《疯狂的东方》封面
我想，如果这本书能让部分中国人了解他们给西方留下的印象，同时打开西方人的视野，让他们知道这边的人们都在做些什么，那就很不错了。看后我想你会感觉到，艺术世界的一部分是能够以全球性的方式运行的。我写这本书也是希望能推动中国当代艺术向这个方向发展。至少让两个地方的人都知道这片游戏场是什么样子。但我写这些并不是要改变中国式体制，我根本不知道它是否需要改变，在这里它对你们正在产生着作用。
我不想把自己表现成一个无所不知的纽约人。相反，我把自己刻画成这样的角色：起先以为自己无所不知，然后来到中国，发现还要学习好多不同的东西。然后打开思路去了解这一切，有时会吃惊，甚至特别惊讶，我的这些反应都渗透在这本书中。
我并不想贬低中国的艺术界，这里有很多令我感兴趣的东西，而我非常清楚我是在给西方读者写作，他们中的很多人对这边的印象完全是否定的，所以我也努力要打开他们的思维。
首先呢，很多西方人直接跟我说他们不相信中国有什么好的当代艺术，因为这里有官方的控制。从政治上他们对中国有偏见，所以觉得这边的艺术就不可能有意思，很多人都是这么想的。
另一个问题是，我认识的评论家几乎都是艺术经纪人。因为在这儿，如果只搞评论是没法生存的。我也不知道在纽约做评论能否维持生计，但是在这里，真的没有一个独立的艺术杂志。也许现在有几个正在发展中，但我认识的大多数人都是给画廊的展览写评论，自己也写文章。画册文章、评论、软广告之间界线很模糊。画廊要想上杂志，就必须交广告费。所以一切都变成了广告的延伸。但我注意到的一个现象是：在艺术家群体的内部，他们经常进行争论和评论，尽管这种有指向性的评论并没有在媒体上出现。
虽然我不会说中文，但我尽最大努力搜集到了很多信息。我有位很棒的翻译，每次来中国我们都一起工作，我很适应她的翻译方式。我会密切地观察说话的人，实际上我比在这里的人得到了更多的信息。他们可能以为我是个外国人，所以没那么敏锐机灵，因为我不懂中文嘛，他们说了很多，但没想到我能将所有的这些信息都用上。除了搞评论，在纽约我也写一些关于市场的新闻报道，所以在市场方面和拍卖行的调查中，我的提问也很专业。我觉得这里没有太多人做这种事。
巴巴拉跟她的翻译张芳与她丈夫，艺术家王庆松旅游长城
北京是一座新的艺术都城，从最近的发展来看，中国是世界上第三大艺术市场，其中还包括香港。现在是纽约、伦敦、香港 (香港/北京，北京有画廊，香港有苏富比和佳士得)。但我真的认为北京是一个艺术之都，一个非常有趣的地方。
世上没什么像成功一样成功了。我想如果佩斯觉得自己能在这边做生意，那么就要注意关系上的打通，西方也将会接受这种模式。
印度艺术家就希望他们能成为中国艺术家。中国艺术家所面对的这一切很特别，因为一切发展得非常快，中国艺术家非常有野心，非常自信。我去世界其他地方的时候，包括莫斯科，艺术家会告诉我他们的问题，他们觉得在自己和美国艺术界之间存在着偏见与隔膜。他们能感到这些，觉得很难突破。而中国的艺术家呢，包括那些一句英语也不会说的，也都流露出信心十足的样子：“我们说了算，给我们让地方吧”，就是这番样子。这种自信真的让很多人都聚拢过来，包括我自己。
我对中国艺术界最期待的是希望艾未未能对中国艺术家产生更大的影响，更多的艺术家能站出来说话、表达自己的想法。我觉得它是围绕这里的艺术所进行的对话中的一个必要组成部分，但这部分目前却是缺失的，这也给了我很多希望。
在西方，自由表达是作为一名艺术家的基础。所以这也是我来中国的初衷之一，我很好奇的是，如果没有自由表达，人们又怎样才能成为艺术家。嗯，我发现这里的人们表达了很多，一些东西已经进入视线，但还未被捕捉到，其他的艺术家已经找到了处理各种各样议题的方法而无需具有政治针对性。我也确实发现，这些艺术家并没有受压制，他们神采奕奕，敢于说话，很期待与我聊天对谈。他们看上去可不是那种郁郁寡欢、受压抑的人。我也明白，艺术界如此偏向于经济成功的一个原因是缺乏自由表达造成的。人们尚不知道，除了成功以外，还有其它缘由促使你去进行艺术创作。
我觉得这边的审查还是产生了很大的影响，削弱了不少本应有的活力。
— 文/ 译／王丹华，采访／安静
来源：artforum
——Barbara Pollack访谈
