For decades critics have written disapprovingly about the relationship between the market and art. In the 1970s proponents of institutional critique wrote in Artforum about the degrading effects of money on art, and in the 1980s Robert Hughes (author of Shock of the New and director of The Mona Lisa Curse) compared the

01/07 deleterious effect of the market on art to that of strip-mining on nature.1đMore recently, Hal Foster has disparaged the work of some of the markets hottest art stars – Takashi Murakami, Damien Hirst, and Jeff Koons – declaring that their pop concoctions lack tension, critical distance, and irony, offering little more than “giddy delight, weary despair, or a manic- Jane DeBevoise depressive cocktail of the two.”2 And Walter Robinson has spoken about the ability of the market to act as a kind of necromancer, Big Business, reanimating mid-century styles of abstract for the purposes of flipping canvas like Selling real estate – a phenomenon he calls “zombie formalism.”3 Shrimps: The đđđđđđđđđđMoralistic attacks against the degrading impact of the market on art are not unique to US- based critics. Soon after the end of the Cultural Market as Revolution, when few people think China had any art market at all, plainly worded attacks on Imaginary in commercialism appeared regularly in the nationally circulated art press. As early as 1979, Jiang Feng, the chair of the Chinese Artists Post-Mao China Association, worried in writing that ink painters were churning out inferior works in pursuit of material gain.đ4đIn 1983, the conservative critic Hai Yuan wrote that “owing to the opportunity for high profit margins, many painters working in oil or other mediums have switched to ink painting.” And, what was worse, to maximize their gain, these artists “sought to boost their productivity by acting like walking photocopy machines.”5 In the 1990s supporters of experimental oil painting also came under fire. After visiting the 1992 Guangzhou Biennial Art Fair, avant-garde art critic Li Xianting was reportedly so overcome by the potential dangers of commercialism that he wept.6đOther visitors were so upset by the contaminating effect of commerce that they sprayed the exhibition hall with Lysol to extinguish its stench. And a few months later, still others organized a mock funeral to mourn the death of artists that had succumbed to the fatal temptations of market exchange.

e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 1 — m c h 2 0 6 đ J D B v i s B i g u s n e , S l h r m p : T M a k t I y P o - C đđđđđđđđđđBut for critics in China, unlike those in the West, the foreign identity of many of the buyers of contemporary art added to the sting, and for decades, nationalism, even xenophobia have inflected the debate. When Zhu Qi complained in 1999 that Westerners do not understand and suggested that artists who pander to their tastes not only risk compromising their personal integrity but also their creative ability,

03.23.16 / 16:54:03 EDT many critics in the 1980s would have agreed, as đđđđđđđđđđBut starting in the late 1970s, China they still might agree today.7 embarked on a series of far-reaching economic đđđđđđđđđđWhile the concerns of these important reforms. Beginning in the agricultural sector, critics are certainly valid, it is also possible to these reforms were aimed at re-igniting a stalled argue the opposite: that in the context of China economy and were defined by the appearance of in the 1980s, the liberalization of the economy a market, first in the countryside and soon after and the introduction of markets liberated artists in towns and cities, where farmers and villagers from the strictures of the state, and created an 02/07 alike sold produce and handmade products for alternative space, incipient yet real, unstable yet prices determined by supply and demand, rather protean, from which emerged artistic than state policy. By the mid-1980s these experiments of great imagination and force. economic directives had expanded to include Among the artists who recognized the some of the large state-owned enterprises, from empowering potential of the market and its media concerns to manufacturers, who were pitfalls was Wu Shanzhuan whose early work encouraged to become financially accountable crystallizes the process I am trying to describe. and to make a profit. đđđđđđđđđđThe state agencies in charge of cultural 1. Big Business programs followed suit, organizing exhibitions at For the three decades between 1949 – when Mao first of ink painting and later oil painting that Zedong declared the establishment of the were sent abroad, to Japan and the West, to People’s Republic of China – and 1979, when develop diplomatic ties and to generate business Deng Xiaoping and his allies in the government opportunities. In an effort to accumulate foreign ousted the ultraleft Gang of Four and began currency, shops selling to an increasing reforming the economy – the dominant and influx of tourists proliferated all over China. Even singular system of support and control of the National Gallery expanded its retail Chinese art was the state. Artists were not only initiatives, rented gallery space, and hosted educated and employed by the state, in state- sales exhibitions, like the series organized controlled schools, but they lived in state-owned between 1986 and 1989 by the housing and produced work in state-owned International Art Palace, a partnership between studios with allocated state-owned art supplies; the Chinese government and a Japanese real work which was then displayed at state- estate developer. Headed by Liu Xun, a senior organized exhibitions that took place in state- official of the Chinese Artists Association, the Art controlled venues. If they were lucky, their work Palace held fifteen sales exhibitions at the might garner state-organized awards and be National Gallery, until establishing its own published in the state-controlled media.8 gallery at the Holiday Inn Crown Plaza in

Two views of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1980, now the China Academy of Art. Courtesy of the artist and the China Academy of Art.

