ABOVE: detail from Liu Xiaodong’s Prostitute 2 (2001). Liu’s work is gaining in popularity both inside and outside China. Observers have watched the Chinese art market heat up in the last few years, but skepticism abounds.

The Art Newspaper noted yesterday that there are 45 Chinese artists represented at Art Basel this year, a significant jump. Always keen to follow the money, TAN noted that while the market for Chinese art used to be exclusively the decadent west, there is a domestic boom going on, with Nouveau-Riche Reds snapping up contemporary Chinese art at never-before seen rates. The Party has also apparently jumped on the bandwagon and is boosting contemporary artists, apparently even discussing construction of a permanent pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where Chinese officials attened the official opening last weekend.

The Art Newspaper says that this new trend is not driven by money, per se—although prices for art by the hottest Chinese artists are spiralling up into the ludicrous amounts that are now standard everywhere else in the world—but because it’s another area in which they are expanding their diplomatic and cultural legitimacy. Look for a good anecdote in the middle of the story about Jiang Zemin being humiliated on a trip to France when Jacques Chirac tried to talk to him about paintings and Jiang didn’t have anything to say; the official Chinese stance on painting changed soon after he got back from that trip. The French save the world from barbarity once again.

LINK: The Art Newspaper > Banking on China