Is Singapore threatening Hong Kong as next Asian art mecca? Wall Street Journal

SINGAPORE AND HONG KONG’S COMPETING ART MARKET

Singapore’s art scene has grown rapidly since its 1989 government mandate to recognize the “importance of culture and the art.” Thriving to a point that, according to The Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong–Asia’s epicenter of art–is beginning to take its competitor seriously.

Hong Kong’s challenging art scene

Today’s numbers would suggest that Hong Kong has nothing to worry about for competition.  Hong Kong is currently the third-largest auction market in the world with both Christie’s and Sotheby’s in its territory, and has set aside close to US$3 billion in order to create a much needed world class arts and culture development known as West Kowloon Cultural District. The project, however, has been slow to start and left many frustrated.

“The Hong Kong government first hit upon the idea in 1998 of building an integrated arts and culture neighborhood on 40 hectares of reclaimed land in the West Kowloon district. After many fits and starts, planning for the project recently picked up some momentum…Nevertheless, even if it all goes as planned, the first phase won’t be open until 2016.”

One of the proposed models for the West Kowoon Cultural Centre

The West Kowloon project has been “frustrating and painful,” says Asia Art Archive’s Ms. Hsu, who is also on the advisory panel for the museum at the new West Kowloon development. “For the public it has looked like the government is stalling, but it gives me a lot of hope. The government is very concerned about getting it right.’”

Singapore makes its move

The time spent behind making Hong Kong’s “necessary cultural move” may eventually result in Singapore gaining ground in the market by the country’s pushing ahead with so many art-hub projects of their own.

“It [Singapore] invested more than US$1 billion in infrastructure, including several museums and a 4,000-seat complex of theaters, studios and concert halls called the Esplanade, which opened in 2002, and spiced up its arts programming with diversity and a regional flavor.”

The Esplanade, Singapore

The benefits of Singapore’s art initiatives are already apparent. According to Singapore’s National Arts Council “between 1997 and 2007, the ‘vibrancy’ of the local art scene, measured by the number of performances and exhibition days, quadruped to more than 26,000.”

However, Singapore is still missing a key ingredient to perhaps prosper further: a big art-auction market like Hong Kong’s.

“Some smaller art-auction houses hold sales in Singapore, but the big ones — Christie’s and Sotheby’s — have pulled out and moved their Southeast Asian art auctions to Hong Kong, the former British colony that is home to seven million people and became a Chinese territory in 1997.”

For a city, having the ingredients for a thriving art market creates a virtuous circle. The powerful marketing machines of the big auction houses, including public previews of coming sales, raises awareness and appreciation of art in the community. All this encourages local artists to create more art. And that momentum, in turn, contributes to the development of a city’s broader cultural scene, including music, theater and design.”

Singapore looks ahead

The relationship between big art-auction markets and a thriving art scene can be so entangled that it would appear difficult to navigate a new course in order to adequately compete. Singapore, it seems, is trying anyways.

“Undaunted, Singapore is diligently pushing ahead and has opened several museums and other arts venues while Hong Kong has dithered on the construction of West Kowloon. Christie’s also recently picked Singapore to be the site of a global fine-arts storage facility to open in a duty-free zone in January.”

Related Posts

• ARTSingapore 2009 Fair-new photography fair, high value sales and gallerists pick top fairs in Asia today- October 2009
• New auction houses with new strategies open in Singapore art market – October 2009
• Liquidity propels prices, Chinese Political Pop is back- Sothebys Contemporary Asian Art Auction 2009 Hong Kong- October 2009

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia

RM/KCE

Contemporary art market in Asia now bigger than US for first time says Artprice

ASIAN ART MARKET

Visitors enter a Sotheby's auction room in Hong Kong for a sale of modern and contemporary art on October 6, 2008.

For the first time ever, the total auction revenue from “contemporary art in Asia” is greater than the total of the United States artprice reports. The statistics are collected from a 12-month period spanning from July 2008 to June 2009. Asia generated €130 million versus the United States’ €123 million. China is the highest gainer out of this trend, having generated €95 million from contemporary art during the same period.  According to the report, this means China is continuing to “hold on to its third place global geographical art auction revenue ranking.”

