Headline, May23, 2013

'''CHINA'S -CROWNING- CHAPTER'''

Only a few years ago, names such as Zhang Xiadong, and Zhang Huan might have drawn blank stares from the Western Collectors of Art. Now with the explosion of museums, galleries and prices, China has become the hottest stop on the International art circuit.

In the emerging cultural capitals of Beijing and Shanghai new pristine forces have emerged in this stampede of new money, unleashed talent, an great national pride.China is now all set and brimming as the beautiful world of Art's New Superpower.

Once an empire of enforced egalitarianism, this nation of over 1.3 billion people is waking up from a stupor of isolation as Shanghai and Beijing prepare to become the capitals of a China dominated world culture. And once wary state officials have managed to befriend a few of the country's most rebellious artists just in time.

A boom of this magnitude requires distinctive artists an eager collectors with cash to burn. And China has plenty of both. Consider the case of Newly Displaced Population, a 2004 canvas by realist painter Liu Xiadong, which presents a critical view of the Chinese government's displacement of more than one million people as result of  building the Three Gorges Dam.

Not only was this painting left uncensored but it sold at the Beijing Poly International Auction in Nov 2006 for $ 2.75 million, at the time a world record for a painting by a contemporary Chinese artist. It was snapped up be a mainland collector.

Until recently, Chinese contemporary art was purely an export market. Baron Guy Ullens, a Belgian Philanthropist, was an early collector. Uli Sigg Swiss Ambassador to China was another who put together an encyclopedic selection of Chinese contemporary art at a time when most works sold for a few hundred dollars.

More than a decade later, the rest of the world caught on. in March 2006, Sotheby's held its first New York Sale of Chinese contemporary art, attracting both Asian and Western collectors, bringing in $ 12.7 million, and establishing auction records for Zhang Xiaogang, Zhang Huan, Liu Xiadong. an Fang Lijun, among 20 other artists.

Topping the list as the most independent of all the self-made artists in China, Ai Weiwei was born in Beijing, grew up in Xinjiang, and saw his father discredited during the Cultural Revolution and forced to clean latrines. But now he is heralded as the artist of the first rank. in 2008, he saw his crowning achievement at the Summer Olympics: Beijing's new Olympic Stadium, often called ''the bird's nest.''

Twenty something dealer Fang Fang, director of the Star Gallery in Beijing, has made a specialty of scooping artists fresh out of school, a generation he calls ''the naughty kids.'' As opposed to their elders, who often came from poverty, these artists have had travel visas from an early age. Chen Ke, one of the Star's stars, graduated from the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts in 2005 and has already had a gallery show.

Her fairytale-like pieces, peopled with forlorn heroines and sad faced clowns, might have come from anywhere. In interviews, she talks about personal expression, apparently seeing no need to define herself or her art as particularly Chinese.

Young Chinese artists are free to think as selfishly as anyone who wields a paintbrush in Brooklyn or on the Lower East Side. It seems that the Chinese Government has managed to diffuse the explosive potential of contemporary art simply by allowing it to flourish.

In their spring 2007 Hong kong auctions, Christie's saw $36 million and Sotheby's $27 million in sales of Asian contemporary art  And it is now felt in China that,  Laugh and the art world laughs with you. But many also believe that the Chinese Government has bigger concerns   -the Internet and movies than contemporary art.

With respectful dedication to all the students and Professors of China. See you all on !WOW!: Awakening the Greatness within.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless