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.

Part 1

When Eloisa Haudenschild decided to collect Chinese contemporary art mainly in the forms of photography and video, her American colleagues did not show particular interest about her ‘adventurous’ plan. From a traditional point of view, art works from these young Chinese artists are obviously not ‘classical’ enough; furthermore, the nature of photography and video is hard to preserve and easy to be duplicated. Therefore, these media forms are generally avoided by collectors. However, when Zooming into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection came into existence in San Diego, California at the SDSU Art Gallery, with vivid personalities and full of vitality, Eloisa had made her point clear: “never be afraid, always trust your eyes.”

In fact, Zooming into Focus is not new to the Chinese contemporary art community. On one hand, as a touring exhibition, it was shown at the Shanghai Art Museum last year; on the other hand, these works have traveled to the Venice Biennial, Italy; Shanghai Biennial; Kassel, Germany; Yokohana Triennial, Japan; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, they have been represented in China and also sent to international cultural exchange events. However, the Zooming into Focus re-exhibition at the National Art Museum of China has its legendary and historic significance.

It is common knowledge that the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) made a clear distinction with experimental arts since the gun shooting incident of 1989 at the Beijing Contemporary Art Exhibition. Only after the Shanghai Biennial (2000) and the Guangzhou Triennial (2002) the Chinese government started lifting the ban of conceptual arts such as installations and images. However, NAMOC, due to the fact that it is located in the capital, maintained its insistence on “framed” art work. Although the exhibition Era of Opening up in celebration of the opening of the new permanent hall had included a few new media art works as well as ‘framed’ art works, but they were still main stream compared with ‘unframed’ ones.

The National Art Exhibition and the Beijing Biennial Art Exhibition held by the Art Association also excluded ‘unframed’ works, although the quality and quantity of new media artists, conceptual artists, and non-government art organizations in Beijing were far out-numbered anywhere else in the country. In fact, ‘framed’ or ‘unframed’ have no direct relationship with the quality of the works. Many avant-garde experimental arts had also adopted traditional media such as ‘framed’ paintings or sculptures; at the same time, art forms like behavioral, installation, photography and video, with decades of history, produced many classical works.

Officials at the Ministry of Culture understood the connections, and under the condition ‘to seek common ground while reserving differences’, they held many contemporary art exhibitions mainly in the form of new media art as international cultural exchange projects. For example, Living in Time, Hamburger Bahnhof, Hamburg, Germany, 2002; Centre National d’Art et de Culture, Georges Pompidou; and Venice Biennial China Art Hall, with the free and diversified art ecology from both in and outside the country.

NOMAC as the symbol of Art Center has lost the need to be a vacuum fortress, the ice has started melting between the so called ‘framed’ and ‘unframed’ art. At this moment, foreign collectors have held out olive branch, Zooming into Focus therefore has become the first to hold a Chinese contemporary photography and video exhibition at the National Museum of Art.

Part 2

‘Experiments’ and ‘classics’ are not totally opposite concepts. From the tense perspective, ‘experiment’ is inclined to the continuous tense, while ‘classic’ belongs to the past tense. However, ‘experiments’ do not necessarily generate ‘classics’; the factors of ‘classics’ are rather complicated. The word ‘classics’ has been paraphrased as: works that are authoritative. However, who defines ‘authoritativeness’ Not individuals or organizations. In fact, politics, religions, economics or pure art forms can all influence whether a work is ‘classic’ or not. Therefore, time is the real judge. ‘Classics’ are those artworks proven by time.

Although the Zooming into Focus collection will be exhibited at the National Arts Museum of China (NAMOC), which symbolizes ‘authoritativeness’, one cannot simply classify these works as ‘classics’. The exhibition cannot be considered an experimental art exhibition either. As the history of photography and video works as experimental art has already become the past, one could say their ‘experiments’ are the past and present tense.

So, what motivated Eloisa to collect such works, taking meticulous care of them, and introducing them to people with joy? She is so confident: “the reason I only collect video and photography is because in my opinion it is the media that produces the most interesting works.”

Similar opinion is held by Per Bjarne Boym, former director of National Art Museum of Norway, when he was the curator of A Facile Task – Shanghai Puzzle (2000-2004) he too selected only videos. When the writer asked him about the reason, he said “most of the best works I have seen in Shanghai are videos”. In addition, works shown at Kassel, Germany and Venice Biennial, Italy in recent years, were mainly video or video installations: such as Yang Fudong’s An Estranged Paradise and Seven Intellectuals; Chen Shaoxiong’s Anti-Terrorism Variety; Xu Zhen’s Rainbow; Yang Zhenzhong’s Let’s Puff; Feng Mengbo’s Q4U, etc.

Is the Western judgment of ‘good or bad’ prejudiced toward China? There is no doubt that both opinions have a personal aesthetic, however, objectivity still exists. Looking back at the evolvement of Chinese contemporary art since the middle of the 1990s, we have to recognize that photography and video are the most experimental and pioneering media today, it is also the media that more strongly maintains the Chinese characteristics.

