Top 20 Asian artists June 2010: Art Radar Asia’s most-searched artists

TOP ASIAN CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

In January this year, we published the article, “Top 17 Asian artists 2009: Art Radar’s most-searched artists“, listing Art Radar Asia‘s most searched for artists to the end of 2009. This was so popular with our readers that we have decided to publish these results again. This list below highlights artists searched for between 30 June 2009 to 30 June 2010.

Takashi Murakami

Art Radar Asia receives an average of 27,000 page views a month. Our readers come to us in various ways: via links from other websites, from Twitter, facebook and other social media, from our email newsletter, from word of mouth referrals and, of course, via search engines.

Many readers find us by typing a specific artist name into Google or another search engine and finding a story written or image published by Art Radar Asia. Our analytics package tracks these search terms for us and we thought you might be interested in this data, too. The search terms used by readers when finding each artist are varied. For example, common search terms recorded for Japanese artist Takashi Murakami included: “takashi murakami”, “murakami”, “murakami takashi”, “takashi murakami art” and “takeshi murakami”.

Art Radar Asia‘s 20 most searched artists – the list

We can’t claim that this list is a reliable proxy for the most-searched Asian artists on the Internet overall (take a look at our notes at the bottom of this article). However, we do think the list throws up some fascinating data, particularly when compared with the 2009 results.

1. Takashi Murakami – male Japanese anime painter and sculptor – 36,086  searches (34,000, December 2009)
2. Shirin Neshat – female Iranian photographer – 4,532 searches (2,200, December 2009)
3. Anish Kapoor – male British-Indian sculptor – 4,246 searches (3,500, December 2009)
4. Marina Abramović – female New York-based Serbian performance artist – 3,092 searches (not listed, December 2009)
5. Yoshitaka Amano – male Japanese anime artist – 829 searches (460, December 2009)
6. Cao Fei – female Chinese photographer and new media artist – 672 searches
7. Terence Koh – male Canadian-Chinese photographer, installation and multimedia artist – 634 searches
8. I Nyoman Masriadi – male Indonesian painter – 625 searches
9. AES+F – Russian photography and video collective – 521 searches
10. Hiroshi Sugimoto – male Japanese photographer – 503 seaches
11. Subodh Gupta – male Indian painter, installation artist – 417 searches
12. Ori Gersht – male Israeli photographer – 408 searches
13. Ronald Ventura – male Filipino painter – 393 searches
14. Farhad Ahrarnia – male Iranian thread artist – 377 searches
15. Farhard Moshiri – male Iranian painter – 363 searches
16. Jitish Kallat – male Indian painter – 329 searches
17. Gao Xingjian – male Chinese-French ink artist – 301 searches
18. Bharti Kher – female Indian-British painter, sculptor and installation artist – 270 searches
19. Shahzia Sikander – female Pakistani miniaturist – 264 searches
20. Zhang Huan – male Chinese performance artist – 237 searches

How has the top 5 changed?

As with the last list, published at the end of 2009, Takashi Murakami is still holding the title spot with more than 36,000 searches. This is compared with 34,000 in 2009’s list. Shirin Neshat and Anish Kapoor have switched places since the previous list, although the difference between their numbers is somewhat insignificant. Yoshitaka Amano is new to the top 5, moving up to 5th place from 6th place in 2009, perhaps due to the 2010 announcement that he has established a film production company called Studio Deva Loka, in addition to directing a 3D anime named Zan. These announcements followed a small solo tour of his artwork. Marina Abramović has surged into the top 5 this time around, particularly notable as she did not appear on the 2009 list. This is most likely due to her 2010 MoMA exhibition, “Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present”.

Marina Abramovic, 'Happy Christmas', 2008, silver gelatin print, 53.9 x 53.9

How has the list changed since it was first published?

The following artists have returned since the 2009 list was published, but many have moved up or down by one or two places: Cao Fei (4, 2009); I Nyoman Masriadi (5, 2009); Ori Gersht (7, 2009); Terence Koh (8, 2009); AES+F (9, 2009); Ronald Ventura (10, 2009); Hiroshi Sugimoto (11, 2009); Farhad Moshiri (12, 2009); Subodh Gupta (13, 2009); Farhard Moshiri (12, 2009) ; Farhad Ahrarnia (14, 2009); Gao Xingjian (15, 2009); Jitish Kallat (16, 2009).

