Made in China by James Panero. The art world success of Zhang Huan makes a compelling story, the postmodern Horatio Alger myth at the heart of contemporary Chinese art. Today, at the age of forty-three, Zhang is a multimillionaire. In New York, he is represented by PaceWildenstein, which held a survey of his latest work in Chelsea last spring.
At his factory studio in Shanghai, a hundred assistants living in dormitories churn out labor-intensive carvings of propaganda scenes, photorealistic “ash paintings,” and fifty-foot-tall giants constructed of calfskins stitched with wire. After a decade and a half of privations, Zhang has become a giant himself, one of the artistic titans of the new Chinese economy. But his tale should come with a warning label. Zhang has struck it rich through cunning and compromise and contamination. He embodies all that it means to be a contemporary artist “made in China.” In the early 1990s, when Zhang started out, the prospects for artistic survival in the People’s Republic looked grim.
Scene/Seen - A City Where Chinese Artists Hope to Strike Gold. Art-world power shifts to China. New York's mammoth art market has lost its longtime standing as the largest in the world. In a turn of events that has caught many art experts off guard, China has snagged the top spot, beating out the United States—where New York is the art industry's center—in terms of fine-art auction revenue, according to Artprice, an art market information service based in Paris. Though China just became the second-largest economy in the world, after the U.S., its rapid rise as an art power has been astounding. It took just three years for China to jump from third place, previously occupied by France, to first place in 2010, with 33% of global fine-art sales stemming from auctions based there.
The U.S. and the United Kingdom, the grand chieftains of the market since the 1950s, raked in 30% and 19% of the sales, respectively. “The speed with which this evolution has happened is surprising,” said Jonathan Stone, the Hong Kong-based managing director for Asia at Manhattan-based Christie's. Still, Mr. Chinese Paintings and Fine Chinese Art. Original Chinese Painting. The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei lives and works on the northeast edge of Beijing, in a studio complex that he designed for himself, a hive of eccentric creativity that one friend calls “a cross between a monastery and a crime family.”
Airy buildings of brick and concrete surround a courtyard planted with grass and bamboo. Ai and his wife, Lu Qing, also an artist, inhabit one side of the yard, and several dozen assistants occupy the other. The place is organized in a spirit of radical openness: visitors roam unhindered, as does a geriatric cocker spaniel named Danny and a tribe of semi-feral cats that occasionally destroy Ai’s architectural models.
Ai wanders among the buildings day and night, making it difficult to discern when he is working and when he is not, a distinction that has eroded further in recent years as the line between his art and his life has become indistinguishable. For Ai, however, the gesture resonates on the level of cosmology. Ai and his wife have no children. China’s Female Artists Quietly Emerge. Chinese Artists Gallery, Contemporary Art For Sale Online :: ArtsrepubliK. Art Scene Beijing - Contemporary Chinese Art Gallery at 798. White Rabbit Gallery. Moganshan Lu and Beyond – Shanghai’s Art Scene Past and Present– Expat Corner.
China's Top 10 Contemporary Artists– Expat Corner. Galerie Du Monde - Contemporary Chinese Art. CNN In-Depth Specials - Visions of China - Inside China: Chinese Art Today. Chinese Contemporary Art - Galleries in Beijing, London, New York. Art Scene China - Contemporary Chinese Art - with Chinese art by Chinese artists. Contemporary Chinese Paintings for Sale, Original Chinese Artwork. Chinese Art - Report. New Chinese Art: Center for Contemporary Chinese Art. Chinese Paintings at China Largest Online Chinese Painting Gallery.