Today we artists can pursue art for art’s sake

Today we artists can pursue art for art’s sake.”And for money’s sake, too. Paintings by famous artists such as Chen Yifei are sold for up to a million dollars in New York. Growing world interest stimulates more Chinese artists, such as Wei herself. Born to an ordinary worker’s family, she was among the first students enrolled by the leading Preparatory School of the Central Art Academy in 1979. It had only just resumed teaching after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.She opted for the copperplate department, leaving others to compete for places in oil painting.

But for her graduation project, she created a series of copperplate works based on street shots she took, scotching the belief that copperplate was only good for abstract styles Wei had made a splash. Photorealism became her trademark.In 1990, while teaching, she included some nude works in an oil-painting exhibition by eight young female artists. The works touched a wide audience, and Wei abandoned copperplate for canvas. This was the exhibition at which she met her future agent, Lawrence Wu.Within a year Wu had brought Wei’s paintings to Christie’s in Hong Kong and auctioned them for over £350 a piece Encouraged, Wei focused on oil paintings of women “The art world remains very male-dominated. Perhaps I want to express a kind of feminism,” she suggests.Her style changed dramatically in 1994 after a tour of an antiques market with her husband Wang Hao, a fellow artist. There she discovered an old album of family pictures from the late Qing dynasty. In a series of oils, she experimented with these images, and produced a collection of “old” black-and-white pictures that sold for £7,500 pounds.The big breakthrough came three years later when she considered combining the old mandarin styles with the new designer fashion The price of her paintings leapt to £22,000 apiece.

“Gathering” is a typical example, in which two young girls in modern attire are inserted into a black-and-white group “shot” of Qing dynasty patriarchs. The result offers rich material for interpretation and analysis by intellectuals and feminists.Yet despite her success, she maintains a low profile. Rarely exhibiting within China, she avoids publicity, and is known only to a relatively small circle. For years she continued at her teaching post, mainly as she needed a studio. By 1995 she had saved enough to buy a plot of land in a village near Beijing.

There she and her husband built a villa and studio that encouraged such a migration of other artists and celebrities that the area is known as “star village”.Wei and her husband quit teaching to dedicate themselves to painting. “People stay at the Academy for its prestige and artistic atmosphere, but now, if you are commercially successful, others may criticise you for pleasing a foreign audience,” she complains. “But what’s wrong with that? I am confident that as Chinese art wins more exposure, particularly as China’s own position becomes more powerful, Chinese art will sell at even higher prices.”Attacks labelling Wei as an “imperialist artist” show that jealousy still lurks in the community, but at least she does not face political censorship. “Before, people would panic if neither partner in a marriage was part of a work unit. Now, luckily, society is tolerant enough for people like us to exist.”. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said a bomb probably caused an explosion that destroyed a Thai Airways jetliner he was about to board at Bangkok airport yesterday.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said a bomb probably caused an explosion that destroyed a Thai Airways jetliner he was about to board at Bangkok airport yesterday.
“It is relatively clear now it was not the engine, and the only thing that it could definitely be is an explosive device,” Thaksin told reporters in the northern city of Chiang Mai. His comments were broadcast by the Ruam Duay Chuay Kan radio station.Thaksin had been due to fly with 148 other passengers from Bangkok to Chiang Mai on the Boeing 737-400 Saturday when it exploded 35 minutes before scheduled departure at the domestic terminal.One cabin crew member died and seven airline staff were injured. No passengers had boarded the plane.Investigators were sifting through the gutted wreckage Sunday and said it was too early to draw a conclusion about the cause.Thaksin said that investigators did not yet know whether the blast was from a bomb or some other kind of explosive in the aircraft.Thaksin, who earlier was briefed by the national police chief, said he believed the blast was intended as a “threat to life” but was not the work of terrorists.”Looking at the wreckage, the source of explosion came from where the prime minister was supposed to be seated,” Police Gen Prasarn Wongwai, a security adviser to Thaksin, said on the radio.”I believe the bomb should be the white phosphorus type,” Prasarn said. “I already talked to the prime minister and he seems to have a clue who did it. But he wouldn’t want to talk too much because it might pressure the investigation officials.”The Nation newspaper quoted a police source as saying that if a bomb was to blame, it could be linked to Thaksin’s pledge to crack down on drug smuggling, largely blamed on drug lords in neighboring Myanmar, also known as Burma.Thaksin took power last month after his Thai Rak Thai, or Thai Love Thai, party won general elections by an unprecedented margin. The campaign was marred by violence and vote fraud, which is usual in Thai elections.Thaksin said that his government’s top priority over the next four years would be to curb the “rampant” drug trade.