It was something to be expected a few years ago. In the wake of the booming Chinese economy, the Chinese art market would take off sooner or later. It is not only the matter of visual and modern arts, the phenomenon is encompassing the entire cultural sphere in China. Some ask the question is the Chinese art dead or indeed is it really being reborn after years of vegetation under the communist rule, and if so, to what form? To answer this question we must first analyze the phenomenon called the Chinese contemporary art, on the grounds of its history and present. We must furthermore ask a very important question about art in general. This question has been tormenting researchers from at least the beginning of the 20th century. Is art understood as creation of art works, looking for answers, trying to express feelings and emotions, is this notion gone and what replaced it? Is art really being produced now, like any other market commodity, to be sold out? In China, this questions are even more complicated. Some argue that there could be no art without freedom, that art is freedom. But is it really so easy to define this most complex of notions?

The beginning of “Chinese contemporary art”

At the beginning of the 20th century, China entered a new era in its long history. The first decades of this century marked the end of the tradition-bound and inefficient Qing Empire.