The Chinese Art Market

"Books and Scholars" ( detail) by Zhiwei Tu
www.tuartgallery.com

Everyone knows the Chinese art market is hot in the West. But is it real or is it "irrational exhuberance?"

Contemporary art critic Ana Finel Honigman, writing for the Guardian Unlimited, says both. Although there are many excellent painters, sculptors, print-makers, and other artists in China, the market also is flooding with a lot of junk, she warns. Especially the mod art she describes as "predominantly 'cynical realist' paintings satirically juxtaposing capitalism and communism." (Much of that is being turned out in Chinese "art schools" that more closely resemble sweat shop factories.)

Honigman has good advice when she warns collectors against flashy-looking works that display --

unskilled self-consciousness, lack of subtlety and reliance on adolescent irony, particularly when confronting the ideological, historical, spiritual and aesthetic conflicts that roil contemporary Chinese culture, is especially disappointing.

Moreover, she says, "the market is already beginning to be flooded with fakes."

Sadly, it seems, one target for unscrupulous purveyors pushing junk art are innocent but well-meaning western businessmen who themselves are engaged in foreign markets. "Having witnessed and aided China's transition to capitalism," she writes --

they are buying a piece of their personal history as well as preserving a part of China's culture for posterity. But these sincere collectors' motives need to be recognized as too limited and subjective to translate into long-term international aesthetic interest and ratification.

Businessmen make it a practice to look at the bottom line. When it comes to today's sizzling Chinese art market, that bottom line is this: resist the temptation of "irrational exuberance." Buy Chinese art from reputable galleries, dealers, or direct from well-researched artists.

If you're lucky enough to find a painting by Zhiwei Tu, you can be sure it is an authentic oil painting by a leading artist in China and, indeed, the world. Tu maintains a studio in Guangdong Province as well as in Chicago. He's one of the only living artists in China to have a major city dedicate an entire art museum to his works. And, Guangzhou TV did a 20-minute documentary about his life and art a few years ago.

Photos, books, essays, and both foreign and domestic news about the Tu Zhiwei Art museum and his life and work can be seen on this non-commercial web site: Tu Art Gallery.com