03.23.16 / 16:54:03 EDT Wangfujing in 1991. The pressure to generate of a million visitors in eighteen days.”11đTaking income became so great that the National advantage of its immense popularity, the cost of Gallery started rotating their exhibitions with admission was increased ten times, from the almost unprecedented frequency. By 1988, it was usual two mao to two yuan, and fully illustrated presenting two-hundred shows a year, of which catalogues were sold (and sold out) for the then- 95 percent lasted less than two weeks and many exorbitant price of forty-five yuan.12 were only open for a few days.9đThe museum had đđđđđđđđđđBut it wasn’t just fee-hungry museum begun to resemble a commercial gallery, and the 03/07 administrators and organizers with overtly largest percentage of work displayed in these commercial goals who saw the possibilities short-term shows was ink painting. Ink painting inherent in the newly emerging space between was the most commercially viable form of art at the state and the market. Champions of the time, and, despite the hype around the experimentalism saw it, too. In 1985, after three handful of oil paintings that achieve six or seven years of effort, Robert Rauschenberg succeeded figure prices, ink painting still accounts for the in procuring gallery space at the National Gallery largest segment of the domestic Chinese art from the Chinese International Exhibition market today.10 Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Culture, to đđđđđđđđđđAn exception to this preference for ink was produce an installment of the Rauschenberg the “Nude Oil Painting Exhibition,” one of the Overseas Culture Interchange. Gao Minglu, the most popular and profitable shows in the history indefatigable advocate of the Chinese avant- of the National Gallery, which ran for a mere garde, was one of the purported 300,000 people eighteen days from December 22, 1988 to who came to see Rauschenberg’s show.13đHe January 8, 1989. “The nude art show,” writes would go on to rent the National Gallery himself Richard Kraus writes in The Party and the Arty in after raising funds from several sponsors, China, “created a sensation even before it was including a fast food entrepreneur named Song opened. As early as June, forty-seven Chinese Wei, in order to present the now infamous newspapers and seven foreign news services “China/Avant-Garde Exhibition” in 1989.14đAnd it carried reports on the coming show. The was here that the market imaginary for Chinese unprecedented exhibit attracted about a quarter contemporary artists finally stepped out onto

Cover of Xiandai youhua: Beijing guoji yiyuan diyijie youhuazhan, the catalogue for the First Beijing International Art Palace Oil Painting Exhibition (1986). Cover image: Wang Yidong.

03.23.16 / 16:54:03 EDT center stage. National Gallery of Art. Price: 9.5 yuan per catty. Hurry while supplies last.16 2. Selling Shrimps “What mattered that day was not the art,” On the day of the opening, visitors to the remembers the artist Zhang Peili, “or the show museum crowded around Wu’s makeshift market itself” – which anyway “looked more like a stall to buy the frozen blocks of shrimps. farmer’s market” than a typical art exhibition. Business was brisk, and Liu Kaiqu, the director

“Everyone knew that they were making history. 04/07 of the National Gallery, was one of Wu’s first We were totally invested in our roles as actors on customers.17đHowever, the exhibition had only a stage where anybody could suddenly become a been open for half an hour when two plainclothes star.”15 One of the stars of this grand art bazaar policemen ordered Wu to stop and took him was Wu Shanzhuan, who brought thirty away. A little while later, the artist returned to kilograms of raw shrimp from his hometown of the exhibition hall to write on his chalkboard: Zhoushan (Shanghai) to the National Gallery. “temporarily closed for stocktaking.”18 There he set up shop by erecting a makeshift đđđđđđđđđđWu Shanzhuan’s deceptively sign board, on which he wrote the following straightforward performance has been message: interpreted in a number of ways. Gao Minglu wrote that Wu’s actions were a “rebellion against Dear Customers: the art museum and art critics.”19 Some of Wu’s own writings support this interpretation:

As our entire nation celebrates the Year of Selling shrimps in the National [Art] Gallery the Snake, in order to enrich the spiritual is a protest against the court that judges and material life of the people of our artworks: the art museum itself. The nation’s capital, I have brought from my authority of the art museum subjects art – hometown of Zhoushan the highest-quality an “innocent lamb” – to a trial conducted export shrimp (to be sold to the domestic according to a quasi-legal process, as well market). Venue of display and sale: as subjecting artists to the process of

Page two of Zhongguo meishubao no. 11 (1989), with an article by Wu Shanzhuan and an image of Liu Kaiqu, director of NAMOC, buying shrimps from Wu’s market stall. Wu Shanzhuan archive at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. Courtesy of the artist.