The establishment of foreign auction houses such as Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams in Hong Kong, in combination with the financial strength of Hong Kong and Shanghai are to be accredited for China’s position. For those who are looking to begin collecting Asian art, this does not mean that the price of contemporary Chinese art is back up to its sky-high prices of a couple of years ago. Artprice’s report tell us that in the first half of 2008 the average price of contemporary works sold in China was $65,500, however, in the first half of 2009, this average dropped to $26,800.

Related posts:

• Liquidity propels prices, Chinese Political Pop is back- Sotheby’s Contemporary Asian Art Auction 2009 Hong Kong- October 2009
• Trends and opportunities in the contemporary photography market- October 2009
• Newslink round up Art Basel 2009- Indian, Japanese artists dominate coverage of Asians- June 2009

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for more market and auction house news

RM/KCE

How a long recession helped Japanese contemporary art collector, Ryutaro Takahashi

JAPANESE ART COLLECTOR

 A Japanese psychiatrist, Ryutaro Takahashi, has become one of the most important collectors of Japanese contemporary art, having amassed a collection of over 1,500 pieces since 1997. And, in an inspiring story we can all take heart from today, he was able to do so largely because of Japan’s long recession. The Japan Times explains:

The late ’90s were particularly tough for dealers… because the long-running economic downturn had translated into severe funding cuts for public museums. The reason recent art is so underrepresented in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, for example, is that from 2000 to 2004 it had no acquisitions budget. Takahashi was able to snap up dozens of pieces while the nation’s museums went AWOL.

Takahashi emphasises that he did not take deliberate steps to fill the void left by underfunded institutions. So what did motivate this collector and how did he get started?

“I used to hang around Fugetsudo Cafe in Shinjuku,” he tells The Japan Times, describing the coffee shop that was a hippie Mecca during the counterculture years. “We’d hear about the happenings that Yayoi Kusama was doing in New York. She was like a star to us.”

Takahashi was not an artist himself, but the period left him with a fascination for the avant garde.

“In 1997 I saw an exhibition of new work by Kusama,” he says. “At about the same time, a show of new work by Makoto Aida was being held at Mizuma Art Gallery. So, in a short time I saw work by someone I thought was a star and also an important up- and-coming artist. That lit the spark within me.”

The spark quickly flared into a wildfire.

“Once I had bought a few I realized that if I was going to do this, I had to do it properly,” he says.

He focused on young artists from Japan, spending Saturdays roaming cutting-edge galleries: Mizuma, Ota Fine Arts, Tomio Koyama. Soon he was plowing all his resources into the project.

 

Makota Aida A Picture of an Air Raid on New York City (War Picture Returns), 1996

One of his first major purchases was Aida’s A Picture of an Air Raid on New York City (War Picture Returns), a giant screen-painting which depicts fighter planes forming an infinity symbol as they bomb New York. Since then he has bought about ten more Aida works.

Usually, big paintings by such respected artists would find their way into public collections. But not in Japan, or at least not in the past ten years in Japan. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, has just one Aida, and the five national art museums have none.

The story is similar with other 40-something artists such as Akira Yamaguchi, Hisashi Tenmyouya and Tsuyoshi Ozawa. Each has been given large-scale, midcareer retrospectives at major Tokyo venues, but none is well represented in any public collection. Takahashi’s holdings, by contrast, include several major works by each.

Read more in The Japan Times about:

•  how Takahashi believes that Japanese art is becoming divorced from the West
• what he plans to do with his collection and
• where it can be seen now

Related posts:

• Japanese art changes and trends by gallerist Koyanagi – Mar 2009
• New York’s first show of Japanese manga anime KRAZY! – Feb 2009
• Corporate art collecting in decline since the eighties – Wall Street Journal – Oct 2008
• World first show of Japanese sculpture in bamboo – Sep 2008
• Russian art collectors tastes change New York Times – Aug 2008

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for news about Asian collectors

Middle East art scene today is like London in nineties – Judith Greer – international art collector

ART COLLECTING MIDDLE EAST ART

Now based in London, well-known US collector Judith Greer spent thirteen years in Japan where she discovered the work Yayoi Kusama well before the artist became well known. Greer, originally from Seattle, Washington told The Observer in 2006 about the difficulty she had adjusting after her move in 1993:

 Tokyo was my city – I’d been there for 13 years. I was this efficient, bilingual woman, international director of the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art. 1

Judith Greer

But it was not long before she thoroughly involved herself in the London art scene and focused on making her home a ‘post modern mecca for art”. Relaxed barbecues and TV show parties allow well known London YBA artists such as Sarah Lucas and Tracy Emin to mingle alongside emerging artists who Greer makes a point of inviting.

The top floor of the house has been converted into a gallery. Greer lets non-profit organisations such as Artangel exhibit here, and shows her own collection for visitors. Many of her parties are held to allow collectors and artists to mingle. ‘People used to be hesitant about opening their houses to artists, which I think is strange. I love bringing people together – and we make a point of inviting young artists who could really benefit.’ 1

Recently she has been active in Dubai where she told the National

It may be a difficult time in the global art market but there is still a palpable sense of excitement about contemporary art in the Middle East,” she says 2

The American collector is involved with several UAE art projects. Earlier this year she took part in The Royal Academy Series Talking Art: three days of discussions in Abu Dhabi around the contemporary exhibition Emirati Expressions. She attended  Art Dubai and the Sharjah Biennial, which she applauds for being held simultaneously. “The main goal is to see work that I can’t see in England,” she told The National.

According to Greer, the contemporary art boom in London (in the late nineties)  is similar to the level of excitement over the growth of the art scene in the Middle East now. “It’s a confluence of all sorts of factors within a period of about three years,” she says, citing both Art Dubai and artparis-Abu Dhabi as examples of major events here that have helped generate interest. “A really intense explosion of occasions and auctions at which there was a sense of the birth of the Middle Eastern art world.”

Greer also notes that there are differences warning that there is a need for a stronger sense of an artistic community, more universities and support of young, emerging artists.

Greer’s tips for collectors

You can see a little of Greer’s collection inlcuding work by Yayoi Kusama in situ at her home in Notting Hill on youtube. This video also gives tips for new collectors and visits Frieze Art Fair. 

youtube video Judith Greer on buying at Frieze

Owning art - Judith Greer

Judith Greer  has also published this year an Arabic translation of her book, Owning Art: The Contemporary Art Collector’s Handbook. First published in the UK in 2006 the book has also been translated into Italian and Russian, and there are plans for a Chinese edition.

It covers topics from the differences between contemporary and traditional art to the different roles that dealers and curators play, and also includes informative chapters on insurance and conservation.

1. Art House - an American collector opens the doors to a rubble-strewn Victorian house she turned into a post-modern mecca for the YBA – Observer – Aug 2006
2. Professional guidance – The National – Mar 2009

Related posts:

• Top 10 most influential contemporary art collectors – Apollo mag – Apr 2009
• Beirut finally has a permanent non-commercial arts centre – Mar 2009
• Sneak a peak at private residence and Chinese art collection of dealer diva Pearl Lam – Mar 2009
• Tate acquires Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari video at Frieze – Oct 2008
• Iranian artist Farhad Ahrarnia picked as one to watch – Canvas – Sep 2008
• East Asian, Middle Eastern artists at Liverpool Biennial – Aug 2008

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for the latest news about collectors

Top 10 most influential contemporary art collectors – Apollo Magazine

CONTEMPORARY ART COLLECTORS

The collectors who really matter to the history of art are not necessarily the very richest or even the most acquisitive says Martin Bailey in Apollo Magazine:

They are those who by their example set standards for others, encourage interest in the art they collect and share their treasures with the public. In short, the collectors of greatest importance are those who wield the greatest influence.

Of APOLLO’S list of the 20 most influential collectors today, 10 collect contemporary work. Here is a list with some brief ntoes. For more information see the full article go to Apollo Top 20 most influential art collectors.

