China Art Shows

Tu Zhiwei will be the featured artist at two upcoming exhibitions in China over the coming two months. The first show will be held at the Shenzhen Art Museum (May 17-27). The second at the prestigious National Art Museum of China in Beijing (June 15-38).

Check in with Tu Art Gallery.com for more details as they become known.

New York's Asian Art Week

New York Times art critic Holland Carter finds the annual Asian Art Fair a disappointment today, but singles out some (mostly ancient) artifacts for praise.

"The sad news is that this year’s fair, which opens today, is a ghost of what it once was. * * * To its credit, the Asian fair struggles impressively. Its signature suaveness is intact, and it still has some memorable art moments."

The difficulty, Cotter rather coyly remarks, is that "problems developed."

"Top-shelf material to sell became harder to find. For various reasons, the fair’s starriest exhibitors dropped out, often to put on Asia-week shows on their own. When the fair added the phrase “also featuring the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas” to its title last year, the distress signal was loud and clear."

In compensation, he says, dozens of private dealers "have set up shop for the week... in quite spectacular fashion" on East 57th Street. But for the long term, Cotter sensibly suggests, it may be time to focus on "contemporary Asian art."

"There’s a ton of it being pumped out, of which New Yorkers see but a fraction, nowhere near enough to give an idea of what’s really going on, which is the only way to separate gold from dreck. As a result, almost everything we see exists without a context, and looks odd and marooned. Maybe the Asian Fair could give it a context. I mean, if the fair really sees contemporary art as its future, why not go for it? A pan-Asian Modern and contemporary fair would be a valuable addition to the city. Done right, with savvy heads in charge ... it could be an event, make news."

Huzzah to that! Somewhere, sometime, a city that aspires to be the cultural center of the world will have to come to grips with contemporary Asian art, if for no other reason than as a consumer protection measure for its citizens. Better New York than Paris, Shanghai or, Minerva forbid, Dubai.

As Cotter quite rightly points out, a great deal of "dreck"is masquerading as contemporary Asian art these days. In China alone, dozens if not hundreds of alleged "art schools" dragoon thousands of aspiring young people every year into becoming mere copyists. Their assembly line 'work' is quickly shipped off to the West where it competes with genuine art instead of hanging above the headboard of some Motel 6 room where it belongs.

Oil Painters of America Annual Juried Show

Artists, collectors, and art students: registration is open for the 16th Annual Juried National Art Exhibition of the Oil Painters of America.

This year, the event takes place in beautiful "hill country" Fredericksburg, Texas, about an hour's drive equidistant from exciting Austin or exotic San Antonio.

The national exhibition runs from May 11 – June 9, 2007. Opening weekend ceremonies and festivities take place May 10 – 13.

A complete schedule of events is here (html) and here (pdf).

Over a hundred oil painting entries already have been accepted. No paintings will be sold before May 12, but offers may be submitted in advance.

Whistle Pik Galleries is the host gallery in Fredericksburg. Other local institutions participating include the Admiral Nimitz History Museum and the internationally-oriented Fredericksburg Artist's School.

The art school is sponsoring a series of artist workshops May 7 through 14.

Guerrilla 'Art' Gone

You may have missed it while you were wandering through that art museum. This week, a 25-feet long spray-painted mural by Robert Banksy -- "one of Banksy's early pieces," we are told -- was apparently destroyed when city workmen in Bristol, England, painted over it with thick paint. According to the BBC, the workmen were dispatched to "tackle graffiti adjacent to the Banksy work, but wrongly targeted the piece itself."

It's not the first time Banksy's so-called "guerrilla" art has been vandalized. Earlier this month, the BBC also reported , "a London council has admitted street cleaners accidentally washed off two Banksy murals, including one of a girl in a frilly dress wearing a gas mask, from the side of a building."

London and Bristol councilmen claim to be scandalized at the losses. In recent years, more portable Banksy works have escalated in price. Last year, Sotheby's sold a Banksy sketch of "the Mona Lisa... spray-painted green and with paint dripping from her eyes," for more than $218,000. And, a Banksy silk screen of Kate Moss in the manner of Andy Warhol sold for nearly $115,000.

Apparently, the Bristol and London pols are worried someone will think they've lost valuable city property when their Banksy murals -- spray-painted on the sides of buildings -- bit the dust. It's difficult to see how the city has lost any value -- unless the politicians really don't mean it when they say city policy is "not to remove murals."

It's so hard to believe politicians. Three years ago Banksy "covertly cemented" a 20-foot high, 3 ton statue of Dame Justice "with US dollar bills stuffed into her garter" into Clerkenwell square in London. Reportedly, the city fathers removed it by crane two days later.

No one seems to know where it is today. Whadda ya bet it shows up at auction -- sooner, rather than later?

Banksy himself presumably might have approved the obliteration of his early work. After the recent Sotheby's auction where price records were set, Banksy's website "featured a sketch of an auction room with a message on a canvas saying: "I can't believe you morons actually buy this shit."

Anyway, why buy a Banksy when he invites you to have one for free from his web site? Be sure to follow the instuctions:

"Prints look best when done on gloss paper using the company printer ink when everyone else is at lunch."

"From China With Love"

The estimable Chicago Reader notes the opening yesterday of a photography exhibition by the Gao Brothers at Walsh Gallery, in Chicago. According to the gallery:

"On March 16th Walsh Gallery presents photography and sculpture by Beijing-based artist duo the Gao Brothers. "From China with Love" is an investigation into the effects of Chinese urbanization on the spirit.
* * *
"Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang have expressed an alternative voice during the 20 years that they have been making art in China. They experimented in performance art, installation and photography during the mid 1980s when these practices were only in their infancies."

