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).”

Chen Shaoxiong, Street Tianhebeilu, 1999

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

Chen Shaoxiong, Street Motorola, 1999

Song Tao, The Floor, 2003

Shi Yong, Shanghai Sky, 2003

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

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

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.

Born in Buenos Aires and currently residing in San Diego, California, Eloisa Haudenschild, has one of the largest collections for contemporary Chinese photography and video art. “Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Photography and video from the Haudenschild Collection” exhibitions in US, China and Mexico included a schedule of Symposia, artist residency programs, commissioned works and a series of lectures, performance, video dialogues and screenings in US, China and Mexico. A passionate collector and art patron, Eloisa Haudenschild was interviewed after her appearance in Hong Kong in July 2004 for her talk on collecting at Bloomberg’s Hong Kong corporate headquarters. The following interview was conducted via emails.

[EH= Eloisa Haudenschild / PW= Phoebe Wong]

PW:    When and why did you start collecting contemporary Chinese video and photography?

EH:    My husband Chris and I started travelling to China on business five years ago. My experience as a collector of Latin American Art fueled my interest and appreciation for upcoming artists in different parts of the world. I tried to find connections with the art world and young artists. After a couple of years of searching we found in Shanghai the first group of artists that are today part of our collection. It was not my initial goal to have a collection of solely photography and video, but soon I realized that they were the media in which the artists were doing the most interesting work in my opinion.

PW:    What was your first piece in the collection? In what way, if any, does it help or determine your future direction?

EH:    There was not a first piece in the collection; there were a few artists I had collected initially. They included Yang Fudong, Shi Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Xu Zhen, Xiang Liqing, and Zheng Guogu and I met them personally in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

After my first encounter, I came back home and started doing some more research. That is how I met Hou Hanru, Huang Yongping, Wang Du, Yang Jiechang (he is part of the collection) and Martina Koeppel-Yang in Paris. Later, generous curators and artists, who are dear friends today, supported our first symposium in San Diego, California. They were Christopher Phillips, Barbara London,  Britta Erickson, Xu Bing, and Prof. Wu Hung, who wrote one of the essays for the exhibition catalogue of Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection. More fascinating people participated in our symposium in Hangzhou.

Subsequent trips brought artists Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Feng Mengbo, Hong Hao, Weng Fen, Yang Yong, Zhao Bandi, and Song Tao into the collection, all artists from Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Haikuo.

PW:    Did you gradually develop a theme in your collection, such as, urbanism?

EH:    Youth and urbanism seem to be very strong issues for these artists in the above-mentioned exhibition. It is expressed in different ways, often with images filled with fantasy and longing.

PW:    Indeed, the collection can be seen through the thread of “constructed visual fictions” as Wu Hung has commented. Also, you mainly collect works from artists who live and work in Shanghai and Guangzhou – two highly commercialised cities and in rapid transition.

EH:    Yes, I enjoy the unique and thoughtful way the artists from the south, they are individuals who operate independently.

PW:    To offer a better understanding of the context of the works (collection), what are the readings you suggest concerning what has given rise to these works?

EH:    Chinese Art at the Crossroads by Prof. Wu Hung and On the Mid-Ground by Hou Hanru are two very important books. Also there are a variety of articles by scholars and curators like Britta Erickson, Martina Koeppel-Yang, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Li Xu, Zheng Shengtian, and others that shed light into this new and exciting moment in contemporary Chinese art.

PW:    Are you among those collectors who also commission new work and offer residencies?

EH:    My interest in collecting extends beyond the acquisition of art works. Collecting allows me to share in the artist’s journey, to participate in the process at a point when I can make a difference in the career of these young artists. My interest extends to the creation of educational programs, residencies (Yang Zhenzhong and Shi Yong at present) and the commissioning of new pieces.

PW:    Using the work of Shi Yong as an example, how did the residency unfold?

EH:    I believe the launching of “Super Angel I” and “Super Angel II” on the internet, Shi Yong’s project in collaboration with the students at San Diego State University, was very interesting and complex. Once the data was gathered for a few months, Shi Yong came to San Diego, interacted with artists on both sides of the US/Mexico border and students. The final phase of the project was an interactive performance.

PW:    Being described as “one of the most important collections of contemporary Chinese art in the world”, indeed, how large is the Haudenschild Collection, to date? And, what is your future direction in collecting?