In fact, after the 85’s new tide, pioneer Chinese contemporary artists have gradually become used to Western art forms such as installations, conceptual, behavioral, and political pop, and they have started utilizing this new language in their work. Photography originally was not the prevailing art form, in the beginning, it was used as a tool to record conceptual or behavioral art, the same phenomenon later appeared in video art. Avant-garde artists’ experiments have gradually changed from indigenous artist’s groups to artists working independently.

Many artists tired of political pop symbols, resisted western culture colonialism and the fast consuming market abroad and started looking for more suitable art languages in which they could express themselves better and more freely. Their progress mirrors the country’s progress of modernization, commercialization and urbanization. The prevalence of electronic images, digital techniques, and the rapid proliferation of the consuming culture extend the new life of photography and video as the revolution of art language; more importantly, it has changed the vision, imagination, and the way of narrations and criticisms of the artists.

Photography and video have become the media art format growing at the highest speed and the largest in numbers of works produced overnight. Conceptual photography and video have become more independent and mature symbols including, ’sensibility’ which has emerged again in works, differing completely from the artists of earlier days, who used photography and video as pure tools of recording. Some artists have begun to consciously use photography or video as the main language of their experimental creations. artists began to connect the relationship between concepts and images, and to challenge photography and video’s indigenous characteristics of narrative and authenticity. When ’sensitivity’ returned to the language of images, concepts did not disappear, they had been quietly hidden, together with tremendous narratives and prolonged dry preach.

Surreal humor and utopia’s poetry acquired the new password to open the real world. This is not a new invention; it comes from the tradition of Eastern Lao Zhuang’s philosophy and Dynasty We, Jin’s spirits of unconcern of fame and wealth, in contrast to the western’s rhetoric origin of Greek comedy and tragedy. This might be the ever lasting talisman for the bright artists, once the humor and poetry are lost, art will become tasteless and suffocating. This is how classics were inherited and led to the new experiment: photography and video’s new battlefield ‘fictitious reality’ or ‘combined reality’.

In conceptual photography, various poses combined with the power of digital composition are no doubt becoming the major weapon. Representative works of this kind can be found in this exhibition: Weng Fen’s On The Wall is a typical work which depicts China’s urban culture, a young girl riding on a wall representing the boundary between new and old, looking up to mirage-like skyscrapers, with aesthetic fantasy.

Zhao Bandi’s Zhao Bandi & Panda openly conspires with public media, he and his toy panda played the fashion public welfare advertisement series’ ghostly appearing everywhere —- subways, airports and streets, mocking the over – urbanization caused by morbidity, pollution, violence, unemployment, drug addiction, and smoking. In fact, such arrangement has a close relationship with digital combination.

The above two works have both borrowed from digital combination. Only with software such as photoshop, artists could freely modify realities, as magical as wizardry. Yang Zhenzhong attempted to use digital combination to make his Lucky Family photography series as early as 1995. Charmingly naïve chicks were simulated to become different family members, the piece was achieved by using a digital combination technique. Xiang Liqing’s Rock Never cloned many stereotyped Chinese city residences and pieced them together to create many surreal pictures. Shi Yong directly cloned himself in his work You cannot clone it, but you can buy it photographs.

Is this a game? Or is it a nightmare? Maybe it just like what artist Zheng Guogu said: ” I’m using photos to play a game…it has a special charm to me—game is a kind of practice, thinking does not waste any film. I know thinking in this way is only a matter of time to me.”

With respect to conceptual video art, distinctions are also becoming clear: early stage conceptual video was interested in stony and tedious video techniques, originated by artists’ rebellion against the commercialized TV media. While the new generation’s conceptual videos are more infatuated with exaggerated, humorous and dramatic expressions, absurdities directly became the structure of narration in order to choke people up.

For instance, Chen Shaoxiong’s Anti-terrorism Variety installation uses computer animation to suggest the many ways how skyscrapers could avoid being struck by aircraft, using fantasy to mock the chaotic world.

Xu Zhen’s Shouting and Rainbow videos on the other hand, are endowed with a power that is instantly explosive, Shouting played the devilment of shouting in a crowd, using the violence of the human voice. Rainbow showed a body whipped and gradually turned red by a disturbing sound, the artist has applied free and relaxed appearances to the implication of violence. Yang Zhenzhong’s 922 Rice Corns looks at the chicken’s instinct (eating the rice corns) and the human’s futile efforts (counting the rice corns) sneering at those monomaniacs in real life.

The other type of experimental short film came from the film aesthetics experience of non- narrative, utopia’s poetic scenes.

Yang Fudong’s well controlled abstract vocabulary and chaotic space-time turned out ambiguous images in City Light where he is daydreaming and sleepwalking in the city; while Seven Intellectuals was his searching for the password to communicate with ancient scholars their ideal way of living.

Lu Chunsheng’s The History of Chemistry was built upon images of fathomless, paradoxical esteem and introspection; its irrational and mysterious statements construct an illusory world created by massive truths.

