Organized by Hou Hanru

9th September, 2010 — Shanghai Exhibition Centre, Shanghai

Contemporary art museums from around the world shall participate in a conference on the issues surrounding institutional collections of Asian contemporary art this September at ShContemporary 2010. Titled Collecting Asian Contemporary Art: What, When and How? the conference is being organized by Hou Hanru, the Chinese born curator and critic currently based inSan Francisco and Paris. Hou is Director of Exhibitions and Public Program, and Chair of Exhibition and Museum Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. His latest curated projects include the 10th Biennale de Lyon and the 10th Istanbul Biennial.

Hou speaks to us on the ideas behind this conference and the important questions to be discussed:

“For the last two decades, contemporary art has become not only a global activity but has also significantly changed the cultural landscape and ways of living around the world. The contemporary art scene inAsia, thanks to its exceptionally rapid development and energetic creativity, has been largely considered as a new centre of the global art scene. Numerous cities across the region are holding major art events such as biennials and art fairs while hundreds of new museums, galleries and art foundations are being founded or are under construction. Along with its booming economy, the art market inAsiais a new Eldorado for the global art economy while some of its star artists are setting records for their high prices. Over the last ten years, we have seen the arrival of a newgeneration of private collectorsfocusing on Asian art in the various countries both inside and outside the Asian continent.

Ironically however, so far very few public museums have been able to build their Asian contemporary art collections in a systematic manner. Most of the museums are still in their earlier stages and lack both financial means and expertise to compete with the private sector although they have been making considerable efforts in organising punctual or regular events to make contemporary creations visible. In the meantime, the existing private collections are intermingled with highly uneven elements in terms of quality and professionalism. Indeed, collecting activities involve a large portion of speculation. The rationale, motivation and function of art collecting are becoming increasingly ambiguous, ambivalent and confusing. This has caused some major debates on the actual significance of contemporary art itself in both social and cultural contexts.

Obviously, the urgent question now is what and how to collect Asian contemporary art. This is a serious challenge that the whole art world faces and requires an answer for. This is particularly crucial for public institutions – including museums and art foundations.

For the last two years, economic crisis has affected the art market but interestingly, has not simply killed the market. Instead, it has brought some correcting effects on the speculative growth and installed a kind of warning device. In a way, this helps to build up a platform for reasonable and rational discussions and debates on the notions of the value of art, cultural memory, heritage and social change.

In this light, we are organizing a conference on the issue of collecting Asian contemporary artat the upcoming ShContemporary fair inShanghai– a seemingly contradictory but effective context for this kind of debate. Somehow, the pragmatic coexistence and interaction between the intellectual and commercial worlds can produce unexpectedly productive and interesting solutions.

With museum professionals and curatorial experts from both the East and the West, we will bring up provocative thoughts and proposals to deal with a wide range of questions, including the following:

What is a public institution today, in the age of commoditisation of art?

What is the special way to define the public and private in the context of the globalisingAsia?

How to collect, conserve and present contemporary art when it’s becoming increasingly diversified in terms of media, languages and materiality?

How do specific visions and strategies for collecting affect the missions of different museums, especially in the context of Asian contemporary art?

How can collecting contemporary art affect public policy when increasing attention is paid to the production of culture and art by public authorities?

What is the best economic model for collection of Asian contemporary art?

Why collect Asian contemporary art, in the end? And what would be an ideal museum for it?”

Established in 2007, ShContemporaryhas become an essential art fair in Asia. Its leading position inChina, focus on experimental ideas, and commitment to developing new collectors in the region, has made it an art fair with a clear vision for the future of the Asian market. The fourth edition will be held from 9th to 12th Septemberat the Shanghai Exhibition Centre. Preview and Vernissage on September 8th. For more information please visit: www.shcontemporary.info.

By Michelle McCoy for the Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, December 2007

Yang Fudong, Honey, 2003, video

Introduction

Located in the hills of La Jolla, a seaside resort community near San Diego, California, the residence of Chris and Eloisa Haudenschild is home to a major U.S. collection of contemporary Chinese video art and photography. It includes the work of roughly twenty-eight Chinese artists, including, significantly, Song Tao’s Life is Wonderful (2003), a large floor-top photo installation; Honey 2 (2003), a video by Hugo Boss Prize-nominated Yang Fudong; and Xu Zhen’s 1999 photomontage Sewer. In addition, the Haudenschild collection includes roughly one hundred and twenty holdings by ninety artists from the Americas, Europe, and other parts of Asia. Notable pieces include a triptych from Francis Alÿs’s series of paintings titled The Liar (ca. 1995), a photograph of Kristof Wodiczko’s Tijuana Projection (2002), and a painting from Komar & Melamid’s Most Wanted series dated at 2000 by the collector.(1)

The Haudenschilds began collecting contemporary Chinese video and photography in the late 1990s, when these mediums were beginning to become as widely used and important as they are today, and just before the beginning of the market’s current boom. Since then, prices for paintings by a few Chinese artists have topped two million dollars,(2) and domestic collectors have entered the market in a significant way.(3) In November 2006, for instance, a Chinese collector purchased a Liu Xiaodong painting at a Beijing auction for $2.7 million, the highest price paid at auction for a painting by a Chinese artist who began working after 1979. (4)

The current overall global art market also finds that contemporary art has, for the first time, “truly begun to rival the historically dominant Impressionism and Modern categories” at auction.(5) Evidence to the overall market’s growth, The Financial Times has recently been publishing how-to articles about art collecting in general and at least one art hedge fund has been established. Situated within this historic global market growth, expansion into China and other regions is seen as having contributed significantly overall. In addition to the work having dramatically appreciated, China has a new class of art collectors, with new levels of wealth among them. In fact, expansion into China and other “new” regions is often used in the case against the market’s potential crash.

