," she says.
"Just dealing in Hong Kong, you can only go so far. Art is becoming
global, and you have to recognize that."
Among
the artists who have demonstrated strong talent and staying power are
Wang Guangyi, Li Shan and Fang Lijun. Fang, whose work has graced the
cover of the New York Times Magazine for its story on Chinese
avant-garde artists, now sells his paintings for between US$15,000 and
US$60,000 a piece. Recently, a very large work of his was reportedly
sold in Singapore for US$ 140,000.
Some
may look with puzzlement upon Fang Lijun's oversized paintings, usually
of a small gathering of bald men laughing and playing around against a
blue-sky backdrop. Others may read in them layers of cultural meaning
and significance. Still others may see a good buy which will increase in
value over the years.
In
introducing new Chinese artists, Plum Blossoms’ McGuinness has been
one of the most successful. Zhu Wei is a recent McGuinness protégé who
shows great promise. When Zhu Wei, a former PLA soldier turned artist,
first exhibited at the New Trends/Art Hong Kong fair in 1994, his works
were priced at HK$12,000.
His
paintings are an interesting East-West marriage -- his imagery
incorporates a sense of Western graphics in its caricatures of Chinese
soldiers and folk figures while his medium is traditional Chinese ink on
paper. This fresh yet familiar approach has gone down well, proven by
the fact that Zhu's prices have seen a 67 percent hike over two years.
At
his recent exhibition carry this year, his standard-sized works were
priced around the HK$20,000 mark. "Zhu Wei is unusual in that he
cuts across the board -- Western, Chinese, young, middle-aged and
old," says McGuinness. "I’ve never seen any artist that has
this kind of effect. The old people like his traditional style, his
allegories. The young ones like the punchiness, the political side of
things ."
Still
others see Zhu Wei as typical of the new Chinese artist pushed too far
too fast. Comments Brad Davis, a noted American artist who has been
living in Asia for three years: "Zhu Wei is a very talented artist
with interesting ideas but [in the recent show] a quarter of the
paintings were substantial, the rest were all just produced for the
show. You can see that he's thinning out already."
Perhaps
only a small percentage of Asian buyers really understand art and are
passionate collectors. For the majority of the nouveau riche, art ranks
on the same level as a decorative ornament -- with its potential to
appreciate in value being an added bonus. For some patriotism is a good
reason for buying Chinese art.
David
Tang, a prominent Hong Kong businessman who boasts an extensive Chinese
art collection hanging in the exclusive China Club (of which he is a
major shareholder), admits that he buys Chinese art out of a
"patriotic duty".
In
a market like Hong Kong where high prices are too often equated with top
quality, cynics question the value of some contemporary Chinese
paintings as lasting works of art. At this moment, few international
museums have added this art to their collections, but then it is still a
relatively new field.
In
assessing value and quality, Hanart’s Johnson Chang cautions against
following the market or looking strictly for "originality", a
concept which he believes has no special importance in Chinese art.
Instead he says, "If an artist has something to say which is
important, which is symbolic of his times, and which has been done in
depth, then his expression can become an icon of an age."
McGuinness
is more practical. "Most people judge the art by whether they like
it or not. I use the same criteria when I'm buying antiques -- it has to
be beautiful, it has to have impact."
Inevitably,
especially in profit-obsessed Asia, buyers often ask whether the artwork
will appreciate and how quickly. Though Zhu Wei's example is an
exception, the rule of thumb is that good art will appreciate over time.
Dealers caution against treating art as short-term investment
instruments -- that could lead to grave disappointment -- and prefer to
emphasize the aesthetic or spiritual value of ownership.
One
measure of the "lasting quality" of art is its resale value --
can a picture fetch the same or more than what was paid for it? This
acid test will only be proved by time as many of these mainland works
are still in the hands of the original buyers.
Economic
cycles fluctuate and art trends come and go. Thus far, contemporary
Chinese art has survived and proved that is not a passing fad. It has
entered the general lexicon of culture, but the worth of individual
artists has yet to be shifted out. Meantime, art from China continues to
evolve. And like writers, artists will be documenting the monumental
social changes brought on by the dragon's awakening.
