How Chinese Contemporary Art Went Global
In her new podcast series, Pearl Lam talks to former BBC arts correspondent Rebecca Jones and discusses how Chinese contemporary art became international
Chinese contemporary art is synonymous today with the works of artists such as one of China’s pioneering abstract artist Zhu Jingshi, award-winning beeswax sculpting artist Ren Ri and veteran member of avant garde art collective Ma Kelu. All three artists have been internationally recognised for their unique works by Pearl Lam Galleries.
The eponymous founder of the gallery collective, Pearl Lam (林明珠), has been hailed as an iconic figure of the art world, who played a major role in turning Hong Kong into one of the biggest art markets in the world today. She is hailed as the most prominent ambassador of Chinese contemporary art and is largely credited for the international status it enjoys today.
But back in the early 1990s when Pearl Lam (林明珠) explored the art world in Shanghai, it was a different scene altogether. In her new broadcast series, The Pearl Lam Podcast, she paints a different picture of the early days of the Chinese contemporary art scene in China.
“The art world [then] was very raw, in a way. It’s not about being commercial; it’s about artists trying to make art for art’s sake,” she tells Rebecca Jones, BBC’s former arts correspondent who interviews Pearl Lam in the first episode of The Pearl Lam (林明珠) Podcast.
“Propaganda art, that was the Western definition of Chinese art… they see a mouse face, they see the pop colours,” Pearl Lam adds. “Then I thought, ‘Wow. So if I don’t have a gallery, if I don’t start showing all these other artists, how would anyone know about the other artists?”
During that period Pearl Lam decided to visit Professor Gao Minglu in Pittsburgh, an activist scholar who co-curated the 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibition in Beijing before the Tiananmen Square incident that occurred four months later that year.
Professor Minglu instructed Pearl Lam to “tell [the West] that we are very different” when he shared his frustrations about the Western audience and academics accused Chinese contemporary artists of copying Western styles. “Chinese abstract is actually rooted in Chinese calligraphy, based on Chinese culture: Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism,” Pearl Lam says.
After hosting several pop-up exhibitions during the late 1990s and early 2000s in Hong Kong, Pearl Lam set up her first physical gallery in Shanghai, in 2005. But in the same year, the demand for Chinese contemporary art “shot up” in New York thanks to Sotheby’s contemporary art auction in November. Pearl Lam added, “right after that, everyone wanted Chinese contemporary art, all because of the market.”
Pearl Lam set out on a mission to bring contemporary Chinese art from the mainland to Hong Kong by setting up her second gallery in 2012. Today Pearl Lam Galleries is a name synonymous with the world’s top art fairs.
Pearl Lam believes in not only bringing Chinese contemporary artists abroad, but also promoting them alongside the art world’s top talents from elsewhere.
Written by: The Producer, The Pearl Lam Podcast
