The branding of contemporary Chinese art and its politics

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe Preece
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Marketing Research ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the branding of the Cynical Realist and Political Pop contemporary art movements in China. The trajectory this brand has taken over the past 25 years reveals some of the power discourses that operate within the international visual arts market and how these are constructed, distributed and consumed. Design/methodology/approach – A review of avant-garde art in China and its dissemination is undertaken through analysis of historical data and ethnographic data collected in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Findings – The analysis exposes the ideological framework within which the art market operates and how this affects the art that is produced within it. In the case of Cynical Realism and Political Pop, the art was framed and packaged by the art world to reflect Western liberal political thinking in terms of personal expression thereby implicitly justifying Western democratic, capitalist values. Research limitations/implications – As an exploratory study, findings contribute to macro-marketing research by demonstrating how certain sociopolitical ideas develop and become naturalised through branding discourses in a market system. Practical implications – A socio-cultural branding approach to the art market provides a macro-perspective in terms of the limitations and barriers for artists in taking their work to market. Originality/value – While there have been various studies of branding in the art market, this study reveals the power discourses at work in the contemporary visual arts market in terms of the work that is promoted as “hot” by the art world. Branding here is shown to reflect politics by circulating and promoting certain sociocultural and political ideas.

Related rhythms: Situating Zhang Peili and contemporary Chinese video art in the globalizing art world

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39
Author(s):  
Orianna Cacchione
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Single Channel ◽  
Video Art ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Video Installation ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Contemporary Chinese Art ◽  
Global Art ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Despite being considered the first video artist to work in China, the majority of Zhang Peili’s earliest video works were originally exhibited abroad. In many of these exhibitions, his videos were displayed in different installation formats and configurations. One of the most evident of these changes occurred at the travelling exhibition China Avant-Garde. In Berlin, the opening venue of the exhibition, two videos were displayed in ways that differed from their original presentations; Document on Hygiene No. 3 (1991) and Assignment No. 1 (1992) were presented as singlechannel videos on single monitors instead of the multiple monitor installations previously used to show the works in Shanghai and Paris, respectively. Water: Standard Version from the Cihai Dictionary (1991) premiered in Berlin as a single-channel, single-monitor work. However, when it was installed in the exhibition’s Rotterdam venue, the work was shown on a nine-monitor grid. This article explores what caused the flexibility in the display of Zhang Peili’s early videos. I argue that these transformations demonstrate Zhang Peili’s conceptualization of video as a medium for art and his navigation of the rapidly globalizing art world. While the initial examples of this flexibility in installation were often caused by miscommunications with international curators, later exhibitions provided a regular venue for Zhang Peili to develop his approach to the ‘scene’ (chang) and ‘content’ (neirong) of video installation. Furthermore, as one of the most active Chinese artists working and exhibiting abroad in the 1990s, Zhang Peili was placed within the middle of domestic and international debates about the globalization of contemporary Chinese art. He responded to these debates by expelling signifiers of national identity in his videos and by forcefully deriding these discussions as a form of nationalism. Considering his video work from the perspective of its international presentation provides an important example of how artists working in China situated themselves in relationship to global art production in the 1980s and 1990s.

Production and marketing of art in China

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruby Roy Dholakia ◽  
Jingyi Duan ◽  
Nikhilesh Dholakia
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Original Art ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Chinese Consumer ◽  
Art Production ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how art production and marketing in China is attempting to move up the value chain as increasing number of Chinese replica-selling galleries seek to break free from the image of Chinese art towns as skilled but imitative centres of art production. Design/methodology/approach – In-depth interviews were conducted among seven gallery owners in Wushipu art village over three weeks to discover how art production in China has evolved and to chart its future growth. Findings – In the Chinese setting with its distinctive cultural patterns, tensions between the emergent national pride in original art and the facile and commercial moneymaking potential of simply selling industrially produced art are revealed. Practical implications – The changing dynamics of arts markets in China provide marketers and researchers a glimpse into a parallel trend: the gradual but rising shift to innovation, originality and luxury occurring in the China-based manufacturing centres of material goods. Social implications – The attempts to break from the imitative mass production of art and strike a balance between creating and meeting the art needs of the Chinese consumer indicate how domestic market priorities and economic growth are likely to serve as the new fuel for contemporary China’s socioeconomic development. Originality/value – Via an interpretive look at contemporary Chinese modes of arts production and marketing, the paper revisits the antagonism between the creation of original art and the production of industrial art in a context not well-known in the west, the massive art production centres of China.

scholarly journals 'The Inexhaustible Surface of Things'

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-94
Author(s):  
Simone Castaldi
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art World ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article explores the work of Stefano Tamburini (1955–1986) in relationship to the ‘high arts’ in the 1980s. By concentrating on Tamburini’s least known works (to this day, among his many works, only the RanXerox saga is actually available for English-speaking readers), it is possible to regard his art as a bridge tying comics with the aesthetic and theoretical preoccupations of many of the leading artists of the postmodern trans-avant-garde of the late-1970s and early-1980s in Italy. This article demonstrates how Tamburini offered a model of comics in dialogue with the rest of the contemporary art world, often taking the lead and generating fruitful exchanges both with the field of literature and the visual arts.