Xu Zhen, Sewer, 1998, photograph

Within this, the private collector maintains a unique position. On the one hand, as Britta Erickson writes, “Private collections are well suited to capturing the life of a vibrant art movement, driven as they are by passion, unencumbered by institutional impedimenta.”(6) Not necessarily affixed to any institution or gallery, today’s private collector has the flexibility to build a historically complete collection, so long as he or she has the means and access to do so. On the other hand, private collectors are not under any obligation to remain loyal to any particular mission. As Lu Jie, founder and director of the Long March Project, said, “ . . . we’ve observed that many [collectors] started out building a big collection and ended up selling the artwork in auctions . . . . It really takes time to get to know what the real agenda is that a collector has.” (7) However, there are standards and traditions by which collectors are judged, which the late Jonathan Napack, former Asia adviser to Art Basel describes: to be considered a “collector,” one must have a certain amount of commitment and knowledge.(8)

Chris and Eloisa Haudenschild’s level of commitment and knowledge is evidenced by the way they support contemporary art beyond collecting. The Haudenschild Foundation supports exhibitions and sponsors artists’ and scholars’ projects and programs such as symposia and residencies at the haudenschildGarage. Perhaps their most ambitious project yet was an exhibition entitled Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection, which took place from 2003 to 2005 and traveled to venues in San Diego, Shanghai, Tijuana, Singapore, and Beijing.

Cao Fei’s and Pi Li’s presentation at the Political Equator Garage Talk at the haudenschildGarage, June 2006

In her catalogue essay for this exhibition, Erickson addresses the collection’s strengths: “Representing a personal vision, it has not been expected to present a complete or historic view of the field. Nevertheless, it has captured a major slice of Chinese photography and video, representative of a signal moment”(9) in the field’s entrance onto the global stage. Scholar Martina Köppel-Yang recognized it as the first collection of its kind, (10) and Tina Yapelli, Director of the University Gallery at San Diego State University and the exhibition’s organizer, lauded it as “the most important collection of contemporary Chinese video and photography in the world.” (11) Lorenz Helbling, the Haudenschilds’ longstanding dealer, writes, “The collection is a very ‘open’ collection . . .. It doesn’t aim to fix images people should have of China, or to transmit stereotypes of China. It’s not about ‘signature works’ or ‘trophy pieces’—it’s more about a spirit, about involvement.” The Haudenschilds, he writes, are “great collectors.”(12)

The Collection

To date, in addition to work by Yang Fudong, Song Tao, and Xu Zhen, the Haudenschild collection consists of works by Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Feng Mengbo, Geng Jianyi, Gu Dexin, Hai Bo, Hong Hao, Hu Jieming, Kan Xuan, Liu Wei, Lu Chunsheng, Shi Yong, Tang Maohong, Wang Jin, Wang Youshen, Weng Fen, Xiang Liqing, Yang Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Yu Youhan, Zhao Bandi, Zhao Nengzhi, Zheng Guogu, Zhou Tiehai, and Zhu Jia. All of the works in the collection are photography, video/animation or computer graphics, or photo-based installations, except for two oil paintings and one print. The photographs are from editions of one hundred or smaller, with the majority of them from editions of ten or fewer. All of the videos are from editions of fewer than ten. (13)

Yang Zhenzhong, 922 Rice Corns, 2000, video

Of these seventy individual works produced by twenty-eight artists, two of the works were produced by women artists: Cao Fei and Kan Xuan. Three of the artists are thirty years old or younger, while ten are between thirty-one and forty, fourteen are between forty-one and fifty, and one artist is over sixty. Most of them are based in Shanghai, with a few based in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Yangjiang, Guangzhou, and Haikou, Hainan. Only Kan Xuan maintains a residence both in Beijing and abroad, in Amsterdam.

Eloisa Haudenschild said she is primarily interested in collecting as a way to assist and connect with emerging artists. She explained that when artists have been recognized and supported by other collectors, she maintains relationships with them, but her interest shifts from collecting their work to assisting them in other ways, such as funding projects. With charismatic ebullience, Haudenschild said she has never sold a work, nor has she bought work by an artist she has not met. She has never attempted to acquire work from an artist directly and has always used an agent or dealer. She said she has never asked the price of an artwork. The works have been acquired through studio visits and meetings with artists, stories she recounts with pleasure. Haudenschild refers to the first trips in which she began to acquire Chinese artwork as “my love affair.” (14)

Background

Eloisa Haudenschild, née Rodriguez-Carbornell, was born into an affluent family in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who were involved in real estate and politics. When asked, she said she probably could be considered a third- or fourth-generation collector, and keeps some of her family’s paintings and antiques in the La Jolla estate. She met Chris Haudenschild, an astrophysicst-entrepreneur and native of Los Angeles, skiing in Portillo in 1973. Chris Haudenschild, who has roots in Iowa and Indiana, is a first generation collector. Together they have two daughters, Rita and Anna, whose artwork is also listed in the collection’s catalogue.

Eloisa Haudenschild, Laura Zhou, and Ma Shulin (Deputy Director, National Art Museum of China) at the opening of Zooming into Focus, November 2005, National Art Museum of China, Beijing

Eloisa Haudenschild’s educational background is in psychology. She was involved in dance and choreography before pursuing her interest in contemporary art. She cut her art-collecting teeth in the early 1990s with contemporary work from Latin America. At that time, she was president of the bi-national board of inSite, a network of contemporary art programs and commissioned projects that map the liminal border area of San Diego and Tijuana.

Haudenschild said, “I traveled with the board and the directors to Mexico City every two months or so, visiting artists and studios, traveling with them and having fun. That afforded me the opportunity of meeting some extraordinary artists like Francis Alÿs, a good friend, who together with other good friends have since become international figures in the art world. There, I really got a firsthand experience of the situation. I saw firsthand their need of support.”

When Chris Haudenschild, founder and president of CliniComp, a healthcare information management system, began expanding his business into China, the couple began making regular trips to Shanghai. As she had done in Latin America, Eloisa Haudenschild sought to investigate the local art scene in Shanghai.