At the same time, strong wishes of anti-narrative induced the artists to explore the possibilities of photography and video to interfere with space and human activities. Photo installation, video installation, and interactive installation were coming to existence. For example, Chen Shaoxiong’s Street pieces together two dimensional street scenes into three dimensional models introducing them into the even bigger urban space; then re-recording it onto photography, wandering freely between two dimensional and three dimensional reality and illusiveness.

Another example is Song Tao’s The Floor, which also presents ordinary black and white life images on floorboards, clearing up the boredom and reconstructing life’s interests.

Video installations are easier to be combined with interactions: Yang Zhenzhong’s Let’s Puff is a multi-screen video interaction. In the city scenes being blown away by the girl, audiences may further experience the ‘unbearable lightness’ of life.

Hu Jieming’s Up Up on the other hand, extends the interaction to communicate with audiences. In the 25 televisions vertically installed videos  on a steel structure, 25 meters in total height, A little girl is doomed to climbing up her way like Sisyphus, however, no one will be able to see the moment she arrives at the top, since any surrounding sound could make her pause or drop back.

Additionally, photography and video art’s fast evolvement is directly related to China’s economic environment. Before 2000, the entire art market and exhibition market were at a preliminary stage, most artists’ ‘unframed’ works were fairly poor, and artists needed other jobs as teachers or designers to make a living. Chances of getting sponsorship on making art works or exhibitions were minimal. Therefore, plans of large scale and expensive installation works had to be suspended. Early behavioral art was treated by the Chinese government as evil since it involved pornography and violence.

Photography and video gradually became a more convenient and workable new media. Although the equipment was not cheap, it was relatively easy to borrow; the prevailing personal computer and digital technology allowed for a more “Do It Yourself” (DIY) editing and production. In comparison, photography and video the media lowest in cost, became naturally more widespread.

Due to the restriction of economic conditions, Chinese artists are used to adjust to low costs and small productions. Film proportion is normally kept very high, such as Ju Anqi’s There is a strong wind in Beijing, Yang Zhenzhong’s 922 Rice Corns and others, they all kept film proportion at 1:1. It is not rare to see artists become actors for each other.

Another feature worth noticing is that all the works in this exhibition come from indigenous Chinese artists’ art practice. In fact, considerable differences exist between indigenous and overseas Chinese artists, in terms of ideology and substance of art practice. Overseas Chinese artists under the Western contemporary art environment are more concerned with the origin and success of Chinese culture and the process of globalization. On the other hand local Chinese artists prefer to proceed from China’s modern realities and through experimenting with art languages, they want to present a more personal opinion on society’s explosive change. Therefore, although indigenous art practices utilized common art language — photography and video, no doubt persists in a realism with Chinese characteristics, particularly bringing up questions and introspections on China’s urbanization and fast commercial development.

Part 3

The Zooming into Focus exhibition has recalled some photography and video experiments of China indigenous artists’ since the 1990s and at the same time has emphasized on the past continuous tense of these experiments, which is a past tense.

I would like to bring us back the topic of this article—when experiments come across classics. There are two arguable statements: the first is whether the assumption of ‘experiments come across classics’ is correct? Second, if the assumption is correct, how does experimentation continue?

In fact, the meaning of ‘experiments’ and ‘classics’ are pointing at different subjects. Relatively speaking, experimentation is granted by the artists, however, the meaning of ‘classics’ is originated by the audiences.

Italo Calvino mentioned in his book Why Read the Classics “The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say, ‘I am re-reading . . . ‘ and never ‘I am reading . . . ‘” It pointed here that ‘classics’ is defined by the readers. Pual Connerton made his point in his book How Societies Remember .

Therefore, the creator of the work does not have control whether the work will be classified as ‘classic’; it also does not have any direct relationship with experimentation.

Social memory inevitably influences the creator, as Pual Connerton indicated. The realist is that government permission greatly transformed the original art system. However, experimental art is facing the possibility of systematization and commercialization; this change could be so fast that there will be no time for preparation. Generally speaking, a “classical” work is treated as the standard of aestheticism by art authorities and has become the art market’s favorite.

However, if getting lost in all of the above and confused by the glory of outside commercial and authority of the “classical”, the essence of “classical” will be neglected. This neglect may be the biggest threat to art to rapidly become commercial and systemized – once overly consumed, art experiments and creativity will not be able to differentiate itself from fashion consumption. Let’s keep in mind that in a commercial society, the scope of new and old is not substantive, but only superficial. This is the major difference between art and fashion.

We have to recognize the formidable “consumption power” of the art system and the art market. History has already shown us the outcome of this self –contradiction. Realist Futurists and Dadaists who intended to destroy art as a system turned out to make their works ‘classics’. It is art experimentation and evolution that formidably pushes art history, the art system and the art market’s “self discipline”.

Under this new environmental language, how will artists confront the temptation of systematization and commercial authorities? How will they overcome the inertia problem of creation?   How will they continue with new experiments?

Looking forward …