Prior to the 1980s, few people in New York were aware of what was happening in the Chinese art world. Some may have heard of the Stars Group (1979–1984), but most did not know the names of any Chinese artists. At that time, unlike the established European artists who dominated the market, Chinese artists had no place in the global contemporary art world.
In this article, Ethan Cohen, an American collector and art dealer based in New York City who specializes in contemporary Chinese art and contemporary African art, joined us to recap the Chinese art scene in USA over the last four decades.
During his first visit to Beijing in 1979, Ethan Cohen was impressed by the flourishing art scene that he found. Cohen’s mother, Joan Cohen, became the first American scholar to teach contemporary art in China.
Cohen told us, “Her lectures showcased works by many renowned artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Yves Klein, Jasper Johns, and George Segal.” That was the first time Beijing artists and students had seen their paintings. The hall at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (Central CAFA) was crammed with more than 500 attendants. People were very excited.
▲Ethan Cohen, Joan Cohen, Li Keran and Li’s family at Li Keran’s Home in the early 1980s. Photo Courtesy Asia Art Archive.
Shortly after following his mother to China, Cohen got to know some Chinese artists, and it became clear to him that he wanted to maintain close contact with the Chinese art circle. In 1984, during his fourth year at Harvard University, Cohen invited Yuan Yunsheng (袁运生) to his college in an attempt to initiate a residency program, as well as for a solo exhibition, held at Adam House. This collaboration culminated in the first large-scale exhibition that Cohen curated, as well as becoming his graduation work.
“I knew that there were talented artists in China, such as Qiu Deshu (仇德树), Ma Desheng (马德升), and Yuan Yunsheng. However, the world did not. Therefore, I took up the flag to try to promote Chinese contemporary art.” said Cohen.
During that time, Cohen visited many art dealers and galleries in New York, among them, one of the most influential, the Pierre Matisse Gallery, located in the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street. Matisse, then in his seventies, had presented many renowned artists, including Chinese–French painter Zao Wou-Ki (赵无极). Declining to represent these younger artists, Matisse nevertheless encouraged Cohen to continue in his own endeavours to promote this new generation of Chinese artists. Additionally, Cohen also talked to a promising young art dealer about his passion but failed to convince him.
Frustrating as it was, Cohen continued his work amid mounting pressure. He not only understood Chinese art and its dilemmas, but also knew that promoting it is necessarily disruptive. “It’s difficult, of course. But I knew Chinese art has its own voice.”
▲Ethan Cohen and Wang Keping (王克平) in Wang’s student flat in Beijing in the early 1980s. Photo Courtesy Asia Art Archive.
Cohen recalled how, one day walking on Green Street in the SoHo, New York with Ma Desheng and Yan Lei (颜磊), they found a rental sign in front of second-floor apartment. Cohen said to his friends, “Let’s go inside and find out what the rent is.” They told them it was $1,200 per month.
With a generous salary as head designer at Diane Von Furstenberg fashion house, Cohen was able to afford the rent and began to build a sustainable business as Art Waves/Ethan Cohen Gallery. Throughout the autumn of 1987, the money earned from Furstenberg was used to cover the galleries costs and allowed Cohen, and his Chinese friends, to work in the gallery in the evenings and weekends. It was the first gallery in New York to represent Chinese contemporary artists regularly.
“Before the internet, art critics, collectors, and museum directors would frequently use the word ‘derivative’ to describe Chinese art but they knew almost nothing about Chinese art. They said, ‘this looks like a Picasso, and that looks like a Rauschenberg’ but, in fact, they lacked both knowledge and reference of eastern culture.” Therefore, according to Cohen, altering the perceptions of collectors would require a great deal of work and meant providing people with a greater education about Chinese culture and history.
In the late 1980s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic swept through New York City, alarming the nascent Chinese art community. Against this background, Art Waves organized the first solo exhibition by Ai Weiwei “Old Shoes, Safe Sex”, which addressed the epidemic, and brought the artist’s significance into the fold. Meanwhile, the gallery also concentrated on other Chinese talents, such as Yunsheng Yuan and Qiu Deshu, bringing them to the attention of many important dealers.
Still, most of the Chinese artists were considered affordable, with many of their works priced between $1000 and $3000.
Qiu Deshu
Cosmos, 1981
Ink on paper, set of 4 panels, framed
44 1/2 × 100 in
113 × 254 cm
In the late 1980s, the Chinese art circle was still quite small in New York City. They lived in the Lower East Side and worked late at night until 3 a.m., while some painted portraits on the streets of New York to stay afloat.
“You couldn’t get through to them before noon, as they hadn’t woken up yet…”
“(At the time,) people thought works by Qin Feng (秦风) and Lan Zhenghui (蓝正辉) were derivative (of American abstract expressionism). Nonetheless, we knew that was not true. Because Chinese artists were putting their unique perspective into these modes of expression. For instance, some ink paintings might be reminiscent of Klein’s, but in fact they are totally different. It celebrates two thousand years of Chinese ink, calligraphic, and landscape traditions that has been digested by this new generation, who are now looking at the West. Chinese ink painters opened a whole new chapter in Abstract Expressionism.
“As to artists who created conceptual works, such as Chen Zhen (陈箴), Huang Yongping (黄永砯), Gu Dexin (顾德新), Xu Bing (徐冰), and Cai Guoqiang (蔡国强), while retaining links to Marcel Duchamp’s style, they also offered some insight into how Chinese art was innovating in a unique way, and how conceptual art could be expressed.”
