Post on 16-Jan-2023
Interview to Josep Soler i Casanellas, art collector and promoter of "Pure Views" exhibition in Barcelona
Xavier Ortells‐Nicolau
Frst published in Catalan, InterAsia Research Group blog, "El impacto de Asia Oriental en el contexto español: Producción cultural, política(s) y sociedad", September 3, 2013, URL: <http://interculturalasiaoriental.blogspot.com.es/2013/09/entrevista‐josep‐soler‐i‐casanellas.html>
Until September 28, Barcelona Santa Monica Art Center hosts the exhibition "Pure
Views. Transformations in Contemporary Chinese Art", jointly organized with
Chengdu MOCA and curated by per Lu Peng 吕澎. The exhibition is a great sample of
contemporary Chinese painting, video and installations.
A key figure in bringing "Pure Views" to Barcelona has been collector Josep Soler i
Casanellas. InterAsia member Xavier Ortells met him last July to know about the
organization of the exhibition and his opinions on the market of Chinese art. Educated
in Economics and with a career on
marketing, Soler i Casanellas arrived at
the art world at the end of the 1990s.
What attracted Soler to Chinese
contemporary art was its political and
critical content, the 'subcutaneous
rebelliousness’ which art historian
Harald Szeemann famously
underscored. His collection includes
artworks by young Chinese artists like
Hua Qing 华庆, Xiong Lijun 熊莉鈞 and
Zhong Biao 钟飙 , in addition to the
"Sanya Collection", a group of twenty‐
eight ink paintings on xuan paper by
some of China's most renowned artists.
What is the origin of the idea to bring "Pure Views" to Barcelona?
In 2005, when I began collecting Chinese art, I bought a number of works which had
been created on the occasion of a gathering convened by art historian Lu Peng in the
island of Hainan. From that moment on, Lu and I became good friends and have since
collaborated in different projects.
In a meeting in Chengdu, Lu told me: "Find me a museum in Europe where we can
exhibit "Pure Views". The show had already toured in London (2010), San Francisco
(2011), the Chengdu Biennale (2011) and the Fukuoka Museum of Asian Art (2012).
Which is the role of Lu Peng in contemporary Chinese art?
He is a key figure. Besides his role as art historian (he is the author of the sole history
of contemporary Chinese art written in Chinese), he has been very close to the artists
from the start. He began as a painter, but decided to abandon it because people said he
wrote better than he painted. Many of the first contemporary artists, those included in
the exhibition hosted Santa Mònica Arts Center 20 years ago, are of the same age as
Lu. Moreover, many are from, or have lived in Chengdu, an important cultural and
artistic hub. This is the origin of a close relationship among many of them, and these
relationships, or guanxi, are very important in China.
Currently 56 years old, Lu is in really good shape, with a lot of projects on progress.
Once we went to Madrid along with his daughter and painter Zhang Xiaogang 张晓刚,
and they spent both flights talking about art. Art is, in China, a system on the making,
and in that it reminds me the transition period in Spain: a country that opens up, a
growing economy, where museums, artists, galleries, the whole field of contemporary
art is just emerging. The same discussions that took place in Spain, debates about the
role of the different actor in this field, are taking place now in China. There are many
debates, with a crucial role played by social networks.
Was it easy to find a venue for the exhibition? How was the process?
When I started looking for a place, I thought it would be rather easy, but the truth is
that it has been very difficult. Even though I was offering unfamiliar contemporary
artworks, with lots of interest for the public; even though the project did not
represent any problem in terms of funding, an important aspect in these days of
financial crisis and budget cuts for museums; it has been very difficult to find an
institution that wanted to host the exhibition.
Eventually, Vicenç Altaió, director of Santa Mònica, became interested in the project.
It greatly surprised me, because Santa Mònica usually holds more cutting edge, avant‐
garde shows. They asked us to include other media besides painting, so we included
the installations and video works. Working with the Chinese is very easy in this sense.
We have tried to show the last tendencies in contemporary art in China, but at the
same time, to create an exhibition that was pleasant to visit, in which the artworks
could breathe. The result has been very interesting and multidisciplinary.
