798 District Blog

Art lovers have a rare and limited opportunity to view a scroll considered a seminal work in the history of Chinese painting, Illustration to the Second Prose Poem on the Red cliff Red Cliff. After August 1, the scroll will be taken off view and not available for public viewing for at least five years to protect it from deterioration caused by exposure to even low light levels.

“This remarkable work is almost a thousand years old, and we feel a deep responsibility to preserve it for another millennium,” said Colin Mackenzie, senior curator of Chinese art at the Nelson-Atkins.

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BEIJING, July 6 (Xinhuanet) — As far as the distance is between China and Chile, it turns out that art is the perfect way to unite the two nations at opposite ends of the planet. Let’s take a look at an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art that has opened in the Chilean capital Santiago.

From the realistic depiction of Chinese coal miners, to the abstract handling of figures in traditional Chinese operas, the 83 works unveil a panorama of contemporary Chinese art in mediums including oil paintings, sculptures, and installations.

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Wu Guanzhong, the father of modern Chinese art, died late on Friday in Beijing Hospital, aged 91.

Born in 1919, Wu was a native of Yixing in east China’s Jiangsu Province.

In 1947, he went to France to study Western painting and returned to China in 1950. He taught at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Tsinghua University.

Wu integrated the Chinese ink and wash technique with Western painting methods. He is now widely regarded at home and abroad as the father of modern Chinese painting.

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A rare Song Dynasty hand scroll, classified as a grade one cultural relic of the State, fetched 79.52 million yuan ($11.6 million) on Saturday at China Guardian’s Spring Auction.

The scroll by an anonymous painter of Southern Song Dynasty (AD 1127-1279), entitled A Copy of Guo Zhongshu’s Four-Hunter Painting, vividly portrays four nomadic horsemen who are respectively riding to the field, training an eagle, hunting and resting.

Paintings of the ethnic groups who lived on the vast grasslands of northern China, became a distinct category of painting in the late Tang dynasty (AD 618-907). The painting, part of the treasure trove of the Qing (1644-1911) royal court, was smuggled out of the palace by Emperor Puyi as a reward to his brother in 1922 and was later transported overseas.

Another royal treasure of the Qing court, Listening to Spring by Jin Tingbiao, sold for 45.13 million yuan ($6.6 million). The painting portrays a scholar sitting by a stone among pine trees. It was completed shortly after Jin served as a royal court painter.

Other items that came under the hammer at the auctions included a Qianlong Tibetan-Style Ewer with under-glazed blue and iron red dragon and cloud motif, which fetched 35.84 million yuan ($5.2 million), and Shi Chong’s oil painting Present Landscape that was sold for 26.09 million yuan ($3.8 million).

More than 6,600 lots of Chinese painting and calligraphy, oil painting, sculptures, antique, stamps and coins are going under the hammer at Guardian’s Spring Auctions, which last until Tuesday.

“Global auctioneering came to a standstill last year. But against that backdrop the Chinese auction market has achieved notable growth, and our annual proceeds established a new record,” says Wang Yannan, president of China Guardian Auctions.

Last year, three pieces of Chinese painting and calligraphy heralded the arrival of a 100 million yuan ($15 million) era for the classical Chinese art market, including one item Writings by Prominent Personage in the Song Dynasty on Attendant Xu’s Seal Character, featuring calligraphy by seven renowned scholars, such as Zhu Xi and Zhang Jingxiu, that was sold at Guardian’s autumn auction.

“As a warm-up for the spring auctions, our auctions in March yielded a turnover of 262 million yuan ($38.4 million). It further increased collectors’ confidence in the market,” Wang says.

One work that is expected to set a new record is Zhang Daqian’s Austrian Lake, a painting in a series inspired by the maestro’s two-day stay at the Achensee Lake in Austria, when he traveled through Europe with friends in 1965. The painting to be auctioned is widely believed to be one of the largest and most brilliant of the series.

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This year’s spring art auctions begins today with China Guardian, one of China’s leading Chinese art auction houses, raising the curtain on the season’s sales that are shaping up to be an exciting affair.

A total of 29 auctions will be held during the seven-day event, including traditional Chinese painting, jade wares, modern porcelain, sculpture and contemporary works.

