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.

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

Marking many important milestones, Zooming into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection (2003 – 2005) was the first exhibition of its kind in San Diego and Singapore and the first contemporary Chinese photography exhibition at the Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico. It was the first time the Shanghai Art Museum exhibited works on contemporary Chinese video and photography from a private collection and most importantly, it was the first retrospective exhibition of Chinese photography and video ever held at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

Zooming into Focus investigated the effects of accelerated change in China through the work of the country’s most talented emerging artists. The swift transformation of Chinese culture is reflected in the work of each of these represented artists who comment on contemporary Chinese urban life with intelligence, wit, foreboding and nostalgia.

The works of Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Feng Mengbo, Geng Jianyi, Hong Hao, Hu Jieming, Kan Xuan, Lui Wei, Lu Chunsheng, Shi Yong, Song Tao, Tang Maohong, Wang Youshen, Weng Fen, Xiang Liqing, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhao Bandi, Zheng Gougu and Zhu Jia were included in this exhibitions. Other artists in the collection include Gu Dexin, Hai Bo, Wang Jin, Zhou Tiehai, Yu Youhan, and Zhao Nengzhi.

Lorenz Helbling and Laura Zhou supported all exhibitions and organized the Hangzhou symposium at the China Art Academy. Shi Yong was responsible for designing the Zooming into Focus catalog and the installation design of Zooming into Focus at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

In addition to the traveling exhibitions, two symposia were held: An International Discourse on New Chinese Video and Photography at the San Diego Museum of Art and Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art from Different Glocal Positions at the China National Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China. Participants included Xu Bing, Waling Boers, Fan Di’an, Huang Du, Britta Erickson, Hu Fang, Yang Fudong, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Wang Gogxin, Hou Hanru, Betti-Sue Hertz, Xu Jiang, Evelyne Jouanno, Mami Kataoka, Martina Koppel-Yang, Pi Li, Barbara London, Zhang Peili, Christopher Phillips, Zheng Shengtain, Karen Smith, Rudolf Stoert, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Li Xianyang, Li Xu, Mo Zhelan, and Qiu Zhijie.

The haudenschildGarage launched their residency program in 2003 which invited Chinese artists and curators for the first time to the United States. Shi Yong and Yang Zhenzhong were the first artists in residence and Hou Hanru, Cao Fei, Yong Fudong, Laura Zhou, Lorenz Helbling, Evelyn Jouanno, and Victoria Lu were also invited to the Garage. Both Shi Yong and Yang Zhenzhong produced new works commissioned by the haudenschildGarage while in residence.

Despite Shanghai’s leading economic role, Beijing is still China’s political and cultural centre. As capitalism thrives, and state paternalism continues, artists juggle the pitfalls of exoticism and international success. Waling Boers and Pi Li discuss the rapidly changing scene of the Chinese capital.

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Waling Boers

Curator, writer and founding Director of BuroFriedrich-Berlin and UniversalStudios-Beijing

When the cab driver dropped me off in a crowded Beijing business street in front of a company called ‘Great Prospect Co.’, a recent headline from a German weekly popped into my mind: ‘Attack from China’ Germany fears the Yellow Danger.’ It is, of course, a question of perspective, but instinctively I felt more at ease in Beijing than in Berlin at that moment, even though I could communicate with the driver only by giving him my mobile phone, so that my host could explain where to take me.

Seen from the other side of the globe, the emotional housekeeping of the West seems all the more in peril. Is this because the fear of losing economic and cultural dominance dictates the dynamics of everyday life? In contrast, the new Chinese attitude clearly gets its positive energy from accelerating expectations. This fundamentally different mindset has modeled the current art scene in China’s metropolises.

In a hectic dialectic involving artists, critics, curators, collectors, gallerists and officials, over the past few years contemporary Chinese art has launched itself into Western art history through international group shows, record-setting auction sales and annual discoveries of new art movements: Mao goes Pop, Cynical Realism, Bad Painting, Shock Art, Meat Art and New Measurement. Recently, Chinese art, however diverse in itself, has become a must-have brand, like those other nation-state-labelled commodities (such as Young British Artists, German Art or Art from the South Pacific). One headline in the Wall Street Journal this July read: ‘New art from China attracts Big Money from Collectors.’ As if everybody must have it now.

