Chinese contemporary art is starting to show up on boardroom walls worldwide but the market is only just taking off, says Ludovic Bois, whose Chinese Contemporary gallery was an early bird on the scene

----By Mark Godfrey

Suggestive, sexual images do not hang easy on Fortune 500 walls. Contemporary Chinese art is aggressive, so it's tough for corporate collectors to buy. But they're looking. Lehman Brothers bought paintings from Ludovic Bois, and the head of business development at Chinese Contemporary expects more to be bought. "The Chinese corporate market will grow. The problem is that there should be no nudity, pornography or logos on their walls. They're scared of hanging something slightly nude or pornographic and a self righteous person comes along to your office and gets offended. They will buy the easy art. Chinese art is not easy."

And Ludovic Bois would know about corporate sensitivities. The MBA-carrying Parisian did the rounds of the financial houses in London for 15 years as a bond dealer before wanting out. "In those big trading rooms we all have the same idea, to make as much money as possible. Everyone wants to own a tennis club or a restaurant on the beach, or a gallery. But no one ever does it, it stays just a dream."

Bois, 49, started to live the dream in 1996, when he teamed up with English art historian Julia Colman to open the Chinese Contemporary gallery in London. "She thought that Asian art was interesting. She saw a show at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford and she told me 'look, there's something going on in China and we should go check it out'."

The two arrived in Beijing on an Autumn afternoon with two phone numbers given them by a photographer friend in London who had recently photographed a couple of local artists. "From one number we found 50 artists because that's how it works." The duo weren't expecting such an abundance of talent. "Our big concern was to try to find two or three artists because maybe with two or three we could open a gallery. But out of the 50 we could have shown 48. It was mind boggling what we had seen; in terms of quality we were gob smacked."

In the beginning

They eventually settled on Ma Lu Ming, a performance artist and painter. The choice was a statement of intent. "He didn't really belong to any clique ... We showed we were not scared in showing something very avant garde." China's talent was also cheap, they discovered, buying 14 of Ma's paintings for US$15,000. He hadn't sold a painting before, but again the nascent art dealers from London were keen to show their intent. "We went to see him and wanted to be credible so we essentially bought his whole studio. He never had so much money in his whole life. He just couldn't believe it, it was ten times the average salary in Beijing ... He could buy a house with that!"

Three weeks after arriving in China, Bois and Colman set out again for London, paintings in cargo. "We took them by air. Shipping them in frames was crazy. There was no need to spend all that money, we could have rolled the canvasses, but we had no experience." Chinese Contemporary opened with the Ma Lu Ming solo show in a Mayfair gallery in September 1996, the choice of location again a statement of intent by the duo. "We had a nice gallery in Mayfair because we wanted people to see us as meaning business. We didn't want a gallery lost in the suburbs of London."

It wasn't an easy start. Neighbouring gallery owners sneered. "The British are risk adverse and totally lost in their YBA, their Young British Artists scene." It took two and a half months to sell a painting. "They were collectors," recalls Bois. "They were interested but it took us a long time to develop the market. Plus we had never sold a painting before, we never had a gallery, we didn't have a base of clients but our friends."

Bois and Colman did 38,000 British pounds worth of business in 1996. Ten years later, Bois shuttles between the London gallery and another in Beijing. One more is set to open in New York. British collectors never caught on. More than 60 percent of Chinese Contemporary's buyers are Americans - only 10 percent are British compared to 30 percent European. "The USA is where the market is. There are no collectors in England, aside from Elton Jon and Saatchi. They are very introverted, they are stuck in their YBA syndrome, and the media is not behind you - if you start writing about Chinese art and not YBA, they'll lynch you."

Best sellers remain paintings and photography, and Bois insists that worldwide, the market for Chinese contemporary art is only just taking off, whatever the doomsayers say. "The bubble that everyone has been talking about isn't going to happen. A million dollars for a leading Chinese artist is actually cheap compared to Western leading contemporary art." Being in on the scene early, Chinese Contemporary today supplies only the serious collectors, "people who want to live with their art." Speculators are more recent arrivals. "Now there's a huge amount of money and people are coming out of the woodwork. A lot of people are buying to flip at auction."