ELI BROAD

Post-war and contemporary Nationality: American Age: 75 Source of wealth: Property and insurance

Eli Broad and his wife, Edythe, began to collect modern and contemporary art in the 1970s, and have amassed one of America’s greatest private collections. They have nearly 2,000 pieces.

Broad was also the founding chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He has given $26m to help build a Zaha Hadid-designed art museum at Michigan State University; building work is due for completion in 2010.

EUGENIO LOPEZ ALONSO

Latin American and international contemporary Nationality: Mexican Age: 40 Source of wealth: Food processing

Eugenio Lopez inherited the Jumex fruit juice business. Although relatively young, he has amassed one of the largest private collections of modern Latin American art. Lopez’s collection comprises 1,500 works, half Latin American and half international.

FRANCOIS PINAULT

Contemporary Art Nationality: French Age: 71 Source of wealth: Luxury goods

Starting by collecting early modernism, Francois Pinault quickly moved into post-war American painting and finally into contemporary art. In 1998 he purchased a controlling share in Christie’s, which puts him in the centre of the art world. Pinault has long wanted to display his collection, now comprising 2,500 works. After scrapping plans for a museum in a former Renault factory on Ile Seguin, in the Seine in western Paris, he took over Palazzo Grassi in Venice, which reopened in 2006. Even more ambitiously, the Francois Pinault Foundation is transforming Venice’s Punta della Dogana (customs building) into a contemporary art centre, which is due to open in June 2009 for the Biennale.

VIKTOR PINCHUK

Contemporary Art Nationality: Ukrainian Age: 47 Source of wealth: Steel

Viktor Pinchuk’s collecting began in the early 1990s with Russian impressionism. He subsequently developed the idea of opening a public display, and turned towards contemporary art, feeling that this would be more popular. In September 2006 the Victor Pinchuk Foundation opened the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev, which is one of the largest public galleries for contemporary art in eastern Europe. Owning 300 works, it comprises both Ukrainian and international art. In January Peter Doroshenko became its artistic director (he is an American of Ukrainian background and formerly director of the Baltic in Gateshead, northern England). Among Pinchuk’s recent purchases is Koons’s Hanging Heart, for which he paid $24m.

LEKHA & ANUPAM PODDAR

Indian Art Nationality: Indian Age: unknown; 34 Source of wealth: Paper industry and hotels

Lekha Poddar, from Delhi, began collecting in the late 1970s and her son Anupam in 2000. Together they recently set up the Devi Art Foundation. They now have 7,000 works of Indian art, ranging from tribal to contemporary (with some from neighbouring countries).

DON & MERA RUBELL

Contemporary Art Nationality: American Age: 66; unknown Source of wealth: Inheritance and hotels

Based in Miami Beach, the Rubells began to collect in the 1960s, and after receiving an inheritance in 1989 were able to expand their ambitions, both to build the collection and open it to the public. Their daughter and son, Jennifer and Jason (and Jason’s wife, Michelle), are closely involved, which explains why it is known as the Rubell Family Collection. In 1996 their Contemporary Arts Foundation opened a public space in a former Drug Enforcement Agency warehouse in Wynwood, north Miami, to show a changing selection of works in 27 rooms. The collection now comprises over 5,000 pieces. The Rubells particularly enjoy discovering up-and-coming artists.

CHARLES SAATCHI

Contemporary Art Nationality: British Age: 65 Source of wealth: Advertising

Charles Saatchi is probably Europe’s most powerful collector of contemporary art. With his first wife, Doris Lockhart, he began with American abstraction in the 1970s. In 1985 he opened his first public gallery, in Boundary Road, north London. By the end of the decade he had turned to British artists, later commissioning Hirst’s ‘Shark’ and buying Emin’s ‘Bed’ and the Chapman Brothers’ Hell Having become the leading patron of the Young British Artists (YBAS), he shot to fame with his controversial ‘Sensation’ exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997, which then toured to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In 2003 his gallery moved from Boundary Road to County Hall, where it remained for two years. His current space is  in the King’s Road, Chelsea, in a converted army barracks.