03.23.16 / 16:54:03 EDT testifying as eye witnesses, resulting in a “that behind the museum and behind even big waste of good space. business, lay the iron hand of the state.”24đGeremie Barmé, on the other hand, has noted that Wu’s conflation of the museum with Selling shrimps is also a protest against art the marketplace revealed that the National critics, as their dominance of the critique of Gallery, which, he said, was making its halls art will end in the tragedy of turning art “available to virtually any self-styled avant-garde

from nothing into everything, and turning 05/07 who can afford the rental fee,” was not so much artists into salesmen who peddle the controlled by socialist dogma as it was by the “goods” they produce, resulting in a waste dollar bill.25đWu’s writings, always arcane, could of good money (referring to the commission support this interpretation as well: fees paid to these theorists).20 On the morning of February 4, 1989, the art Dissatisfaction with state-controlled institutions museum became every bit the black market of art was widespread at the time, and another that it was when the museum was built, artist to voice his disdain was Huang Yongping, where the theories produced there could be who conducted a series of provocative resold in the secondary market. performances, including the display of junk inside a museum and the incineration of artworks outside of it.21 In a more muted yet With big business, you have something to equally pointed work, Huang extended his sell but you cannot just go out and sell it: assault on the art institution by submitting a you want to buy something but you cannot proposal to the “China/Avant-GardeExhibition” in just go out and buy it. There is always this which he planned to attach up to four thousand man in the middle toting a black briefcase meters of rope to sixty locations on the façade of and controlling our myth-making the National Gallery, in order to pull the building traditions.26 away from its site.22đBy trapping it like a whale in a large fishing net, Huang sought to subdue the Wu would strenuously resist any attempt to put behemoth, dislodging the museum from its too fine a point on his comments. He’s more position of authority, and exposing not only the philosopher than political economist, and would depth of its structural supports but also its probably not want his words to be attached to a vulnerability. specific current event or even historical moment. đđđđđđđđđđOne of Geng Jianyi’s submissions to the Still, Wu’s equation between the ecology of the “China/Avant-GardeExhibition” targeted the art system and big business was prescient. Early bureaucratic tendency of many of the on Wu identified 1987 as the year that the participants, including the aspiring avant-garde Chinese masses, including the intellectual class organizers. Prompted by the blizzard of official- of which artists were a part, accepted business looking notices and forms issued by Gao Minglu as integral to their new way of life. And in 1988, and his organizational team, Geng disseminated at an important art world conference, he his own mock registration form which he asked declared, “Although some Chinese intellectuals the unwitting recipients to fill out. These tried to escape from this commercialism, da deceptively official but ultimately useless forms shengyi (big business) has become an affair of all not only exposed the eager willingness of the Chinese citizens.”27đThe Shanghai artist Yu organizers to adapt to official protocols, but also Youhan must have noticed a similar tendency reflected the conformist impulses of aspiring when also in 1988 he painted a set of pop- artists equally eager to comply with any inspired renminbi. authority in hopes of gaining acceptance. Huang Yongping, however, saw through the ruse, as did Wu Shanzhuan, who responded with tongue in cheek. Many others, however, answered Geng’s forms in earnest.23

đđđđđđđđđđArt-institutional critique was perhaps a e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 1 — m c h 2 0 6 đ J D B v i s B i g u s n e , S l h r m p : T M a k t I y P o - C common lens through which many local Chinese art critics viewed the work of the avant-garde, and Wu’s work in particular, but other critics (often foreign) focused on its political and economic context. Norman Bryson, for example, writing in a later moment, saw Wu’s performance as a rebellion against the state: “Selling Shrimps was all about restriction,” he wrote, revealing

