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 ARTICLES Beijing  |
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It's 7.00 am local time, and I've arrived in Beijing, the first stop on a 10-day tour of visiting Chinese contemporary artists' studios. There's nothing like art and architecture to seduce foreign visitors, and Beijing is throbbing with energy in the biggest celebrity architectural show on earth. My visit is arranged by the London-based Red Mansion Foundation, promoting cultural exchange between China and the west. A quick check-in at the Novotel Peace hotel, and then I deserted my group - made up of art collectors from the UK, Germany and Switzerland - to meet Meg Maggio, an art consultant who took me to see the Courtyard Gallery near the Forbidden City. The gallery represents some of the best artists in Beijing, a city which is experiencing an extraordinary cultural renaissance. Its contemporary art scene is red-hot, and westerners are streaming here to buy work, other than us there were two more museum groups touring the city. Right now, one can buy good pieces for anywhere between $5,000 and $100,000, but the market is going up so fast that prices double every year. There are more than 2,000 artists working in Beijing, without any state assistance whatsoever. Some take on other jobs to support themselves, others are by now financially independent, after years of persecution and hardship. One of the latter is Wang Qingsong (pronounced 'Wong Chingsong' - the Chinese put the last name first), one of China's major art stars who I'm due to meet for lunch. I commissioned him a month ago to create a huge installation in the Oxford Street windows run of Selfridges, opening on January 29, when the 'China in London' festival kicks off for the Chinese New Year. Beijing and London are both Olympic cities now, and Ken Livingstone initiated the festival to attract Chinese investment into the UK capital. Qingsong's window project is called 'Follow Me', about the global fascination with shopping, regardless of race, colour and creed. It is his first ever collaboration with a department store, and fits in with his overall body of work, a witty take on Chinese society's obsession with logos and brands. We meet at a restaurant called Silk, one of a chain of five owned by another artist, the painter Fang Lijun, an entrepreneur dubbed the Chinese Damien Hirst. The restaurant is in the Jian Wai SOHO mixed use property development, a series of elegant white glass towers created by a woman developer, Zhan Xin. She won a gold medal at the Venice Architecture Biennial for the 'Commune' commission near the Great Wall, 12 private houses by Asia's greatest architects - they're now for rent via the Kempinski Hotel Group and having seen most of them, I'd recommend the 'Bamboo' House. At 39, Qingsong is a small, intense figure, who used to work in the mines to support his family but is now financially independent. He is highly articulate about China's economic boom which started with Deng Xiaoping's liberalisation in 1992, and was given a boost by being awarded the summer Olympics in 1997. It is a massive opportunity the Chinese are making the most of: "The effort made by the government publicising the Olympics, it was like the Cultural Revolution", Wang says. "The government is now saying: 'you should help us look good to the outside world' ". To see what he meant I had an appointment after lunch (delicious vegetables in hot sesame oil, rice noodles in broth) with Thomas Polster, a Swiss project manager of the firm Herzog and de Meuron, one of a select group of star architects re-shaping the city which also includes Rem Koolhaas and Norman Foster. Herzog and de Meuron are building the Olympic stadium here, and I got the chance to clamber all over it, an unforgettable experience. The stadium design is like a gigantic bird's nest, a 90,000-seat ovoid structure with a steel zig-zag ring around it, just beginning to go up. I caught a glimpse of the pitch within, a reminder of the film 'Gladiator', a modern coliseum, with modern athletes as the gladiators of our times. There are 25,000 workers 24/7 on site, working three 8-hour-shifts, all dressed in green military style coats with brass buttons, echoing Maoist times. The entire structure was festooned with red flags covered in yellow Chinese script - according to Posner, it said nothing more than the construction company's name, but to me it looked as if the stadium was a prominent signal that China had arrived on the world stage. By evening, I was crazed with fatigue when I met Colin Chinnery, arts manager of the local British Council, back at my hotel. Chinnery, who is half-Chinese, half-British, is also an artist, on his way to Guangzhou to install a piece for the second Guangzhou Triennial, China's most important contemporary art show, last stop on our itinerary. "In Beijing, you find a lot of people smiling in the streets - there is a very positive vibe in the city" he told me, a fact confirmed by our visit at dusk to a sound installation he had just organised by British musician Brian Eno. Young and old were milling around Ritan Park's circular theatre, built in the 16th century for use by Ming and Qing emperors to honour the sun god. A poetic sound of bells wafted into the air, light and dark, fainter and louder, emanating from 16 small tape recorders positioned in a ring on the stony ground. A minimalistic device used to devastating effect in this ritualistic environment, made almost cosmic by the pale blue light of a rising moon. Art and architecture fused with China's imperialist past to create the perfect end to a perfect first day. © 2005 Bettina von Hase |
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