It has been my impression that Chinese art has been in decline for a while but prices are getting bigger even for dubious pieces like these. Two examples are Xu Beihongs SLAVE AND LION and PUT DOWN YOUR WHIP. The first sold for US6.9 million in 2006 and the second sold for US9.2 million in 2007. Xu Beihong is very well known for his ink horse paintings and whose copies appear ad-nauseum everwhere. I do like the horse paintings(last picture) but I can't see any artistic merit in these two oil paintings done in western style.

SLAVE AND LION was painted in the 1920's while he was a student in Germany. To me it looks like he copied the kind of artwork that appeared in weekly magazines or on cheap book covers at the time.

PUT DOWN YOUR WHIP was painted in the 1940's. It depicts a woman begging for mercy from her Japanese oppressors. Based on a street performers paly. Looks no different to thousands of commercial posters and propaganda style art of the period and later.

It is clear these have little artistic merit but are strong statement pieces that appeal to sentimental patriotic and nationalistic feelings. But also perhaps inferior to numerous other works of art of similar themes and genre from less in demand Chinese artists.

Any opinions on these works?



Beihongs[img=http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/9005/xubeihongpferdeo1.jpg]
[img=http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/xubeihongpferdeo1.jpg/1/w366.png]


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I thought Xu Beihong was more famous for his horse - painting..

Indeed he is but it appears his name is now bigger than his famous horses. Seems like anything with his name will sell including these mawkish early works. This is not Chinese art but mundane and substandard western style works from a painter who's niche with his horse paintings.

Hi,
It would be interesting to know who is buying these kinds of works. I also knew of Xu Beihong as a famous painter of horses and am really not familiar at all with his other kinds of work.
The two pictures in Western style really like you say, Changsham, absolute typical examples of their time, 1920s and 1940s, and of no special merit at all. The 'put down your whip' one reminds me totally of Soviet art of this same time. I find the 'slave and lion' one totally uninteresting, like some copy a student might have done just for practice. 'Put down your whip' has more substance to it, to my mind, and I like some socialist-realist style art, but I would agree that it is not a painting with any special merit as such.

I am not any kind of expert about art prices, auctions etc, but I know that in the case of Russian/Soviet art, for example, prices have risen dramatically over the last few years, and this is because there is a new class of wealthy Russians who have no particular artistic education but have money to spend, and they buy works by Russian artists who are famous, but, like the Chinese cases you cite, the works themselves are not always of any great merit and the prices are really extremely high. Often these people are most attracted by the kitsch and patriotic, and push up the prices for these works.

I have heard that the same kind of market has emerged in China, where there is also this new class of wealthy people. I'm sure you probably know much more about this than me. But I would guess that this is nouveaux riches in mainland China buying this stuff and inflating the market, and if the parallel with the Russian case has any validity, the correlation between the prices and the quality of the works is just a reflection of the tastes and financial possibilities of this particular group of investors.

Hi Changsham,

My opinion is that I would never dare to judge any works of a famous artist like Xu Beihong (same for unknown artists though)...
I can give my opinion about the final work, I mean, I can tell if I like it or not, but I would never judge the way it has been done, its style, its subject... On the contrary, I will try to understand why he uses such brushes, colors, style... and what could have given him such idea to paint this subject.

Art is free and this is why it is so vast, various and interesting. I like artists who do not stay in the same style all their life. They are free to EXPLORE any subject, any painting in order to express their creativity. We have discovered some great paintors with different 'periods', different styles of painting. For me, this is one of the way to recognize a great paintor, always looking for new styles, and new subjects... always open-minded.

Liu