Approach

Participants in the symposium “Distance—A Discussion on Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video” at the China Art Academy, Hangzhou, March 2004. Left to right: Pi Li, Eloisa Haudenschild, Waling Boers, Martina Koppel-Yang, Laura Zhou, Evelyne Jouanno, Hou Hanru, Jonathan Napak, Rudolf Stoert, Anna Haudenschild, Chris Haudenschild, Rita Haudenschild, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Wang Gongxin, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Wang Du, Zhang Peili, and Zheng Shengtian

Haudenschild recounts the late 1990s as an environment very different from the art world in the large urban centers of today’s China. “I spent a lot of time looking around,” she said of her first trips. “My husband and I went to the Shanghai Art Museum and saw a show of work by the Corsinos, a brother and sister who live in France. I was so moved by the work, and was bummed about not being able to share it with anyone. It was so nice to see something besides calligraphy and ink washes. I thought, ‘Somebody did this, some curator—someone has this sensibility,’ but I didn’t know who it was. So, I saw this guy walking around [the Shanghai Art Museum] who looked a little like Salvador Dali. I thought, ‘I’m going to ask this guy.’ And of course, it was Dadou.”

Dadou, or Davide Quadrio, founded BizArt, a self-supported non-profit gallery, in Shanghai in 1998. Along with ShanghART, it shares billing as one of the oldest contemporary art institutions in the city.

“I said [to Dadou], I’ve been coming here for three years, where is the artwork?’ He said, ‘Go to ShanghART and see Lorenz.’ So, my husband and I immediately caught a cab and went to [the gallery in] Fuxing Park. As you may know, getting around in those days wasn’t as easy as it is now.”

“I walked into [ShanghART]. Then, I met Laura Zhou,” Mr. Helbling’s partner at ShanghART. “It was genius from that moment on with Laura. . . . We are very close. She calls me ‘mommy.’”

Previously, Mr. Helbling had been showing work at the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a massive hotel, convention centre and residence in Shanghai. “He used to carry paintings around on the back of his motorcycle trying to sell them, because at that time he didn’t have a space,” recounts Haudenschild. Since then, ShanghART has moved from its Fuxing Park location and expanded into three different spaces within Shanghai. A fourth space opened this year in Beijing.

“I loved the continual excitement. The best part was going to studios and apartments to look at the work,” Haudenschild says. Effusive with praise for Mr. Helbling, she said, “[Lorenz] is so good. If I wanted something and he wasn’t working with that artist, he’d get it for me. For instance Cao Fei. He facilitated that…You know, Lorenz wouldn’t sell to just anybody. He’s not as concerned with making a profit. We work together; he really wants to support the artists.”

She said he has never given her explicit advice, saying, “You know how it is with Lorenz, you never know [what he’s really thinking]. He’ll listen, smoking, with his coffee. And then he’ll say, ‘Eloisa, I think it’s time to think.’” Helbling and Zhou did, however, encourage her to look at certain artists.

After that initial trip, Haudenschild says she did a fair amount of research, contacting and meeting with scholars and curators in the field. She went to Paris and met with Hou Hanru, and exchanged emails with Britta Erickson. Perhaps in testament to the perceived need for a studied, serious, aesthetics-based treatment of contemporary Chinese art, Haudenschild said her queries to these noted curators and scholars—“from me, this little collector”—were enthusiastically received. Meantime, she continued collecting on her regular trips to China.

Yang Fudong, City Light, 2000, video

Collecting Video And Photography

In general, photography and video, like other edition-based media, have traditionally sold for less than paintings. Despite their lower value within the market, however, these media, as previously mentioned, are important to contemporary Chinese art and often become vehicles for highly conceptual projects. Critic and scholar Lu Leiping describes photography and video as the “most experimental and pioneering media today,” and “the media that more strongly maintain the Chinese characteristics.” (15) Indeed, many artists represented in the Haudenschild collection work solely in photography and video, and several are now highly sought after in large international exhibitions and biennials.

Haudenschild describes the process of arriving at the collection’s focus on video and photography as a product of following her own instincts. “You have to trust your eye,” she said. “I just get what I like, and the video and photography were what I liked . . .. There’s no one telling me what to do.” “I did not initially intend to collect video and photography,” she said, asserting that certain works she selected, such as Yang Fudong’s The First Intellectual photographs, did not initially appear collectible. When asked why more people don’t collect video, her response was, “I don’t know. Maybe they just haven’t warmed up to it yet.”

Art: The “Alternative Asset Class”

Mainstream media outlets have described the recent growth in art investment in the overall market. “Art has emerged as a serious alternative asset class in the past few years, in spite of the disdain of art lovers and the skepticism of many dealers and collectors,” wrote Deborah Brewster in an article about art collecting that appeared in the July 13, 2007 issue of The Financial Times.(16) She continues:

“Randall Willette, who advises collectors, says: ‘There are increasingly two types of buyer in the market. The idea that you should buy purely because of your passion is becoming less common. More buyers are coming from a financial background and people want to support their buying decisions with financial information. Increasingly, art is part of the balance sheet of private clients.’” (17)

Indeed, much of the current dialogue surrounding contemporary Chinese art, and contemporary art as a whole, is in the language of finance.

Texas-based venture capitalist and wildcatter oil tycoon Robert Chaney speaks in such financial terms about his extensive contemporary Chinese art holdings. On the eve of the current exhibition of his collection at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Red Hot: Asian Art Now, Chaney described his strategy for “acquiring masterpieces,” using a method that is, in his words, a studied adaptation of the Warren Buffet model for investing. In the meantime, Chaney invited art dealers to sit on a panel in conjunction with the exhibition and encouraged Houston galleries to hold concurrent exhibitions of Asian art. Chaney seems determined to establish himself as an important, involved collector who also vocalizes his financial interest in the art world. (18)

Haudenschild, on the other hand, downplays herself as an investor. “I think I am not a good collector,” she joked, pausing in front of I Usually Wait Under the Arch Roof for Sunshine, a 2001 photograph by Hong Hao, who is well known for his photographs of densely accumulated objects. “For instance, the smart collector would’ve gotten [the accumulated object photos]. But me, I liked this one.”

Mrs. Haudenschild stands apart from the object-focused connoisseur as well, giving importance instead to her relationships with artists and members of the community. “For me, the collecting is just a token, a way to support these young guys . . . . The reward is that I have the opportunity to be part of their path.” She affectionately describes the relationships among the artists represented in her collection, noting that they have maintained their integrity and loyalty to one another as friends in spite of experiencing unequal degrees of recognition. “You know, there are many collectors who are buying pieces and then putting them away until they become valuable—they don’t even show the work. And that is such a waste—these people need exposure,” she said.