Saatchi not only buys, but also sells, so his collection is constantly evolving. He owns around 3,000 works. Although wanting the public to enjoy his art, he remains a rather private figure.

SAUD AL-THANI–Eclectic, but particularly Islamic and natural history Nationality: Qatari Age 41 Source of wealth: Family wealth

Sheikh Saud al-Thani is a cousin of the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. As chairman of the country’s National Council for Culture, Arts and Heritage, he was responsible for buying for a group of new museums that are being set up in the capital, Doha. However, it has often been unclear whether his purchases were for the national museums or his personal collection. The scope of his purchases is enormous, ranging from antiquities to 20th-century furniture. Money is no problem. Saud al-Thani’s current personal role in collecting is unclear, but other members of the family are voracious buyers.

DAVID THOMSON

19th-century English to contemporary art Nationality: Canadian Age: 51 Source of wealth: Media

David Thomson, the 3rd Lord Thomson, is the son of the media owner Kenneth Thomson, who died in 2006. Kenneth Thomson was a very major donor to the Art Gallery of Ontario, to which he gave 2,000 works in 2002.

GUY ULLENS

Chinese contemporary art Nationality: Belgian Age: 73 Source of wealth: Food processing

Baron Guy Ullens is of Belgian origin, but resident in Switzerland. He began to collect classical Chinese painting while on business trips to China, but in the 1980s, together with his wife, Myriam, he branched out into Chinese contemporary art-famously selling his paintings by Turner to finance his purchases. Today he owns one of the world’s finest collections, with 2,000 works.

In November 2007 Ullens opened a permanent space in a restored military factory in Beijing, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art. It has changing displays, with works from the Ullens collection and outside loans (including international art).

Related posts:

• Who is buying Chinese art? The Mugrabi family is – Mar 2009 – NYT
• Saatchi Middle East exhibition – which artists are critic favourites? – Feb 2009
• India’s first art museum Devi employs students as curators – Livemint – Jan 2009
• New non-proft museum Devi ground-breaking first for India – NYT – Sep 2008
• Billionnaires from Russia, Middle East new in top 10 list of collectors – June 2008 – ArtNews

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia

Saatchi back with new gallery, school programme, China show, – Reuters, BBC

COLLECTOR SHOW CHINESE ART

Influential British art collector Charles Saatchi is back after three years out of the limelight, opening a major new gallery in central London showcasing some of China’s hottest artists reports Reuters. The man who introduced the world to Britart stalwarts like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin has been largely absent from the art scene since his gallery was forced out of its previous home on the River Thames in 2005. Now he is back with a huge new exhibition space in upmarket Chelsea, where he hopes free entry to the imposing former headquarters of the Duke of York will attract passers by.

Critics have lauded the imposing three-storey building with its glass and white-walled interior, and welcomed back one of contemporary art’s biggest players. But the inaugural show, opening on Thursday, has earned mixed reviews.

“The Revolution Continues: New Art from China” is dedicated to Chinese artists including established stars like Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang and Zeng Fanzhi, whose painting fetched $9.7 million in May, a record for Asian contemporary artwork.

Some critics have categorized the crazed, laughing men of Yue or the gray, stylized portraits of Zhang as repetitive, even “mass production” art.

Generally more popular were the sculptures, particularly an installation piece called “Old Persons Home” by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, involving 13 aging men on wheelchairs moving randomly around a large basement room. Their striking resemblance to late world leaders turns the work into a commentary on the pitfalls of power and conflict. The gallery calls it “a grizzly parody of the U.N. dead.”

But the gallery’s head of development, Rebecca Wilson, said Saatchi’s target audience was less the experts — critics, collectors and curators — and more the general public, most of whom are unfamiliar with contemporary Chinese art. “There was a feeling that all of these artists were suddenly emerging from China, doing very well at auction, there were the Beijing Olympics coming up,” she told Reuters. “There was this kind of convergence of interest in China, so we felt it should be the exhibition that we open with.”