More than 6,600 pieces will go under the hammer at Beijing International Hotel, among which ancient Chinese coins, bronze mirrors and stamps, all hotly pursued in recent years, account for more than half.

Traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy works will be a highlight at the auctions, as prices of these types of works have dramatically increased in the past few years, bucking the doom and gloom of the economic recession.

Last year, several traditional Chinese painting pieces and calligraphy works were sold for more than 100 million yuan (US$15 million) each, considered by art experts and economists as a symbol of the Chinese art market’s quick recovery.

China Guardian will offer a range of traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy works from the Song (960-1279) to Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, with five different painting schools and six features by individual collectors represented.

Art experts and market researchers are paying close attention to the first spring auctions on the Chinese mainland, the outcome of which will serve as a barometer for the rest of the year’s sales.

“It is not only art lovers and collectors, but other auctions houses in and out of China that are looking forward to these spring auctions,” commented Zhao Li, director of Art Market Research Center (AMRC), an independent organization devoted to Chinese and international art market research.

Zhao added that since Chinese traditional pieces were extremely hot last year both in the domestic and overseas art markets, concerns have been raised about the market’s sustainability and this year’s spring auctions will serve as a key indicator to whether the market will continue to soar, or overheat.

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A mammoth new exhibition of 291 Chinese artists, Reshaping History, currently on display at three venues across Beijing, is hoping to cast a light on the growth and maturity of the entire nation, as the exhibition’s subtitle, “Chinart from 2000 to 2009,” indicates.

Often we look to art to illuminate something deeply personal, something lurking under the surface of artists’ imaginations that reflects their view of themselves, their surroundings and the world at large. Art too can serve as a proxy for far larger, more expansive arenas: a community, a people, a race.

Indeed, if there is one buzzword that encapsulates the Chinese experience over the past 10 years, it is “growth,” a concept toward which the artistic luminaries of Reshaping History have no shortage of opinions.

“Like every aspect of the Chinese economy, Chinese art is developing immensely,” said exhibition founder Lü Peng. “So much talent has emerged over the past 10 years, so many contrasting styles and worldviews and I really wanted a venue where we could put them all next to each other and let the viewer take it all in.

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Sotheby’s Hong Kong will hold its Contemporary Asian Art Spring Sale 2010 on 5 April at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
This season’s sale will offer a series of early works by established Chinese artists that are rarely seen on the market, as well as seminal works from prominent Japanese and Korean artists.
There will be over 170 extraordinary pieces, with a total estimate in excess of HK$94 million / US$12 million.

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CHINESE CULTURE: Artists Gao Qiang and Gao Zhen lost their father to China’s Cultural Revolution, and their work is an attempt to get China to face up to its difficult past and the truth behind its most famous leader, Mao Zedong, writes CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing

GAO QIANG IS slightly out of breath when he arrives at the studio he shares with his older brother Zhen in Beijing’s trendy 798 art district. En route to the interview, China’s most controversial contemporary artists crashed their car, and Qiang had to stay behind to sort out the paperwork. The younger Gao apologises for being late, and then, almost casually, he takes Mao Zedong’s head out of a plastic bag and attaches it to the corpulent, kneeling body of modern China’s founding father.

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The bulldozers are moving in on a number of artists’ villages in Beijing, causing dismay and loss. Chitralekha Basu reports.

Australian installation artist Denise Keele Bedford was given notice to vacate her studio in Beijing’s Huang Hua, near the Suojiacun artists’ village, on Dec 15. She took the news with equanimity, having been through a far more harrowing experience in 2005, when she was rudely jolted out of sleep on a November morning by police, who asked the 126 artists living in Beijing International Art Camp at Suojiacun to move out.

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by Zhu Linyong

BEIJING, Jan. 26 — First there was Yuanmingyuan, then Songzhuang and later, the 798 Art Zone. As urbanization spreads, artists’ villages are being forced to newer locations.

Yi Ling, 49, widely acknowledged as head of the Yuanmingyuan Artists’ Village of the early 1990s, likens artists to nomads. “They are always hunting for new pastures to satisfy their hunger for inner peace, personal freedom, and a sense of achievement,” says Yi who has witnessed the dramatic turns in the development of China’s artists’ villages.

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