Eloisa Haudenschild with Chen Shaoxiong, Yang Zhenzhong, Xu Zhen, Shi Yong, Yang Fudong, and Song Tao, February 2003

Future Of The Market

Speculations on a crash or correction in the global and Chinese contemporary art markets circulate. Commenting on the market in general, Los Angeles-based billionaire collector Eli Broad was quoted in The New York Times in August 2007 as saying, “We’ve seen an unprecedented 68 appreciation of contemporary art in the thirty-five years that I’ve been collecting . . . . We’re bound to have a correction. I don’t know if it will happen at the November auctions, or it will happen next May.” (19) Other recent articles have described the Chinese market as “bubbly,” (20) and the overall market as “overblown,” (21) and “showing signs of a bubble.” (22)

Jonathan Napack wrote of a grim future, with a specific focus on China: “The current ‘boom’ in the Chinese economy is all about positioning and manipulating perceptions to help attain certain short-term goals. This infects the art world as much as anybody else.” He wrote, “It will one day crash, when the speculators who are now blindly following their ‘advisors’ realize prices have started to fall and dump their collections on the market.” (23)

Echoing Broad’s sentiments about the overall market, Eloisa Haudenschild commented on the contemporary Chinese art market’s future, saying, “I’m worried about the market. Will there be a crash or a correction? Hopefully it will be a correction. But [regardless, as a collector,] you either have integrity or you don’t.”

Li Xu (Curator), Zhang Peili (Artist and Director, New Media Department of China Art Academy), Eloisa Haudenschild, Li Xiangyang (then Executive Director, Shanghai Art Museum), and Lorenz Helbling (Director, ShanghART), Shanghai Art Museum Press Conference and Opening for Zooming into Focus, February 2004.

Questions Remain

Art collected by individuals from a different country than the origin of the artist is now a common practice. Today, there are numerous galleries dealing exclusively in contemporary Chinese art in cities around the Western hemisphere. The question of what influence the foreign collector of contemporary Chinese art has on the globalized art world is a complex one.

Lu Jie put foreign collectors in a positive light, saying, “[the artists] feel more confident to have their works sent abroad. They respect the international collectors more and believe they are the real collectors. The local collectors very often use the building of a collection as an introduction or entry into the market. The artists feel safer with their work in foreign collections.” (24) There is also the idea that foreign collectors have helped contemporary Chinese art to be seen as valuable within China. Haudenschild said that the most important works in her collection have been shown at the Shanghai Art Museum and the National Museum of China in Beijing because she knows “how important it was for these young artists to get there.”

“Foreign collectors held out [the] olive branch,” according to critic Lu Leiping, in influencing the establishment of serious interest in contemporary Chinese new media art such as that in the Haudenschild Collection. (25) Jonathan Napack wrote: “That is not to say that there is no real basis for the current foreign interest in Chinese art. This huge country, for so long off the map, is producing artists who can draw on a wellspring of images, concepts, and issues that are totally unique to China and produce works that have that elusive ‘local flavour’ increasingly rare in a globalized world.” (26) However, an often-discussed problem is that the possibility for this “local flavour” is diminished once the artwork is brought to market.

A less-discussed question, whose answer remains to be seen, is, as they become part of the global art market, how are China and other “new markets” for contemporary art changing it? Will contemporary Chinese art be subsumed by the same practice seen in the Euro-American art market of limitation and marginalization of different groups, such as women and minority artists? Consistent with Western art, works by male Chinese artists generally sell for more at auction than those of women. Living Han male artists have appeared much more prominently in the exhibitions of important collections. This also fits with the Western art historical tradition of marginalizing, ignoring, and dismissing women artists within Chinese art history. (27) Just as Chinese art, which has not reached the heights that Euro-American art does at auction, is marginalized by art world regionalism, female Chinese artists may be marginalized even more.

Here again, private collections occupy a unique space. Private collections, “driven as they are by passion, unencumbered by institutional impedimenta” (as Erickson was quoted as saying in the introduction to this essay), are truly private in nature, and do not fall under the type of public scrutiny that attempts to address and confront the gender- and ethnicity-based biases about an artwork’s value that is at work in public collections. In addition, through the funding of exhibitions, the establishment of art centers, and the lending of artworks, private collections may indirectly promote the marginalizing practices of the institutional and historical art worlds. On the other hand, private collections also present the possibility of freely challenging and questioning such biases, which, as attested to by Lorenz Helbling, is perhaps what Eloisa Haudenschild has attempted to do.

The impact an individual collector can have on the market is another question. One of the indicators by which to measure the success of an artist is his or her inclusion in important and well-known collections. It follows that the larger and more important the collection, the more influence on the market the collector has. As Napack wrote of the recent inflation, “It prices younger or novice collectors out of the market, leaving many artists vulnerable to the whims of a few deep-pocketed collectors.” (28)

Finally, it remains to be seen how the market’s inflation will affect the artworks themselves. Napack wrote, “The current infusion of cash into the market brings [first-rate galleries] some short-term profits, but it is also destructive in the long run. It inflates the expectations of artists and makes them even more exploitative of their galleries.” (29) Marc Spiegler of New York magazine wrote, “Historically bad markets tend to produce better art—there’s less pressure on artists to produce and fewer temptations to sell out, and they’re dealing only with collectors and galleries willing to ride out the hard times.” (30)

Haudenschild stressed that ultimately what remains important to her is having the ability to support emerging artists and connect people in dialogue. She said, “The inflation of the market is problematic. When I was starting to collect, it was like these guys could really benefit from my collecting their work . . .. A lot of bad work has come to auction recently.”

She said, “You know, Chinese art has become this kind of cliché.” Gesturing around the garage that houses many of the collection’s significant photographs, including Yang Fudong’s The First Intellectual series of photos (2000), Song Tao’s In Loud Crowds I Dream of Hanging Myself (2002), and Lu Chunsheng’s Water photos (2002), she said, “I’m thankful I was able to get these pieces, but I know it’s become a little bit like a fashion show.” Expressing an increased interest in funding projects, she said, “I’m not even sure I want to be a collector anymore. But I have to make a choice that I can live with.”