IRAN, IRAQ ART TO COME

Early next year the Saatchi Gallery will put on a show dedicated to contemporary Middle Eastern art, including from Iran and Iraq, by artists never seen in Britain before.

“None of those artists have been seen in this country before and will be very little known elsewhere in the world as well,” said Wilson. “I think Charles has been searching for months to try to find interesting works.”

Saatchi sells some art after an exhibition ends, partly to fund his enterprise. Auction house Phillips de Pury is supporting the gallery to ensure entry will be free.

_____________________________________________________________________________

BBC coverage:

Only free contemporary art museum in world

The BBC reports that the Saatchi gallery claims to be the only completely free entry contemporary art museum of its size in the world. Simon de Pury, of auction house Phillips de Pury & Company, who is sponsoring the exhibition, said they expected “millions” of visitors.

Ground-breaking school education programme to come

The gallery said it was seeking to establish a “ground breaking” education programme “to make contemporary art even more accessible to young people.

“It is anticipated that the facilities that the Saatchi Gallery plans to offer – at the gallery, via its website and the gallery’s own classroom – will ensure that teachers receive the best on-site and outreach support for their students.”

——————————————————————

Artists: Zhang Dali, Zeng Fanzhi, Wang Guangyi, Zheng Guogu, Zhang Haiying, Zhang Hongtu, Zhang Huan, Qiu Je, Xiang Jin, Shi Jinsong, Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Li Qing, Wu Shuanzhuan, Shen Shaomin, Li Songsong, Zhan Wang, Liu Wei, Zhang Xiaogang, Zhang Xiaotao, Cang Xin, Shi Xinning, Li Yan, Bai Yiluo, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Zhang Yuan, Yin Zhaohui, Feng Zhengjie

Find more on

• Chinese art, Iraqi art, Iranian art
• Events on now, events coming
• Reports from London
• News about collectors

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia

Indian collector Sarkar plans new art museum Calcutta – New York Times

NEW ART MUSEUM PLANNED CALCUTTA

According to the New York Times a new modern art museum is under way in the eastern city of Calcutta. Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architecture firm that built the Tate Modern in London, is designing it. Construction is to start next year, and the museum is to open in late 2013, said Rakhi Sarkar, a collector there and one of the driving forces behind the museum.

Related:

• Latest Indian contemporary art news
• More on collectors

Financial meltdown impact on the art market – Time, Artinfo

ART MARKET RECESSION

At least for now, the US has managed to avert a complete collapse of the banking system permitting the press breathing space to ponder the potential impact of the financial crisis on businesses and individuals around the world.

How will the art market fare? The views are mixed.

From Indian art galleries to billionaire art collectors noone in the art market will be immune from the fallout claim some observers. Prices will alter, collections will change hands, art businesses will consolidate, change strategy or move. Others point out that art indices such as the Mei Moses index show that art has a low correlation with stock indices. But can you rely on art indices when art as an asset class is so illiquid and non homogenous compared with stocks goes the counterargument. According to Philip Hoffman of the Fine Art Fund a third of investible art assets is in the hands of just 20 or so very wealthy collectors providing some price protection. However others point out that the market is splitting and the upper end may have a different outlook to the lower end. 

Time will tell how events will unfold but in the meantime some press sources have started to report stories hinting at what they expect ahead.

Impact on Indian galleries – Time

It is easy to be dazzled and forget for a moment that India’s markets, like those around the globe, are in the throes of financial turmoil. But even here, worries are starting to surface reports Time. Mumbai is India’s financial capital, but it’s also the center of the country’s booming fashion industry and contemporary-arts community. Those three worlds feed each other here, just as they do in London, Tokyo and New York. As the markets plunge – the main Mumbai index, the Sensex, is down 36% since January – many of Mumbai’s wealthy financiers are beginning to spend less in the city’s galleries and luxury boutiques. “I’m extremely worried,” says Jai Bhandarkar, owner of an art gallery in Colaba, one of Mumbai’s toniest neighborhoods. “The spending power of the people who collect art is going to be affected. The art market has already gone down so much.”

