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Article: The Chinese-art craze: what's up in the contemporary-art market? Anything new from China.(ARTS & CULTURE)
- Article from:
- Town & Country
- Article date:
- March 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Hearst Communications, reprinted with permission of Hearst. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Combine the social commentary of contemporary art with the beauty and mystery of the Far East, and what do you get? A red-hot market. Chinese contemporary art is burning up the auction block in New York salesrooms, flying off the walls at galleries in Chelsea and topping acquisitions lists at major museums. Western collectors may stumble over names like Zhang Xiaogang and Cai Guo-Qiang, but they are nimble enough with their checkbooks, buying almost half of the Chinese contemporary works offered at Christie's and Sotheby's in the past year and causing prices to rise exponentially.
The buzz is fresh, but the art dates back to the late 1970s, when, after a long ...