Cohen also announced an initiative called “Survival”, that aimed to invite Chinese artists to paint visitors’ portraits. The price was often as low as $25 each.
“My intention was to make the people of New York aware of the difficulties and obstacles that artists of the Chinese scene in America faced.”
Ai Weiwei
Last Cigarette of the Smoking Generation, 1988
5 1/2 × 5 1/2 in
14 × 14 cm
“Things were changing very quickly in the 1990s.”
With the rise of the internet and changes in global art marketing, Chinese artists were becoming more sophisticated, integrating more artistic practices from across the globe. For instance, according to the art dealer, Gu Wenda (谷文达) was inspired by a Bulgarian artist whose works were made of fabric. In the meantime, Chinese art was gaining significant attention in global markets.
In 1989, Centre Pompidou organized “Les Magiciens de la Terre,” an important exhibition that presented many Chinese artists, including Huang Yong Ping, Gu Dexin, and Yang Jiecang (杨诘苍). Gao Minglu (高明潞), the chair of the Department of Art History at the University of Pittsburgh, organized another notable show at the Asia Society and the P.S.1 Centre; “Inside Out: New Art from China,” which marked a new breakthrough for Chinese contemporary art.
▲View of a performance by Zhan Huang in the courtyard of P.S.1 during the exhibition, “Inside Out: New Chinese Art”. Photo Courtesy of MoMA.
After that, some Chinese stars like Wang Guangyi (王广义), Zheng Huan (张洹), Zhang Xiaogang (张晓刚), Huang Yan (黄岩), Yue Minjun (岳敏君), and Fang Lijun (方力钧) started to catch wider international attention .
Chinese art also experienced what Cohen called “art globalism”.
“Can you call art by Chinese artists just ‘Chinese art’? The Chinese artist Wu Shanzhuan (吴山专) was married to an Icelandic female artist. They collaborated to make art together. So, you really couldn’t just call their art ‘Chinese art’. It was art made by artists who happen to be coming from China. There is an onset of global art.”
In a significant shift, the Chinese economy boomed at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which also resulted in more Chinese art reaching Western markets and becoming a rising trend. In this environment, any Chinese art became a sensation.
“In 2003, we started to present Chinese contemporary art at the SCOPE Art Show in Miami. I convinced the American and European buyers that Chinese art was worthy of being in their collections.” For the dealer, it was part of a large effort to shore up support for Chinese art going forward.
“In 2005 Chinese art was hot… One of the developers of Miami Design District, Craig Robins, offered us a 20,000-square-foot space to curate a large exhibition, ‘Chinese Art Invasion’. The work was closely related to the development of Chinese avant-garde art over the last 25 years.”
▲Ai Weiwei and Ethan Cohen
Straight after that, on March 31, 2006, Sotheby’s presented its first New York solo show of Chinese contemporary artworks. Collectors jostled for the privilege of spending money on works by Chinese artists.
Despite the economic crisis of 2008, Chinese art still played a key role in the global art market. Art collectors were hungry for Chinese art during that period, with demand being thousands of times as much as it was in the 1980s. As a young art dealer specialising in work from China, Cohen suffered little in the economic distress.
“It became much easier for Chinese artists to make a living in the art world, therefore, more and more Chinese artists were entering art schools… That was an uplifting moment filled with challenges.”
LAN ZHENGHUI: RE-THINK
FOCUS | ART CHINA X SCOPE Miami Beach
December 3 – December 9, 2019
However, in recent years, some see it as a bubble that occurred in the art market, resulting in sharp declines in the prices of the big-ticket works, as well as gallery closures. The US–China trade war is also having an impact throughout the art market.
Like Mrs. Cohen, Ethan Cohen is a cultural ambassador between China and the United States. He recently organized the show FOCUS | Art China in Miami, curating the solo exhibition “Re-think” by Lan Zhenghui, recontextualizing the discourse of Chinese ink painting.
“There is no dispute that ink painting is very Chinese, however the discourse contains a wealth of cultural understanding. China and the United States can still share their love of the arts, despite their economic disagreements.” said Cohen.
▲Installation view of a group exhibition “Fuck Off Generation: Chinese Art in The Post-Mao Era Part II”, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, Photo Courtesy Ethan Cohen Fine Arts.
In recent years, with the rise of a new generation of artists, dealers, and curators, Cohen found that some graduates’ works were selling for up to $100,000. This certainly raises a question from the public: Are they really worth it?
“On a global scale, the price of artwork depends on its quality, originality and market demand. I think works priced between $2,000 and $10,000 is a good start for graduates.”
“After the financial crisis of 2008, art market prices fell around the world, and the market for Chinese contemporary art was no exception, but now it has gone up again. I believe new challenges can inspire better work, the challenge for a gallery is to offer a benign environment for art creation and find new audiences.” according to Cohen.
Today, the art dealer has expanded his Art Waves/Ethan Cohen Gallery from a rented SoHo attic to the famed international art center known as Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, where he continued to break boundaries and tap new potentials.
“Every gallery has its own philosophy and its own approach.” But Cohen points out that it is important to create new context for the market, and to continue to open dialogue. He continues to connect with fresh talent – artists who can compete on a global scale, and who have something new to say - regardless of the type of art they are producing.
“I’m looking for talent which contributes something to the art world. They could be self-taught artists. They could be quite different from tradition… As long as they can understand who they are as an artist. As long as they have a unique voice, a powerful voice.
“Being an artist or an art dealer isn’t easy. But the number one thing is that you love what you do.”