一场金融危机，似乎让退潮之后的所有人都体会到了裸泳的危险性，金融危机确实如潮水一般，在艺术市场站在峰顶浪尖的时候抽身而去，将艺术市场真实的现状“表露无遗”。如果说艺术市场的萧条现状起因于金融危机，毋宁说，金融危机就是艺术市场错乱操盘下所不可避免的一根导火索。今天的艺术市场，在历经退潮和重整之后，“惊蛰”之春还有多远？
| 中国文物网：金融危机爆发后，艺术品市场大面积呈现萧条状况，有业内人员声称，90%的藏家是因为购买信心的下降所致，而非真正的购买力降低，您怎么看待这个问题？ Barbara Pollack：对于一份显示购买信心度的声明来说，想要靠这个去诠释整个艺术市场的运作方式还是略显青涩的。中国的艺术市场上挤满了那些靠不断地转手艺术品、想在短时间内牟取暴利的“伪藏家”，他们中曾经就有很多人向我表示，投资艺术品是一项稳赚不亏的事情。在经济低迷的时期，这类“藏家”在艺术市场的突然离开，必将会导致艺术品价格更进一步地下滑。我想这会需要一段时间来重新找回“购买信心”，但我不能确定中国的艺术市场还会不会重现曾经的繁荣。 中国文物网：中国艺术品市场和国际艺术品市场的接轨体现在那些方面？ Barbara Pollack：实际上，中国艺术品市场已经几乎完全与国际艺术市场接轨了，一些顶级的艺术家在世界范围内展出和出售作品，越来越多的西方画廊商在中国开馆就是很好的佐证。此外，从经济低迷时期二者的同时紧缩这一点上，更可以看出二者之间实际上已经相互影响、相互依存了。我曾经认为中国藏家和西方藏家都会独自运作各自的收藏市场，但今天看来，他们都在遵循着共同的国际趋势和走向，中国艺术市场已然同国际市场达到了共通。 中国文物网：中国的当代艺术品较之其他艺术品，特点或弱点在什么地方？ Barbara Pollack：在过去这几年里，中国的当代艺术家群体上升得非常迅速，大量“艺术家”的涌现，使得大众可以眼见创作质量的下降和作品价格的攀升。由于利益的引诱和艺术价值观的模糊，众多的中国年轻艺术家放弃了自我创作，大量地复制知名的先辈作品或公然地剽窃和模仿西方的成功艺术家作品。如果非要说当下的艺术市场是低迷的，但这种低迷对于艺术领域来说同样是难能可贵的，正是因为这种低迷，才会让中国艺术找出原因和自己的不足，重新投入到刻苦的创作之中，带来更多的原创艺术和新的艺术构想。 中国文物网：您怎样看待经历金融危机后的中国艺术品市场前景？ Barbara Pollack：目前的金融危机不但影响到了中国的艺术品市场，同时也影响到了美国的艺术品市场。在最近的一段时间内来看，整体的形势还是比较暗淡的，但根据我从其它同样有所衰退的艺术市场的实际体验来说，这也正是新的艺术和机构出现的时机。中国的艺术市场是巨大而有潜力的，不会因为这次金融危机就会消退，相反，金融危机下，它正在进行着自我革新与重组，相信不久的将来会更加富有生命力，迎来新的春天。 Barbara Pollack简介： 现生活与工作于纽约 艺术批评家及作家 纽约视觉艺术学院教授 《art news》特约编辑 |
Shanghai SERENADE
by Barbara Pollack
It’s a humid night in Shanghai, and I’m sitting in a private club with my host, Colin Chinnery, the new director of the ShContemporary art fair, Sept. 10-13, 2009, which brings 75 dealers from a dozen countries to the neo-classical Shanghai Exhibition Center. Chinnery is happily serving as translator in a conversation between Serpentine Gallery director Hans Ulrich Obrist and the Chinese conceptual artist Xu Zhen. Like many in China, Chinnery wears multiple hats. He’s also an artist who has just opened an installation at Pekin Fine Arts, a Beijing gallery that has a booth at ShContemporary. 