These days, the connection with an important antecedent of this exhibition has
repeatedly being brought up. In 1995, Santa Mònica held the show "Des del país
del centre: Avantguardes artístiques xineses" [From the country of the center:
Chinese artistic vanguards], curated by Inma González Puy. In 2008, there was a
large presence of Chinese art in Barcelona: the Uli Sigg collection was exhibited
at the Miró Foundation ("Vermell a part"), the Virreina museum held a
contemporary photography show ("Zhuyi!"). Do you think the lack of interest
you just commented might be due to certain saturation with regard
contemporary Chinese art in Barcelona?
Not at all, I do not think there could ever be saturation of art and culture. The Sigg
collection is the historical collection, with the big names. "Pure Views" includes some
of these artists, but it presents young artists with a lot of talent. There is always an
interest for good shows.
The different institutions to which I presented the project brought up some sort of
problem, like "we do not do this or that". The Miró Foundation, for one, has the policy
of not repeating country‐centered shows, which is understandable. Then‐‐we had
total collaboration from the Chinese side, we were able to adjust the project to the
venue‐‐ we offered them a monographic show of Zhang Xiaogang, probably the most
important contemporary artist from China. A retrospective of his work should be of
interest to any museum, but even that did not work. I think that the main problem was
that the art world is a quite isolated sector, made up of circles and institutions where
it is difficult to access.
An example of Zhang Xiaogang famous Bloodline series. Big Family, num. 9 (1996)
Why do you think contemporary Chinese art has frequently been exhibited in
the format of large groups of artists in Europe and the Americas?
It is difficult to get out. In this sense, China is not yet a normal country: each and every
artist who has come to Barcelona has had to go through an interview in order to
obtain a visa. Language and cultural distance is also a problem. But the biggest
obstacle is that Chinese artists face a lack of receptivity.
How would you characterize the Chinese art market?
While capitalism took over a hundred years to evolve in Europe, the same process has
merely taken a decade in China. In many respects, everything is very incipient. For
instance, here the art world is very well divided and everyone has a clear role: critics,
historians, museum directors, collectors, private and public institutions, etc. But in
China you can find people like Lu Peng, who is an art historian, scholar, and curator,
who is also part of the private sector (her daughter runs L‐ArtGallery, in Chengdu)
and at the same time it has good relationship with the government (i.e., he has been
main curator of the Chengdu biennale).
At the same time, the art market is more 'capitalist' than in Europe. While most of the
artists work primarily with one gallery, the majority has a bigger freedom. Here it
would be unconceivable that an artist himself brings his own work to an action, as it
happens sometimes in China. A while ago I was after a painting by Xue Song 薛松,
which a collector from NYC had bought but could not sell in any auction. We
negotiated until I obtained an interesting price. When everything was settled, he
called me and told me that the artist had bought the painting back to place it in an
investing fund! It's OK, but circumstances like this naturally affect the rules of the
market.
A taoist is a thief (2011), by Yue Minjun
As for prices, there are currently two groups: on the one hand, the big names, like
Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi 王广义 , Fang Lijun 方力钧 , Yue Minjun 岳敏君
or Zeng Fanzhi 曾梵志 . This is a pretty consolidated group. If Santa Mònica had
bought one or two pieces from the 1995 exhibition, they wouldn't have any financial
problem now. That exhibition had all the big names, but in that moment they did not
cost a penny, on the contrary, sometimes they needed to pay to be bought. Twenty
years ago, some of the artists from "Pure Views" were poor as rats.
On the other hand, you have the group of artists who are beginning their careers. It is
harder for them to enter the market and sell at all. During the boom of Chinese art in
the markets, in 2008 and 2009, you could sell everything, whatever the price; any
beginner could start by asking ten thousand dollars. Then there was a drop and now
the market is more stable, with more normal behavior, and less speculation. The big
names have their stable value, as happens here with works of Picasso, Miquel
Barceló, Joan Fontcuberta or Jaume Plensa, but as a collector I can still find some
artworks that I like at an acceptable price.
After the boom in Chinese art, both in terms of market and in terms of criticism,
do you think that the appreciation of Chinese art and artist will sober up? Are
we perhaps going to be left with just a few names?
As of now, there are about twenty well‐known names, those that reach European
museums. But I think that rather than diminishing, the number of important Chinese
artist can grow even further. If we take into account the number of artists in Europe,
China still lags behind in the proportion. Were we to reach the same percentage, a
normal percentage, there would be so many more artists.