EH:    The exhibition Zooming into Focus is only one part of the collection. Artists like Yang Jiechang, Gu Dexin, Wang Jin, Wang Youshen, Zhou Tiehai, Hai Bo, Yu Youhan, Zhao Nengzhi are included in the collection as well. The collection, now numbering over 60 pieces, will continue growing; we are constantly in the process of buying new works from new artists and are continuing to buy more works from artists already part of the collection – there is always a long wish list.

My commitment to the artists is to continue exposing their work, having the collection travel, supporting the development of the artists, and opening opportunities to them. Most importantly is my relationship with the artists – I think of them as friends. I only collect works from artists I know personally, I live surrounded by their work, I have never sold a piece of any of our collections, and do not purchase works that I feel exploit the exotic or the oriental. I have supported the participation of many Chinese artists in exhibitions such as the Venice Bienale, “Past and Reverse” at the San Deigo Museum of Art, and as well at Berkeley University in San Francisco.

The collaboration with international institutions was key to our project as was the organisation of lectures, symposia, video screenings, and video premieres – activities that took place in the US, China and Mexico.

PW:    Your being an avid collector, I am able to the feel emotional investment in your collection and in your endeavour to bring educational programmes to it. In hindsight, do you think your collection reflects your sensibility, or, offers you a new understanding of yourself? As for the works shown in the exhibition as well as in your talk, they are edgy works – some rather provocative.

EH:    I imagine the collection reflects my interest in the discovery of new and untapped works and artists. I enjoy participating in the artist’s process and development as much as I can.

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Having studied in design and cultural anthropology, Phoebe Wong is a Hong Kong-based culture worker specialising in art, design and visual media. She is currently a researcher of the Asia Art Archive.

Photography became art again in China in the late 1970s and 1980s. Whereas this visual technology was largely reduced to a propaganda tool during the first thirty years of the People’s Republic, it reconnected with individual expression after the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) was over. The April Photographic Society – the first unofficial photo club in post-Cultural Revolution China — emerged in 1978; the exhibition it organized in Beijing the following year, entitled Nature, Society, Human, attracted a huge audience hungry for images outside the official media. The 1980s witnessed a delayed introduction of the major schools and masters of western photography from before World War II. Their techniques as well as social and artistic aspirations influenced a generation of young Chinese photographers, whose first goal, not unexpectedly, was to regain photography’s credibility as a record of real social events and human lives. The result was a sustained “documentary movement” from the 1980s to the early 1990s, which produced many works with a strong political agenda, either exploring the dark side of society – poverty, deprivation, social stratification, and political injustice — or glorifying an idealized, timeless Chinese civilization unspoiled by Communist ideology.

This initial process, which Chinese critics have termed a “Photographic New Wave” (sheying xinchao), lasted about a decade and laid the ground for a new generation of photographers to undertake wide-ranging artistic experiments beyond realism and symbolism. Photography became linked to an ongoing experimental art movement in the early and mid-1990s, employed by avant-garde artists to record performances and staged scenes. Since then, a brand of image-making, often referred to by Chinese artists and critics as “experimental photography” (shiyan sheying), has grown into a broad trend; its continuous, exciting development over the past decade has been characterized by non-stop reinvention, abundant production, multifaceted experimentation, and cross-fertilization with other art forms. While “experimental photographers” find inspiration in performance, installation, and multi-media art, painters, performers, and installation artists routinely employ photography in their work, sometimes even reinventing themselves as full-time photographers. Photography now plays a central role in contemporary Chinese art because of its openness to new visual technology such as digital imaging, and because it most effectively challenges the conventional boundaries between fiction and reality, art and commerce, object and subject, thereby inspiring and permeating various kinds of art experiments in China.

Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography from the Haudenschild Collection, the exhibition that this catalogue documents, showcases some of the most recent developments in this experimental art. Most works on display were created in the past five years, while a considerable number date from 2000-2002. The exhibition thus has an acute focus on contemporaneity in a twofold sense – the contemporaneity of China as a rapidly changing society, and the contemporareity of photography as a constantly self-inventing art form. In terms of subject matter, these images demonstrate the artists’ overwhelming concern with their living environment and their own identity.