Meanwhile the first private ‘Chinese Collections’ have become publicly accessible outside and inside China: the Sigg Collection in Switzerland and the Haudenschild Collection of Experimental Art in Shanghai and Beijing. In the case of the substantial collection of the Belgians Guy and Myriam Ullens, their lucrative investments returned to China packaged with a foundation, and will be included in Beijing’s art park Factory 798. Although this act of reciprocity is, of course, injected with the post-colonial idea of balancing the cultural exchange, these events are important in Beijing’s artistic landscape. For those involved in the field, these intensified activities involving foreign collectors have provided reason enough to question the ethics of collecting. At this year’s Art Basel Conversations, Guan Yi, one of the most engaged collectors in China, stated: ‘I think Western collectors are not always interested in the cultural value of contemporary Chinese Art; they pay more attention to the commercial relationship between politics and art.’

Although many people are talking about this branding phenomenon, artists are less impressed than amused by it. The sardonic Beijing artist Yan Lei responded to the questionable role of auction houses, an important market instrument in the Chinese art upheaval, by creating an ‘industrially produced’ series of paintings featuring banknotes, Picassos and a so-called ‘artistic expression’ created by a chimpanzee. Besides commenting on the superficiality and anonymity of the international art market, Yan Lei addresses Chinese artists’ increasing dependence on the market and the pressure to produce art works as market-fitting commodities, a dependence imposed by the lack of an alternative. There are no grants in Beijing, no commissions, no museums for contemporary art, no political elite that acknowledges its cultural responsibility.

Not that this is such a big problem under the current circumstances. The Chinese cultural elite knows only too well what it is to have Big Brother watching you, although everyday surveillance is lessening. While some specific acts are forbidden by law, such as the consumption of human tissue, which has featured in some works, exhibitions are no longer being closed down. While in its first years the Beijing Art Fair was a state-subordinated affair, it is now a privately run organisation that will soon be the largest contemporary art event in Asia.

In other, traditionally more state-controlled branches of the arts, like film and literature, changes are also taking place. Censorship is turning into a form of advisory supervision, as the independent filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai discovered when getting his film Shanghai Dreams (2005) officially distributed. After a process of negotiation he had to change the ending of his film by reducing the number of audible gun shots, which referred to public executions. But such interventions from the Ministry of Information are not taken so seriously any more. Within the ideological framework encapsulated in the new slogan ‘Build a Human-centered Harmonious Society’ people play sportily with the rules of mainland China, as former ‘underground’ filmmaker Jia Zhang-Ke did when he accepted the position of chairman of the jury at last year’s Shanghai Film Festival. In practice, the relation between Government officials and the art scene has become a kind of Cold Peace. State censorship is becoming self censorship of all those involved (artists, curators, producers, publishers, etc). As in the West, the ‘underground’ is becoming more and more like a waiting room for the mainstream.

The best place to feel this cool breeze is in China’s cultural centre, Beijing, which has the ambivalent reputation of being more ideologically sympathetic than other cities such as mondaine Shanghai or hard-working Guangzhou. In Wang Wei’s latest installation, Trap (2005), realized at Platform China in Beijing’s new art area the East End, birds flew around, caged in a huge labyrinth of sticks. Only a few small windows were opened to extend their territory. Rethinking the political-cultural situation in a similar way to Wang Wei, one of the few programmatic galleries in Beijing ironically named itself Long March, leaving little room for misunderstanding about the remaining ties between the new cultural upheaval and the past.

Looking at the international success of the older generation of painters (strongly Beijing-based) and the endless repetition of its predictable Socialist Realist vocabulary, the younger generation of artists is especially aware of being trapped by the pitfalls of exoticism: the ironic use of the imagery of Mao’s propaganda machine is good for a Western sale because it is easily recognized as typically Chinese and therefore satisfies contemporary sentiments among the post- or anti-communist ‘68 generation. But it is a vocabulary that isn’t current any more in daily life in China, where it arouses only a meaningful smile.

Transcending the boundaries of the traditional, the Chinese and the market is not easy but is apparently a challenge that stimulates younger Beijing artists such as Liu Wei, Kan Xuan, Cui Xiuwen and Liu Xiao Dong. Their work uses the current situation as the basis for a substantial contribution to a more subjective experience and understanding of contemporary life. In humorous attempts to exorcize her fears by accepting them Kan Xuan put herself in some uncomfortable positions: running against a stream of people in a subway corridor (Kan Xuan yes!, 1999) or standing naked on a public pedestal (A happy girl, 1999) or allowing spiders to crawl over her (Looking looking looking for!, 2001). The problems Cui Xiuwen tackles are also connected to women’s lives in society today, problems that derive from the conventional female role of supplying services to the male population. From the perspective of a hidden camera Ladies’ Room (2000) shows a group of ‘night service’ women in the rest-room of a night-club.