《亚洲杂志》1996年8月16至18号
封面：朱伟作品“广场九号”
大图：史蒂芬-麦克吉尼斯和他收藏的朱伟作品
图2图3：方力钧和张晓刚的作品
图4图5：李山的“一周七天”和王广义的“大批判”
艺术进攻：当代中国艺术能生存吗？
在第一波的成功
- 以及因而导致的过剩 - 之后对当代中国绘画的需求退潮了，亦使犬儒主义者怀疑其艺术价值。斯卡尔雷特-程报道
九十年代初的艺术进攻到底发生了什么？至少有一段时间，看上去亚洲的暴发户们好像在意大利跑车和镶钻劳力士之外，要认真开始收藏艺术品了。香港，向来是名贵云集之地，画廊一夜间如雨后春笋般林立。画展开幕式和拍卖会成了社会名流和名媛们聚会的场所。
但在初始的喧嚣之后，回归变成了主话题。
在这一地区的第一个国际美术交易会是1992年11月香港举行的“艺术亚洲”。来自全球的72家画廊参展；吸引了四万名观众，总成交额四千万美金。1992年到1994年期间中国大陆迄今为止仍不知名的画家们不断刷新交易价格记录。最不可思议的一夜成名故事就是刘宇一，他的油画作品“女娲之歌”在94年“艺术亚洲”卖出了8888888港币（115万美金）的天价。
令人不可思议的
- 或曰疯狂的，见仁见智 - 是这些90年代在国际美术界初出茅庐的中国画家们的叫价竟然和戴维-霍克尼或吉姆-戴恩这些在国际画坛纵横几十年的画家比肩。这种对当代中国艺术的兴趣爆炸确实促使一些艺术评论家警告买家们不要光为声势所夺。
“确实存在对当代中国艺术的兴趣大涨这一事实，但主要是一种追时髦，”香港及新加坡万玉堂画廊经理史蒂芬-麦克吉尼斯承认。“人们倾向于追涨杀跌。”
拍卖会是市场泡沫的写照
- 香港克里斯蒂95年秋拍会一片愁云惨雾，当代中国美术品总成交额仅只438万港币 - 仅及高峰时的92年春拍会的三分之一。不过今年的春拍会有所回升，总成交额达到了763万港币。
业界人士认为这种降温是有益的。“这简直是及时行乐，价格远远超出了价值，”一位画廊老板说。而这种降温，他说，将会去芜存菁。
想从这场狂热中捞一笔的中国画家的故事不胜枚举。美国画家詹妮丝-普鲁夭色说一个中国画家的纸画（区别于油画）想要卖6000美金，只是因为他听说在国外的同行们都是这个价。虽然他的作品不错，但他在海外既无名也无市
- 当然他的画也从未卖过6000美金一幅。
即便是亚洲其他的画家和评论家也觉得大陆的艺术进攻是天方夜谭。香港画家王无邪说：“中国大陆的画家变得如此商业化，什么卖钱
- 或经纪人说什么好卖，他们就画什么。”
尽管“当代”这个词被用以形容现在创作的作品，但也有人认为它不仅代表当代的创作风格，而且代表当代的思想情绪。这就把那些现实主义风格的学院派中国画家排除在外了，如陈逸飞以及他那些表现旧上海和苏州的浪漫主义作品，王沂东和姜国芳以及他们怀旧的肖像画。虽然在技术上“当代”，但一些评论家会说这些作品没有灵魂，亦不能表现新中国
- 因而也就不成其为真正的当代艺术。
当代中国艺术并不是一个新发明
- 现已六七十岁的早一代的画家们，在年轻时曾留过洋
-其表现手法非常西化且个性化。这一波画家
- 如赵无极和Walasse
Ting - 经已从事当代绘画几十年了。但是在亚洲当代中国美术的市场确是刚刚形成。在香港12个左右的专营亚洲当代艺术的画廊有一半是1992年才成立的。
除了这一地区在艺术上渐趋丰富和成熟外，观察家们还将中国艺术市场的繁荣归功于大陆的开放，使得外界更容易接触到大陆艺术家的作品。其意义在于在中国这些作品
- 虽非违法但也不被接受
- 很难公开曝光，也完全没有市场。
汉雅轩TZ画廊的经理张颂仁是把当代中国艺术推向世界的几个香港画廊老板之一。在1993年，张和大陆艺术评论家栗宪庭一起策划了具有里程碑意义的展览，展出51位大陆画家的200幅作品。那次名为“后89中国新艺术”的展览在香港引起了巨大反响。
“我办那次展览的动机是我觉得中国大陆的当代艺术已趋成熟，”张说。“虽然有很多借鉴（西方的艺术风格），但其借鉴方式是有意义且合理的。”
对张来说，其已成为（当代中国艺术）美学上和商业上的鼓吹者，意义在于“丰富的生活经历”体现在与其社会环境相关联的艺术创作中。
在新一代的大陆艺术家中，“政治流行”成为一种最合理的和容易理解的风格。他们的作品将毛泽东、解放军、革命芭蕾舞和代表西方消费主义的产品商标、电子游戏、比基尼女郎、可口可乐和米老鼠有机地结合起来。
