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| Art Capitalism in China (Part I) |
| By Zhu Qi |
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  n the first of two articles being published by ArtZineChina.com, Zhu Qi, an art critic and curator based in Beijing, and a graduate of the country's top arts school, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, has written a provocative essay about how Chinese contemporary art is being shaped by the booming marketplace.
Zhu's essay offers a sweeping perspective on how the market developed after the "Stars" group first emerged in the 1970s and he takes the reader to the present, when young artists like Chi Peng, a recent graduate of Central Academy, are already making it big, and calling themselves millionaires.
Zhu says this new era of "art capitalism" is dominating the art scenes in Beijing and Shanghai. And he knows something about the subject. He earned a Ph.D. at Central Academy and works at the China Art Research Institute. He is also chief editor of Art Map. Here is part one:
 few days ago I read an article in American Art, titled “Aiming for Money: Contemporary Chinese Art”, which was a conversation about Chinese art between three American critics and curators who are quite familiar with Chinese art circles. Unlike over a decade ago when western critics were all singing praise of Chinese art, recently voices of criticism of it begin to be heard constantly.
Like our nation, contemporary art is also undergoing an unprecedented great change in one thousand years. Is contemporary art a rising capital myth? Is he whose works sell well definitely a good artist? Is half of the contemporary art only pseudo art? Are those artists who top the peak auction prices great masters? Can those star artists represent the future Chinese national soul? All these doubts are beginning to rise nowadays.
Are They Artists or Art Capitalists?
 In recent years obvious change has taken place in the structure of contemporary art. First there was the rise of Biennales, then the rise of art districts, followed by the growth of art galleries, and finally, the boom of auctions brought the wave of contemporary art fever to its climax. Moreover, these “rises” were not limited to a scattered elite few but were enjoyed by a whole army in art scenes. Before 1996 there was none of the Biennales in China, now there are already 7 Biennales and Triennials (in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Beijing, Guiyang, Anhui, and Chengdu respectively); four years ago there was only one art district – the 798 in Beijing, now 7 cities around this country have art districts, and Beijing alone enjoys 9 art districts (the 798, the Jiuchang, the Caochangdi, the Bodhisattva Hall, the Railroad Ring, the Suo Village, the Fei Village, the Black Bridge Village, and the Beijing One Art Base); art galleries grew from less than 30 five years ago to the present at least 300 ones; and five years ago no more than five auction houses dealt with contemporary art, now at least fifty auction houses have stepped in contemporary art market.
The rise of this huge art system has brought enormous amount of wealth, and old and new generations of artists have rapidly turned men of great wealth, such as Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang and Luo Zhongli who may each have accumulated a wealth of one hundred million yuan; the younger ones like Yin Zhaoyang may have also long been rich men of tens of million yuan; the others such as Li Jikai, Chen Ke and even Chi Peng and Zhang Peng who were . born in the 80s have also turned into millionaires overnight; even at the graduation exhibition for the seniors in the Sculpture Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2007, three students could have had their works sold at prices from 190,000 to 250,000 yuan. As for auction prices of easy ten million yuan, they are more like the “satellite-launching” exaggeration in the time of the Cultural Revolution, when people exaggerated that a single mu of land (=0.0667 hectares) could yield a grain production of 5 thousand kilograms.
The sudden wealth filled these artists with fanatical desires to pursue luxurious cars, superb apartments and villas; going everywhere they took airplanes and lived in five-star hotels; luxurious painting albums always heralded the opening ceremonies of their exhibitions; in front of the exhibition hall’s entrance always parked all sorts of luxurious cars, and beautiful girls and reporters thronged there. Then, well-known artists became more and more like stars, who are constantly interviewed by TVs and newspapers, and every time when a “satellite-launching” auction record was set, all big newspapers around this country would follow up. Like China Import and Export Fair (Canto Fair), the art expos in Beijing and Shanghai are all attended by artists of businessman, film producer, and influential director sorts who seem to come to negotiate business and are usually followed by more than one aide. Nowadays, many girl art students cherish a career dream: to be an assistant to a great artist.
The wealth effect of contemporary art has created numerous stories of Arabian Nights sorts in art scenes in these two years. Artists such as Chang Xin, Ma Liuming, Zhang Huan and Rong Rong who were originally struggling hard at the East Village, are now rich men of million or ten million yuan, and it’s hard no more for a photographic work or a painting work to be sold at a price of several hundred thousand or several million yuan. It’s rumored in art circles that Zhang Huan has set up the biggest studio of Asia in the suburb of Shanghai and dozens of people are producing works for him. Then it’s true that many artists would no longer create works in person but only give ideas and suggestions like a movie director, and the painting, sculpturing, photo’s computer-processing or video editing work is all left to their assistants. Some artists even hand exhibition negotiation and selling jobs to their assistants, and he himself only answers calls and gives opinions, then all the rest would be done by his special aides, like sending out works and documents of the works, sending resumes and photos of the artist to the media. At last, when a work is sold for a while, over a hundred thousand or several million yuan would pour into the artist’s bank account.