The Shanghai Exhibition Center, home of ShContemporary, the Asia Pacific Contemporary Art Fair, Sept. 10-13, 2009 
ShContemporary director Colin Chinnery 
ShContemporary, advertised in the Shanghai gallery district 
Phil Tinari and Hans Ulrich Obrist, on stage at ShContemporary 
Xu Zhen 
Xu Zhen’s installation at Shanghart 
Xu Zhen’s installation at ShContemporary 
The "New Discoveries" exhibition hall at ShContemporary
The eArt Festival panel, including (from left), Zheng Ga, MoMA curator Barbara London, Hong Kong collector Hallam Chow, Christie’s Hong Kong specialist Eric Chang, and BitForms director Steve Sacks
Obrist is in town to deliver a talk titled "What is Contemporary Art?", the high point of the VIP lecture series that was organized by e-Flux founder Anton Vidokle. Obrist is also launching his new book, The China Interviews, conversations with 26 Chinese contemporary artists, including Xu Zhen. Xu has been so busy this year that his comments are already out of date.
"Are you Xu Zhen or are you MadeIn?" Obrist is asking, referring to Xu Zhen’s newly formed corporation that now is listed as the creator of his works. Without ever answering the curator’s question, Xu Zhen replies that with his new company, he is able to get much more done. And indeed, Xu Zhen seems uncommonly busy. His Chinese gallery, Shanghart, is presenting a show produced by MadeIn that "reflects a Chinese point of view about the Middle East," and his New York gallery, James Cohan, is currently exhibiting "Lonely Miracle: Middle East Contemporary Art," a faux group show of works by fictional Middle Eastern artists that is actually produced by MadeIn.
MadeIn also has a large-scale installation of five flamboyantly costumed mannequins prancing on top of a grassy hill at the center of the "Discoveries" section of ShContemporary, and is one of the key organizers of "Bourgeiosified Proletariat," an expansive exhibition of new works by over 70 local artists, taking place in three buildings in an empty design complex one hour from Shanghai. Additionally, Xu Zhen’s video from 1998, titled Rainbow and showing the artist’s back turning red as it is slapped by an invisible whip, is featured in "History in the Making: Shanghai 1979-2009," curated by Biljana Ciric, another excellent show in a vacant real estate development here in Shanghai.
It is typical of China that the best shows I’ve seen this week have not taken place in museums, but in the hallways of the fair, at real estate developments and at a tourist site. At ShContemporary, Chinnery is determined to set an example and make "Discoveries" a strong conceptual art show, able to attract top international galleries in a year when few opted to take booths in the exhibitors’ hall. He recruited three curators -- Vidokle, the Mori Art Museum’s Mami Kataoka and Beijing multimedia artist Wang Jianwei -- to assemble the "Discoveries" section, which included works by Joseph Kosuth and Marina Abramovic, Martha Rosler, Japanese artists Shinjin Omaki and Ayiko Mianagi, Anri Sala and Fiona Tan, among others. Many of these artists had not previously shown their work in China.