03.23.16 / 16:54:03 EDT Jane DeBevoise is Chair of the Board of Directors of đđđđđđ1 Chinese domestic fine art Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong and New York. For Robert Hughes’s famous auction market, with oil painting quote (“What strip mining is to and contemporary art Previously DeBevoise was Deputy Director of the nature the art market has representing 16 percent. Guggenheim Museum, where, in 1996, she first joined become to culture”), see as Project Director of “China: 5000 Years, a large-scale http://www.theguardian.com/b đđđđđđ11 exhibition of traditional and modern Chinese art,” ooks/2012/aug/07/robert-hugh Richard Curt Kraus, The Party es-quotes-best and the Arty in China (Boulder, which was presented in 1998 at the Guggenheim New CO: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), York and Bilbao. DeBevoise holds a BA from Tufts đđđđđđ2 80. University, an MA from the University of California, Hal Foster, “The Medium is the 06/07 Market,” London Review of đđđđđđ12 Berkeley, and a PhD from The University of Hong Kong, Books, October 9, 2008 Forty-five yuan was equivalent all in art history. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n19 at the time to approx.đone /hal-foster/the-medium-is-th e- month’s salary. market đđđđđđ13 đđđđđđ3 See Rauschenberg Foundation Walter Robinson, “Flipping and website the Rise of Zombie Formalism,” http://www.rauschenbergfound Artspace, April 3, 2014 ation.org/art/art-in-context /roci http://www.artspace.com/maga zine/contributors/see_here/t đđđđđđ14 he_rise_of_zombie_formalism- The rental cost, including 52184 utilities, was about 50,000 RMB. To close the deficit in his original đđđđđđ4 150,000 RMB budget, Gao’s Jiang Feng, “Guanyu financing strategy included Zhongguohua wenti de selling artwork in the show. But yifengxin” [A letter about the ultimately this plan failed, problem of Chinese painting], leaving him with a large unpaid Meishu 12 (1979): 10–11. debt. Gao Minglu, interview by author, New York, August 11, đđđđđđ5 2004; Kong Chang’an, interview Hai Yuan, “Jingti yishu by author, Los Angeles, August shangpinghua de buzheng 20, 2005; Gao Minglu, Total zhifeng” [Watch out for an Modernity and the Avant-Garde incorrect tendency toward in Twentieth Century Chinese Art commercialization in the arts], đ(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Meishu no. 1 (1983): 42. Hai Yuan 2011), 152–54; and for a price is probably a pen name and may list of works in the be short for Qian Haiyuan. “China/Avant-Garde Exhibition,” see Tokyo Gallery archive at Asia đđđđđđ6 Art Archive, Hong Kong. Zhongguo: Bajiuhou- yishuđ[China: Post-’89 art], ed. đđđđđđ15 Wang Lin (Hong Kong: Yishu Francesca Dal Lago, “The Avant- chaoliu zazhishe, 1997), 92–93. Garde Has Its Moment of Glory,” Time, September 27, 1999, 98. đđđđđđ7 Zhu Qi, “Do Westerners Really đđđđđđ16 Understand Chinese Avant Cited in Norman Bryson, Garde Art?,” in Chinese Art at the “Something to Do with End of the Millennium:đChinese- Freedom,” in Wu Shanzhuan: Red art.com 1998–1999, ed. John Humour International, eds. Clark (Hong Kong: New Art Susan Acret and Lau Kin Wah Media Limited, 2000), 55–60. Jaspar (Hong Kong: Asia Art Archive, 2005), 9. đđđđđđ8 đThe Gang of Four is described as đđđđđđ17 “ultraleftist” because that is Wu Shanzhuan, interview by how the Chinese would have author, Hong Kong, February 13, described the extreme 2004. conservatism and doctrinaire Maoism of this group. In đđđđđđ18 contrast, many of the leadership Wu Shanzhuan, “Guanyu figures who advocated for a ‘dashengyi’” [On “big business”], more liberal – meaning more Zhongguo meishubao 11 (1989): open – social, political, and 2. See translation in Acret and cultural space in the 1980s Lau, Wu Shanzhuan, Artists’ would have been described as Writings/14. “right-leaning.” đđđđđđ19 đđđđđđ9 Gao Minglu, “Wu Shanzhuan’s Zhongguo meishuguan [NAMOC], Red Humour International Zhongguo meishu nianjian, Series,” in Acret and Lau, Wu 1949–1989 [Annual of Chinese Shanzhuan, 63. art, 1949–1989] (Nanning:

e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 1 — m c h 2 0 6 đ J D B v i s B i g u s n e , S l h r m p : T M a k t I y P o - C Guangxi meishu chubanshe, đđđđđđ20 1993), 1058–68. The shortest Wu Shanzhuan, “Guanyu exhibition during this time ‘dashengyi,’” 2. period lasted only two days. See ibid., 1068. đđđđđđ21 See Fei Dawei, “Two-Minute đđđđđđ10 Washing Cycle,” in House of The Art Market in 2014, 25–32 Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping http://imgpublic.artprice.co Retrospective, eds. Philippe m/pdf/rama2014_en.pdf. Vergne and Doryun Chong According to this report, ink (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, painting and calligraphy 2005), 9; and Gao Minglu, “The represent 84 percent of the ‘85 Movement,” ibid., 160, in

