Word: regionalization
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...Throughout Asia's developing nations, once penniless painters are getting used to this most unexpected emotion. The region's contemporary-art market has never been so hot. Last year, a collection of dreamlike portraits and landscapes by China's Zhang Xiaogang raked in just over $24 million - more than British enfant terrible Damien Hirst made in 2006. In March, a sale of modern Indian art in New York City raised a record $15 million, including just under $800,000 for Captives, a stark evocation of desiccated torsos by New Delhi-born Rameshwar Broota. Two months later, an auction in London...
...compelling tale: that of a rising continent intent on recapturing its former glory. The Chinese dragon wakes, mother India rises. Even little tiger Vietnam is finding its roar. Outsiders looking to ride this remarkable wave have invested heavily in prosaic sectors like real estate or manufacturing, but now the region's rich contemporary-art scene is also beckoning. "Wherever the economy booms, art booms," says Ganieve Grewal, the Mumbai-based representative for Christie's, which has seen its annual sales of Indian contemporary art in New York City double between 2003 and last year...
...some ways, given the frothiness of the global art market as a whole, Asia's rise is understandable. Yet the boom in modern Asian art also serves as an important reminder that the region is not just a copier but an innovator as well. Asia's avant-garde artists explore the clash between ancient traditions and pell-mell development, the lure of commercialism, and, most fundamentally, the struggle for individuality on the world's most populous continent. "There's this misconception that art from Asia is static, that it's the same old boring stuff," says Eloisa Haudenschild, an Argentine...
...arbiters of Asian art didn't always reward such experimentalism. In the great art academies of India, China and Vietnam, technical skill and an ability to reference the region's rich cultural heritage outweighed social commentary or renegade brush strokes. For centuries, Chinese students spent their school years laboriously copying the ink landscapes of ancient masters. The same held true in India, where artistic merit often was equated either with an ability to reproduce themes from religious epics or mimic the miniaturist details of the Mughals. In Vietnam, the 20th century's most promising painters attended the École...
...while members of the Indian diaspora snap up artwork with local themes to decorate their overseas homes. Nevertheless, it is foreigners - particularly European, American, Japanese and Singaporean collectors - who are driving the modern Asian art boom. The result has been a massive flight of contemporary art from the region. Exacerbating the trend is a dearth of quality modern-art museums in India, China and Vietnam. In August, the central Chinese city of Dujiangyan announced it was lavishing some of the nation's top contemporary artists with their very own museums, but the ploy likely won't draw more than...