Coinciding with the fair was the Shanghai eArts festival, an annual event now in its third year and sponsored by the Shanghai municipality, gearing up for a major blow-out next year during the World Expo. This year, eArts Beyond, China’s first retrospective of new media art -- Nam June Paik through Jennifer and Kevin McCoy -- was installed in two floors of the sci-fi-worthy Oriental Pearl TV Tower, the iconic pink skyscraper over in Pudong, curated by part-time New Yorker Zheng Ga. These efforts were a great leap forward for China, where museum shows at the Shanghai Art Museum and the Zendai Museum of Modern Art were disappointing as usual.
"We need to prove ourselves," said Chinnery, who had been chief curator of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. ShContemporary, produced by the Italian company Bolognafiere SpA, was originally founded by former Art Basel director Lorenzo Rudolf and Swiss art dealer Pierre Huber. After the first year, Huber left in a cloud of controversy, and Rudolf, who was a better manager but failed to attract European collectors, resigned in 2008.
For the 2009 installment, global players like PaceWildenstein, Max Protetch and Jack Tilton, who participated last year, decided not to return. To deal with these problems, the fair chose to reduce the number of participating galleries from 150 to 75 and focus in earnest on attracting Asian buyers. "Dealers did not have confidence in us and had skepticism about the Chinese art market, but it is my job to prove them wrong," said Chinnery, evidently sure of his accomplishment.
"Last year was a complete disaster, poorly organized, so we decided we would not do it again," said Saskia Draxler of Galerie Christian Nagel, who came in 2009 because she, like other dealers in "Discoveries," was offered a small stipend to bring works by Martha Rosler to the fair. She stood beside one of Rosler’s most famous images, the 1966 Cargo Cult, which shows photos of high-fashion models collaged onto shipping containers, now reprinted as wallpaper and priced at $49,000. The gallery had originally intended to show the artist’s more recent series on the war in Iraq, but this plan was nixed by censors due to its Middle Eastern imagery, which could be interpreted as commentary on the unrest by the Uyghurs in western China this spring. All the same, Rosler’s "Body Beautiful" series, on offer for $15,000-25,000 and featuring pictures of naked women cropped from advertisements, attracted plenty of attention in this country where nudity can still cause a certain amount of trouble.
As if to prove this point, Tamas Banovich of New York’s Postmasters Gallery ran into problems with Eva and Franco Mattes’ video projection, Synthetic Performance in Second Life, in which digital avatars reenacted Marina Abramovic’s 1977 Imponderablilia, also on view across the hall. Censors didn’t mind the nudity in the Abramovic performance but complained that the female avatar’s breasts in the digital reenactment were too big and Banovich had to replace video with another Second Life performance of Gilbert and George’s Singing Sculpture.
An ad for the upcoming World EXPO
Saskia Draxler at the Galerie Christian Nagel booth at ShContemporary, with a work by Martha Rosler 
Eva and Franco Mattes (aka 0100101110101101.org)
Re-enactment of Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s "Imponderabilia," Synthetic Performance in Second Life
2007
Postmasters 
Yayoi Kusama at Ota Fine Arts at ShContemporary
Upstairs in ShContemporary’s spacious exhibition halls, Asian art galleries made up the bulk of the exhibitors and seemed downright delighted to be free from competing head on with international dealers. Ota Fine Arts from Tokyo sold over $800,000 worth of works by Yayoi Kusama, ranging in price from $200,000 for a pumpkin sculpture to $450,000 for a large painting. "Kusama is well known in China, but mainly through her prints," said dealer Yoriko Tsuroto. "So we decided to bring strong masterpieces to a Chinese audience." Her clients were local Shanghainese as well as collectors from the Philippines. Given that China imposes a 34 percent luxury tax on the sale of art and that Tsuroto did not reduce prices for the fair, these collectors paid well above the market price for these works.
