L.A. curator immerses himself in Chinese art — in China

LOS ANGELES — Let others talk about the lure of art from China. James Elaine did something about it. He moved there.

"China is here to stay," says Elaine, an artist and curator who has organized edgy exhibitions and introduced emerging figures at Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles, for the past decade. "The culture, the art world, it's not a fad of the West that's going to fade away. China is a power."

With the help of a grant from the Asian Cultural Council — and the windfall of the 2008 Ordway Prize, a $100,000 award for midcareer artists, curators and art writers — he has traded his Hammer "curator" title for "adjunct curator" and taken himself to China, where he plans to stay two years.

The goal is to learn more about art being made throughout the vast country and explore possibilities of exhibitions and exchange programs for the museum and the university. He spends about half his time working for the Hammer, the rest pursuing independent projects.

"I want to be a bridge," Elaine says. "I think there are a lot of opportunities to collaborate and partner for a long time ahead."

His adventure is a bold move, for him and the university, but it reflects an escalating interest in Chinese contemporary art that goes well beyond Beijing Olympics fever.

At the moment, Elaine is back in Los Angeles for his first Chinese show, an installation by Sun Xun that's part of the Hammer Projects series and runs through Oct 12.

Inspired by a 1914 bilingual book, "The New China," Sun — a 28-year-old artist who lives in Hangzhou and founded an animation studio in 2006 — has explored changing notions of China's evolution in wall paintings and an animated film.

"I do see in this new generation, a new kind of art being made," Elaine says. "Maybe not new to the world, but certainly new to China. The first wave was political pop, more direct and obvious work. I'm seeing a much more introspective, emotional, psychological, sexual type of work, people investigating themselves and their identity. Sun Xun is asking identity questions about his country, where it came from, where it's going and the world's perceptions."

From East to West

This season, Chinese art seems to be everywhere. A snapshot of the global art calendar is filled with Chinese offerings:

In Paris, the big summer show at the Musee Maillol (www.museemaillol.com), featuring works by 35 artists, has an Olympics theme, "China Gold."

This fall's attraction at the Asia Society (www.asiasociety.org) in New York is "Art and China's Revolution."

In London, the Saatchi Gallery (www.rizzoliusa.com) is touting its Chinese collection with a profusely illustrated book, "The Revolution Continues: New Art From China."

California is fertile territory for young artists from China.

In Los Angeles, in addition to the Hammer show, three galleries (DNJ Gallery, DF2 and Morono Kiang Gallery) are showing photography and paintings from China.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (www.sfmoma.org) recently opened "Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art From the Logan Collection," featuring 50 paintings, sculptures and installations of international contemporary art.

And the fall exhibition at Berkeley Art Museum (www.bampfa.berkeley.edu) is "Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art From the Sigg Collection," a traveling exhibition showcasing the work of almost 100 artists from the collection of Uli Sigg, a Swiss businessman and former diplomat who spent many years in China.

All this art represents the tumultuous growth that has transpired since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976.

Initially, artists had to move to the West to gain recognition and earn a living. And the government crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989 brought new restrictions. But now it's possible for avant-garde artists to flourish at home and — for a few — to become wealthy.

The market for contemporary Chinese art has boomed, with a big push from Christie's and Sotheby's auction houses. Paintings of Chinese people looking stressed, depressed and hysterical by artists such as Zhang Xiaogang, Liu Xiaodong, Yue Minjun and Zeng Fanzhi have brought $2 million to $9 million at auction.

"The market is shifting," Elaine says. "A whole new generation is coming up with a new vision. Ten or 15 years ago, some of these artists didn't have a penny. Now they are wealthier than I will ever be. Young people see that you can be an artist in China. You can be respected, you can make lots of money and you don't have to do traditional Chinese landscape painting."

Critics and criticism

Not everyone embraces the art pouring out of China.

New Republic critic Jed Perl blasted the new Saatchi Gallery publication as "the most hateful art book published in my lifetime" and condemned some of the artists for "getting comfortable with Mao (Zedong)" and rehabilitating his atrocities in their work.

Jeff Kelley, an expert in Chinese contemporary art who curated the Logan collection exhibition at SFMoMA, takes a more nuanced view in his catalog essay. Art thought to represent a jaundiced reaction to rampant consumerism or government control, he contends, "has revealed itself to be more psychologically resonant than the facade of pop iconoclasm and gestures of ironic detachment might readily suggest."

The masklike visages so frequently painted may not expose the artists' souls, he writes, but they "re-enact the psychic aftermath of an era in which representations of specific human emotions were replaced with the idealized faces of the Revolution."

What young artists are doing is another story, as the Chinese exhibitions reveal. The photographers at DNJ Gallery shoot pictures of people riding trains and bicycles, panoramas of streets, portraits of miners, dwellings in an ancient farming community.

"As the culture changes, you see the subject matter changing," Elaine says. "You see what is really real and what's happening."

A native of Dallas whose mother was born in China, the daughter of American missionaries, Elaine has spent several years learning to speak, read and write Chinese. But he didn't go to China until 2002, with his family.

"When I came back to L.A. from that trip, I was just full of passion and fire," he says. "I had to learn the language. It was almost frenetic. I didn't know why I was doing it. I just had to. When I came to Los Angeles 10 years ago, I thought it was the Wild West. Now China is the Wild West. I love it."