Artistic forgery

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Currie
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Art World ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
False Claim

Forgery in art occurs when something is presented as a work of art with a history it does not actually have. Typically this involves a false claim about the producer’s identity. Forgeries are most usually works in the style of the artist whose work they falsely claim to be, while a forgery that is a copy of an existing work is a fake. Forgery is most common in the visual arts, but is also possible in other arts, such as literature and music. The main aesthetic problem that forgery poses is that typically no deception is practised concerning what we might call the appearance of the forged object (generalizing from the pictorial case). Thus the forger does not deceive us about the disposition of colours on the canvas, the sequence of musical notes in the score, or the sequence of words in the text. If we adopt the widely held view that aesthetic value is a function of appearance alone, we shall conclude that something’s being a forgery is irrelevant to its aesthetic worth; whatever false beliefs the viewer might be induced to have about the work, those beliefs could not affect an honest judgment of its aesthetic value. But in the art world it is universal practice to condemn forgery. If that practice is to be justified as anything other than artistic snobbery and the protection of prices in the art market, it must be shown that the aesthetic interest of a work is not exhausted by its appearance alone. In fact it can be shown that the aesthetic features of a work often depend on its historical features as well as on its appearance, and that these historical features are likely to be obscured by the deception that forgery involves.

scholarly journals Aesthetic Height of the Art and the Art Market: Essential and Imaginary Nature of Art Quality

2021 ◽  
pp. 94-131
Author(s):  
A.V. Karpov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Art World ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
Market Participants ◽  
Essential Value

A problem of perfection at art is analyzed in the article according to paradigm of the art market as a system of cultural, economic and social interactions of the art world. The author finds out the vitality of the artwork not only as its essential value but also defines the idea of its imaginary vitality. The latter is created by the art market participants, and it causes the commercial value of the artwork. The article makes an assumption about the division of art, at least of the Modern and Contemporary history, into two spheres — the art of “aesthetic experience” and the art of “commercial success”. While the art of “aesthetic experience” is aimed at finding and creating a new artistic language (the embodiment of new creative ideas, complex ethical and aesthetic problems), the art of “commercial success” follows artistic stereotypes, uses creative innovations in an adapted form, which is included in the cultural and aesthetic system familiar to the audience of art. This antithesis is analyzed in the article by the example of comparing a number of works by two artists of the same time. One is Mikhail Larionov, a prominent artist of the Russian Avant-Garde, and the other is Vladislav Izmailovitch, a typical representative of Salon and Late Academic art. Considering the specific historical aspects of vitality in art, the author analyzes several examples. Firstly, the late oeuvre of the Russian artist Ilya Repin as a metaphor for the “joy of the risen”. Secondly, the Easter rarities of the House of Faberge, which have changed their status over the past century from a home memorabilia to a cultural myth and became an object of the art market nowadays. Thirdly, the exposition of the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2019, where authors and curators exploited the vitality of Dutch and Flemish art of the 17th century as the personification of contemporary creative pursuits.

LITERARY BOGEMIA IN RUSSIA AND IN THE USSR. REVOLUTION AND BOHEMIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-77
Author(s):  
O. M. Kirillina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Problems ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The State ◽  
Art World ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Acceptable Method ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Moment

Bohemia arose in opposition to the values and to the way of life of bourgeoisie at the moment when bourgeoisie became the largest customer in the art market. In Russia bohemia was more respectable, far from social problems and less revolutionary than in Europe, that is why representatives of the Russian avant-garde did not feel very comfortable in the restrictive bohemian environment. In the first years after the Revolution, the intense struggle of various art groups stimulated creative search and bohemia could find quite a comfortable niche. However the abolition of all art groups except the Union of Soviet Writers as well as the approval of the only acceptable method, socialist realism, in the early 30s eliminated the existence of such a free and asocial community as bohemia. Many poets and writers were repressed. These were not only critics of the government, but also totally apolitical or too revolutionary nonconformists, such as members of the OBERIU. Writers were destroyed not only by the state, but also by the deep disappointment due to the return of the spirit of Academism, Philistinism and bureaucratization, which penetrated the art world. At the same time loyal poets and writers generously endowed by the state turned into an elite.

