Economics and the rise of contemporary Chinese Art
Michael Huang
In 1998, United States, an exhibition called ‘Inside Out: New Chinese Art’ 90 marked the origin of a strong force that reshuffled the entire art market. This force was Chinese contemporary art and it soon became unstoppable. The following year at the Venice Biennale, the rise of Chinese contemporary art was approved and fostered by legend curator Harald Szeemann, who, as the artistic director, included a large contingent of Chinese artists into the Biennale. After years and years, this phenomenononly continues and expands after; Chinese contemporary art now receives not only critical, but also commercial successes, with auction prices regularly hitting above million pounds. 91 ‘How?’ I believe this is the question that many people want to ask under amazement. What has transformed Chinese contemporary art from market afterthought into world auction superpower? ‘Economics’ would be the keyword in my answer; this word has been the main focus for the new China, where communism became nominal and 70 per cent business had been privatized under the capitalist dynamo. People yearn for better life and economic success seemed to be the only solution to it. For the past decades, China has rapidly launched itself up the ranking table – now the second biggest economy in the world. However, there are also negative effects caused by this economic development. In this essay, I will be evaluating how both the positive and negative sides of the Chinese economics contributed to the rise of Chinese contemporary art.
Globalization is certainly one of the good effects that economic development has brought into China. During the Cultural Revolution, China was almost completely cut off from the outside world 92 . With the ‘supposed’ industrial revolution under the failed ‘Great Leap Forward’, the government finally realized the damage that has been forced upon Chinese economics and it was the time that China should open its front door to the curious world. In the new China, western concepts are welcomed and cherished; especially in art, artists no longer needed to be worried about being persecuted for learning ‘corrupted’ western ideas. As a result, young Chinese artists started to explore different media (oil painting, installation, sculpture, video, performance, photography and etc.) and art movement (Pop art, Abstract Expressionism, Impressionism, Cubism and etc.) in art-making. Chinese avant-garde now ‘absorbs a ubiquitous popular culture, addresses similar critical issues, uses a common visual language, and seeks validation by the same museums, critical
publications, universities, galleries, and auction houses’ just like the rest of the world. 93
90 ‘New China New Art’ by Richard Vine: 8 91 Data from http://www.sothebys.com/en/departments/contemporary-asian-art/records.html 92 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution 93 ‘New China New Art’ by Richard Vine: 9
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