Several photographic series are included, among them "TV," "From China with Love," "Embrace," and "High Places." These series include photographs depicting various "real and imaginary" events. Explains the Walsh gallery:

"China's rapid globalization and the sexual ambiguity that often appears in the Gao Brothers' work refers not to sexual confusion; it's about a confusion of spirit. This sexual androgyny also questions conventional party line logic on what is normal and what is pornographic.

"The Gao Brothers simultaneously invite the viewer to share in these feelings of confusion while hoping all along for a little more love for us all."

Gao Zhen (b. 1952) and his younger brother, Gao Qiang (b. 1962) come from Shandong Province, but now maintain a studio in Beijing's former "No. 798 Electronic Components Factory," the centerpiece of the Da Shanzi art district. Zhen is a graduate of the Shandong Academy of Arts and Crafts. Qiang graduated from Qufu Normal University and is now a painter at the Shandong College of Light Industry.

They work with a variety of media including painting, sculpture, and photography. They're best known, however, for "digital art" performances like World Hug Day. Last year, the UK Guardian mentioned that "1989 until 2003, they were on the government blacklist and forbidden to leave the country. But they are now part of a new wave of Chinese artists wowing galleries abroad."

The Walsh gallery exhibit runs until April 28.

Pipa Revival

As with European music from the Medieval to the Baroque, there is something of a revival of ancient Chinese music going on, played with authentic period instruments. Kathie Price contributes an interesting feature article to The Arizona Republic today, titled "Foothills Woman Masters Pipa."

Phoenix musician La Mai Gates (below, right) is featured. She plays the Pipa, an ancient Chinese lute-like instrument that dates back to well before the Ch'in dynasty (221-206 B.C. E.) .

"The pipa is a familial favorite for Gates, a concert master and soloist with the Phoenix Chinese Art Ensemble. Her father was a pipa professor at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music in the northeast province of Liaoning. Her mother, her uncles, aunts and cousins all played the pipa as she grew up.
* * *
As a tot, Gates listened to a cousin play the pipa.

"I got a lot of influence from my family," she said. "My dad not only taught, he used to fix pipa and make them."

In middle school, we're told, she "majored in pipa with piano as a minor." The pipa "is not an easy instrument to learn," Price warns.

"The 2,000-year-old pear-shaped lute, also known as a Chinese guitar, has four or five strings and as many as 30 bridges to produce 12 tones and a range of more than three and half octaves."

Playing the pipa requires both strumming (pi or 琵) and plucking (pa or 琶) the strings.

Master painter Tu Zhiwei's conception of how the pipa was played while dancing in the grottos of Dunhuang can be seen in the reproduction, above. It is one of his first murals, completed in 1994.

That mural is now in private hands, but the pipa theme is repeated in some of his other Dunhuang paintings and murals, inspired by the thousands of wall drawings and documents uncovered by archaeologists in western China in the 1970's.

Ancient treasure troves are still being discovered, even today, in remote areas of China as well as metropolitan Beijing. Urns, funeral masks, clothes, weapons, even an entire 'pottery army'.

But the pipa remains something very special, indeed: a musical instrument that symbolizes the joy and peaceful yearnings of an entire culture. It's gratifying to know that the instrument lives on so its music can enrich our own age. Give a listen:

Is it Art - Or is it Mo' Money?

The reliable Scotman.com from -- where else? -- Scotland, has the latest update on the red hot market for modern Asian artwork:

"Art collectors, dealers and auction houses are increasingly looking east for inspiration and investment opportunities, eying the rising stars of Asian painting as well as the region's super-rich patrons.
* * *
"Asian art's ascendancy in recent years has been spectacular, with contemporary artists seeing prices for their work soar."

Everyone's favorite example de jour is mentioned -- Zhang Xiaogang's bleak "Tiananmen Square." Originally estimated to sell at Cristy's Hong Kong auction last autumn for $257,069 to $385,604, the winning bidder actually paid $2.3 million plus, one assumes, the usually hefty buyer's premium.

It's no knock against Zhang's painting to say that someone got taken, badly. Conning the rich into over-paying for the latest fashion in the art world is a marketing ploy as old and disreputable as any stock swindle on Wall Street.

Now, we are told, the market already is tiring of Chinese modernists and is moving on to India. Also last fall, a Tyeb Mehta acrylic, "Mahishasura," sold for more than $1.5 million.

A gallery owner is quoted as saying --

"There were some Western collectors who had got into contemporary Chinese art which has seen a gigantic runup in the last year or two.

"Some were saying 'What's next?', and contemporary Indian art seems to represent a certain value opportunity and creatively a certain strength."

It won't be long before India's artists are abandoned, too, and auction houses start hyping artists from some other clime like Yemen or maybe Tierra del Fuego. Sounds like typical stock churning, doesn't it? Art collecting as the equivalent of a Kwakiutl potlatch, where the rich throw their money away to prove just how rich they are.

The whole business reminds us of critic Peter Schjeldahl's pointed observation in The New Yorker not long ago. Speaking of a U.S. artist who enjoys a certain momentary popularity in New York, he wrote:

"Great artists work from and for history, where no one lives. Kiki Smith, the subject of a tangy retrospective at the Whitney ... is a major figure ... who makes minor art."

The real trick is to collect "major art" that you like and pay no attention to the reputation-at-the-moment of the artist.