Talent glut

A huge abundance of talent in China's contemporary art market is ironically its weak point. "Where there's a danger is in a younger artist with a very thin CV, with no previous shows, seeking $15,000 for his paintings. That painting is not worth more than two or three thousand. But because his friend next door is selling for $25,000 he thinks 'I'm selling for $15,000 because the whole movement in Chinese art is going through the roof.' That's where the danger is. It's not in the million dollar price if you buy one of the top four paintings because in a few years time you'll be laughing, it's one of the best investments you can make. But if you invest in a young artist and he doesn't do well that's very tricky... there's no value in that."

Quick-buck galleries selling the youngsters' work have lowered the tone of Beijing's Dashanzi art district, where Chinese Contemporary's local gallery is located. Of 50 galleries in the zone, Bois estimates "Ten are good, 20 are mediocre and 20 are rubbish." Some galleries hang patchwork exhibitions of half a dozen separate works rather than thematic shows by a single artist. "Over time it will develop, it's still the wild west so anything goes. Many think 'oh I'll open a gallery and make money.' It's not that easy, you need a client base and to build relationships with the artists. It's a relationship building process." Bonds with collectors have kept Chinese Contemporary ahead of the competition. In fact, Bois can't get enough Chinese art to satisfy the hunger of collectors. "I have five artists of whom I could sell 50 works on the spot." Up to 20 emails hit Bois' inbox every week requesting paintings by Zhen Xiaogang. There's similar demand for Zheng Dali's 'AK47' series of paintings. A few years ago a friend bought two AK47 prints for US$9,000 each. Bois bought them back for US$50,000 a piece, selling them on immediately for US$65,000.

Contrary to images of avant garde adventurers, collectors of contemporary art are in fact a serious, conformist bunch. "Everyone is chasing the same stuff. Some will take risks but most want the best. They find out because they're in big collections and museums. As a big collector you want the best, speak to a few dealers and they'll tell us the same thing, you should have this and this and this. It's very rare to find risk, it's very conformist. A serious collector with 150 paintings doesn't want an error. They want the sure thing."

At any cost

Supplying the sure thing is often difficult considering most artists usually complete only 30 works each year. Worse, relationships between artists and galleries are also promiscuous. "No artist works exclusively with one gallery. We were the first ones, so we got a lot of loyalty which we built up over the years. It is tricky doing business but it's compensated by artists knowing we are the first ones and didn't do it for the money and that we were there at the beginning to help them help us. I can still call on a lot of artists and see them in 24 hours."

Bois sees four sorts of collectors competing for those artists' work. "There are those who buy because they've always been collectors. And those who were in Hong Kong in the 1990s and bought it for a few thousand dollars because they liked it. And these people are selling because now it's worth 300,000 dollars and they can't resist. These people are replaced by hardcore collectors. And then there's the speculator." Funds, too, have entered the fray: "There are people putting together 10 to 30 million dollars to buy."

With that kind of money about, art prices will rise, particularly since mainland Chinese collectors are now beginning to seek out early contemporary works which left the country when local art was cheap. "They have a huge amount of money. Chinese art was at a discount for a long time, but in five to ten years' time Chinese artists will be at a premium because of such a demand. In the 1990s all this was underground, but all of the works of that time have left China. If you are Chinese you have loads of money and you want a piece, you'll go to auctions and pay whatever price you have to."

Chinese Contemporary's annual sales have increased many times since the grand take of 38,000 pounds in 1996. And the move from bond broker to art dealer has proven "immensely satisfying" for Bois. Monuments to a smart business move perhaps, Bois and Colman have hung onto five of those Ma Lu Ming paintings, in their original wood frames. If they ever should decide to sell, each is worth US$70,000, an appreciation of 700 percent.