Barbara Pollack’s book decoding the Chinese art scene “The Wild, Wild East” has caused some controversy with its recent release––I interviewed her for artforum.com.cn, and the following is her responses. A translated version can be found here, and see the Sinopop review of the book here. While she talks below about she located herself in the “scene,” I remain enamored with the Benson & Hedges.  

中文读者请看这里。。。

“I think that if [this book] starts some people [in China] thinking about what kind of impression they’re making on the West, that’s great, and if it opens some minds in the West to what’s going on here, that’s great. I don’t think you can come away from this book without realizing that one part of this art world is to be able to operate globally. So I hope that the book helps push things in that direction. At least letting people on both sides know what the playing field is. But I didn’t write this to reform the Chinese system, I don’t know if it needs to change at all, it’s functioning for you here.

The one thing I didn’t want to come off as was a know-it-all-New Yorker. What I did was I cast myself as somebody who thought she knew it all, and then got to China and realized she was going to have to learn things that are done very differently. Being open-minded about those things, sometimes surprised, sometimes shocked, but my reactions are part of the story.

I didn’t want to trash the Chinese art scene, there’s a lot I like about it, and I’m very conscious that I’m writing this for Western readers, many of whom have a totally negative impression, so I’m trying to open their minds too.

First of all, I’ve had [Western] people say to me point blank: they can’t believe there’s any good contemporary art in China because of government control here. They have a negative view of China politically, so they feel the art here could not possibly be interesting, that’s where a lot of those people are coming from.

There’s the “Zhang Xiaogang factor”––there’s the people who saw it and collected it, and they are the biggest promoters of it. And then there are people who saw it and hated it, and decided that they don’t like any Chinese contemporary art because of it. And then there is the Yue Minjun factor….

In an American art education the one thing that is absolutely brutally beaten into you is that you have to make unique art works; uniqueness is taught, and in China, that’s not even in the curriculum.

I do think that one big problem in the Chinese contemporary art scene is that auction houses have been allowed to dominate the dialogue. Auction houses dominate the market––that’s what they do all over the world, so I can’t criticize that––but because the museums are so weak here, there’s no counter balancing curatorial voice putting things in perspective.

Another problem is: every critic I spoke to is now an art dealer. So, you can’t make a living here as a critic. I mean, I don’t know if you can make a living in New York as a critic, but here there’s really no such thing as an independent art magazine. Perhaps a few are developing now, but most of the people I know who are writing criticism work in galleries and also write. There’s also a blur between the catalog essay, a review, and a paid advertisement, especially since the magazines often make galleries pay for what’s run about them in the magazine. And so everything becomes an extension of advertising. But what I also noticed is that artists can be quite critical and debate among themselves, although this kind of really targeted criticism never shows up in print.

I got as far as you can get without speaking Chinese. I had a really good interpreter, we worked side by side on every one of my trips to China and I got very used to the way she interpreted. I would watch and pay very close attention to the person speaking, and I think that I actually got more information than somebody living here from a lot of these people. I think they thought because I’m a foreigner, so I’m probably not that smart because I don’t know Chinese, and I think they talked a lot not really thinking that I was going to use all of this stuff. In addition to criticism, I write journalistic stories on the market in New York, so I’m really well trained in asking market-type questions and investigating auction houses. I don’t think there’s many people here who are doing that at all.

Beijing is a new art capital, and the latest statistics read that China is the third largest art market in the world, that includes Hong Kong. But it’s now New York, London, Hong Kong (Hong Kong/Beijing, Beijing provides the galleries and Hong Kong has Sotheby’s and Christies). But I definitely think of Beijing as an art capital, a really interesting one.

Nothing succeeds like success. I think that if Pace finds it can do business here and it will adjust to guanxi, then the West will accept this model.

The Indian artists wish they were Chinese artists. What happened with Chinese artists is so unique because of how fast it happened, and because of how ambitious and confident Chinese artists are. When I go to other places in the world, including Moscow, the artists tell me their problems, and they very much feel there are obstacles and prejudices between them and the American art scene. They feel all of this, and they feel like its really hard to break through. The Chinese artists, even the ones that didn’t speak a word of English were like, “We’re taking over, make space for us.” That confidence really won a lot of people over to them, including me.

I would love to do a book like this on the Middle East, especially with Abu Dhabi gearing up. I don’t know when I’m going, but I’m getting ready. There’s galleries popping up in places like Cairo and Lebanon, or Beirut, and I’m really interested in what’s going on there. But one way in which it’s going to be really different is because in many of those places artists have left their countries en masse, so it will be interesting to meet the artists who have stayed in the Middle East and learn what they’re like. As to whether or not there’s an art scene as richly indigenous as Beijing’s, I don’t know.

What I hope most for the Chinese art scene is that Ai Weiwei will have more influence on artists and that more artists will speak out. I think that is really a necessary part of the dialogue around art here that’s missing, that gives me a lot of hope.

In the West, freedom of expression is the cornerstone of being an artist. So it’s one of the things that brought me to China to begin with, I was curious how people could be artists without freedom of expression. Well, I find that people are expressing themselves a lot here, and certain things are under the radar screen, they don’t get picked up, and other artists have figured out ways of dealing with all sorts of issues without being pointedly political. I also definitely discovered that these artists are not repressed, they are exuberant, outspoken, and very forthcoming with me when we’re talking. They don’t seem like unhappy, oppressed people. Although, I think that one of the reasons that so much of the art world is skewed towards economic success is a result of the lack of freedom of expression. People don’t really see that there are other reasons to make art other than to be successful.

I think that censorship does have a great effect on the scene here. It keeps it from being as truly dynamic as it could be.

Barbara is naive about China. Just visiting here many times and interviewing people in the art world through an interpreter could only get her so far. You have to live here full-time for years to understand the depth of materialism, dishonesty, and opportunism. The lack of an ethical core and lack of independent thinking are the key issues here, plagues on the society, and the art is catering to those traits rather than speaking out against them. Products of an education system that still focuses on rote-learning, rather than humanistic subjects, much less modern art history, the nouveau-riche who are buying the wildly overpriced art could care less about truth, self-expression, and the human condition–such concerns are simply not part of this highly practical cutlure. They have made their money in any way they can, often unethically. They are buying this art to gain face, for the same reasons they buy Mercedes. I would say, despite her best efforts, Ms. Pollack was snowed. I would also recommend she herself take a step back and stop focusing on the material side of the art world, the jet-setter b.s. part of it, and try to remember what got her interested in the actual art in the first place.