Seeking Visibility for China’s Art

BEIJING â€" China’s art market, though its growth slowed significantly last year, is an established part of the art world, ranking second in size behind the U.S. market in 2012 and ahead of Britain’s, according to a recent report.

In fact, Chinese collectors are scouring the world for deals, or “panning for gold,” as The Art Newspaper’s new Chinese edition put it â€" a common sight (or, often, voice at the end of the telephone) at auctions around the world, even in small towns in Europe.

“Whether in New York or Hong Kong, everywhere you can see Chinese buyers ‘hearing the wind and reacting,’ ” The Art Newspaper wrote, using a Chinese saying that means moving fast.

But as private buyers build collections, the art publication posed pressing questions: In artistic terms, is China a creator of value in this process, or mostly a receiver of value? And how can Chinese art grow in visibility around the world, getting into more museums and private galleries?

The Art Newspaper is a leading voice in global art; here’s what Thomas Shao, chief executive of Modern Media Group, the Chinese partner, said about the Chinese edition of the publication that launched its first edition in March: “The Chinese are now curious about the world of art beyond their frontiers, so it is vitally important to launch a professional art newspaper that provides timely and accurate news about the global art scene.” (The comments were made on the newspaper’s Web site.)

The launch came as the spring auction season was about to begin here. China Guardian Auctions, a major player, starts previews in Beijing tomorrow and sales on Friday. Its Hong Kong auctions took place last weekend, netting nearly $38 million, it said.

But here’s how The Art Newspaper formulated the question in its Chinese edition in April: “Can Chinese Art Make the World Look?”

Specifically, many artists and curators feel art from here is underrepresented in museum collections around the world, and in major galleries.

Part of that may be its newness. China is an important market, but it’s a developing one, subject to considerable fluctuation, based on last year’s figures.

These, compiled by Dr. Clare McAndrew in a report of The European Fine Art Fair based in Maastricht, the Netherlands, showed that in 2012, China’s art market dropped hard, year on year, by 24 percent, to €10.6 billion (nearly $14 billion).

The market in the U.S., by comparison, recovered by 5 percent, year on year, to over $19 billion.

“Slowing economic growth and continuing uncertainty in the global economy filtered down to the art market in 2012 with global sales contracting by 7 percent to €43.0 billion,” the report said. “A key factor in the decline was a slowdown in the Chinese market,” it said.

Still, the Chinese market made up 25 percent of global sales of over $56 billion, said Ms. McAndrew in the report, “The Global Art Market, With a Focus on China and Brazil.”

Beyond such figures, how can China secure the intangible, cultural value and visibility that it craves?

The Art Newspaper’s Chinese edition, in a cover story, cited an art academic, Zhao Li of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, as saying that China lacks a domestic culture of passing art down from generation to generation, so when the realization dawns that something has value, collectors can only turn to the market and “go shopping.”

The article didn’t delve into the reasons for that but a host of political and sociological factors play a role here, including the deep artistic losses after the 1949 Chinese revolution as the Communist Party sought to largely eliminate traditional culture and control contemporary cultural development. China’s art scene only began to burgeon again in the 1980s after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and is still subject to censorship as well as creativity issues tied to the political and educational system.

“How do artists see the issue of Chinese art getting on to the horizon of world art?” the article asked. The solutions seem to lie in growing the infrastructure at home and focusing on quality, it suggested.

“In the beginning when art went overseas, Chinese artists had political and ideological labels stuck on them by curators but the individual’s learning and technique was not heavily considered,” the article cited Zeng Fanzhi, an artist, as saying.

“As the years passed, these artists sorted out their individual careers, but there was no corresponding industry here in China. What China most needs today is still museum-level, high quality, serious, good exhibitions, to sort out and explore the atmosphere surrounding artistic worth and learning,” he said.

The artist Wang Jianwei told the newspaper that art was a mirror of social capability. What is most lacking today is knowledge about art and respect for creativity, he said.

“The art market is developing and we have a market that’s the richest in purchasing power, but we’re still very far from creativity itself,” he said.