——
Notes

1 Plates of much of the Chinese collection can be found in the exhibition catalogue, Zooming Into Focus: Contemporary Photography and Video Art from the Haudenschild Collection, Shi Yong and Laura Zhou, eds. (Shanghai: ShanghART, 2005). Images of the Haudenschild’s other holdings may be found at www.haudenschildgarage.com.

2 David Barboza, “In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism,” New York Times, January 4, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/arts/design/04arti.html

3 “Chinese art is now beginning to be aggressively collected by the Chinese themselves,” said Boriana Song, manager of the Chinese-owned Beijing Art Now Gallery. ”But now Chinese buyers are hungry for culture, and they see contemporary art as fashionable. The market is maturing, tastes are changing, and more than 60% of our clients are local Chinese.” Pallavi Aiyar, “Modern art scene grabbing investors,” Asia Times Online, April 11, 2006, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HD11Cb05.html .

4 Barboza, “In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism.”

5 Marc Spiegler, “Five Theories On Why the Art Market Can’t Crash (and Why It Will Anyway),” New York, April 3, 2006,
http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/16542/ .

6 Britta Erickson, “Zooming Into Focus, Sliding Into History,” in Zooming Into Focus, 14–15.

7 Lu Jie, “Contemporary Art in Greater China: Under Pressure, A Discussion at the 52nd Venice Biennale,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (September 2007), 8–24.

8 Jonathan Napack, “An Art Market With Chinese Characteristics,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (March 2006), 16–17.

9 Erickson, “Zooming Into Focus, Sliding Into History,” in Zooming Into Focus, 14–15.

10 Martina Koppel-Yang, “Compelling Images of a Distant Life, Video as Expansion of Reality,” in Zooming Into Focus, 71–72.

11 Erickson, “Zooming Into Focus, Sliding Into History,” in Zooming Into Focus, 14–15.

12 Ibid.

13 Information about the collection provided by the haudenschildGarage.

14 Statements by and biographical information about Mrs. Haudenschild based on a conversation at the haudenschildGarage on September 5, 2007, a telephone conversation on September 12, 2007, and e-mail exchange.

15 Lu Leiping, “When Experiment Encounters Classics,” in Zooming Into Focus, 19–21.

16 Deborh Brewster, “Investing in the art market,” Financial Times, July 13, 2007, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a531d0d2-3153-11dc-891f-0000779fd2ac.html .

17 Ibid.

18 Kelly Klaasmeyer, “RED HOT: Asian Art From the Chaney Family Collection,” Houston Press, September 13, 2007, http://www.houstonpress.com/2007-09-13/culture/red-hot-business/ .

19 Robin Pogrebin, “Volatile Markets? Art World Takes Stock,” New York Times, August 29, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/arts/design/29mark.html, accessed 08/24/07 .

20 Barboza, “In China’s New Revolution, Art Greets Capitalism.”

21 Spiegler, “Five Theories On Why the Art Market Can’t Crash (and Why It Will Anyway).”

22 Sharon Reier, “Contemporary Art: Follow the Money—The Latest Status Investment is Showing Signs of a Bubble,” International Herald Tribune, January 27, 2007, http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/news/news.cfm?doc_id=6894 .

23 Napack, “An Art Market With Chinese Characteristics,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (March 2006), 16–17.

24 Lu Jie, “Contemporary Art in Greater China: Under Pressure, A Discussion at the 52nd Venice Biennale,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, September/Fall 2007, 8–24.

25 Lu Leiping, “When Experiment Encounters Classics,” in Zooming Into Focus, 19–21.

26 Napack, “An Art Market With Chinese Characteristics,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (March 2006), 16–17.

27 Marsha Weidner, preface to Flowering in the Shadows, Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, ed. Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), xi–xiv.

28 Napack, “An Art Market With Chinese Characteristics,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (March 2006), 16–17.

29 Ibid.

30 Spiegler, “Five Theories on Why the Art Market Can’t Crash (and Why It Will Anyway).”

Coinciding with the anniversary of the “Art For Sale” exhibition, the haudenschildGarage held a Ten Year Reunion Celebration for artists, critics, and curators on January 18, 2009 in Shanghai and on January 20, 2009 in Beijing.

Organized by Laura Zhou and Lorenz Helbling, some attendees included Li Xiangyang, Liu Wei, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzong, Shi Yong, Song Tao, Xiang Liqing, Wang Youshen, Zhu Jia, Yang Enli, Zhao Bandi, Lisa Movius, Tang Maohong, Hu Jieming, Lynn Zhang, Zhou Tiehai, Ding Yi, Helen Zhu, Chen Ya, Lu Leiping, Florence Dinar, Shaway Yeh and Xu Zhen.

This unprecedented view of one of the world’s most dynamic cities examines Shanghai as a laboratory for 21st-century urban creation. Leading artists, architects and fashion designers provide an insider’s view of the high-speed, high-density, high-rise culture that is rapidly emerging in China’s largest city.

What started out as a bustling seaport known for its corruption, casinos and opium trade has quickly become one of the world’s most forward-thinking cities. From the Bund to Pudong, Shanghai has transformed itself into a leading destination. Business peoples, designers, investors and tourists collide in what is a remarkable cultural and urban whirl.

Shanghai Kaleidoscope presented four key aspects of the city’s vibrant culture: architecture, urban design, contemporary art, and fashion. The exhibition brought together an adventurous mix of architectural models and digital simulations; designer fashion apparel, drawings and runway videos; and paintings, photo-works and video installations by the city’s leading contemporary artists.

Watch guest curator Christopher Phillips talk about the exhibition below:

Yang Zhenzhong, Let's Puff, 2002 Video

Shi Yong, Gravity: Shanghai Sky, 2004

The haudenschildGarage supported Zheng Shengtian’s research project which investigated the influence of Mexican art on the development of contemporary Chinese art in the 20th century.  Shengtian is the Managing Editor of the Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art the first publication on Chinese contemporary art in English.

