The Times (via the Australian) reports on the hype over Chinese artists in the international market:
If there is a bubble in the market for contemporary Chinese art, gallery owners, curators and collectors are not expecting it to pop just yet.
Briton Karen Smith arrived in China in 1993 planning to stay a year and research a book on Chinese art. Fourteen years later she is a leading authority, working from an office a stone’s throw from the Forbidden City and co-curating The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China, which opens next month at the Tate Liverpool in England. Smith is of the view that, bubble or no bubble, modern Chinese art is finally being plotted on the world map.
“Even if it does crash, everything goes in cycles, and out of that will come something new. Chinese art is not going away,” she says.
…Are collectors buying because of the quality of the work or because of the excitement surrounding all things Chinese? The mystique surrounding China cannot be denied. “In the past six months people do seem to have struggled at spotting talent. There’s a blurring of the senses, as if entering a dark room from sunlight. It takes time for the eyes to adjust.” [Full text]
(Photo: Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong with his painting Hot Bed, from The Australian.)