Contemporary art does not have the same public as here, people has not grown with
it, neither in school nor in society. Recently it was revealed that the number of visitors
to the last important art fairs in Shanghai and Beijing was only of fifty or sixty
thousand, of which probably half were Westerners.
Zhou Chunya 周春 芽, Sexualized Stone (2012), oil on paper
In a talk organized on the occasion of "Pure Views" at ESADE business school,
Anders Petterson from Art Tactic, an important contemporary art consultant
firm, talked about certain risks due to the lack of institutional stability in China.
Which are the challenges and risks of this market?
As Petterson mentioned, in the West scholars and museums are the ones setting the
value of artists, while in China this is the job of the market and actions. Markets
emerge in a very artificial way, and this can generate a big instability.
Up to now, the were two markets in China: on the one hand, you have the market for
traditional ink painting, which went along with modern oil painters from the
beginning of the century. Among these you can find some who have reached forty or
fifty million euros, like Qi Baishi 齐白石 or Zhang Daqian 张大千. On the other hand,
you had contemporary art, which let's remember it is only 30% of Chinese art market.
Now there is a third space, ink artworks created by contemporary artists. Christie's in
Hong Kong has just began to organize auctions exclusively of ink artworks.
In 2011, the painting "Eagle Standing on Pine Tree" by Qi Baishi, reached 65.5 million dollars
(50 million euros) at an auction in Beijing
In addition, there is still a lot of dependence from the government: five months before
the last Congress of the Communist Party, in which Xi Jing ping was appointed,
everything stopped. The whole country is dependent on national and regional politics,
and this also affects the art world. A dialogue with the traditional aesthetics characterizes “Pure Views”. The name
comes from an ancient painting, Pure and Remote View of Streams and
Mountains (溪山清远), by Song dynasty master Xia Gui 夏圭 , a reproduction of
which is also exhibited. There is an evident change in the work of some artists,
from their more political production of twenty years ago. Why is that?
I believe this is part of the evolution of the artists. There might be some evident
change in the work of Fang Lijun but I think there is a coherence between his famous
heads from the 1980s and what he is doing now, like the painting in display at Santa
Monica.
Howl (1991), a painting by Fang Lijun representative of his earlier works
Another factor to take into account is that European and American collectors
primarily guided the 2008 boom, while it is Chinese buyers and collectors who now
dominate the market. Just a symptom: 20 years ago, every artist wanted to go the
Venice Biennale. Today, Venice is full of Chinese artists. This year there was even a
pavilion of the province of Guangdong, but then you discover that it actually belongs
to an investment group. The pavilion website is only in Chinese, because now you
want to go to Venice to raise your value, but you are aiming at Chinese buyers. This change among the buyers has undoubtedly had a lot of influence in the work of
the artists and their evolution, from political criticism and rebelliousness towards a
more traditional work, perhaps more commercial. We must remember that although
there are no specific laws, not everything is allowed to Chinese artists.
Do you get inquiries about Chinese art from individuals or galleries? Does
anybody ask for your knowledge as a collector?
Not really. There has been some movement now with "Pure Views", but in general
people tend to collect what they already know, what they have around. In the choices
of the collector there is always an important part of ego, the fact that you can say "I
own a Picasso or a Miró". Given the choice, here in the West people would buy a Miró
before a work by Zhang Xiaogang. It might seem that the comparison is far‐fetched,
but the truth is that both have the same commercial value.
Lastly, can you tell us anything about the Chinese artists (Zhan Wang, Shen Na
沈娜 , Zhang Xiaogang, among others) who visited Barcelona on the occasion of
the opening of the exhibition? What were they most interested in?
They visited mostly museums, MANAC, Tàpies and Miró Foundations. There was also
time for Gaudí and his Sagrada Familia church, and a bit of tourism and eating a paella,
but the art worlds is what they are most interested in, travelling is an opportunity to
know and visit things.
Zhang Xiaogang and other artists have insisted in highlighting the influence on them
of Catalan artists like Miró, Dalí and Tàpies. Especially the later, some of them met
him in 1995. Today, a lot of artists mention Antonio López among their important
inspirations.