There are some new additions: Marina Abramović, perhaps due to her 2010 MoMA exhibition, “Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present”; Shahzia Sikander, whose medium has recently become popular with collectors and critics and who has herself surged into prominence with a win at ART HK 10 ; Bharti Kher, whose works are currently auctioning for large sums; and Zhang Huan, who has had a number of permanent sculptures installed in US cities this year, and whose company designed the permanent public sculpture for the US pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

Only Chinese ink artist Wucius Wong doesn’t reappear. His surge in popularity in 2009 may have been due to the retrospective exhibition, “Myriad Visions of Wucius Wong“, at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Preferred media of most-searched artists: miniatures and performance art rising in popularity

Most of the arists work in various media but in this list we have tagged them with the media they are best known for. Six of the artists are known primarily for painting, compared with only five in the 2009 list, and once again, this list is dominated by photographers, new media artists and sculptors. Miniature painting and performance art seem to be new topics of interest for readers.

Artist Age

Most of the artists were born in the 1960s and 1970s, as you would expect for a contemporary art website.

Interestingly, Shirin Neshat (Iranian photographer), Anish Kapoor (British Indian sculptor), Marina Abramović (Serbian performance artist), Yoshitaka Amano (Japanese anime), all born before 1960, were listed as number 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. Of course, due to their age and time spent working in the arts, they each have large bodies of work which are consistently being exhibited, collected and discussed.

Artist Gender

male 14 (13, 2009); female 5 (3, 2009); mixed collective 1 (1, 2009)

In the year to June 2010, there were more female artists on the list though men still dominated (approx. 75 percent). Those female artists who were on both lists appeared higher up this year than last.

Breakdown of artist nationalities

Chinese 4 (4, 2009); Indian 4 (4, 2009); Iranian 3 (3, 2009); Japanese 3 (3, 2009); Serbian 1 (not listed, 2009); Israeli 1 (1, 2009); Indonesian (1, 2009); Filipino (1, 2009); Russian (1, 2009)

As you can see, this result is almost identical to the previous result, with the edition of one Serbian artist (Marina Abramović, Serbian performance artist). Once again, artists from China and India are among the most searched nationality, despite fears the Indian art market would be slow to recover after the 2008-2009 global art market turndown.

Shahzia Sikander working on a mural in the USA.

Notes

This list is not a reliable proxy for the most-searched artists on the internet overall. Here is why: If we have not written a story on or tagged this artist, the search engines will not bring us traffic for this search term and it won’t appear on our traffic analysis stats page. As we have only been up for 18 months it is quite possible that we have not yet covered some higly-searched artists. And even if we have referenced an artist on our site and the artist is highly-searched, the searcher will not come to us unless we have a good page ranking for the story on the search engine.  For example if the story is, say, after page 4 of the search engine results, the searcher probably won’t find our story and will not appear in our stats. Despite these limitations the data is likely to be a reliable indicator for certain trends. Finally even if we have a story and the story is well-ranked, it may be that other stories on the same page are more alluring than ours and readers do not find their way to us.

KN/KCE

Related Topics: lists, from Art Radar

Related Posts:

• Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander impresses judges of SCMP|ART FUTURES at ART HK 10 – June 2010 – some great images of her work
• Peabody Essex Museum loaned 3 giants of contemporary and modern Indian art: Anish Kapoor, Francis Newton Souza, Paritosh Sen – June 2010 – discusses works loaned from the Ambani Collection
• Murakami’s Geisai Miami cancelled, Geisai Taiwan debuts this summer – October 2009 – Miami ditched for biannual Geisai art fair in favour of Taiwan
• Marina Ambrovic to perform at MoMA 2010 – video interview at Armory – August 2009 – an insightful interview with the artist herself
• Manga, ink and new generation Chinese – Top 10 shows in Hong Kong September 2008 part 1 – Saatchi Online – September 2008 – contains some information on Yoshitaka Amano

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for more original data on contemporary Asian artists

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Top 17 Asian artists 2009: Art Radar’s most-searched artists

TOP ASIAN CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

We have been up and running for over 18 months now and we receive over 25,000 page views a month. Our readers come to us in various ways: via links from other websites, from twitter, facebook and other social media, from our email newsletter, from word of mouth referrals and of course via search engines.

Many readers find us by typing a specific artist name into Google or another search engine and finding a story or image written by Art Radar. Our analytics package tracks these search terms for us and we thought you might be interested in this data too.

Wucius Wong

We can’t claim that this list is a reliable proxy for the most-searched Asian artists on the internet overall (take a look at our caveats below). However we do think the list throws up some fascinating data.

1. Takashi Murakami – Male Japanese anime painter and sculptor – 34,000 searches
2. Anish Kapoor – Male British Indian sculptor – 3,500
3. Shirin Neshat – Female Iranian photographer – 2,200
4. Cao Fei – Female Chinese photographer and new media artist – 550
5. I Nyoman Masriadi – Male Indonesian painter – 520
6. Yoshitaka Amano – Male Japanese anime artist – 460
7. Ori Gersht – Male Israeli photographer – 380
8. Terence Koh – Male Canadian Chinese photographer, installation and multimedia artist – 340
9. AES+F – Russian photography and video collective – 320
10. Ronald Ventura – Male Filipino painter – 280
11. Hiroshi Sugimoto – Male Japanese photographer – 260
12. Farhad Moshiri – Male Iranian painter – 240
13. Subodh Gupta – Male Indian painter, installation artist – 210
14. Farhad Ahrarnia – Female Iranian thread artist – 180
15. Gao Xingjian – Male Chinese ink artist – 180
16. Jitish Kallat – Male Indian painter – 170
17. Wucius Wong – Male Hong Kong Chinese ink artist – 160

The most startling finding is the “‘winner takes all” phenomenon. Takashi Murakami searches are 10 times the second most-searched artist and more than 100 times most of the artists on the list. This correlates with some of the latest findings on internet searches which are tending towards an L shape ie  there are blockbuster categories and a long tail of niches in which a vast number of categories each receive very few searches.

I Nyoman Masriadi

The well-known book “The Long Tail”‘ first brought the long tail phenomenon to light and it was expected that searchers given the choice would no longer need to cluster around a blockbuster because that was what was most readily available but would be able to choose between a myriad of interest categories. The latest research is showing that the long tail is indeed happening but that the long tail is not diminishing interest in blockbusters, instead the long tail is taking away from the middle-interest categories.

This pattern seems to be borne out in our data.  This trend could have some profound implications for the way that artists are marketed in the future. Perhaps art galleries as we now know them will go the way of independent bookstores and publishers, unable to afford the marketing costs needed to create blockbusters and unable to sell enough in the niches to survive. We would like to hear more about your thoughts on this subject in the comments section below.

Farhad Ahrarnia, The Struggle Within

Preferred media of most-searched artists

Most of the arists work in various media but in this list we have tagged them with the media they are best known for. Only 5 of the artists are known primarily for painting and this list is dominated by photographers, new media artists and sculptors.  Chinese ink, thread and anime make intriguing appearances on the list too.

Age

Most of the artists were born in the 1960s and 1970s as you would expect for a contemporary art site. But there are some surprise appearances for 2 older artists Gao Xingjian born 1940 and Wucius Wong born 1936. What is even more interesting is that both of these artists are Chinese and work in the same, very national genre of ink. While new media dominates, the inclusion of traditional Chinese ink art suggests a countertrend in which historical media and disciplines are being appreciated by contemporary art enthusiasts.

Gender

Male 13, Female 3, Mixed collective 1

Farhad Moshiri

Breakdown of nationalities

Chinese 4, Indian 3, Iranian 3, Japanese 3, Israeli, Indonesian, Filipino and Russian 1 each

While it is commonly known that there is now great international interest in the Chinese, Indian and Iranian art scenes we were fascinated to note the high ranking of two painters from Southeast Asia: Indonesian artist I Nyoman Masriadi and Filipino Ronald Ventura.  The  Southeast Asian collector base is composed of a small group of prominent Indonesian Chinese businessmen collectors. Artists from Southeast Asia find themselves in a somewhat enclosed and isolated art scene and are rarely exhibited outside the region. We did not expect to see Southeast Asian artists achieving a high ranking for internet searches.

Yoshitaka Amano

Notes

This list is not a reliable proxy for the most-searched artists on the internet overall. Here is why:

If we have not written a story on or tagged this artist, the search engines will not bring us traffic for this search term and it won’t appear on our traffic analysis stats page. As we have only been up for 18 months it is quite possible that we have not yet covered some higly-searched artists. And even if we have referenced an artist on our site and the artist is highly-searched, the searcher will not come to us unless we have a good page ranking for the story on the search engine.  For example if the story is, say, after page 4 of the search engine results, the searcher probably won’t find our story and will not appear in our stats. Despite these limitations the data is likely to be a reliable indicator for certain trends. Finally even if we have a story and the story is well-ranked, it may be that other stories on the same page are more alluring than ours and readers do not find their way to us.

More recent lists: June 2010

Related posts:

• A common man uncommonly direct – Subodh Gupta in conversation in Hong Kong – Dec 2009
• Which 5 Indian artists would you dare to buy now? May 2009
• What are the latest trends in Chinese art? Who are the top two emerging artists? – Melissa Chiu – Feb 2009
• Female Middle Eastern artists trendy thanks to Shirin Neshat – Time Out – May 2009
• AES+F talks to the Art Newspaper about their meteoric success – Aug 2008
• Women emerge onto the Beijing art scene – Aug 2008

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Chinese Canadian artist Terence Koh show in Cool Hunting top 5 art shows 2008

BEST ART SHOW 2008

Terence Koh’s first New York show Flowers for Baudelaire was selected as one of the top 5 art shows of 2008 by Cool Hunting, a website which  ‘attracts and inspires’ more than 250,000  readers from around the world with daily updates on  art, design and technology. It described the show as ‘delicate’ and ‘mesmerising’.

In keeping with a common Koh all-white trope, the studio has been turned into a smoky white room, the floor and walls gessoed into a white landscape of slopes eliminating the right angles of the room. After removing their shoes to enter the room, guests are treated to the “flowers,” gorgeous readymade canvases, simply constructed from corn syrup and powdered sugar. The results are sweet and mesmerizing in their simplicity, a delicate tribute to the French poet’s Les Fleurs du mal.

Cool Hunting

Terence Koh Flowers of Baudelaire

The show consists of 51 paintings of varying sizes created using titanium paint, corn syrup, and powdered sugar.  Curated by Vito Schnabel, a close friend of Koh’s and the son of the artist Julian Schnabel, the show was held at the home of Oliver Sarkozy, the half-brother of France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The artist maintained that the works were edible at the opening, even licking a painting in example though few of the guests such as Anna Wintour, Cynthia Rowley and Salman Rushdie ventured to taste the works. Others in attendance for the opening and after party were artists Dash Snow and Agatha Snow, Museum of Modern Art curator Klaus Biesenbach, gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, music mogul Lyor Cohen and photographer Todd Eberle. The Upper East side space, formerly the studio of late photographer Richard Avedon, was painted entirely white -floors, walls, and ceiling- as part of the display.

Art Observed

The Paintings at Terence Koh’s New Show Are Possibly Edible [NY Magazine]
Now Licking | Terence Koh [The Moment]
Terence Koh Revealed [Hint Mag]
Uptown Baby [Vmagazine]

Open Tuesday-Thursday, 11-6pm through January 2009 407 East 75th Street New York, NY 10021

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Korean Canadian artist Tim Lee takes Canada’s premier art award – Globe and Mail

ART PRIZE CANADA PHOTOGRAPHY

The Sobey Art Award is Canada’s leading visual-art prize and its aim is to throw a spotlight every year on the work of one of this country’s most promising emerging artists. So when the announcement was made in the Royal Ontario Museum’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal in Toronto last Wednesday night that this year’s prize money ($50,000) has gone to the Vancouver artist Tim Lee, the moment held a subtle irony. As emerging artists go, you’d have to say Tim Lee is about as emerged as they come. Making work in the large-format Cibachrome photo medium of the international A-list (he also makes video and sculpture), Lee has already leapfrogged over the Canadian gallery system to find representation in the leading commercial galleries of the United States and Europe (Cohan & Leslie in New York, Johnen + Schottle in Cologne and Lisson Gallery in London). The 32-year-old is one of Canada’s most internationally acclaimed rising stars, his talents developed in a local art scene that some outsiders see as insufferably self-valorizing and others see as admirably supportive and nurturing. (The truth lies halfway between the two.) Following in the traditions of his hometown elders Jeff Wall, Ken Lum (who taught Lee at the University of British Columbia), Rodney Graham, Stan Douglas and Ian Wallace, his art is deeply rooted in the conceptual-art tradition of the seventies, but freshly minted with his own inquisitive and eccentric wit.

Competition for the award was stiff, with other contenders including the brilliant Winnipeg artist Daniel Barrow, who enthralled his Toronto audience last Tuesday afternoon with a performance titled Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry, involving his live narration and a sequence of multi-part cartoon drawings illuminated by an overhead projector. (The story involved the artist’s fictitious account of his childhood days, a complex meditation on vision, loneliness and personal identity.) As well, Lee was up against the New York-based Canadian Terence Koh (a.k.a. asianpunkboy), whose stylish white-on-white installations and bad-boy posturing have made him a darling of the international art press.

Sitting down to talk just moments after the announcement, Lee was still carrying the champagne bottle that someone had given him and looking a little startled. Notwithstanding his many successes, he has the quiet, slightly introverted air of a scholar pulled involuntarily from the stacks of a library to blink in the spotlight.

Fear of a Black Planet Public Enemy

 

 

 

I had a few practical questions about the work in the gallery upstairs, where the ROM is showcasing works by Lee and the other shortlisted candidates. One of his large two-part photographic works from 2006, titled Untitled (Neil Young, 1969) is a self-portrait of Lee playing an electric guitar, his slope-shouldered pose echoing Young’s trademark stance. Lee’s body, though, is pictorially segmented into its upper and lower parts, which are framed separately. Close inspection reveals that the grey band running vertically up the left side in the two shots is actually a concrete floor, snaked over with electrical cords. Correct for this and look at the pictures sideways, though, and Lee’s body is now hovering parallel to this floor.

Did he use digital manipulation to produce this gravity-defying effect? No, he explains, he shot the work in two parts, so that the upper and lower parts of his body, respectively, could be supported off-camera. It’s a photograph that lies, suggesting the simultaneity of one take when, in fact, it’s the product of two.

This approach to photography – taking an instrument assumed to be truth telling and making it bend reality – is of a piece with Lee’s Vancouver roots, whether one thinks of Jeff Wall’s digital manipulations for his giant backlit Cibachromes or Rodney Graham’s flamboyant looping narratives and sly simulations of historic materials.

• Biography
• View works
• Sobey art award web site
• Globe and Mail full story

Lee’s work will be featured at the upcoming Biennale of Sydney, Australia; in a fall 2008 solo exhibition at the Hayward gallery in London UK; and a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, Texas. Tim Lee is represented by Cohan and Leslie Gallery in New York, NY; the Lisson Gallery in London, UK; and Johnen & Schöttle, in Cologne.

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• art awards
• Korean art
• photography, new media, video

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Museum show for recent discovery Chinese Canadian artist Terence Koh

FRANKFURT MUSEUM SHOW CHINESE ARTIST to 31 August 2008 In an incredibly short time, Terence Koh’s spectacular performances and experientially intensively accessible installations have made this Chinese-Canadian artist one of the most fascinating discoveries of recent years according to Asia Art Archive.

Following up his spectacular installations at the Kunsthalle Zurich, the Wiener Secession and the Whitney Museum in New York, Terence Koh installs one of his signature monochrome environments especially for the Schirn; for this exhibition, he initiates the surreal objects, ritually summoning them to life, in a secret performance.

Under the title “Captain Buddha”, visitors who set foot in the luminously flooded room are invited to accompany the artist on a journey that will take them on a search for themselves through the entire world – India, China, Burma, Belgium, Africa, Mexico and Canada are just some stations along the way – one that aims to reach nirvana and ends in nothingness.

For his installation at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Koh links two worlds that at first glance seem almost antipodal: Buddhism and that popular classic of world literature, Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” – the tale of the fateful quest of charismatic and supremely obsessed Captain Ahab for the Great White Whale.

For this installation, Koh himself set out on a quest: clad as a monk in a golden robe, he journeyed to fifteen places – Canada, Japan, China, Thailand, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Israel, Iceland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Africa, and the USA – in his search for objects. In Terence Koh’s words: “I’m like the captain in Moby Dick. I’m trying to find the White Whale in the white objects, but in the end I find nothing.”

When: 28/5/2008 – 31/8/2008  
Where: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt  http://www.schirn.de 

Source: Asia Art Archive www.aaa.org.hk