Word: zhang
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...purchase of a large painting by Zhang Xiaogang at an Oct. 15 London auction by British collector Charles Saatchi suggests the tide of interest from overseas will continue to rise. Saatchi paid about $1.5 million for one of the artist's Bloodline series. Still, New York?based collector Larry Warsh believes he got a good deal. "Saatchi is coming in late, but he's important because people follow him," says Warsh, publisher of the magazine Museums and an enthusiastic advocate of contemporary Chinese art. "It will soon prove to be a bargain." Indeed, that prediction may already have come true...
...contrast between such sentiments and the attitudes of the current crop of leading artists, like Zhang Xiaogang, Zhu Wei and Fang Lijun, couldn't be starker. Mostly now in their 40s, many of the artists suffered through the tail end of the Cultural Revolution. The cultural flowering that followed in the '80s was another casualty of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Many artists left the country. Now back, they're thrilled at being rewarded instead of hounded for expressing their feelings in their work. Fundamental issues like politics, ideology and spirituality remain important themes. Images of Mao Zedong...
Call it the Year of the Panda. In 2006 a record 31 pandas were born in captivity in China, triple the number in 2000. Zoo Atlanta welcomed a baby panda too: Mei Lan (Chinese for "Atlanta Beauty") was born Sept. 6. "The giant panda's safe," said Zhang Hemin, head of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda...
...Zhang's team plans to raise the captive-bred population from 120 to 300 within 10 years. That would guarantee the species' survival for at least 100 years, increase the number of pandas that can be reintroduced into the wild and provide more specimens for lucrative loans to zoos around the world...
...these love-shy mammals to mate? Mei Lan was a product of artificial insemination. But conservationists are using other methods to encourage natural breeding. Unpopular females have been scented with the urine of popular rivals, so that a male thinks he's mating with a more attractive female. Zhang has shown them videos of pandas breeding in the wild--basically, panda porn. He even gave one male Viagra--which didn't work so well. "We'll never do that again," he said. "The panda was excited for 24 hours...