Cold Night in Beijing

This corny picture of Tiananmen Square is not like anything I experience in Beijing. I arrived today and went straight to Pekin Fine Arts which will open a show of Huang Zhiyang tomorrow. More about that later....

Meg Maggio, Pekin Fine Arts owner, took me over to 798 where there was a party for the French Pavilion for the World Expo in Shanghai 2010. We ran into my friends, Zhang Fang and her husband Wang Qingsong, the artist. I just wrote a profile of Wang Qingsong for an upcoming issue of Art news. So we all went out to dinner at a restaurant called 3 Guys from Ghizou. Waiting on line for a table we ran into Leng Lin, director of Pace Beijing. It's all a small world in the Beijing art scene where everyone knows everyone and so far, everyone seems a lot more upbeat than in New York.

More Beijing art tomorrow, now to bed.

Time Sure Flies

I didn't realize how much time has passed since my last posting. But, it is a sign of how depressed everything has been over the past two months, that I have not been inspired to write. Overnight, the art world ground to a halt and the art magazines stopped returning emails. I've been at a loss to think of things to write about, since most of the shows I've been seeing have either been about apocalyptic disasters or seem woefully out of step with the times.

One bright spot--Elizabeth Dee's X Initiative--she'll be installing shows at Dia's old space on W. 22nd Street all year. But the real aim is to stimulate discussions about where to go, what to do, how to think about all that's happening right now. What is to be done? That question seems more on the money (excuse the expression since there is no money) than any of the pictures, paintings, sculptures, videos and installations on exhibition in Chelsea these days.

Holland Cotter wrote a column, "Long Live Art," this Sunday, basically saying that the best art occurs in a down market. It was uplifting, but a little rose-colored for me. I wish this will be the case, but right now things are a little scary. Let's see what happens.

Max and Obama

Max has just made a video in time for the election. Those of you who are still trying to make up your minds should see this. Better yet, those of you who are Obama supporters will really enjoy this.

You can find it at Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ovs6BTxcZU-<3

Zhang Xiaogang in New York

Here's Leng Lin, Arne Glimcher and Zhang Xiaogang at the opening of Zhang's show at Pace this week. I always wondered if an artist could become a household name if his name was impossible to pronounce and Zhang Xiaogang has proven that this is possible. The paintings at the gallery, all new, were huge and didn't look at all like his usual sullen faces. Instead, he dished up surrealistic bed scapes, somber and thoughtful. I still have doubts that this is the best work out of China even if it is the most expensive. According to Leng Lin, almost all of them were sold by the end of the evening.

Glimcher has become a total Beijing enthusiast now that he has opened the biggest gallery there. He even told me that he would like to install an apartment in the gallery so he can move to Beijing or at least spend more extended time there. Leng Lin, who is now President of Pace Beijing, has been a friend for a long time. I remember one of his first trips to New York when he was still advising Max Protetch. Now, Max remains gracious though he's been cut out of the picture. It's a shame, since he gave Leng Lin his first shot at the international art market and was the first dealer to show Zhang Xiaogang in the U.S.

Max stayed away from the festivities on Thursday night but Jack Tilton was around, fretting about the current art market. According to him, it's frozen--that's the word he used--and won't warm up until the major auctions start this week. There's a Malevich with a starting bid of $60 million. But no one knows how the rest of the sale will go. Apparently, Zhang Xiaogang doesn't have to worry and maybe that's a good sign for the Chinese market. Or as Chin Chin Yap of Phillips put it, at least now we have a Chinese market. Only a few years ago, that was not even a possibility. I spent a while talking with art historian Irving Sandler who was at the dinner. He wanted to know if the market was corrupting the Chinese artists. I had to explain that the market is not viewed that way in China, but is seen as a reliable indicator of the strength of the work. It's just so much less puritanical over there, which may or may not be a good thing.

Glimcher has been awfully generous to me, always taking my calls and answering questions. When he gets enthusiastic about something, there's no bigger booster. And he's been the best on China--smart as always--which he sees as the future. We chatted a bunch and agreed that Beijing is city that could be a second home.

Tim Rollins Dinner

On the night of October 22, I attended the dinner for Tim Rollins and K.O.S. at Lehmann Maupin gallery. Sit down for 100 in the gallery, very lovely with the nearly abstract paintings all around. I feared that it was going to be boring but I was sitting near Bill Ehrlich, collector-developer, who had a fascinating story to tell. Seems he was with Rauschenberg when the artist brought his ROCI show to China in 1985. That was the first time western art was shown in China and I can't tell you how many Chinese artists that I've interviewed have mentioned the show as a key influence. I asked Ehrlich where he stayed when he was in Beijing. Oh god, was his first reaction. Seems he was kept up all night by cockaroaches crawling over the walls of his room He went down to the lobby of the hotel to sleep. He also said that Rauschenberg was kind of bitter about the experience, not due to the Chinese, but because he couldn't find a single American sponsor at the time.

Here's Tim Rollins who was incredibly gracious in his remarks. Lots of the Kids of Survival were on hand, now all grown. At my table were a couple of young men who had worked with Tim since they were 12 years old. As you know, Rollins taught high school in the South Bronx and involved his students in his art making projects. They recalled flying to Europe for openings while they were still in high school thinking that this is what their life would be from then on. Well, K.O.S. didn't stay a hot item but now they were back to enjoy Tim's renewed success.

Censorship in China

On Tuesday, October 21, I will host a discussion about censorship in China at China Institute. My good friend Colin Chinnery, former chief curator at the Ullens Center, is flying in for the event, joined by Zhang Hongtu, an artist based in NY, who encountered problems with his painting of the Bird's Nest this year in Beijing. (It was stopped in customs and not allowed into China.)

It's funny. With all the hype around the Chinese art scene, little attention is given to this issue, which still hovers over everything that takes place. As Exhibit A, I am passing along this email I just received from Defne Ayas in Shanghai who has run into problems curating the E-arts festival, a city run event.

hi dear barbara,
how are you?
shanghai is busy and continues to be sceptic and more inward-looking than ever.
i am now up to my nose in e-arts, a first attempt to work with a gov't foundation.
dealing with not so much political censorship (so far it has all been smooth), but more so an aesthetic one. after submitting proposal 6 month ago, giving materials for cship review 3 months ago, the young staff tells me that they do not like the way shih chieh huang's work look, how it is ugly and should be replaced, can we remove it?!
they ask me to screen an artist video twice on different screens, when the artist has given me the mandate to screen the work only in one screen.
when i say, i cannot, they say well the artist wouldn't know, it looks so nice on two screens. !!
it is a learning curve for all of us.
hope to see you here again.
love,
defne

here is the link to the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBRXn4ahblw

I dont get it

Elizabeth Peyton's show opened at the New Museum this week. Roberta Smith says in today's New York Times, "The best collapse the distances between realist painting, modernist abstraction, personal snapshot and magazine, and are accessible, devotional and visually alive. Their gem-rich colors are applied with brazen abandon, like miniature action paintings."

I've obviously been looking at Chinese art too long, since these small scale, awkward paintings barely register with me and I find the references to rock stars and art stars far too insular. Not that anyone cares what I think, but the world feels like a far bigger place than conveyed by these works. Still, I know they sell for millions and Peter Schjeldahl once described Peyton as the "moral center" of the Whitney Biennial. I don't get it. Do you?