In their effort to show that they aren’t scared of the Red Dragon, European cultural organizations, and in their trail artists, writers, scientists and others, are visiting China more frequently than ever. The Beijing Case, a somewhat conventional exchange programme organized by the Cultural Fund of the German Republic, brings together artists, film directors and writers from the two countries, among them Thomas Bayrle, Antje Majewski, Ma Yinglis and Cao Fei. Although the make-up of Cao’s work is extremely surreal, on the level of meaning and action it deals with completely ordinary experiences. Her film COSplayers (2005) is both challenging and chilling: it juxtaposes the fantasy world of video games, in which young urban people in China spend their days, and the increasingly alienating expectations of society and family life. The piece sends a clear message about the management of fear among young people in China’s big cities. Welcome to the club.

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Pi Li

Art historian, critic and founding Director of UniversalStudios-Beijing.

Until the early 1990s the ‘art world’, in the sense of a system comprising artists, critics, dealers, curators, collectors and academics, simply did not exist in China. There were no commercial or non-official art spaces, and the China Art Gallery (and large official exhibitions in other venues) mostly displayed works in the approved Socialist Realist style.

Beijing is, of course, China’s political centre and the main focus of international attention. As a result artists there have been able to enjoy periods of relative freedom. From the late 1970s a circle of talented amateurs started to emerge in the city, supported by a coterie of diplomats from foreign embassies, curious international journalists and representatives of international corporations who were kept idle by China’s planned economy. In the early 1990s, while artistic innovation was again being suppressed by the state, these people acted as a conduit between Chinese art and the international contemporary scene and held a number of unofficial exhibitions in offices and apartments, so that gradually a small market, albeit not exactly as that word is understood in the West, arose. Although standards were variable, this market was lucrative, and some artists resigned from their official state posts and moved to Beijing, where they rented cheap houses from local farmers to use as studios. Most gravitated to Yuanmingyuan (the old Summer Palace) in the north-west of the city, an area that soon became known as the ‘artists’ village’.

China’s move towards a market economy more generally in the early 1990s and changes in the political situation were reflected in the way Cynical Realism and Political Pop became the dominant artistic styles. Those artists who committed themselves to ‘exposing the suppression of human nature in China’s society’ were praised in the West and frequently exhibited there, earning substantial incomes that enabled them to enjoy the good life, becoming China’s nouveaux riches. Western tourists took these styles, which clearly alluded to a non-Western ideology, as representative of contemporary Chinese art. Other artists meanwhile were inspired to elaborate on these ‘internationally best-selling’ styles, giving them more of a political emphasis; many younger ones, however, were encouraged to join the ranks of the supposed ‘dissidents’. While the West looked on more or less approvingly, the new art went hand in hand with a form of cultural nihilism and was finally reduced to little more than a roguish form of Cynical Realism.

Outside China itself most exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art adopted one of two approaches: the ‘impact versus response’ approach, which held that the salient factor in the development of modern Chinese culture was Western aggression, or the ‘tradition versus modernity’ approach, according to which modern Western society provided the benchmark for the rest of the world. Both of these represent Western-influenced views, believing that the industrialization of the West had been a good thing and that conditions in China could never favour a similar process of modernization. Following this logic, experimental Chinese art basically became a kind of folk art. The ‘export-oriented’ system of the mid-1990s did give rise to a whole new crop of curators, but it did nothing to promote academic research or theoretical writing. In several cases exhibitions were held purely for international journalists and were actually intended to be closed down by the state. ‘Curator-oriented art’ created a false impression of prosperity while covering up deficiencies in scholarship and criticism. This not only hampered the development of contemporary art but also allowed the status quo, and Western-derived values, to go unchallenged. Another factor in the shortage of home-grown theoretical art writing was China’s flawed academic system. With Chinese educational institutions ill-equipped to serve as an information resource, and with the mass media incapable of providing an objective assessment, any information about contemporary art in the West had to be passed on by word of mouth or culled from catalogues brought back by artists who had travelled abroad. And as most young artists were not able to read the catalogue texts, the only information they could glean came often from illustrations measuring just a few square centimetres.