03.23.16 / 16:54:03 EDT which he cites an unpublished “Debt: Wu was selling shrimps at essay by Huang that states, the National Gallery [NAMOC] in “Regardless of their market the name of art. As an artist he price, to burn artworks is a is in debt to the shrimp seller at proper way to keep their large.” substantial value.” This incineration took place on đđđđđđ31 November 23, 1986 outside an Wu Shanzhuan, interview by art museum in the southern author, Hong Kong, July 5, 2005. Chinese city of Xiamen. đđđđđđ32

đđđđđđ22 Bryson, “Something to Do with 07/07 See Vergne and Chong, House of Freedom,” 9. In his discussion of Oracles, 23. the nature of the Chinese avant- garde, Bryson suggested that đđđđđđ23 the totalitarian state voluntarily Geng Jianyi, interview by author, created quasi-independent Hangzhou, July 13, 2006, and areas, such as Special Economic confirmed by Wu Shanzhuan. Zones and “zones of art,” in See also Vergne and Chong, which, by implication, emerging House of Oracles, 21. The businessmen and artists were questions on these forms able to work. started conventionally enough, asking for names, birthdates, đđđđđđ33 and employment status, but Wu Shanzhuan, interview by gradually evolved towards an author, Hong Kong, December unusual curiosity, to include 15, 2003. questions about favorite plants, animals, and people, attitudes đđđđđđ34 towards work, ideological đIn the 1980s these so-called tendencies, and lifestyle. avant-gardists were not political dissidents advocating the đđđđđđ24 overthrow of the Communist Bryson, “Something to Do with Party – an interpretation that Freedom,” 9–10. has been favored by some Western writers. This đđđđđđ25 interpretation appears Geremie R. Barmé, “Arrière- somewhat self-serving, Pensée on an Avant-Garde: The projecting a Cold War Stars in Retrospect,” in Chang perspective and a certain Tzong-zung, Michael Sullivan, American triumphalism. If Huang Rui, Yan Li, Ma Desheng, anything, these artists were Ahcheng Zhong, Wang Keping, clamoring for admission to the Chen Yingde, Geremie Barme, “center,” hence the great and Li Xianting, The Stars: Ten excitement around exhibiting Years, 79–82 (Hong Kong: Hanart inside the National Gallery, the 2, 1989), 82. ultimate Socialist Art Palace.

đđđđđđ26 đđđđđđ35 Wu Shanzhuan, “Guanyu đThe Chinese Communist Party ‘dashengyi,’” 2. See also Acret (CCP), which is the sole party in and Lau, Wu Shanzhuan, Artists’ China and defines the political Writings/14. establishment, has a left wing and right wing, and many đđđđđđ27 factions in between. The right Wu Shanzhuan cited in Gao wing, which held sway during Minglu, “Wu Shanzhuan’s Red the 1980s, was more liberal, and Humour International Series,” tolerated (if not advocated) 63. debate in a more open sociopolitical space. The left đđđđđđ28 wing is and was more Wu Shanzhuan, interviews by conservative. The left wing won author, Hong Kong, December the internal CCP ideological 15, 2003, and Nanjing, June 12, struggle that was waged during 2005. In the 1980s, after the 1980s, and after Tiananmen graduating from the Hangzhou- the relatively open sociopolitical based Zhejiang Academy of Fine space that had emerged at that Arts (now named alternatively time was closed, market reforms the China National Academy of were accelerated, and economic Art or the China Academy of Art), growth became the singular goal Wu returned to his hometown of at the expense of political Zhoushan (located on an island plurality. The Faustian bargain not far from Shanghai) and was was struck, and making money assigned to and worked at a became the new ideology. This a small local state-run basic sense of a story that is, of organization called the Institute course, much more complicated. for Mass Culture, from which he received a modest salary and đđđđđđ36

other benefits. Since the 1990s đNicholas Jose, “Notes from e - f l u x j o r n a # 7 1 — m c h 2 0 6 đ J D B v i s B i g u s n e , S l h r m p : T M a k t I y P o - C Wu has lived between China, Underground, Beijing Art, Germany, and Iceland. 1985–89,”đOrientations, July 1992, 8. đđđđđđ29 Wu Shanzhuan, interview by đđđđđđ37 author, Hong Kong, February 13, Martina Köppel-Yang, “The 2004. Surplus Value of Accumulation: Some Thoughts,” Yishu: Journal đđđđđđ30 of Contemporary Chinese Art, Wu Shanzhuan, “Alphabetical December 2007, 18. Aphorisms,” unpublished booklet. The “D” entry reads,

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