A Research Project to Investigate Mexico and China’s Exchange in 20th Century
Mexico, February 2008

The Project

Exchange, dialogue and migration between societies have occurred throughout the history of art and continue to impact our society today. Unfortunately, very few scholars have investigated the development of collective visual culture, especially those occurring outside the European-American cultural arena. This research project is designed to uncover the influence of Mexican art on the development of contemporary Chinese art in 20th century. The project, consisting of research trips to both China and Mexico seeks to further encourage this artistic dialogue through meetings and artistic collaboration. It is our hope the result of this project will be presented in a documentary film and an art exhibition.

The History

Documented contact between Mexico and China can be found as early as 1934, when Mexican artist, Miguel Covarrubias visited Shanghai and soon became the mentor of a group of young Chinese artists. A major exchange took place in 1950s after China’s communist revolution. Mexican artists Xavier Guerrero, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Ignacio Aguirre and Arturo García Bustos, among others, visited China successively. In March and July 1956, two exhibitions of Mexican painting and prints came to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. As China was completely closed to the West at that time, the art work in the exhibition brought new styles and new ideas and influenced a great number of Chinese artists. Yao Zhonghua, painter and the head of Yunnan Painting Institute, recalled how “the large murals by Diego Rivera that recruited the Indian tradition and Western modernism excited us and refreshed our eyes. It was in congruence with our artistic pursuit… we were having feverish dreams about making murals.” And make murals they did. Commissioned by the Beijing Airport in 1979, a group of Chinese artists completed a dozen large scale murals pushing the boundaries of artistic expression. It was the first art movement after ending of the Cultural Revolution and marked the beginning of a new era for contemporary Chinese art.

The Delegation

The delegation is led by Zheng Shengtian – Independent Canadian curator and managing editor of Yishu Journal(www.yishujournal.com). He is joined by Chinese artists Yao Zhonghua and Sun Jingbo– Muralist and Professor of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, Joy Bloser, research assistant and interpreter, andGu Yu, videographer.

The Trip to Mexico

A research trip to Mexico is the second phase of the project, designed to further uncover the influence of Mexican Muralism on Contemporary Chinese art and to further that artistic dialogue. Two Chinese artists will visit Mexico City and Guadalajara with our research team. The goal of the trip is to firstly, interview scholars and living artists who participated in the early Mexican – China exchange, secondly, to further expose Chinese artists to the Mexican aesthetic, and thirdly, to facilitate an artistic dialogue and collaboration between Mexican and Chinese artists. This research trip will be videotaped. Documentation of this trip will be used for a future touring exhibition that demonstrates the significant cultural interchange between these two societies and its continuing impact on Chinese art.

It was more than fifty years ago that Chinese artist, Yao Zhonghua declared, “We [Chinese Artitsts] are having feverish dreams of making murals!” Now in February 2008, Yao Zhonghua is joined by professor and fellow Chinese muralist Sun Jingbo here in Mexico City to travel with the Canadian Chinese art curator, Shengtian Zheng and his research team. During which time, this delegation of Chinese artists and researchers will visit historical Mexican sites, the great Mexican murals, museums, private collections, and meet with artists and scholars integral to the historical reconstruction and re-establishment of Chinese-Mexican Collective Visual Culture.

2008 Trip Update

As the second phase of the Mexico – China research project to investigate Mexico and China’s exchange in 20th Century, our team: two well-respected Chinese artists, Mr. Yao Zhonghua and Sun Jingbo, Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Gu Yu, research assistant Joy Bloser, and curator and organizer Mr. Zheng Shengtian all traveled to Mexico City and Guadalajara from February 18 to 29, 2008, while there we accomplished all our initial goals and established invaluable connections with Mexican scholars and Mexican art institutions. Time in Mexico provided great encouragement for our research, and further supports our theory of the influence of Twentieth Century Mexican art over contemporary Chinese art.

A Tour de Force in Mexican Muralism

In the course of 11 days, our team visited more than 19 sites housing one or more murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jose Clemente Orozco and Rufino Tamayo, as well as others. We traveled to 11 different museums, including the Musuem of Anthropology, Frida Kahlo’s House, Diego Rivera Museum at Anahuacalli, Dolores Olmedo Patino Museum and Instituto Cultural Cabañas. Personal connections allowed the team to visit with four artists in their studios: Rina Lazo and Arturo Garcia Bustos, both friends of Rivera and muralists in their own right, who met with Mr. Zheng in 1982 when he visited Mexico. Mr. Ricardo Martinez, painter and sculptor active in the 50’s and still working today, showed us his most recent paintings and private collection of pre-hispanic artifacts, and finally Mr. Arturo Estrada, whose work traveled to China in 1957 with the Mexican Exhibition, offered invaluable resources in our search for Mexican art missing since its exhibition in China.

Goals Accomplished

An important first step in establishing connections and sharing information, we accomplished all four goals of this trip:

1. Established connections with the official governing art bodies of Mexico. With an introduction from Cultural Attaché of Mexico to China, Mr. Edgardo Bermejo, the team met with the Cultural Ministry of Art and Culture in Mexico. Their representative, Mr. Americo Sanchez planned and accompanied the team to the majority of art sites and coordinated many meetings with artists and scholars. Mr. Sanchez provided enthusiastic encouragement for our project and proposed a collaborative approach for future research. Additionally, the Cultural Consul of China to Mexico, Mr. Sun Jiamu, dined with us and offered his support as well in this project.

2. Initiated collaboration and the exchange of information between leading Mexican scholars and research team. The Cultural Ministry of Art and Culture in Mexico organized a meeting in which Mr. Zheng, accompanied by Artists Sun Jingbo and Yao Zhonghua, presented to date research to a room of directors of galleries and museums, curators, researchers, and art critics familiar with Mexican Muralism. They unanimously agreed this was a research project worthy of further investigation and offered their respective organizations as open door resources and hosting institutions. Material exchange between scholars was agreed upon as well.