A striking aspect of Chinese cities in the 1990s and 2000s has been a never-ending destruction and construction. Old houses are coming down everyday to make room for new hotels and shopping malls. Thousands and thousands of people have been relocated from the inner city to the outskirts; in their place a new “urban generation” has begun to invent a globalized culture for itself. This situation is the context and the content of several works in this exhibition. For example, Weng Fen’s striking photographs of two southern cities, Shenzhen and Haikou show a young girl sitting on a wall and looking out; following her gaze we see a mirage-like cityscape emerging on the horizon. The wall thus separates not only space but also time; and the girl mediates not only “here” and “there” but also “now” and “then,” extending our view to an alluring future (nos. 00-00)). When we turn to Xiang Liqing’s Rock Never, however, we are abruptly brought back to the (intensified) reality of a “post-modern” Chinese city: the six large pictures in this series represent residential high-rises as paradoxical structures, characterized by their uniform, anonymous architectural style on the one hand, and by abundant signs of human activities on the other hand. The simulated repetition of both types of image brings these two aspects of a contemporary Chinese city into sharp conflict.

As Xiang’s pictures imply, the emerging city attracts experimental photographers not only with its buildings but also with its increasingly heterogeneous population. To Chen Shaoxiong, a member of the avant-garde Big Elephant Group in Guangzhou, a heterogeneous city resembles the stage of a plotless tableaux; what unites its characters is the place they share. This notion underlies his series of photographs in this exhibition, which are conceived and constructed like a series of puppet theaters within the real cityscape. Images in each photograph belong to two detached layers: in front of a large panoramic scene are cut-out miniatures — passersby, shoppers, and policemen amidst telephone booths, traffic lights, different kinds of vehicles, trees, and anything one finds along Guangzhou’s streets. These images are crowded in a tight space but do not interact. The mass they form is nevertheless a fragmentary one, without order, narrative, or a visual focus.

Representing urban spaces and population, Chen’s photos are linked with another popular subject in contemporary Chinese photography – images of a new “urban generation,” called dushi yidai in Chinese. Works belonging to this category include Yang Yong’s Cruel Youth Diary, Yang Fudong’s Don’t Worry I Will Be Better and The First Intellectual , Yang Zhengzhong’s Cycle Aerobics, and Zheng Guogu’s A World View Digital Image. Instead of portraying the lives of urban youths realistically, these images deliver constructed visual fictions. Each work consists of multiple frames, which invite us to read them as a narrative unfolding in time. Indeed, such interest in seriality and story-telling may be traced to contemporary Chinese experimental cinema, especially the “urban generation” films of the late 1990s and early 2000s. But the “stories” in the photographs remain non-specific or allegorical. What the artists hope to capture is a certain taste, style, and mood associated with this generation of people, and for this purpose they have created images that are often deliberately trivial and ambiguous. Yang Fudong’s Don’t Worry I Will Be Better, for example, represents a group of fashionable Shanghai yuppies, including a girl and several young men. The pictures resemble film stills, but the plot that connects them remains beyond the viewer’s comprehension. In a different and more comical style, another work of Yang’s in the exhibition, The First Intellectual (no. 00), comments on the vulnerability and insecurity of such yuppies — a byproduct of China’s social and economic reforms.

Images of the “urban generation” are further linked to the self-representations of experimental artists, who often identify with this generation. In fact, a strong interest in representing the self sets experimental photography apart from other branches of contemporary Chinese photography. For example, although documentary photographers also take pictures of people and urban scenes, they approach their subjects as belonging to an external, observed reality. Experimental photographers, on the other hand, find meaning only from their interaction with the surrounding world, and customarily make themselves the center of a photograph, as seen in many works in this exhibition: Hong Hao’s Mr. Hong Usually Waits, Shi Yong’s Tonight Moon and You Cannot Clone it, But You Can Buy It, Zhao Bandi’s Zhao Bandi and Panda, Feng Mengbo’s Shot 0074 Q and Shot 0075 Q, Cao Fei’s Beautiful Dog Brows, and Xu Zhen’s Sewer. Shi Yong represents himself as multiple, mass-produced robots; Zhao Bandi employs the style and format of a public poster for his self-portraits; Feng Mengbo turns himself into an action hero in the fictional world of a computer game; Hong Hao imagines himself as the master of an opulent, western-style mansion; Cao Fei transforms herself into a cat; Xu Zhen constructs an abstract picture with images of his body parts. Taken together, these images, the results of masquerade and self-manipulation, both reflect the crisis in the artists’ self-identity and their urgent quest for individuality in a rapidly commercializing society.