The fate of Lehman’s art collection – Artinfo

Artinfo : When Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, it left out Neuberger Berman, its giant asset management unit and, according to Artnet, one of its “few profit-making divisions in recent months.” The investment bank is now taking bids for the unit – which includes an impressive corporate art collection – with five private equity firms reported as possible buyers: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Hellman & Friedman, Clayton Dubilier & Rice, Bain Capital, and CVC Capital Partners.

Neuberger Berman was cofounded in 1939 by Roy Neuberger, whose name also graces the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, established with the help of Nelson Rockefeller in 1974 so Neuberger could show off his collection. Neuberger Berman has had a fund since 1990 to buy works from “emerging to mid-career artists, with an emphasis on the former,” according to a press release for a 2004 touring show. That exhibition, “Crosscurrents at Century’s End: Selections from the Neuberger Berman Art Collection,” included pieces by such artists as Marlene Dumas, Andreas Gursky, Takashi Murakami, Neo Rauch, and Sam Taylor-Wood.

The firm is now reported to have some 600 works in its collection, which is displayed in its offices worldwide. It remains to be seen whether the new owner will keep the collection intact or sell the pieces off while the art market is strong.

Billionaire art collectors not immune – uTV

It is unlikely that art will retain its value in the current slump, despite the record-breaking Damien Hirst sale earlier this week says UTV Business News. This will come as a shock to Donald and Doris Fisher, the founders of the Gap clothing chain who returned to the Forbes Rich list in joint 377th place – on $1.3bn – thanks to their $1bn art collection which includes pieces by Chuck Close, Richard Serra and Alexander Calder.

Related:

• Latest stories on market watch
• Indian art news
• More on collectors
• Posts about potential art recession

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for the latest news from Asia and beyond

Artist to watch Cao Fei

ARTIST TO WATCH

As we scan the news every day, some new artists and new trends emerge out of the cloud of informaton bigger bolder and brighter than the rest. This is the first in an occasional series in which we beam in and take an in depth look at one artist or art trend.

CAO FEI

Cao Fei  is a female artist who was born in 1978 in Guangzhou China and is now based in Beijing.

What people are saying

Red Mansion Foundation, London: “Cao Fei is no doubt one of the most remarkable and powerful artists of this generation.”

Serpentine Gallery London: “Cao Fei is one of the pre-eminent Chinese artists of her generation”

About the art

Photographs, videos and installations.

Influences include superheros, avatars, electronic entertainment, pop music, TV drama, computer games and new subcultures such as Japanese Manga, American Rap, and Hong Kong films.

Why her work is interesting

Cao Fei fearlessly experiments with new media, in particular virtual media such as Second Life. She is fascinated by the contrast between urban reality and fantasy-perfect etopia and how it is possible to move between the two at the flick of a switch. Her art presents the issues and zeitgeist of her generation.

I am interested in “the premise that people can choose characters that are very different from their real selves. They can use their character to create a “second life,” to change their friends, family, and lifestyle — like switching a TV channel “says Cao Fei in an interview with Artkrush.

“I started to confuse my two lives, and so I compared them. The younger generation, like 15-18 year olds, I don’t think they ask as many of these questions; that kind of lifestyle is their real life — they belong to a technological world — but for my generation, we will always compare virtual and real”

Her work

Cosplayers: King Kong at home

 She first attracted international attention in 2004 with COSplayers, a video and photo series about Guangzhou teens dressing up as Japanese manga characters.

 At the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007, she premiered China Tracy Pavilion, a project exploring the virtual worlds of Second Life that merged role-playing, ethnographic documentary, and animation. 

 After discovering Second Life, Fei embarked on a six-month journey through the wonders of the digital realm, as China Tracy, and many came across her through a YouTube stream in which she introduced herself in machinima footage with Chinese subtitles.

According to Fei, all sorts of typical activities occurred during that period: ‘Fly, chat, build, teleport, buy, sex, add friends, snapshot…’

I.Mirror Documentary Video 2007

These experiences were documented and generated the three-part, thirty-minute epic, ‘i.Mirror’ that Fei exhibited at Venice’s Arsenale back garden as well as on YouTube.