BREAKING THE INK – ABSTRACT INK ART IN MAINLAND CHINA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Zhang Cziráková
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Abstract Painting ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The 1960S

Chinese art is mostly presented at foreign exhibitions from a different perspective and abstraction is represented modestly or completely absent. However, abstract art, which to a greater or lesser extent based on the roots of Chinese semi-abstract tradition, finds its firm place in the works of Chinese artists in different countries or regions. After giving a fundamental analysis of the possible inspiration for abstract ink painting from Chinese art history, and modernist art movements in Taiwan and Hong Kong during the 1960s, which had a significant influence on the formation of modernism in mainland China, and the historical overview of Chinese avant-garde, such as the 85 New Wave, the author focusses on abstract ink art in mainland China. As far as the situation in abstract painting is concerned, all important movements, exhibitions are preceded chronologically. Artists' opinions on abstract painting, their contradictions and the questions that this work raises, are observed, too. Abstract ink painting began to develop with the influx of ideas of modernism in the 1980s, and it was in important factor during the movement of Experimental ink and wash movement in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. This movement has organised exhibitions, conferences, publishes catalogues dedicated to the work of its representatives. Then the attention turns to other movements and individual artists devoted to abstract ink art. Some of the artists come to a greater extent from tradition; others try to escape the limitations of ink painting, more or less adhere to traditional Chinese art or calligraphic strokes and techniques. Some of them are more influenced by Western techniques or are attempting to synthesise. What is essential is that they create works that are often of a high standard and in their search, open new ways for Chinese ink painting in general. Special attention deserves the artists standing at the birth of the movement and to those who have so far significantly influenced the whole atmosphere in Chinese art world.

Buy one painting, get two names. On the valuation of artist collaborations in the art market

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-121
Author(s):  
Anne-Sophie V. Radermecker
Keyword(s):  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Art World ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Auction Market ◽  
Average Value ◽  
Art Objects

PurposeTo analyze the market reception of multi-authored works of art through the lens of collaborative old master paintings (“formal/prestige collaboration”). This paper tests whether multi-authored attribution strategies (i.e. naming two artists as brand names) affect buyers' willingness to pay differently from single-authored works in the auction market.Design/methodology/approachThis case study focuses on collaborative paintings by Flemish masters, based on a data set comprising 11,630 single-authored and collaborative paintings auctioned between 1946 and 2015. Hedonic regressions have been employed to test whether or not co-branded artworks are differently valued by buyers and how the reputation of each artist might influence valuation.FindingsDespite the opportunity for buyers to purchase one artwork with two brand names, this study reveals that the average value of collaborative paintings is statistically lower than that of single-authored paintings. This is especially true when a reputed master was involved in the collaboration. The present findings suggest that the valuable characteristics of formal collaborations (i.e. double brand name, dual authorship and reputation, high-quality standards) are no longer perceived and valued as such by buyers, and that co-branding can affect the artist brand equity because of a contagion effect. We argue that integral authorship is more valued than partial authorship, suggesting that the myth of the artist as a lone genius is still well-anchored in purchasing habits.Research limitations/implicationsPrestige collaborations are a very particular form of early co-branding in the art world, with limited data available. Further research should consider larger samples to reiterate the analysis on other collaboration forms in order to challenge the current findings.Practical implicationsResearchers and living artists should be aware that brand building and co-branding are marketing strategies that may generate negative effects on prices in the art market. The perceived and market value of co-branded works are time-varying, and depends on both the context of reception of these works and the reputation of the artists at time t.Originality/valueThis market segment has never been considered in art market studies, although formal collaboration is one of the earliest documented forms of co-branding in the art world. This paper provides new empirical evidence from the auction market, based on buyers' willingness to pay, and it further highlights the reception of multi-authored art objects in Western art markets that particularly value individual creators.

scholarly journals The Wasteland of Creative Production: A Case Study of Contemporary Chinese Art

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Alexander Ulfstjerne
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Paradigmatic Shift ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Contemporary Chinese Art ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

With the new magnitude for the relatively unhindered production and circulation of artworks, galleries and contemporary art museums are burgeoning across the larger cities of China. This article provides an empirical example of how contemporary and avant-garde art is produced and valuated in the art communities that thrive on the recent international recognition of Chinese artworks. It addresses some of the effects that occur when art production becomes mediated by cultural entrepreneurs and propelled by resourceful investors. Challenging notions of autonomy and independence in the sphere of aesthetics and contemporary art, the article addresses some of the ways in which art becomes co-opted, not only by commercial agents, but also by official ambitions. The commercialization of the cultural sphere reveals a paradigmatic shift, giving a stronger emphasis to the intangible notion of creativity as a new driving force for economic development in China.

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