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Wu Hung is the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Chinese Art History at the University of Chicago. He has written extensively on contemporary Chinese art and visual culture and has curated several important exhibitions on Chinese experimental art, including The First Guangzhou Triennial. He is currently collaborating with the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography in New York on the forthcoming exhibition New Photography from China.

Contemporary art in China reflects the country’s rising influence as an economic, political and cultural force in the global arena. Chinese artists are gaining international recognition for their potent artworks that address a rapidly changing society; influenced by Western ideals and art practice, their creative production nevertheless remains distinctly Chinese in its content and aesthetic. Several of these artists have exhibited their work in major exhibitions such as documenta in Germany, the Venice Biennale in Italy, and the Shanghai Biennial and Guangzhou Triennial in China, but have had little exposure in the United States.

The first project of its kind in this country, Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection features the work of many of the most noteworthy Chinese artists working today, including Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Feng Mengbo, Hong Hao, Shi Yong, Weng Fen, Xiang Liqing, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhao Bandi and Zheng Guogu. In two exhibitions, the project highlights the extraordinary photography and video being created by these artists in a country that is undergoing tremendous growth and development. This swift transformation of Chinese culture is reflected in the work of each of the artists, who comment on contemporary Chinese life with intelligence, wit, anxiety and nostalgia.

All of the works in both exhibitions are presented at the University Art Gallery through a generous loan from the Haudenschild Collection. Noted art collectors and alumni Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild have created one of the largest and most significant groupings of contemporary Chinese photography and video in the world. Focusing on the work of experimental artists from China’s lively urban centers, such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, the collection has become a landmark contribution to the field of international contemporary art. In addition to lending their collection of new Chinese works, the Haudenschilds have commissioned a performance by Shi Yong and a video installation by Yang Zhenzhong that will premiere in San Diego.

In conjunction with Zooming into Focus, an extensive educational program that consists of a keynote lecture, a symposium, a screening and three artists’ residencies will be presented at San Diego State University and partnering institutions in San Diego. A complete listing of the program, as well as related events in San Diego, Tijuana and Hangzhou. Together, the exhibitions and educational program comprise a comprehensive project intended to showcase contemporary Chinese art, and to encourage viewers to appreciate today’s China with new insight and perspective.

In November of 2002, at the invitation of Eloisa Haudenschild, I had the opportunity to view the first works of contemporary Chinese photography that she and Chris had collected during a visit to Shanghai. Overwhelmed by the power and vitality of the images, I immediately declared my desire to exhibit the photographs at the University Art Gallery. Eloisa responded with equally-instant enthusiasm, and our adventure began. With Chris’s and the University’s blessing, we traveled together to China in January of 2003. We met with artists, curators and gallerists in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hangzhou, and viewed two major exhibitions, The First Guangzhou Triennial and the 2002 Shanghai Biennial. Following this trip, during which the collection grew, we began to discuss the exhibition, possible educational events, and a modest brochure that would document the project.

As the Haudenshilds continued to collect photographs and video works during the first several months of 2003, it became clear that their impressive collection warranted two exhibitions at the University Art Gallery and a substantial catalogue with scholarly essays. And as Eloisa met with relevant artists, curators and collectors in Paris, New York, Venice and San Francisco, she planted the seeds of a broad-based series of educational programs featuring international participants. Finally, through recent meetings in Shanghai and Guangzhou, and with colleagues from Tijuana, Eloisa successfully paved the way for the photography exhibition to travel to museums in China and Mexico.

On behalf of those who view the exhibitions, partake of the educational programs, or read this book—both here and abroad—I am grateful for the generosity of Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild. Their joyful willingness to share their collection is a special gift to us all. I also would like to express appreciation for Eloisa’s collaborative commitment to the project and her passionate devotion to art. Her dedication to the work of young artists has made a difference in their lives, and has benefited the world of contemporary art.

My personal thanks are expressed to Eloisa Haudenschild for her inspirational spirit and her absolute trust.

Tina Yapelli, Director, University Art Gallery, 2003

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This text appeared in the exhibition catalogue “Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection”, copyright 2003 by the University Art Gallery, San Diego State University, and is re-printed with permission.