A recent project RMB City, an online art community in the virtual world of Second Life is on show at the Serpentine Gallery and on-line.

Institutions and collectors are invited to buy buildings in RMB City and programme events and activities in them. The project is an experiment exploring the creative relationship between real and virtual space.

Career highlights

Cao Fei has exhibited around the world in premier institutions such as Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Beijing, Mori Museum Tokyo, San Francisco Art Instute, Serpentine Gallery and Red Mansion Foundation. 

She has been shown at the Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennial, Taipei Biennial, Biennale of Sydney and her work has been included in important survey exhibitions such as “Between Past and Future – New Photography andVideo from China” Asia Society New York.

Collectors of her work include Guy Ullens, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Israel Museum, Uli Sigg, Guan Yi  amongst others.The famous Chinese collector Guan Yi names Cao Fei along with a handful of other artists as an important artist of her generation.

Cao Fei Siemens project

In the Siemens sponsored art project “What are you doing here?”, the artist Cao Fei worked with employees from subsidiary OSRAM China Lighting to turn their individual ideas, hopes and expectations into art.

Auction history

As at September 1 2008, Cao Fei is still much under-appreciated at auction. She has only had 3 photographs at auction, one at China Guardian May 2007 which sold for US$21,890 including premium (over double the estimate) and two at Sotheby’s New York 2007 which were bought in.

Where to buy

Dealers:

• The Courtyard Gallery Beijing
• Pekin Fine Arts Beijing
• Grace Li Zurich

See (in new window)

• Cao Fei’s website
• Cao Fei’s up to date bio on artfacts.net
• Latest price history on artnet artprice findartinfo
• more posts on Cao Fei including participation in Mori Art Museum video weekend 2008, Ullens Center show 2008, RMB City at the Serpentine to 2009
• Cao Fei excerpt from Robert Adanto documentary video ‘The Rising Tide’ on Saatchi website

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia now

Zhukova, girlfriend of Abramovich opens new 92,000 sf art space in Moscow 2008 – International Herald Tribune

Daha Zhukova, Abramovich

 

 

 

 

RUSSIA NEW CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE opens September 2008

Dasha Zhukova is to open a contemporary art space in the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, a giant red-brick Constructivist-era landmark near the Olympic Stadium in Moscow. Popular with architects the garage was designed in 1926 by Konstantin Melnikov.

“I thought Moscow should have a space like this for contemporary art,” Zhukova said. “There is a huge thirst for knowledge among the younger generation for contemporary art, but most of them learn about it by going on the Internet.”

Under its new name the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture this 92,000 square foot space will open next month and its first show will be a retrospective of the artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.

Zhukova herself acknowledges being a relative art neophyte. “I didn’t study art history and don’t remember names of artists,” she said. “But if I like an image, I remember it.”

Born in Moscow in 1981, Zhukova is an only child. Her parents divorced when she was young, and when her mother, a molecular biologist, took a job at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the early 1990s, they moved there. Zhukova spoke not a word of English. But she quickly adjusted, she said, attending schools in Los Angeles and then the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A year ago few people in the art world had heard of her.

Zhukova said she isn’t modeling the Garage Center after any specific museum. “I’m taking different aspects of different institutions that are inspiring influences,” she said.

Besides aid from Abramovich, financing is also coming from other private sources and corporations. Admission will be free.

After the Kabakov exhibition that opens next month, the Garage Center plans to exhibit works from the collection of Christie’s owner, the luxury goods magnate François Pinault, whose foundation is based in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Dent-Brocklehurst said she was considering commissioning artists to create site-specific works for the space, analogous to installations in the vast Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern.

Asked if the Garage would have its own collection, Zhukova said that would be many years down the road, if ever.”For now I’m trying to learn as much as I can to make up for my lack of art history,” she said. “The more I read, the more I realize what I don’t know.”

See (in new window)

• International Herald Tribune story
• Russians changing the art market
• Russian artists AES+F getting noticed
• more posts on collectors

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia now