Mary Bittner Wiseman Strategies in Chinese Avante Garde Art

Introduction

Objective and background

The thriving market for Chinese contemporary art (CCA) has crystallized the country'southward fast evolution from an emerging economy to a global powerhouse following the opening-up policy for foreign investment and private entrepreneurship. The objective of this study is to examine how strange (in)direct investment (FiDI) has penetrated opportunities rendered by institutional voids in developing countries like China. Viewing the "art game" as based on the so-chosen Saatchi model of value creation, FiDI played a key role in globalizing gimmicky art to non-Western cultures while generating rich return of investment (ROI). It besides helped to complete the ecosystem and infrastructure of the art industry in China and brand gimmicky fine art a future heritage for local peoples. A clear example of this practice tin be found in the actions of two long-term patron-investor-collectors—the self-made man Uli Sigg (1946-) from Switzerland and the multimillionaire Baron Guy Ullens de Schooten Whettnall (1935-) from Belgium. They were agile approximately between 1989 and 2013, subsequently the Tiananmen Square protests and before the Belt and Road Initiative, when the market confidence remained strong due to China'southward development strategy, which was upheld by the political order and land's foreign policy (Friedberg 2018).

In retrospect, the development of CCA served equally a window through which to view the radical sociocultural change of Cathay in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries. Subsequently the social reforms of 1978, the loosened control of the central authorities in higher didactics and the job marketplace gave way to the rise of a market-oriented fine art making and consumption. Instead of leaving the metropolitan areas (where the leading art academies were located) for assigned jobs, young art graduates were able to break the Hukou system (household registration) by becoming professional person artists—which formed a tireless source of art product for an fine art market yet to emerge. One early on sign of such a phenomenon was the establishment of immature artists groups, such as No-Proper name and Stars in Beijing, Grass in Shanghai and Wild Meadow in Chongqing. Lacking exhibition venues, most of the artworks were shown at artists' homes, which resulted in so-called "apartment art" (Gao 1999) and CCA had its debut (Lü 2009). Instead of official art authorities similar the Communist china Artists Association, established in 1949 and chaired past "national artists" (for case, Xu Bei-Hong), these immature artists feverishly copied and explored Western art styles according to newly allowed publications from the Due west. The Exhibition of Chinese Modernistic Art at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing in 1989 was a milestone summarizing this golden decade of CCA in the 1980s—where multiplicity seemed possible to supervene upon uniformity in politics (Gao 1999, 2011). However, the exhibition turned out to exist the end of it, as it was abruptly close down by police due to the improvised gunshots of the participating artist Xiao Lu for her installation Dialogue. A few months after the exhibition, the mortality at Tiananmen Square occurred. Many creative person-protestors fled the state to the West, heading to France, Australia and the USA, among other places. As Deng stood by his reforms, in 1990 the Shanghai Stock Market was reopened (closed since 1949) and the Shenzhen Stock Market place established. Strange investment and privatization accelerated and the individual sector began to grow exponentially equally a percentage of Gross domestic product. The market place economic system of CCA was no exception. Following the very first fine art auction of gimmicky People's republic of china held by the Hôtel Drouot from France at the Nifty Hall of the People in 1989; the first commercial gallery Cherry-red Gate was founded past the Australian Brian Wallace in Beijing in 1991, the outset art biennale in Guangzhou was held in 1992 and the starting time local auction firm China Guardian Auctions in Beijing opened in 1993. From this point on, the ecosystem and infrastructure of a market-oriented art industry began to rapidly develop in China, thanks to significant contributions of FiDI flooding in from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore and especially the W (Liu 2019) through the player-agents of the fine art economy, including dealers, gallerists, auctioneers, critics, and journalists, as well as investor-collectors in particular. These art professionals then brought CCA centerstage in the global contemporary art scene (Wang 2013), consisting of longstanding art fairs, biennales and museum exhibitions such as ARCO, FIAC, Frieze, Art Basel, Venice Biennale, documenta, MoMA, Whitney Museum and Tate Modern. In the meanwhile, they contributed to turning contemporary fine art into a future cultural heritage by building upwardly new museums, galleries and art centers in China and Hong Kong.

Conceptual framework

The phenomenon described above has attracted all-encompassing scholarly interest. Nevertheless, most of them take focused on the writing of art history per se (Wu 2014; Zhou 2020), covering questions such as motives (Gao 2012), cultural significance (Huang 2014) and gender (Wiseman 2010; Welland 2018). In the growing literature of cultural economics (Towse 2014; Zorloni 2013), a few have concentrated on CCA (Joy and Sherry 2004; Robertson 2005; DeBevoise 2014). Although the impacts on the CCA market from China's political organisation (Robertson 2018) and from the entrepreneurship of strange patron-mediators in business management (Betzler and Camina 2020) have been analyzed, the topic has not been examined unequivocally from the perspective of FDI—a specific business concept and practice disquisitional for emerging market countries. This study bridges this critical gap in knowledge. According to the International Monetary Fund, FDI is defined as when an individual or business owns ten percent or more of a foreign visitor. The term conventionally indicates (1) capital invested in a land that provides manufacturing and service capabilities for both native consumers and world markets, (two) investor conviction in a specific business and in the geopolitical climate of the host country, and (3) connecting to national economics and benefiting both the capital suppliers and the host regions. The term FDI is used in this commodity in its widest sense. As data from the Earth Depository financial institution has indicated, FDI has been drastically increasing in the post-conflict era with the expansion of global markets into those countries that were formerly backside the Iron (Bamboo) Mantle. By far, China has been one of biggest recipients of FDI. This has manifested in many business sectors, including art. Although data and information on the art concern often remain opaque, information technology is evident that FDI has played a crucial part in initiating Red china's own art economy, not to mention its close connection to the global art market. In the in-flow of FiDI toward commercial galleries, sale houses and museum spaces, two major CCA patron-investor-collectors—Uli Sigg and Guy Ullens—formed a dominating force that guided the entire industry during the terminal decade of the xx^thursday century and the offset of the 21^st. It is worth noting that the chiliad operation of FiDI in the post-socialist China, a developing country under a dictatorship, appeared to be viable exclusively for prominent figures like Sigg and Ullens who already had a sure socio-political guan-11 (relationship) with the local government prior to their art enterprises. The implied complexity, manipulativeness and opportunism of FDI in CCA, a result of the shifting social paradigms and system of political economic system in contemporary China, characterize the term "art game" used in this written report. One important reference for the term is "heritage game," devised by cultural economists in the 2000s (Peacock and Rizzo 2008). In additoin, the concept of business ecosystem or infrastructure (Hayes and Boyle 2021) is employed to denote the business chain of the art industry (Figure 1)—a network of organizations including suppliers, distributors, customers, competitors, government agencies, and so on.

Foreign (In)Direct Investment in Chinese Contemporary Art Game: The Case Studies of Uli Sigg, Guy Ullens and beyond, 1989-2013

Published online:

xxx July 2021

Effigy one. The ecosystem of fine art manufacture in market economy.

Effigy i. The ecosystem of art industry in marketplace economy.

Methodology and result

Investigating the intriguing relationship between FDI and CCA, this paper applies an (art) historical-interpretive method with two cases (of quasi-biographic) studies in add-on to content analysis. Post-obit the actor-agent network theory, it studies the directly and indirect materials gathered from relevant art organizations, publications and the printing and media centered with Uli Sigg and Guy Ullens and their respective proxy-agents Ai Weiwei and Fei Dawei. While scrutinizing the information of brusque-term and long-term FiDI in CCA, a comparative written report is carried out to identify a full general business concern model of the (in)directly-associated transnational art enterprises of Sigg and Ullens and their peers from Western Europe and North America. In an inductive arroyo, theory-edifice is achieved from this comparing—the "Saatchi model" of value creation in the globalized gimmicky fine art market place. This refers to the practice of buying art at low price in a large quantity from the chief market place within a relatively curt period of fourth dimension, and so exhibiting them with well-established (public) cultural institutions and and then selling them at a high price monopolistically in the secondary market. The stock market place logic of "buying low and selling high" was first appropriated in the art business organization world in this manner past the co-founder of what was in one case the globe'south biggest ad bureau, Charles Saatchi (1943-), in the early 1990s in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland with the YBA (Young British Artists). The author has thus named this practice the "Saatchi model", which can be identified in the FiDI of Sigg and Ullens and others in CCA, though maybe less recognizably so due to diverse socio-cultural barriers across borders.

The unimposing fine art game

The diplomat'south hunting

With the Law of the People's Republic of China on Chinese-Foreign Equity Joint Ventures passed past the v^thursday National Congress, Uli Sigg went to Beijing representing the Schindler Grouping. In the belief that "Mainland china needs an example to tell the world that investing capital and technology is viable" (Jun 2018), Sigg accomplished Prc's very first industrial joint venture in 1980. Over a decade and a half, he strived for business concern success, overcoming enormous sociocultural conflicts. Yet it is not until 1995, when he entered the political realm (every bit the ambassador of Switzerland), that he cast his centre on China's cultural scene and noticed the budding market place of CCA. Instead of buying from galleries in Hong Kong or Europe like others, Sigg frequented the artists' studios, simply as Saatchi had done in the UK, and purchased there directly, often in cash. Being a diplomat in Beijing at that fourth dimension (1995-1998), Sigg practically turned his embassy into an art salon displaying the latest finds of his evening and weekend art cruises. Later on his term ended in 1998, Sigg kept visiting China every year, engaging in diverse business deals and investments, all the while continuing to collect art. By 2010, he was acquainted with more than than 1,000 artists and amassed almost ii,000 artworks (Liu 2018) with an ambition to (1) build a documentary-like systematic drove, (2) tour the exhibition of his collection to the West, and (3) complete the ecosystem of gimmicky fine art manufacture in Mainland china (Zhu 2012). It is worth noting that in 1995, when he started collecting, the memory of the pro-democracy movement crushed by the Chinese military at Tiananmen Square was still fresh. Passionate young artists often poured their frustrations out onto the canvas and thus created Chinese political pop (an fine art movement combining Western pop art with socialist realism to question the political and social climate of the rapidly changing country), equally seen in the artworks of Beijing Eastward Village—a short-lived politically motivated arts collective in the early 1990s, joined by Ai Weiwei after his return from New York in 1993 (Barboza and Zhang 2006). In spite of buying their fine art, Sigg made a comment that "the students meant well only the protests made the land regress for a decade" (Jun 2018).

A shared adventure, 1995 to 2010

In 1995, Uli Sigg and Ai Weiwei met, and their subsequent collaboration led them to great success: with the former becoming the godfather of CCA (Shou 2008) and the latter the nigh known Chinese artist-dissident the Ai God (Tu 2012), ranked in the Power 100. Their shared journey from 1995 to 2010 also provides an note to how FiDI has worked hand in manus with local entrepreneurship in the emerging art economy of post-Mao Mainland china through an expert network, though discreetly. In add-on to being a founding president of the Chamber of Commerce Switzerland-China (in 1980) and the venture capital company Asia Pacific, Sigg was likewise the board member of diverse businesses in media (Ringier), manufacture (Vitra), finance (the China Evolution Bank) and art (the International Council of MoMA, the International Advisory Council of Tate Gallery and the Musée Guimet) (Li 2012). This long list indicates the powerful influence Sigg wielded behind the global stage of CCA—with the indispensable contribution of Ai Weiwei. In 1995, Ai co-edited a three-volume art journal—the Blackness, White and Gray Books—published past Timezone 8, an art publishing business firm and bookstore created by the American Robert Bernell in the 798 Contemporary Art Commune. In 1998, Ai co-founded the nonprofit Art Archives and Warehouse in Beijing with the Dutch curator Hans van Dijck. In 1999, the two together with the Belgian art dealer Frank Uytterhaegen established the Modern Chinese Art Foundation in Ghent. In the same twelvemonth, Ai participated in the 48^th Venice Biennale. In 2000, Ai built the Warehouse in Caochangdi, which led him to open his architectural design firm, False. In 2002, he collaborated with Herzog and de Meuron from Switzerland on the Beijing National Stadium proposal of 2008 Olympic Games (Jiang 2009). In 2003, Ai became represented by Galérie Urs Meile, a commercial gallery headquartered in Lucerne with a branch in in Beijing. In 2005, he co-curated the exhibition Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from The Sigg Collection, which toured in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the Us. In 2007, Ai attended the Documenta 12 in Kassel with the art project Fairytale (Li 2007). In 2010, the Tate Modern in London hosted his solo installation, Sunflower Seeds at the Turbine Hall.

Art promotion, value creation

Cross-examining the art careers of Uli Sigg and Ai Weiwei, traces are identified of a common endeavour to promote CCA (with Sigg's collection and Ai'southward curating and fine art) to the Due west. In fact, in 1995, when their shared journey began, the CCA marketplace was just starting to grow: the Red Gate gallery had opened four years previously in 1991, the show Communist china'southward New Fine art, Mail service-1989 was co-organized by Johnson Chang (a leading gallerist in Hong Kong) in 1993 and China Avant-garde, curated by Andreas Schmid, Hans van Dijk and Jochen Noth had only toured Berlin, Rotterdam, Oxford and Odense from 1993 to 1994. After three years of intensive collecting, Sigg set upward the Chinese Contemporary Art Honour (CCAA) in Beijing in 1998, inviting Harald Szeemann (and Ai Weiwei) as judge, who besides served equally the creative managing director in 1999 for the 48^th Venice Biennale (also in 2001 for the 49^th), where CCA was included for the very starting time time. Information technology was also a time when this world famous biennale transformed from a state-run convention to a private enterprise in response to the emerging contemporary fine art off-white Art Basel (Adam 2019). Through Sigg, Ai became connected with Bernhard Fibicher, the director of Kunsthalle Bern and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the creative curator of Serpentine Gallery in London (in add-on to the Swiss architect Herzog and de Meuron)—Fibicher hosted Ai's very start solo show (in 2004) and Obrist began to publish his writings most him. In 2005, Sigg commissioned Ai to co-curate the above-mentioned exhibition Mahjong, which until 2009 was shown at the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Hamburg Kunsthalle in Hamburg, the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, the USC Berkeley Art Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum most Boston. In 2007, Sigg introduced Ai to Ruth Noark, who included Ai'southward Fairytale in the well-known Documenta 12 in Kassel, Withal it has remained little known that this gigantic art project was really sponsored past the gallerist Urs Miele, who fabricated a deal with two financial funds in Switzerland under the agreement that the loan should be returned with involvement once the market price of Ai's fine art increased (Zhu 2011). In 2009, Chris Dercon (a judge of CCAA in 2006 and 2008) held a solo show for Ai in Kunsthalle Munich. In 2010, another of Ai'southward gigantic projects, the aforementioned Sunflower Seeds, was hosted by Tate Modern (where Sigg was a member of the International Council). Sponsored by Unilever (Bingham 2010), Sunflower Seeds has produced "sellable items"—150 tons of porcelain seeds handmade by more than 1,600 artisans in Jingdezhen over a period of almost 3 years with every single one of them crafted out of the kaolin through a 30-pace procedure. Spread all over the flooring of the Turbine Hall, the show was well-received in London (Etherington 2010). Immediately after the show, a series of sales began, with the starting time lot—a hundred-kilo pile—going for USD 56,000 at Sotheby's in New York (Vogel 2011), the highest marketplace record of Ai'due south art. In 2012, 8 million seeds were purchased by Tate Modern nether the auspices of the Art Fund Clemency (Kennedy 2012). With the toll gear up past the secondary market, the remainder of the seeds were offered in the primary market by commercial galleries such as the Danish Galleri Faurschou. As the prices for Ai'south art increased, information technology meant a ascension in the vaule of Sigg's collection. Simply as Ai's art reached its highest market price, Sigg began seeking ways to "return his collection to Cathay" (Li 2012). In 2012, Sigg made a bargain with the government of Hong Kong (rather than Beijing or Shanghai), which agreed to buy 47 fine pieces for USD 22.9 meg and receive another 1,463 educational pieces (with an estimated value of USD 170 million according to Sotheby's) for the even so to be built M + museum (Balfour 2012; Li 2012).

Nonprofit functioning for profit

From antiquarianism to the contemporary art game

Built-in to Baron Jean Ullens de Schooten Whettnall (a Belgian nobleman and diplomat to Communist china) and Baroness Marie née Wittouck (a boyfriend of Royal Geographic Social club and girl of a distilling and carbohydrate magnate), Guy Ullens earned a BA in Law at the Catholic Academy of Louvain in 1958 and an MBA at Stanford in 1960. Starting with creating Eurocan in Mechelen, he joined the family business concern R. T. Holding the conglomerate in food industries (Tiense Suiker, SES and bank) and created the Artal Group Luxemburg which carried out an FDI in the Mankattan company in China in 1995. Ullens began collecting fine art with a wide interest just equally the traditional antiquarians had during the Belle Époque. In the 1980s, through the Chinese antique dealer Christian Deydier in Paris and Guiseppe Eskenazi in London as well as the Chinese fine art consultant Wu Erlu, he started to buy prestigious Chinese classic paintings dating from the Vocal, Yuan, Ming and Qing menstruum. In 1991, he bought his first Chinese contemporary artwork from the aforementioned HK art dealer Johnson Chang. In 2002, in add-on to bidding for the painting of Emperor Song Huizong (1082-1135) from Communist china Guardian in Beijing (Art Market place Journal 2019), Ullens organized an exhibition of CCA—Paris-Pekin: The Private Collection of Myriam and Guy Ullens (with 120 pieces)—at the Espace Cardin in Paris and met the Chinese art critic and curator Fei Dawei. Becoming his consultant, Fei brash him to sponsor the exhibition Le moine et le démon, co-organized by Guangdong Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, equally well as the exhibition Zone of Urgency, curated by Hou Hanru for the Venice Biennale. In 2003, the Foundation Guy & Myriam Ullens was registered in Switzerland with Fei equally the director in Paris to build a systematic drove of CCA. In 2005, the foundation sponsored China's first ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale and Fei started looking for places in Shanghai and Beijing to build a warehouse—which turned out to be a kunsthalle-like space. Between 2003 and 2007, around 1,700 pieces were hoarded by the foundation (Xie 2011).

Connecting Chinese gimmicky fine art, fashion and entertainment

In November 2007, nether the presence of Prince of the Belgians Philippe Léopold Louis Marie, the museum-like space called the Ullens Eye for Contemporary Fine art (UCCA)—designed by the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte and located in the 798 Contemporary Art District—was inaugurated with the exhibition '85 New Wave: The Nascence of Chinese Contemporary Art, curated by Fei, who nonetheless left UCCA and the foundation four months later. His successor, Jérôrme Sans (a one-time co-founder of Palais de Tokyo) on the very same solar day of the 2008 Beijing Olympic opening ceremony then greeted the audience of UCCA with an informal talk Becoming: Image of Beijing'south Air Concluding 3, A Dialogue of Norman Foster and Ai Weiwei where the Ullens couple were sitting in the first row, and a special exhibition Our Time to come: The Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation Collection to declare Ullens's long-term commitment to Chinese artists (UCCA 2008). Topped off with a crystal chandelier designed by Ai Weiwei, the post-obit special exhibition of UCCA was the dazzling Christian Dior and Chinese Artists—for which, the exhibition room was literally turned into a futuristic movie setting forged by Timmy Yip Kam-tim, the well-known art director and designer for fiction films from Hong Kong. More 100 Dior Couture pieces were sent from Paris to bring glamor to UCCA to build "a dialogue between contemporary art and style" and the cherry rug gala dinner was participated in by height-tier celebrities from around the world, including Charlize Theron, Marion Cotillard, Evan Dark-green, Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh. In this style, UCCA immediately became the landmark of CCA in mainland People's republic of china.

Outside the kunsthalle

The sudden change of managing director and shakeup of direction was a consequence of the radical turn of organizational mission from being a nonprofit kunsthalle to a for-profit art business, when Ullens announced a reset of the financial targets of UCCA every bit moving to the breakeven point from 2003 to 2010—which meant that within two years from 2008 to 2010, UCCA should generate vi-million euros annually to cover its costs (Gill 2008). Although challenge to be a nonprofit organization, UCCA in actuality was registered as a for-profit visitor in China. in fact, the original programme for the opening exhibition that Ullens preferred was not '85 New Wave but Whitney Biennial—the old was an art history based curatorial practice and the latter a market-oriented art show. In 2010, at the same time when Ai'due south art reached the highest marketplace price in the Due west and Sigg began to "return" his drove, Ullens also started to sell his (owned by his foundation instead of UCCA) in People's republic of china. In 2011, the kickoff lot, comprising 106 pieces, was sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, and the intention to sell UCCA was as well expressed (with or without the condition to keep the name of information technology). In 2016, a deal for UCCA was finalized, selling it for RMB 100 meg to a group of local investors, including Future Edutainment (under Lunar Capital) and Focus Media. A UCCA-specific foundation was then registered in Hong Kong equally a tax-exempt nonprofit system (Liu and Lu 2017). In 2017, UCCA had a mega refurbishment designed by Chris van Duijn OMA. Between 2009 and 2017, nine sale sales of Ullens's Chinese collection were ended within Red china, with significant ROI: in 2009, a work by Chen Yifei was sold at Poly Beijing for RMB 40,432,000, a painting of Emperor Song Huizong went for RMB 61.7 meg and a Wu Bing sold for RMB xvi.9 million. In 2011, a Zhang Xiaogang was sold at Sotheby'southward Hong Kong for HKD 79 million, and in 2013, a Zheng Feizhi fetched HKD 180 million (Gao 2017).

The marketplace

Creating the marketplace in the 1990s

The FiDI (with long-term transaction) represented by Uli Sigg and Guy Ullens has played a crucial role in securing the marketplace confidence of CCA in Switzerland, Hong Kong, the USA and the UK during the 2d half of the 2000s (Fine art and Finance 2016). Examining the major exhibitions of CCA endorsed past leading fine art dealers and the prominent results of auction sales, information technology is fabricated explicit that the CCA market was initiated beginning in the francophone area of Europe and through Hong Kong expanded to Prc via a handful of Anglo-American short-term investments. After the shutting down of the said Exhibition of Chinese Modernistic Fine art at the National Art Museum of Communist china and the Tiananmen Foursquare protests in 1989, available venues to show CCA were limited to those hugger-mugger non-official spaces in mainland China and a few commercial art galleries away in pre-1997 Hong Kong and Europe. The aforementioned exhibition Prc'southward New Art, Mail service-1989, co-curated by Johnson Chang in 1993 in Hong Kong, was a prelude to the market trend. Through Hans van Dijck, Jean-Marc Decrop (the quondam cultural attaché of France in Hong Kong) became a shareholder (venture capitalist) of Chang'due south gallery in Taipei (1995-2000) and an investor-collector of hundreds of CCA artworks. Some other French-speaking gallerist based in Geneva, Pierre Hubert (who was in one case a commission member of Art Basel and later director of SHContemporary), was an early European art dealer and gallerist concentrating on CCA (starting from 1993) with a focus on the overseas Chinese immature artists, such as Cheng Zhen, Yen Peiming and Wang Du, who left Mainland china after 1989. Howard Farber, who started to buy CCA in 1995 through Johnson Chang, Robert Bernell and Karen Smith, likewise became ane of the earliest dealers of CCA in the West. He had been a real estate businessman and owned the gallery Chinese-art.com in New York and Miami Beach.

Market expansion in the 2000s

Later on the turn of the last millennium, the market for CCA began to expand. In 2002, Christopher Tsai, a hedge fund manager in New York, began investing in CCA. In 2003, Fritz Kaiser, owner of a finance management visitor from Switzerland, besides joined the trend, through Uli Sigg and Lorenz Helbing (the owner of the Shanghart Gallery established in 1996). Between 2004 and 2007, John Fernandez hoarded a big amount of CCA works with a few million dollars through galleries in New York and London. In 2005, Sylvain and Dominique Levy in France began to build the DSL collection, comprising major works of effectually 200 Chinese contemporary artists (shown online as a virtual museum). In 2006, Michael Gagosian, ranked second in the Ability 100 and possessor of the Gagosian Gallery in London and New York, bought a work past Xu Bing with USD 408,000 from the very showtime sale of Asian contemporary art through Sotheby's—which marked his entry into the CCA market. In 2007, Howard Farber sold 44 pieces through a special sale China Avant-Garde: The Farber Collection, through the auction business firm Philips de Pury in London. In addition, William Acquavella, ane of the Forbes tiptop ten art dealers and owner of Acquavella Galleries in New York, too entered the market, along with Charles Saatchi, the maker of the YBA, who tried to grab the trend through Saatchi Art, an online gallery based in Los Angeles. Other lesser-known Western short-term investor-collectors of CCA included the Australian Judith Neilson, the Austrian collectors Agnes and Karlheinz Essl besides equally the Dutch collectors Marcel Brient and Sue Stoffel. Together with these Western buyers, the FiDI of commercial galleries in Beijing and Shanghai equanimous a close role player-agent network that oriented the evolution of China's contemporary fine art economy. The names of these FiDI and private galleries included Mario Christiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi and Maurisio Riggilo of Continua, Alexander Ochs of White Space, Waling Boers of Boers-Li Gallery, Pace Gallery, Cohen Gallery and the same Red Gate Gallery as well as the publishing house Fourth dimension Zone 8. It is made explicit that the CCA market expanded drastically through the collective effort of such a network, centered around Western art professionals, specially the said brusque-term investor-collectors of art dealing and financial backgrounds.

The ascent of the local fine art industry and economy

Equally the global market place for CCA expanded, China's art economy and the domestic mechanism and infrastructure of the fine art industry was taking shape too. This has been well illustrated by the rise of the same 798 Contemporary Art Commune in Beijing (and like settings in cities such every bit Shanghai, Chongqing, and Guangzhou). In 2002, the outset artist's studio was permitted to be established in 798, as well equally the showtime foreign gallery, the Beijing Tokyo Art Project (Arton 2012). Past the fourth dimension UCCA was inaugurated, dozens of local galleries and fine art-related businesses had been founded in 798. Although the artist's studios and galleries began to move out after around 2010, when 798 became an expensive tourist destination, a boom in private fine art museums took place in China with the nouveau-riche becoming art-patrons or long-term investor-collectors similar Uli Sigg and Guy Ullens. The most known ones included the multimillionaire couple Wang Wei and Liu Yiqian, who founded the Long Museum in Shanghai in 2012; Lu Jun, the president of Nanjing Sifang Construction Industry Company Ltd, founded the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing in 2013; Adrian Cheng, the existent estate developer from Hong Kong, established the K11 art foundation and art spaces in several cities; Wang Zongjun, an entertainment tycoon, founded the Song Fine art Museum in Beijing in 2017; and Zheng Hao, a hotel owner, founded the How Museum in Shanghai in 2017.

Discussion and conclusion

Discussion of case studies

The value creation of Chinese contemporary art

Studying the aforementioned long-term and short-term patronage-investment-collecting of CCA has made explicit that the line between the two based on their transaction timespan has go thiner because both of them are using the same methodology of value creation—the Saatchi model. As introduced earlier, it was invented by Charles Saatchi, who applied the logic of the stock market to his art business organization with young British artists (YBA) during the 1990s in the UK. In 1992, Saatchi Gallery organized a group show of YBA (including Damien Hirst) in London. Within v years, Saatchi hoarded a massive amount of YBA works either direct from the artist studios that he frequented on weekends or indirectly from the gallerists such as Jay Japling, Douglas Baxter, Sadie Coles, Anthony d'Offay, Larry Gagosian and Leo Casteli. Between 1997 and 2000, he sponsored the bout exhibition Sensation: Young Artists from the Saatchi Drove in three well-established fine art institutes: the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart (part of the Berlin National Gallery) in Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Correct after the prove, he began to sell his holdings through auctions with prices far in a higher place cost (Tien 2011). This model of value cosmos in gimmicky art became legendary instantly and caused bitter controversy.

The performance of Pierre Huber on CCA, as discussed, has demonstrated a clear resemblance—start hoarding works in 1993, and then collaborating with the managing director of Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne for the exhibition Individual View 1980-2000: Collection Pierre Huber in 2005 (Aupetitallot 2005) and selling them through Christie's Hong Kong in 2007. Another discernible instance is the short-term investor, Michael Goedhuis, who gathered a individual fund (from a few investors including Ray Debbane and Sacha Lanovic, the former was the president and the latter the co-founder and managing partner of the New York investment firm Invus Financial Advisors) and chop-chop clustered near 200 pieces in the name of the Estella Collection in 2003. Right later on touring them in the Louisiana Museum of Modern Fine art in Humlebaek, Denmark with the exhibition Communist china Onward: The Estella Collection Chinese Contemporary Art, 1966-2006 (Bowles 2007) and in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel with the exhibition Fabricated in China-The Estella Drove curated by Suzanne Landau in 2008, Goedhuis sold the unabridged drove to the art dealer William Acquavella in New York, who then immediately resold them in two groups through Sotheby's Hong Kong (for USD 18,000,000) and New York (Barboza 2008). Saatchi was a bit late to bring together this game of CCA. In 2008, the new space of Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea London held a group prove The Revolution Continues. In 2009, he sold an unabridged collection of 180 pieces at Sotheby's Hong Kong.

Return of investment for long-term strange (in)directly investment

The Saatchi model of curt-term art investment for rich ROI in United kingdom seemed to be rather childlike: hoarding piddling known works of young artists from their studios or the principal market, exhibiting them in established public institutes so selling them monopolistically in the secondary market. Withal it appeared to be artful to employ it for long-term investment like Uli Sigg or Guy Ullens did in the art game of CCA across the borders of Communist china, as the requirement to exist adaptable of China-specific socio-political conditions remained high.

Similar Saatchi, Sigg frequented and bought straight from artists. Simply unlike in Britain, in China the ecosystem or infrastructure of the art industry had yet to develop at that time. Lacking convincing fine art authorities to judge or rank the value of CCA, Sigg devised the aforementioned fine art accolade CCAA in 1998, through which he began to promote CCA to the West. Due to such an attempt, the market place prices of CCA increased drastically, as seen in the instance of Ai Weiwei'due south Sunflower Seeds. In 2010, a hundred kilos of porcelain seeds (out of 150 tons consisting of 100 meg seeds) were sold for USD 56,000 at Sotheby's New York, while an identical seed was listed for CNY 1.ii (USD 0.17) online in Taobao (the Chinese version of Amazon). The exact amount of Sigg's ROI has remained unknown, because he refused to reveal the bodily cost (Sigg 2016). But information technology has been known that the 47 pieces he sold to Hong Kong were valued at USD 22.9 million in 2012, while an ordinary repast in the urban center center of Beijing should price only effectually CNY 30 to l cents (USD 0.046-0.077) in the late 1990s when he began to collect CCA. A like story occured with Ullens.

If Sigg'south investment was indirect, Ullen's served as a clear case of FDI. Other than setting upward an art accolade to create an international network, Ullens congenital his own art authorisation through UCCA—a quasi-museum with customary soical functions such every bit inquiry, exhibition and didactics (but not collection). Instead of touring his collection abroad to the Westward with known university museums and art curators or critics, Ullens attempted to make UCCA an established venue itself in China by having it headed with reputable directors and collaborating with luxury fashion and high-end brands. Although Ullens was unable to accomplish a wholesaling of his drove to a single heir-apparent in China (as Sigg did to M+ in Hong Kong) due to the lack of close guan-xi with the Chinese authority, the ROI generated from selling both the infinite of UCCA and the collection of his foundation was speculated to be high.

International market and national heritage

One significant paradox in valorizing art is the intriguing correlation between the measurable (utilise) value for the market and the immeasurable (non-employ) value for the spiritual or philosophical. To create, interpret and promote such a coorelation relies about exclusively on the writings of art historians, critics or theoreticians. This has all begun with the mod concept of "fine fine art," resulting from the anonymous market that emerged in response to the growing centre grade of industrialized guild in Europe (Corbey, Layton, and Tanner 2008). Together with it came the institution of national art institutes (such as the Purple Academy of Arts in London) and the art industry business concern chain (Figure 1). Following political democratization, royal collections (high fine art) became public property under the captainship of (nationalised) museums to demonstrate and disseminate a crafted collective retention and cultural identity. Through such a heritage procedure, the artwork of an private artist that enters a permanent collection of museum is supposed to be remembered and admired by hereafter generations. Thus is born the mutual wish of mod artists for their works to be collected by (national) museums—which through inquiry, exhibition and education volition guarantee the value (the said correlation) of them. And this explains why most contemporary artists would sell their work for exceptionally low prices or even requite it for free to dealers who promise them museum conquering. Scandals often occur when dealers fail to evangelize on their promises, or museums are found to be complicit with them through holding temporary exhibition. Pierre Huber had such a scandal (Taylor 2007). So did the Estella Collection (Barboza 2008). Sigg and Ullens encountered similar criticism. One of Ullens's auction sales was called "shameless" by Fei Dawei, as many artists had sold their works at extremely low prices when Ullens'southward foundation promised non to "sell its legacy" (Halperin 2017). Both Sigg and Ullens denied the intention to sell, at some point. The one-time openly said that he did not program to sell (Ren 2012), and the latter that he came to China spend but non to make money (Fine art Finance 2011) and refused to tell the reason for the eventual sales. Though praised by fiscal investment agencies (Gerlis 2018), the brusk-term transaction of art investment is absolutely avoided by well-established museums—which insist on "non getting too close to the marketplace" so every bit to baby-sit their brownie. Involved in the scandal of Estella Collection, the manager of the Danish museum Anders Kold said he seriously regretted that it turned out to be mere speculation and that there was dishonesty. Had he known that the collection should quickly be sold, he would have never organized the exhibition.

Conventionally, the journey of an artwork from an artist'southward studio to museum storage is long. It often needs to pass through public competition as in Europe or market choice equally in the USA—where the tax and legal organization is designed to encourage capitalists to reward society. The result is that millionaire-collectors are used to donating collections to museums or to setting upward foundations running museums themselves, such as the Guggenheim or the Getty. The evolution of the art economy in Communist china, especially after 1989 and earlier 2013, vicious into the gap between the two systems and yielded great opportunities for long-term also as short-term FiDI. These take generated rich ROI, merely have also contributed to propelling a market-oriented ecosystem of the art industry and the nascence of new laws related to the art market. In 1996, the Auction Law of the People's Commonwealth of China was issued (revised in 2004 and 2015), and in 1999 the law on donations for public welfare. Notwithstanding it was not until 2016 that the general legal surroundings began to amend for private entrepreneurship of arts and culture, as seen in the revision of the Full general Rules of the Ceremonious Constabulary, Charity Law, regulations of voluntary service, Not-country Pedagogy Promotion Law, Enterprise Income Tax Law, regulations on the registration and management of social organizations and particularly the preferential tax policies for social organizations and the notice on issues of tax exempt eligibility of nonprofit organizations. Such a lag in establishing fine art laws may explicate why those conflicts of interest or violations of lawmaking of conduct occured in the art earth, as seen in the actions of Sigg and Ullens as well as in the subsequent Chinese museum smash. In 1996, the well-known German millionaire-collectors of Chinese fine art, Elena and Jurgen Ludwig, donated 117 prestigious modern artworks of Western masters to the National Art Museum of China. In 2010, the Colorado-based banker Kent and Vicki Logan donated their entire drove (i of the greatest of modern fine art and CCA in the United states of america) to the Denver Art Museum. It remains to exist seen whether this would become a model for the Chinese nouveau-riche to handle their collections with or without their own museum establishments. But it is mostly sure that the chances take go thin for some other Sigg or Ullens to come up and play the art game of CCA accroding to the Saatchi model and return their holdings to Cathay with exponential ROI through a donation-sale or auction-sale to the locals in the coming years.

Decision

The findings of the two case studies on Uli Sigg and Guy Ullens and the extensive survey of the CCA market functioning presented in this report take demonstrated how the long-term and brusk-term FiDI played the fine art game of CCA co-ordinate to the Saatchi model between 1989 and 2013. Considering of understanding deeply the local socio-political state of affairs as foreign investors and businessmen inside Communist china, Sigg and Ullens were able to succeed in their transnational fine art enterprises, with rich ROI in the stop.

This study represents i of the showtime attempts to examine the connection between FiDI and Communist china's art economy. FiDI has been identified as playing a crucial role in promoting the contemporary art of not-Western cultures past networking information technology to global (international or Western) art institutes and marketplace. It has helped to build or complete the local fine art manufacture ecosystems of developing countries past transferring adept cognition or engaging in bodily construction. Still it as well creates a chance of manipulating or exploiting the development of not-Western arts past favoring a specific theme or style of fine art product and overpricing certain artworks in pursuit of high ROI. This occurs through a loosely regulated market mechanism which lacks substance in terms of art philosophy and theory.

Although the lack of direct information from the art concern may present a limitation for research, the discovery of the fine art game played by the FiDI of CCA according to the Saatchi model should be applied to other emerging art economies of non-Western cultures as well, for example, in Southeast Asia or the Middle East. Nevertheless, one of import reason for the success of Sigg, Ullens and the like is the ascent of China per se—from an agrestal guild to the globe's manufacturing plant and a global powerhouse within around three decades—which makes the rich ROI of FiDI possible. In other words, the experience of Sigg or Ullens might not be hands reproduced with other developing countries. Every bit a longstanding culture and a rising power, Communist china'southward contemporary fine art seems to be able to go on growing with reorientations provided by local easily, equally manifested in the museum boom after the long-term and short-term FiDI cashed out from the marketplace. What most other countries? This is a challenging question to be examined by future studies.

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Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10632921.2021.1918597