3. Exposed Chinese artists to the vast array of Mexican murals and contemporary art. With the help of Mr. Sanchez and art dealer Pablo Goebel, our team accomplished a tour-de-force of Mexican Murals, Modern Art, Public Art and historic Mexican art. The team was granted private access to multiple collections, private viewings of important art works, all proving to be an excellent and thorough introduction to the heroic tradition of Mexican art.

4. Facilitated the continuation of collaboration and artistic exchange between Mexico and China. The final days of the research trip were filled with enthusiastic future plans on both the Mexican and Chinese sides. Both Chinese artists, Professor Sun and Professor Yao, expressed serious interest in organizing future trips with Chinese artists to Mexico. The cultural institutions in Mexico also pledged their support of future collaborative projects.

Future Plans

With cooperation from the Cultural Ministry in Mexico and many Mexican scholars, an important materials exchange has already begun. Our research team will continue to collect printed material and primary resources concerning the Chinese-Mexican artistic exchange, building our bibliography and text collection. The Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros invited research assistant, Joy Bloser, to return to Mexico City in order to continue searching for materials about Siqueiros visit to China in the 1950’s.

Documentary filmmaker, Gu Yu, is presently editing taped interviews from both Mexico and China to create a trailer of our project and is continuing to develop the documentary proposal.

Connections made in Mexico have also helped solidify plans for a major traveling art exhibition presenting our research and findings to the international public in a visual forum.

The Sponsors
Our trip would not be possible without the sponsorship of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Long March Foundation in Beijing, China, the generous support of Stephanie Holmquest and Mark Allison, and the haudenschildGarage: Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild. Thanks to Pablo Coehlo Fine Arts for planning and hosting this trip. We would also like to thank the Mexican Embassy in Beijing and the Mexican Cultural Ministry for their unending support.

For more information please contact
Zheng Shengtian: shengtianz (at) hotmail (dot) com
Joy Bloser: jbloser (at) gmail (dot) com

Cao Fei, Whose Utopia, 2006 Video

Videos from the Haudenschild Collection by Cao Fei and Yang Fudong were the inspiration for the Arizona State University Art Museum’s exhibition Business As Usual: New Video from China Cao Fei and Yang Fudong on view from September 15 – December 8, 2007 at the Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe; August 18 – September 27, 2008 at MassArt, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston; and October 1 – December 1, 2009 at the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle.

The videos selected were Cao Fei’s Whose Utopia (2006) and Yang Fudong’s City Lights (2000) and Honey (2003). Click here for more information about the exhibition.

Business As Usual is an opportunity to examine two of the most prominent contemporary Chinese video artists. Both Cao Fei and Yang Fudong address the emergence of a new middle class in China. Contemporary artists in China employ a range of media to explore the experience of living in a rapidly changing urban environment. Globalization has brought them into contact with Western contemporary art, which explains the increasing visual similarity, but their concerns remain unique to present-day China.

In Whose Utopia, Cao Fei portrays workers who left their small hometown to pursue life in the big city. They took with them dreams to be dancers and singers, and ended up in factories. Working with employees in a light bulb factory, Cao Fei has the workers dress in the garb of their dreams and perform within the environment of their actual lives, the factory.

Yang Fudoing’s film and video work portrays his generations of people in their late 20s and 30s who are part of the emerging middle class in China who hover between the past and present. Fudong’s work epitomizes how the recent and rapid modernization of China has overthrown traditional values and culture. He skillfully balances this dichotomy to create works endowed with classic beauty and timelessness.

The exhibition is co-curated by Marilyn A. Zeitlin, former-Director and Chief Curator, and Heather S. Lineberry, Senior Curator and Interim Director, of the ASU Art Museum.

Yang Fudong, CIty Light, 2000 Video

Yang Fudong, Honey, 2003 Video

The Haudenschild Collection was the inspiration for the exhibition City Lights: Shanghai – Los Angeles on view from November 7 – December 17, 2006. The exhibition was organized by Yeonsoo Chee and examined contemporary life in Shanghai and Los Angeles. Chee writes that these cities were “two of the most dynamic and influential urban centers of the 21st century. On the streets—and in the artists’ images—of these two great metropolises are played out many of the issues confronting post-modern society: the globalization of markets and cultures, the search for individual identity in the face of homogenization, the proliferation of artifice and spectacle, the excesses of consumer culture, and the endless sprawl of urban development.” Click here for more information about the exhibition.

Works on loan for this exhibition included Lui Wei Unlimited 2004; Yang Fudong City Light 2000 (video); Song Tao In Loud Crowds I Dream of Hanging Myself 2 2002; Yang Fudong Honey 5, 2003; Yang Fudong Honey 2003 (video); Xiang Liqing Rock Never (Facades) #2 2002.  The Los Angeles portion of the exhibition featured works by Uta Barth, Martin Kersels, Michael Light, Robbert Flick, and Melanie Pullen.

Lui Wei, Unlimited, 2004

Yang Fudong, Honey, 2003 Video

The Haudenschild Collection was the inspiration for the exhibition City Lights: Shanghai – Los Angeles at the University Art Gallery, CSULB on view November 7 – December 17, 2006. The exhibition was organized by Yeonsoo Chee and it examined contemporary life in Shanghai and Los Angeles. Chee writes that these cities were “two of the most dynamic and influential urban centers of the 21st century. On the streets—and in the artists’ images—of these two great metropolises are played out many of the issues confronting post-modern society: the globalization of markets and cultures, the search for individual identity in the face of homogenization, the proliferation of artifice and spectacle, the excesses of consumer culture, and the endless sprawl of urban development.”

Song Tao, In Loud Crowds I Dream of Hanging Myself 2, 2002

Yang Fudong, City Light, 2000 Video

Works on loan for this exhibition included Lui Wei Unlimited (2004); Yang Fudong City Light (2000) video; Song Tao In Loud Crowds I Dream of Hanging Myself 2 (2002); Yang Fudong Honey 5 (2003); Yang Fudong Honey (2003) video; Xiang Liqing Rock Never (Facades) #2 (2002).  The Los Angeles portion of the exhibition featured works by Uta Barth, Martin Kersels, Michael Light, Robbert Flick, and Melanie Pullen.

