Chinese Art That Fetches Millions Isn't Always Best: Interview
Interview by Le-Min Lim

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Yue Minjun's painting of the crackdown on student protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square sold for $5,000 in 1994 and almost $7 million in May -- a testimony to the surge in Chinese contemporary art prices.

Yue's trademark laughing men and the somber, gray-hued figures in Zhang Xiaogang's paintings have become synonymous with the genre, mostly commentaries on post-Cultural Revolution China by artists now in their 30s and 40s.

In the updated version of her book ``Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art'' (Timezone 8 Ltd.), curator Karen Smith traces the lives and works of nine top Chinese contemporary artists -- Zhang, Wang Guangyi, Geng Jianyi, Fang Lijun, Gu Dexin, Li Shan, Xu Bing, Zhang Peili and Wang Jianwei. The book's first print run of 4,000 copies was released in 2006.

Smith, 43, writes for Bloomberg News on Chinese contemporary art. She spoke with me on the phone from her Beijing office.

Lim: You featured nine artists in your book. Why them?

Smith: They are the innovators, the original innovators; without them, you wouldn't have all the art that came afterwards. They are like the spark that ignited those ideas; and other people picked up those ideas and ran with them.
Wang Guangyi believed in using the Chinese visual experience to make art; he wasn't just taking approaches from the West. But the irony is of course that he does take an approach from the West. People call him China's Andy Warhol, but not entirely; he uses this socialist realist imagery which is everything that was the Chinese people's visual experience from the Cultural Revolution on. There's a great honesty in that he's trying to confront something about the Chinese culture that people try to avoid.

New China
You have people who came up with conceptual ideas -- real conceptual ideas about how art should function. What should be the new art for the new China? That was really the question a lot of these artists were asking. The period they covered is 1985 when the avant-garde is emerging and 1989, which is that heady period of experimentation when China was just beginning to open up before (Tiananmen Square) caused it to close down a bit.
Wang Guangyi also represented that first generation. Wang Jianwei was a former People's Liberation Army soldier, Gu Dexin was a worker -- not an educated person at all. Li Shan graduated before the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, so he was someone who had an entirely different experience.
But all of them belonged to this new outpouring of ideas that began. They tackled subjects that were very close to their hearts and I think by tackling these subjects, they became close to the Chinese people's experience.

Place in History
Lim: Some critics say the artworks now fetching top prices at auctions aren't of the highest artistic merit and might not have a place in Chinese art history. What do you think?

Smith: I agree 100 percent. Auction is almost mainstream these days. People will always buy what's more attractive, that's how auctions work. They would also focus on more easily packageable art that reproduces well in catalogs. That's why auction houses do well with paintings and photographs, and not so well with sculptures. You rarely see an installation or video artwork being sold at auctions here.
If you went back to the early 1900s, you had Picasso, Matisse and Van Gogh. At that time, I can guarantee you no auction house would have touched their paintings because they were too groundbreaking for their moment. Auctions, by their very nature, are just a big supermarket -- they are going to deal in what they can shift.

Selling for Millions
Lim: So you are saying the artworks now selling for millions might not be worth very much in the long run?

Smith: There are few artists who are selling for that price. One of them is Zeng Fanzhi, who's very important in terms of his contribution to paintings. We also have Yue Minjun, he's a second generation Chinese contemporary painter and emerged in '91, '92 and '93, which is why he wasn't in my book.
It's like looking at young British artists: Damien Hirst is both a groundbreaking artist and his works are also selling at high price at auction. So it's not always mutually exclusive, but when we talk about these artists, we are only talking about three or four who will also have value. A lot of important Chinese artists are not represented at auctions at all. Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun and Zeng Fanzhi deserve to be as highly prized as they are.
Fang Lijun is not selling for millions. He deserves to be there, though I wouldn't wish that league upon anybody really. He has to mature. He has 20-30 years of his career in front of him. If you are selling at millions now, it's dangerous. I don't see where they are going to go; Zeng Fanzhi, he's a really good painter, but his works are already going for millions. Of course that's through no fault of his own.

Ephemeral Art
Lim: Which are the underrated artists?

Smith: You have video artists Zhang Peili, conceptual artist Geng Jianyi. Gu Dexin's work is fantastic but it's ephemeral, he doesn't work to last, but that's what makes him so interesting. Those artists will never be represented at auctions. But they are too consumed with ideas for the most part, they don't even think about the market too much.

``Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art'' is published by Timezone 8 Ltd. (471 pages; price unstated).
(Le-Min Lim writes for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Le-Min Lim in Hong Kong at lmlim@bloomberg.net