Chinese art boom doesn't translate in the 'Burgh

Pittsburgh was once praised for its multi-ethnic communities, but nowadays it is seen by many as being far from multicultural, even provincial. Nowhere is this more obvious than with its visual-arts scene, where most of the focus on art and art collecting is on art by local artists.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. But the art world at large, and especially the art market, is a voracious, albeit fickle, beast. And right now, all eyes the world over are on Chinese contemporary art as prices have risen dramatically in recent years.

For example, in 2006, Sotheby's and Christie's, the world's biggest auction houses, sold $190 million worth of Asian contemporary art, most of it Chinese, in a series of record-breaking auctions in New York, London and Hong Kong. And in September, Sotheby's (New York) featured its fourth sale of contemporary Asian art, including works by artist from China, Korea and Japan, which far exceeded expectations, commanding $38.44 million, almost $10 million more than its highest estimate of $27.9 million, a record sale for that category, according to artdaily.org

But Pittsburghers, it seems, are not paying attention. An exhibition organized by University of Pittsburgh art history professor Josienne N. Piller that opened in the fall of 2004 titled "Out of Time, Out of Place, Out of China" featured works by Chinese contemporary art heavyweights Xu Bing and Wenda Gu, among others. It was received warmly, but only among a small group of cognoscenti, most of whom were academics.

Area art collectors, it seems, are not catching on. "Not to my knowledge," says Michael Berger, a longtime art collector and fine art dealer. Berger maintains a small gallery in Point Breeze (www.mbergerart.com), where he stocks work by some of today's hottest Chinese artists, among them, Zhang Xiaogang, whom Berger first learned about at an international art fair in Germany in 2002.

"I fell in love with this artist's work, and I bought one of his pictures," Berger recalls. "I had never heard of him. I didn't know anything about him. And then I read that Chinese art is catching on. So I went to China in 2004 and met him and asked him if I could show his work in Pittsburgh. By that time, his prices had already quadrupled and were out of the range of almost all of the collectors in Pittsburgh."

Case in point: In the aforementioned Sotheby's sale in September one of Zhang's pieces broke an all-time record. A figurative work titled "Family Portrait," from his "Bloodline Series" inspired by 1920s photographs, brought $4.4 million ($4.9 million including premium), well above its $2.5 million to $3.5 million estimate.

Regardless of disinterest among local art collectors, Pittsburgh is home to a few very influential figures in Chinese contemporary art.

Gao Minglu, a Pitt art-history professor who moved to Pittsburgh in the fall of 2005, is considered the world's foremost curator of Chinese contemporary art, having organized the groundbreaking exhibition "China/Avant-Garde" for the National Art Gallery, Beijing, in February 1989. A highly political show with close links to China's pro-democracy movement, which erupted that spring in Tiananmen Square, it was closed down by the authorities within hours of its opening.

Gao has since gone on to organize nine important exhibitions of Chinese art, including "Yi School: Thirty years of Chinese Abstract Art," an exhibition (sponsored by Beijing Cultural Bureau) of Chinese abstraction since 1970, which will take place in Spain from March 14 through January 2009 in three venues -- Palma, Barcelona and Madrid.

A witness to history, Gao wants to make the university a top center for the study of Chinese contemporary art, and sees Pittsburgh as a perfect placed to do so.

"Pittsburgh has a long tradition of communication with Chinese contemporary art," Gao says. "Andy Warhol took two trips to China in the 1970s and 1980s. Even though he did not like China in that period, he is the most popular artist in China, and many artists follow his Pop (art) since the 1980s. And the Mattress Factory is also interested in Chinese contemporary art. Several Chinese avant-garde artists visited there and participated in exhibitions since the 1990s."

Another influential figure is Lily Pietryka, part owner of Mandarin Fine Art Gallery (www.mandarinfineart.com) in Laguna Beach, Calif. Though she splits her time between Laguna Beach and Pittsburgh, which she considers her home, Pietryka also manages to travel to China extensively throughout the year looking for fresh art and artists to represent.

Pietryka says that with auction prices soaring, hundreds of new studios, galleries and private art museums are opening in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, and artists just a year out of college are selling their work for as much as $10,000 each, oftentimes directly to collectors.

"China is a great market," Pietryka says. "But one of my problems, because I deal in Chinese art, selling it to Westerners -- Americans and Europeans -- is that there is a great demand in China. All of the nouveau riche people are buying art as an investment. So, that's my competition."

Pietryka says the interest in Chinese art is first and foremost a result of the upturn in the Chinese economy, but it also is driven by cultural influences. "I think it's both," she says. "It's definitely money-driven because a lot of collectors from China, they buy it like they are buying stocks because it appreciates so much. I have seen pieces appreciate by 500 percent over five years. So, from an investment standpoint it is a money-driven thing. But it is also a cultural thing."

She agrees with Gao that Pop art is big. But the Chinese version is a politicized version, oftentimes relating to the Cultural Revolution.

"In China it's called 'Political Pop,' because it reflects the Chinese Cultural Revolution, what communism has or hasn't accomplished," Pietryka says. "Even what is going on right now in China, the economy is booming. People's lives are getting better. And that is being reflected in the art as well."

"Now that China is open to the Western world," Pietryka says, "China has a stronger and stronger voice because of the economy. Because of the economic boom, all eyes are on China. China is an economic superpower now."

Even with all of the excitement generated by the Chinese art boom, Berger says he's not in it for the money. "I don't buy art for the return," he says. "I buy it to live with it."