Long March Space from Beijing, which started off as a nonprofit venture but has since evolved into one of the more powerful galleries in China, boasted sales from the moment the fair opened. "We sold a small sculpture by Zhan Wang for $60,000 in the first five minutes," reported gallery deputy director David Tung, who also sold three acrylic wall pieces by a young woman artist named Yu Hong, priced around $30,000. Larger works were on offer too, including a full-scale scholar’s rock fabricated in stainless steel by Zhan Wang for $250,000 and a mural-sized painting of coal miners by Yang Shaobin for $350,000. "No one is buying in that range right now," Tung said.
The Beijing branch of San Gimignano’s Galleria Continua is one of the stronger galleries in China, bravely introducing a program of Western art to a Chinese audience. Its booth featured a new series of carbon drawings by Antony Gormley, priced at $15,000 each, as well as two large sculptures with video monitors playing views of clouds by conceptual artist Gu Dexin, priced at $60,000. "We didn’t think that Gormley would be the taste of Asian buyers," said Beijing gallery director Federica Beltrame, "but we did well with drawings by Hans Op de Beeck this year and discovered that Chinese collectors like drawings."
Likewise, Arthur Solway at the Shanghai branch of James Cohan Gallery was doing well with a series of tapestries by Western contemporary artists, initially commissioned by the British organization Banners of Persuasion. Priced from $50,000 to $100,000, banners by Fred Tomaselli and Kara Walker had sold. "China has a long tradition of paintings on fabric, so these tapestries are a good way to introduce western big names here," said gallery director Leo Xu.
Beijing’s Long March Space at ShContemporary, with works by Zhan Wang (right) and Yang Shaobin (left) 
Gu Dexin
2009-05-02 (video projection)
2009
Galleria Continua 
Arthur Solway at James Cohen Shanghai 
Yang Zhenzhong’s forgeries at Shopping Gallery, Shanghai 
Jia Aili at Platform China 
Berlin dealer Michael Schultz with Ma Jun’s porcelain computer
Since this is China, the danger of knock-offs is ever-present, even in the fine art world. One Chinese artist, Yang Zhenzhong, decided to take the issue of plagiarism head-on at the booth of Shanghai’s Shopping Gallery, where images by Matthew Barney, Cindy Sherman, Andres Serrano and Jeff Wall, found on the internet, were reproduced as full-scale works. "Because in China you find a lot of fake products, this is very Chinese in its way and also very ironic because it is so commercial," said a young Italian woman, who was standing in as manager for the gallery, which is basically a collective of young Shanghainese artists.
The suite of fakes even included a famous Chinese work, To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain, a photograph documenting a 1995 performance in which several naked bodies pile one on top of the other to incrementally raise the height of the titular hill. The work is highly controversial in China, because several artists claim authorship, though it is best known and sells for the most when credited to PaceWildenstein artist Zhang Huan. The reproductions in this booth, obviously not originals and with pixels and errors in plain view, were offered for $1,000 to $5,000.
In this more focused fair, local galleries were able to make a bigger splash. Platform China, which specializes in more experimental projects by emerging artists, devoted its booth to a single artist, Jia Aili. In one series of exquisitely done black-and-white paintings, the artist has added Mickey Mouse ears to images from 1950s East European documentary photographs; gallery founder Natalie Sun had sold three for $36,000 each. "Capitalism is reclaiming socialist society," she said with a smile, evidently aware of the parallel to holding an art fair in once-Communist China. "All our American collectors stopped buying this year, but it seems that interest from the Chinese and Southeast Asian buyers is quite good."
Another European dealer with a gallery in Beijing, Michael Schultz, was also getting strong results for some new Chinese artists, selling a landscape by Huang Min to a local real estate company for $84,000, two paintings from the "Peerless Beauty" series by Zou Cao for $35,000 each and a porcelain computer by Ma Jun for $21,000. "Last year, the fair had more international galleries, very high quality but not good for the Chinese domestic market," said Schulz. "Now the fair concentrates on the young Chinese market with lots of Chinese galleries and adjusted price levels and this is good for the domestic market in China." 