 For example, artist Zhan Wang has been working on fake rocks for over a decade, and now his major work is to tour around fake rock markets at different places looking for right rocks. After deciding on a rock he need do nothing more: he has aides to finish the transaction; he has a factory to process the rock into a work; his assistants would ship the work to the exhibition establishment, and after the exhibition they would ship it back; then, there is someone specialized in the negotiation of selling price; finally, the money is transferred to his account. For overseas artists like Zhang Huan, Xu Bing, Cai Guoqiang, Wang Du and others, they all have created a global art production model, maximally making use of the resources of international metropolises, major cities and small local cities. For instance, relying on their international name they forged alliances in Beijing and exploited their allies’ resources to advertise themselves and seek favors in the top, thus gradually acquiring a name of Chinese art representative and in turn with this Chinese identity acquiring resources of international exhibitions, art museums and foundations.
With the production of works, artist Shen Shaomin, who came back from Australia, took advantage of a less developed small city Daqing in Northeast China and set up a workshop there, where he could use cheap premises, workers and raw materials to produce art works. In Beijing he acquired an identity as Chinese artist representative while in Daqing he represented himself as an international artist. He invited Beijing’s artists and critics to Daqing and ultimately took the works produced in Daqing to be sold in Beijing, Europe and America at prices of international art works. So, this new generation of Chinese artists, who grew up in a socialist system after the Cultural Revolution, seemed to be more adept at art production and capital operation than artists growing up in veteran capitalist systems. For instance, they introduced a practice of selling painting works at studios, so they could deny their  galleries the 50 percent of the sales income. And it is widely known in art circles that artists themselves sent their works to auction houses, and it is even rumored that the peak auction prices were also pushed up by someone the artist himself asked, for even if the work could not be sold, it could mobilize mass media to follow up too, and it is worthwhile to pay some commision to advertise the work.
Then there is still the practice of controlling supply of one’s works, which has become a market secret passed on orally in many artist groups. For example, he should have a certain number of works supplied in early period of his market entrance and try not to be controlled by only one gallery; he should get more galleries involved in operating his works so that the works could be sold to different collector groups. Once a reasonable collector group and structure is formed, all buyers are trapped in it actually; even if you paint poor in later days, collectors would still have to hold on his place, word of mouth and market price level in art scenes, for artist’s future decline in art standard and place would do good to no one. By now, the artist could then control the supply of his works. For example, he might have produced a yearly 50 to 80 painting works at the start, each work sold at a price from 200,000 to 800,000 yuan, and by the time when each piece is sold at a price from 1 million to 5 million yuan, he needs to paint 10 to 20 pieces only.
With respect to art capitalism, Chinese artists of this generation have acquired far more talent and intuitive business capacity than many international artists and Chinese older artists could have imagined. Chinese artists might be regarded as the most skillful group of business operators in the world. A case in point was their formation of a brother gang in early and middle 1990s to seize opportunities to go to overseas Biennales: a foreign critic and curator came to China; the moment he got off plane and set feet on land he was met by Beijing artists and then was accompanied to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and other cities to see artists of their own gang, all the way until this foreign guy boarded a plane and returned home he could hardly see any other Chinese artists outside that circle.
Art Exhibitions Are Directed at Sales
 Art Biennale was a focus in the whole 1990s, and under the influence of Venice Biennales, China’s art Biennales also became an academic symbol and ended up an assessment index of artist’s position in art scenes and of his market price. However, in recent years the Biennales have been overshadowed by the commercial system and are gradually marginalized. From a past holy shrine they have been reduced to the present undistinguished place where only those Biennale strangers could wish to go. In 2007 when Venetian Biennale, Kassel Documenta and Art Basel were held in the same month, it was readily discovered that artists were more devoted to Art Basel, and on its opening day almost all rich upstarts around the world were gathering there. Of course, artists nowadays are rich upstarts too.
