Mr Bigs of Britart buy into China

Mr Bigs of Britart buy into ChinaRichard Brooks, Arts Editor
BRITART’S two leading art impresarios are turning east. Charles Saatchi, who made his name promoting the likes of Damien Hirst, and Frank Cohen, his Manchester rival, are to stage Britain’s first big exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art.

Cohen’s show will take place in Wolverhampton in the spring, while Saatchi’s follows in London at the end of the summer. They will help alter many preconceptions of Chinese culture.

The shows contrast with an exhibition last year at the Royal Academy and another later this year at the British Museum fea-turing artefacts from imperial China.

Contemporary China is often seen as a booming land of mass-produced consumer goods and communist repression with little notable artistic output. This image is now likely to alter.

“It’s fascinating buying from a place like China which is changing so much and so fast,” said Cohen, who now owns about 70 paintings by Chinese artists and whose exhibition opens at the Initial Access gallery next month “Change in a society often brings with it interesting art. I’m also buying from China because I want to stay ahead of the game.”

Works going on show will include two of Princess Diana by the same artist, Li Qing. Saatchi’s shows her and the Prince of Wales kissing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on their wedding day in 1981 while Cohen’s depicts her funeral cortãge in 1997.

In addition to Cohen and Saatchi, other galleries are catching on to Chinese art. Exhibitions will be staged this year by the Tate Liverpool and the Haunch of Venison in central London.

Saatchi, who made his fortune in advertising before moving into dealing art, will place his Chinese collection at his new gallery in Chelsea, west London, when it opens this summer.

He came to prominence as a Britart impresario but in recent years has sold many of his works by young British artists such as Hirst, the Chapman brothers and Marc Quinn. Now, following the lead of western businessmen who outsource production to China, Saatchi and others see the country’s art as a great untapped resource.

“We started looking at Chinese art a couple of years ago,” said Saatchi. “We were initially sniffy about it as it seemed kitschy and derivative. But, just like art everywhere, some of the artists were so strong. So we’ve been won over and have found that the best 10 or so are producing work as exciting as anything made in Europe or America.”

Both collectors have bought recent works by Feng Zhengjie and Li Songsong. “Li’s Cuban Sugar is my favourite,” said Cohen.

The largest sum Saatchi has spent on Chinese art is £800,000 on A Big Family by Zhang Xiaogang, which he purchased last October. Another work by Zhang sold at an auction at Chris-tie’s Hong Kong last November for £1.2m.

The most costly work of any contemporary Chinese artist was the £1.45m for a work by Liu Xiaodong, sold in Beijing last autumn to an overseas buyer.