During the first half of the 1990s painting remained the dominant medium. However, from 1995 the most fundamental change in Chinese art was the use of a broader range of media, with video and photography finding their way into a number of exhibitions in Beijing. This was a reflection of the dissatisfaction felt by younger artists towards a system focused purely on works that were collectable. Within a short period of time Chinese contemporary art had been galvanized. Almost immediately a new controversy sprang up in 1996, when a debate on ‘meaning’ highlighted differing approaches taken by young artists to the relationship between contemporary art, Realism, and a utilitarian understanding of art’s function in society. Some, most notably Qiu Zhijie, argued that ‘art cannot help us approach truth’ or, in more ‘academic’ terms, that ‘art is just pre-thinking, a preparation for a process, but it refuses to become any finished thought’. The original intention behind this line of argument was to reverse the tendency towards ‘vulgar sociology’ and ‘non-art’, which these artists argued were hindering the development of contemporary art. They also wanted to counter the pro-Western bias inherent in Cynical Realism, Political Pop or the kind of flashy, over-the-top kitsch work that has been dubbed Gaudy art. Qiu’s views, which were embraced mainly by artists from southern China, had a fundamental affinity with the political Enlightenment of the 1980s. In this context it is worth bearing in mind, however, that contemporary Chinese art cannot call on an extensive tradition of analytical discourse. Many young artists believe that artistic innovation simply means discovering original motifs. They regard the relationship between art and society as purely inimical. Art becomes a simple search for novelty, a view that has been described as a ‘Modernist cliche’. The result has been a variety of deliberately shocking works using the human body not so much to reflect on the implications of Modernism and Postmodernism within a post-colonial context as simply to provide novelty and titillation.

In the view of most of the more innovative artists the 1999 Venice Biennale (curated by Harald Szeemann) did not provide a representative survey of contemporary Chinese art because the artists included seemed to be mainly those who had achieved some degree of commercial success, again revealing one of the drawbacks of ‘export-oriented’ art. However, against that, the development of an art market in China has made it possible for not-for-profit or alternative, artist-run spaces to emerge, such as the Loft New Media Art Centre in Beijing and BizArt in Shanghai, complementing the commercial galleries and state-run museums. As contemporary Chinese art has received increasing international exposure, spaces such as these have attracted more and more critical attention; this, coupled with the fact that an increasing number of Chinese artists now receive at least part of their education abroad, means that experimental art has begun to look much healthier.

The growing market value of the new ‘commercial avant-garde’ has also aroused the interest of local dealers and the mass media, giving a further boost to innovative art by raising its profile. A number of private, Chinese-run commercial galleries have emerged, such as the Upriver Gallery in Sichuan and the Dongyu Gallery in Shenyang. However, with no state funding for the arts, and no tax concessions to encourage sponsors, their situation remains somewhat precarious.

Perhaps the most notable change in Chinese society as a whole in the 1990s was the sudden proliferation of the mass media. The lifestyles of the Cynical Realists and Political Pop or Gaudy artists became a recurrent topic in popular magazines, gradually making new art seem ‘harmless’ to society and again raising its profile. By the late 1990s younger figures were being promoted to important positions in government, helping to create an artist-friendly environment. The Central Academy of Fine Arts and the China National Academy started running courses on the new media, and a number of experimental artists were invited to give lectures. At the same time the Shanghai Art Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art and He Xiangning Museum in Shenzhen all began holding regular exhibitions of new work, such as the Shanghai Biennial, the China Contemporary Sculpture Annual Exhibition and the Guangzhou Triennial. And by 2000 there were numerous opportunities for artists in the form of cultural exchange programmes with other countries.

Nevertheless, such measures have usually been the result of one-off decisions made by individual officials, rather than being built into China’s political or legal structure, and so the situation remains somewhat unpredictable. Even so, the rise of local museums and the emergence of ‘alternative art spaces’ does reflect a move away from an ‘export-oriented’ system to something more ‘local-oriented’, effectively transforming contemporary art and its social context. The ‘export-oriented’ art system had led to a logic based on the manipulation of ideological differences and antagonisms between China and the West, but these differences and antagonisms obviously cannot provide a permanent basis for new art in China, which needs to establish its own identity. One lesson to be learnt from the new work coming out of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is that a redundant ideology alone cannot provide a permanent raison d’etre for art.

With China’s entry into the World Trade Organization the need to come to terms with the new world order is increasingly urgent. Young Chinese artists must prepare for an era when pressure from different ideologies gradually disappears: they will have a future only if they turn their attention to deeper issues within society. In the meantime the increasing acceptability of new art has raised some interesting problems. For example, when artist Zhao Bandi appeared with a toy panda in a series of posters throughout Beijing and on CCTV (Chinese Central Television), critics and theorists were uncertain how to react: ‘When an artist gets into bed with the system, what moral obligations are incumbent on him or her?’ By borrowing Habermas’ notion of ‘commonness’, art theorists had been looking for a way to seize art from the clutches of international biennials and return it to its local context. They assumed the essence of new art was to be anti-establishment, but without support from some form of establishment that new art lacks roots and is vulnerable to manipulation. This paradox had already been apparent with the ‘export-oriented’ art of the 1990s. Innovative art is increasingly found in public spaces, but only on the condition that it avoids sensitive issues. Can interesting new work continue to be produced if artists allow themselves to be restricted in this way? And what will happen if they don’t?