On November 16, 2006 Eloisa Haudenschild was in conversation with CSULB Professor Todd Gray as part of the exhibition.

Click here for more information about the exhibition.

Xiang Liqing, Rock Never, 2002

Yang Fudong, Honey 5, 2003

Chen Shaoxiong, Street Tianhebeilu, 1999

Yang Yong, Cruel Youth Diary - No Way Home, 2000

Chen Shaoxiong, Street Motorola, 1999

Song Tao, The Floor, 2003

Shi Yong, Shanghai Sky, 2003

Three photographs and two large-scale installation pieces from the Haudenschild Collection were loaned to the San Diego Museum of Art for the exhibition Personal Views: Regarding Private Collections in San Diego on view October 21 2006 – January 7, 2007.

The works loaned were Chen Shaoxiong’s Street Motorola (1999) and Street Thianhebeilu (1998), Shi Yong’s Shanghai Sky (2004), Song Tao’s The Floor – Life is Wonderful! (2003), and Yang Yong’s Cruel Youth Diary – No Way Home (2000).

“Zooming into Focus is the first retrospective show of Chinese contemporary photography and video ever held at the National Art Museum, Beijing. It reveals the changes in social notions and technology in Chinese contemporary art from a different angle. The exhibition showcases the most outstanding and symbolic works from the late 1990s and 2000s which directly reflect the changing cultural and social environment and values of the Chinese people in a booming economy”. -Feng Yuan, Director of the National Art Museum, of China, Beijing

China’s National Art Museum is currently hosting what some are calling ‘its best exhibit ever.’ It’s a stronghold of landmark artworks from the breakout period of the early 90s, and this is a ‘once in Beijing’ opportunity to see them all in one place. Go at once to the art museum, but make it before the 20th of November, when the show ends and art fans sadly walk back to the distant 798-Dashanzi district. – Published in That’s Beijing

The National Art Museum of China presented the exhibition Zooming Into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography From the Haudenschild Collection. The exhibition highlighted the remarkable photography and videography works currently being created in China. The swift transformation of Chinese culture is reflected in the work of each of the participating artists, who comment on contemporary Chinese urban life with intelligence, wit, apprehension and nostalgia.

Noted American art collectors Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild have created one of the most important collections of contemporary Chinese art in the world. Focusing on the work of experimental artists from Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, the collection makes groundbreaking contributions to the field of international contemporary art. The National Art Museum of China, which is China’s national museum for the visual arts, focuses on collecting, studying and exhibiting China’s modern and contemporary works of fine art based on people’s daily life.

Shi Yong, one of the participating artists has his own opinion about getting some local exposure, “I feel very lucky that we can do this exhibition in our home country today. Actually many Chinese artists care more about domestic exhibitions then overseas ones.” – Published by the Siemens Art Program for Culture Times Beijing

Exhibition
November 5 – 20, 2005, National Museum of China, Beijing, China

Organized by Laura Zhou and Zooming into Focus catalog and installation design at the National Museum of China, Beijing by Shi Yong.

About Laura Zhou

Laura Zhou is co-director and co-founder of ShanghART in Shanghai, China. The gallery was initiated in 1996 and it has since grown to become one of China’s most influential contemporary art institutions. ShanghART has established itself as a leading gallery representing established figures whilst continuing to support the work of innovative younger artists. As a gallery, producer, supporter, and point of reference ShanghART contributes as a vital resource to the development of contemporary Chinese art. Being recognized for its importance ShanghART became the initial gallery from China participating in major international art fairs like Art Basel and Fiac, Paris. Since its inauguration the gallery has established more than 70 exhibitions, and it enjoys the great respect of being among the 75 international galleries selected in Thames & Hudson publication international Art Galleries that features 75 of the most acclaimed galleries from post-war to post-millennium (2005). ShanghART represents over 40 of China most talented artists working with different media ranging from painting and sculpture to video art and performance.Today ShanghART works out of three spaces in Shanghai (Moganshan Rd and Huaihai Rd )and one space in Beijing (Cao Changdi).

About Shi Yong

Shi Yong’s work embraces modernization and the ideology of consumerism as the basis for self-imagination and creation. He has produced a series of photo-based works around the concept of the ideal Shanghai citizen. It is an ongoing multifaceted project that explores images of consumption, commodity and the development of the culture industry. One series, entitled “Made in China – Welcome to China” (1999), consists of hand-painted plaster models of a young businessman in a Mao suit, sunglasses, briefcase and waving. The image of the ideal citizen used for the statue was the outcome of an Internet project through which Shi Yong asked volunteers to vote for the ideal way of looking. The individual now transforms the identity of his or her self by following the logic of commodity market surveys. It is a composite image that Shi Yong has repeatedly used in other pieces such as “Longing For” (2000) and “You Cannot Clone It, But You Can Buy It” (2001). The iconic figure is morphed through the agency of the marketplace.

Recently, Shi Yong has focused his attention on large-scale installations and architectural models imbued with an absurd twist of humor. Most notably, his mixed media installation “Flying Q” is of a UFO built with the purpose of opening up the sky. The flying object comes with no additional explanation, but might be recognized as just another signature vision of and interventions into the imaginary world of Shi Yong. His subversive approach pokes fun at architecture based on rules and pre-established schemas. Shi Yong fabricates a colorful and ironic architectural structure that is at once a parody of serious design and its synthesis. In short, his work is an amalgam of Shanghai’s eclectic ‘anything goes’ attitude towards the built environment.

Shi Yong was born in Shanghai in 1963. He graduated from Light Industrial School, Fine Art Department. He resides and works in Shanghai. Shi Yong has exhibited widely since the early 1990’s. Recent shows include Follow Me!, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2005), Second Guangzhou Triennale, Guangsong Museum of Art (2005), Zooming into Focus, China National Art Museum (Beijing, 2005), Felicidad Indecible, Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art (Mexico, 2005), The Heaven, The World, ShanghART & H-Space (Shanghai, 2004), Shanghai Biennale (2002), Bienal de Sao Paulo (2002) and Bienal de Maia (1999). (ShanghART; Shanghai, China)