As China's nascent art market is taking off, the country's emerging crop of young talent has the golden opportunity to make a breakthrough in an international art scene that some say largely overlooked locally-inspired art.

With such stimulating views, the month-long second Beijing International Art Biennale, which closed yesterday, has become a stage for the world's artists to display and discuss their latest ideas.

Artists and scholars touched upon a wide range of subjects centering on the theme "Contemporary Art with Humanistic Concerns."

The discussions covered everything from contemporary art in different countries and feminism in contemporary art, to the future of traditional Chinese art forms such as the ink painting in the face of globalization and the emergence of new media.

"Compared with my findings at the first Beijing Biennale, I found more Chinese artists, especially the younger generations, are showing their strengths," said Roger Gustafsson, a curator from Finland, adding that it takes time for a fledgling market to mature and to be well-regulated to secure sustainable growth. "I believe they will attract collectors from China and foreign countries."

Unique diversity

Variety in contemporary art and cultural identity, another hot topic at the seminar, can be a factor in the market's development.

Variety and uniqueness make the international art scene so colorful and vigorous, said Lin Mu, a professor with Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts.

"When speaking of contemporary art, in most cases, people are just referring to art in certain Western countries with a highly developed economy and predominant influence on the world art market," Lin said. "But art with local flavors, such as traditional Chinese art and art in Africa and Latin America, are largely overlooked by the mainstream market, international critics and curators."

Artists create according to their life experiences and their native cultures, and thus have their individual characteristics and unique value, he said.

Criticized by some as a "conservative and old-fashioned biennale" which focuses only on paintings and sculptures, Lin would beg to differ. In Lin's opinion, the Beijing Biennale is the first one that provides artists from all parts of the world an equal platform to show off their art and to learn from each other.

Sami Ben Ameur, an artist and critic from Tunisia, said: "In an age of globalization, the governments should make a clear statement of respect of cultural variety and its development through policies and market strategies.

"Training of artists involved in the economic field about law and rules on protecting cultural and artistic variety is necessary."

Art market

One of the most eye-opening issues during the biennale has been about the art market.

The art market worldwide is divided into a professional world with its own terms of quality assignment and the world of the average art consumer, who is often left feeling confused, according to Marek Claassen, a German art dealer. The way in which the professional world evaluates the quality of a work of art remains a mystery to potential consumers.

The lack of conviction and knowledge of a large section of society in its own tastes explain why the art market continues to have such a unique character, he said.

"This basically means that the professionals designed a kind of private code that art consumers cannot decrypt," he said. "That makes the consumer feel uncertain. The other thing is that often, people do not trust their own taste. Instead, they look at what others do and copy that."

The lack of certainty makes the art market a playground only for the super rich or for every well-funded institution, he warned.

"China's art market is taking off in recent years along with economic booms," said Xu Liang, editor-in-chief of Beijing-based World Art magazine. "But the fledgling market has also encountered some irregularities and practices of dishonesty."

Many Chinese art collectors, due to lack of knowledge and expertise, have reportedly bought lower quality or even fake artwork.

Bjorn Li, a veteran art dealer from Norway, said that artwork of "conservative and figurative nature," as some advocates of vanguard art such as performance and installation described, still dominate the art markets worldwide.

"The craftsmanship and emotional involvement of an artist are still highly valued by critics and art collectors alike," he said. "It is the work itself that arrests the attention of viewers and wins their hearts."

In his view, the strict training in classic art and basic skills and the techniques of Chinese artists put them in an advantageous position. But many artists have a weakness.

"In contrast, too many of today's contemporary artists, either in China or in Western countries, talk too much about their work (to explain the meaning) rather than letting others directly understand and interpret their 'conceptual art' works."

Despite the need for improvement, Anders Liden, a veteran Swedish artist and president of the Swedish National Committee of International Association of Art, saw the promise of the country's artists.

He marveled at the centuries-old masterpieces of the Xin'an Painting School founded in today's Anhui Province by ancient monks such as Jian Jiang (1610-64) and Shi Tao (1630-1742), shown at the Special Exhibition of the Beijing Biennale in Anmei Art Center, Hefei. The exhibition ended on October 8.

He was also impressed by the works of Chinese artists displayed during the second Beijing Biennale. "They are doing very well," he said. "But my suggestion is that Chinese artists today should never sever their cultural roots when embracing new trends in the contemporary art.

"Only deeply rooted in the time-honored, highly developed Chinese culture can Chinese artists gain a firm foothold in the world art market. It is unwise for young Chinese artists to give up their cultural identity and copy their Western counterparts."

(China Daily October 21, 2005)