The government sponsored Biennales were still reveling in their recapture of the leading power of contemporary art in the past several years, but suddenly they have lost their influence in the rival against the commercial system. However, in this round of contest they are losing not to avant-garde groups but to powerful art capitals. In recent two years, art creations, exhibitions and sales have been rapidly developed into an integrated whole by galleries, art expos and auctions, like a production chain lubricated by capitals. The galleries’ evolution into art museums, the art expos’ development into  Biennales, and the auctions’ orientation to direct sales are still debated but not boldly and wholly tried out in European and American art scenes in recent years, but in China all these seemed to have been accomplished once and for all. For example, Galleries such as Tang Contemporary Art Center and Arario Beijing have all evolved into actual art museums, and they not only deal with solo exhibitions and sale of works but also set up their own foundations for collections. They would invite the best curators to plan themed group exhibitions, and even cooperate with international art museums and Biennales to plan themed exhibitions. They integrate foundations, art museums and gallery sales into a whole and end up an academic and commercial unity.
In these years, art expos have all opened up special academic exhibitions, which charge no fees and provide spaces to all non-profit galleries in the world. Then art expos like “Art Beijing” in Beijing and “Basel” in Shanghai also follow suit immediately. Art expos contract exhibition spaces out to galleries or open special spaces and invite curators to plan so-called non-profit exhibitions, whose expenses are met by sponsors. Artists submit their project plan like in academic exhibitions; they can even finish their works like installations on-site at the expos, and they can sell their works immediately if some collectors like the works. Thus, art expos, art museums and gallery sales have been integrated into a whole. As many auction houses in China allow artists to send their works to auction without the intermediary of galleries, lured by huge gains in Chinese market, Sotheby and Christine Auction Houses also venture to go directly to artists for paintings, in a spectacular and unprecedented way, breaking the long established practice in European and American auction history. This might also be regarded as a typical example that Chinese-style art capitalism is beginning to exert influence over American and European art capitalisms; in comparison, Chinese goes even farther, for it matters only if it makes money.
The rapidly rising galleries in China may exert no influence over star artists, but it acquires an increasingly dominant power over younger artists or artists whose works do not sell well. For star artists, they actually follow a practice of producing and marketing all on their own, and their studios are their galleries. Fearing younger artists will follow suit after making their names, galleries desperately prevent them from more exhibitions and try to slow their pace to fame and maturity as hard as possible. The evolution of a gallery system also quicken the disintegration of the artist gangs that were formed in  the 1990s, then, artists could no longer form brother-like communities like East Village, Yuanming Garden and Song Village, and each artist now has to relate to a gallery separately.
Except Biennales, almost all current exhibitions are happening under the support of galleries. In Beijing, every weekend witnesses at least 50 to 60 contemporary art exhibitions, and no one could go through all these exhibitions. And with their art standards going evenly, all exhibitions are essentially the same. Actually, all exhibitions in different art districts of Beijing turn out only to be different combinations of a group of about 200 artists; they are nothing but transference of works from one gallery to another and recombination with another group of artists. Many exhibitions are actually not exhibitions but sales promotion meetings or art parties in the name of exhibition, and no one are really viewing art works but all are eating things, exchanging name cards, taking photos, or looking for a love affair.
In the Avant-garde exhibitions over a decade ago you could hardly see girls, now you see throngs of beautiful girls there. With the rise of rich artist groups, the influx of upper class upstarts, the springing up of gallery setups, and the rapid expansion of capitals, art circles are now filled with art-loving young beautiful girls from all fields of study: computer science, medicine, financial accounting, literature, movie, journalism, music… a phenomenon seen only in IT and real estate industries a few years ago.
Increase of galleries led to short supply of good artists and good works, then galleries began to fight for artists. First they tried to win star artists; when there were no stars to fight for, they fought for artists born in 1970s; when there left none of the 1970s-borns, they turned to artists born in 1980s; currently some art dealers even go directly to art colleges hunting senior students. When representatives of the 1985 New Wave were contracted, all  galleries went to hunt artists in the peripheral groups of the 1985 New Wave; when no artist in the 1985 New Wave was left, they all went for those in the Star Art Group; when they could find no more in the Star Group, they went to dig out any artists that once belonged to a certain “Group” and bought their works and asked critics to write a follow-up history.
In the past when a gallery met a young artist, it would examine him several years before contracting with him; now it would contract with him immediately in case some other gallery contracts him in a few days. The fierce competition in this industry forces them to act fast; they must get ready to harvest saplings before they grow into trees. The consequence is that many young artists become millionaires soon after graduation from art colleges, and with incessant creation of works on order, the little bit of his young talent and suffering is soon consumed, and his art becomes increasingly lifeless.
 Zhu Qi ( born in 1966, Shanghai), an art critic and independent curator.
Translated by Hu Zhu. 
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