例如王广义将文革模范工人和士兵的画报与尼康相机的标识和斯沃琪手表排列在一起；又如余友涵在矫揉造作的花卉图案背景上画毛泽东像。
这些政治流行作品
- 还包括冯梦波、祁志龙、张弓和朱伟
- 都很好卖。现在，小幅作品起价1000美金，而中幅作品从5000到30000美金不等。粗犷的颜色和线条赋予这些作品强烈的视觉效果，并且充满讽刺意味。
张想方设法让他的艺术家进入国际画展和美术馆，帮助组织在欧洲、美国、和南美的展览。去年他带领三位画家
- 谷文达、朱伟和张晓刚-
前往威尼斯双年展。去年六月多位他代表的画家参加了在巴塞罗那圣莫尼卡艺术中心举办的“中国前卫艺术15年”展览。今年张担任德国波恩昆斯特博物馆举办的名为“中国之觉醒”当代中国画家展览的顾问。
其他经销商也越来越认识到曝光的重要性。侯画廊的安吉拉-侯正在著名的纽约麦迪逊大道上建立画廊。“中国的画家走向国际，被美术馆认可等等是非常重要的，”她说。“香港市场太有限了，艺术也在全球化，你必须认识到这点。”
表现出强大艺术天分和持续创造力的画家有王广义、李山和方力钧。方的作品在纽约时报杂志关于中国前卫画家的报道中被登上封面，他的画现在卖到一万五千美金到六万美金一幅。最近据报道他的一幅大幅作品在新加坡以十四万美金成交。
有人可能对方力钧的超大人物画感到迷惑，通常是一堆光头人物大笑着在蓝天背景下嬉戏。也有人从中读到了某种文化内涵。还有人可能只是看到了升值潜力。
在推介后起中国画家上，万玉堂的麦克吉尼斯是最成功的一个。朱伟是麦克吉尼斯的最新宠儿，他显示出强大的潜力。朱伟，由一个前士兵变成的画家，1994年第一次在新潮流/香港艺术博览会展出时，其作品就卖到了12000港币。
他的作品是有趣的东西方结合
- 他的人物肖像画用西方的图画感觉漫画中国的士兵和民间形象，但他画的又是水墨画。这种新鲜又似曾相识的尝试是成功的，朱伟作品的价格在两年中已经涨了67%就是证明。
在今年年初他最近的展览中一幅标准尺寸的作品标价两万港币。“朱伟的不寻常在于他吸引不同的顾客，西方的，东方的，年轻的，中年的，老年的都有，”麦克吉尼斯说。“我从没见过任何一个画家有这种效果的。老年顾客喜欢他传统的风格，他的讽喻。年轻人则喜欢他的冲击力，政治的一面。”
不过还是有人觉得朱伟不过就是另一个典型中国的年轻画家，走得太远又太快。在亚洲居住了三年的著名美国画家布莱德-戴维斯如此评说：“朱伟是个极具天赋又有想法的画家，但是（在最近的展览中）只有四分之一的作品是有实质内容的，其他的不过是为展览而作。你能看得到他已经开始枯竭了。”
恐怕只有一小部分的亚洲买家是真懂艺术且热衷于收藏的。而对大多数的暴发户而言艺术不过就是另一种装饰
- 当然升值潜力使它略微与众不同。爱国主义可能是购买中国艺术的另一个借口。
邓永铿，香港著名商人，他持股的私人俱乐部“中国会”中挂满了中国绘画，承认他购买中国绘画是一种“爱国责任”。
在香港这种最讲究一分钱一分货的市场，犬儒主义者们怀疑某些当代中国绘画作品是否真是传世艺术。目前极少的国际美术馆收藏这些作品，当然这确是一个新的领域。
在评估价值和质量上，汉雅轩画廊的张颂仁的信条是不跟随市场，也不严格追求原创性，他相信原创性对于中国绘画来说并不十分重要。相反，他说道：“如果一个画家觉得有重要的话要说，而且对他的时代具有象征意义，且还说得深入，那么他的表达很可能成为一个时代的标记。”
麦克吉尼斯更为实用。“大多数人依靠自己的喜好判断艺术。我也用同样的标准买古董
- 它必须美丽，必须有冲击力。”
不可避免地，尤其是在利润至上的亚洲，买家都会问作品会否升值？升值多块？虽然朱伟是个例外，基本定理是好的艺术品一定会随时间的推移而升值。经销商不会把艺术当成一种短期投资工具
- 那样会让你死得很惨
- 而会强调艺术收藏的审美价值或是精神价值。
衡量艺术品的“耐久性”的一种方法是看它的转售价值
- 一幅画再出手时能否卖到原价或更多？这需要时间来证明，因为大多数这些大陆画家的作品仍然持有在最初的收藏者手里。
艺术品行情的起伏有如经济周期的波动。到目前为止当代中国艺术幸存了下来，并非昙花一现。它已经进入了艺术词典，但个体画家的价值还有待厘清。同时来自中国的艺术还在不断涌现。就像作家一样，画家也将持续见证龙的觉醒所带来的一系列社会剧变。 |