New York dealer Sean Kelly at ShContemporary’s "Discoveries" section 
Film artist Yang Fudong
Schulz and other dealers were happy that fair organizers had made a concerted effort to bring in art buyers with its bureaucratically named "Collectors Development Program," flying in nearly 300 guests and putting them up in the nearby Swissotel. Organizers managed to lure a few European and American collectors to the fair, including Cees Hendrikse from the Netherlands, who has a large collection of Chinese contemporary art, and Dr. Howard Osofsky, a board member of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
But, ShContemporary’s true success was with Asian buyers, many of whom have only just begun to patronize private art galleries. At the gala dinner held for these VIPs, I had the chance to meet Hong Kong attorney Hallam Chow, a partner at White & Chase who has been funding experimental and new media projects in mainland China, Takeo Obayashi, former chairman and CEO of one of Japan’s largest global contractor corporations, and Tseng Wen-Chuan, aka Rudy Tseng, former managing director of the Walt Disney Company in Taiwan. These Asian collectors are the new players in the Asian art market and their names are well known in the East, Asia’s counterparts to Don and Mera Rubell, Aby Rosen and Eli Broad. 
Meg Maggio, director of Pekin Fine Arts from Beijing, being interviewed in her booth at ShContemporary
"This was our first participation in ShContemporary and we are very pleased," said Meg Maggio, director of Pekin Fine Arts in Beijing. "Much more attention to collector needs and interests went into this year's fair and the result is -- from what I've heard from fellow dealers -- more sales than last year's fair." She had brought to ShContemporary works by Choi Jeong Hwa, the star of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s recent show of contemporary Korean art, "Your Bright Future."
Arthur Solway, who opened a show of works by American artists Trenton Doyle Hancock, Erick Swenson, and Alison Elizabeth Taylor at James Cohan Shanghai during the fair, was even more positive about the market for western contemporary art in China. "I think things are getting better and better for the gallery and I can definitely say that there are Shanghai collectors, and other Asian collectors, for western work," he said.
The fair was just as interesting for the presence of those who were not participating as those with art on sale. I ran into Leng Lin, president of Pace Beijing, who is about to open a solo show of new works by Zhang Xiaogang, best known in the west for his "Bloodlines" series. According to Leng, the artist has expanded into painting on steel plates as well as making small sculptures, which will be priced around $200,000, substantially less than the $450,000 to $1 million for the canvases recently shown in New York. 
Artist Song Dong with Pace Beijing president Leng Lin at the "Bourgeoisified Proletariat" show
Lin is also assisting Yin Xiuzhen with her upcoming show at the Museum of Modern Art, scheduled to open in February. Yin is the wife of artist Song Dong, who recently placed his massive installation of material collected by his late mother, Want Not, in the MoMA atrium. "The number of local buyers is still very small, but even with the economic crisis, they have remained active so the market is not bad here," he explained.
Eric Chang, the director of Asian contemporary art at Christie’s Hong Kong, was also on hand and spoke positively about the art business’ economic prospects. "The young generation of buyers now coming into the market are very smart and have a new perspective on value," he said. "We have a very strong confident feeling about China and the upcoming sales."
But the visitor who may surely have the last laugh was Magnus Renfrew, director of Art HK, the Hong Kong art fair which has had much greater success attracting top galleries like Gagosian and Lisson. Hong Kong is a duty-free zone with a state-of-the art convention center, making it much more suitable for international galleries. Renfrew boasted about the number of galleries that have contacted him about participating in the fair, ShContemporary’s main competitor, next May.
Can China, which also has two art fairs in Beijing, sustain this much activity? "We have a responsibility to support and build up these three very disparate markets," said Meg Maggio of Pekin Fine Arts. "Each fair is a fascinating window on a different local art scene."
BARBARA POLLACK is author of The Wild, WIld East: An American Art Critic's Adventures in China (Timezone 8 Books).
