Private collector pays record amount for painting

San Francisco Chronicle published an article entitled "For collectors with deep pockets, China is fast becoming the place to buy new art", citing a painting by Xu Beihong fetched 33 million yuan ($4.1 million) at an auction earlier this summer. It was the highest amount ever paid for a Chinese oil painting. The buyer was an unnamed local private collector. The author cited William Wu, art historian and collector, and former professor of Chinese art at Dartmouth and Mills colleges, saying one of the central questions of contemporary Chinese art is, "Who is the artist painting for?" Many, he says, paint to satisfy buyers whose pockets bulge with euros and dollars. If that's the only reason, he says, "The Chinese artist will lose his essential Chinese-ness." However, Victoria Lu, the California-educated creative director of the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, disagrees, while she acknowledges that money plays a role in the current art scene, it by no means defines Chinese art. Like everything else in China, the sheer high number of artists promises diversity.

Diversity indeed, the above photograph is Zhu Ming's work "To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain, 1995", as just one example of contemporary Chinese art.