IT WAS the wonder of Art Asia 1994, no one could pass it without staring -a colossal mythical scene featuring a naked Rubenesque brunette reaching for the heavens, surrounded by two dozen nude maidens. The crowns trickled past the European prints and glanced at the calligraphy. But it was the oil painting Song Of The Goddess Nuwa, price $8,888,888, by the little-known mainland artist Liu Yuyi that drew the crowds - and the sneers of the other stall holders. Then an Indonesian Chinese steel magnate called Kenneth Chan arrived. 'It took me half an hour to decide to buy it,' he said. 'It is gorgeous.' On the fourth and final day of the art fair, in front of dozens of clicking press cameras, he handed over a cheque.
The sneers turned to slack-jawed amazement. Nuwa had sold for about four times the price of any other Chinese oil painting. It was, apparently, a world record and yet there was hardly a soul in the Hong Kong art business - not a dealer, not a critic, not a curator, not even one academic - who would praise the painting or comment on the deal. No one even knew the buyer or the gallery Artinasia which had acted as middleman.
If the local art market feels outraged, it has only itself to blame. Liu may have been the most unexpected Chinese oil painter so far to go almost overnight from rags to riches but he was not the only one. Who would have payed $200,000 five years ago for an Ai Xuan nude or $1.5 million for a Chen Yifei portrait? He may not have established a very wide market for his work or be able to boast a consistent price structure, but then which Chinese oil painter has? The brief history of Chinese oil painting has been controversial from the start. Twenty years ago there was no market for it at all. Chinese oil painters like Liu worked to a monthly salary in academies all over China, restricted to churning out propaganda in a Soviet realist style.
It could have stayed that way forever if an Oklahoma oil man called Robert A. Hefner III, with a nose for finding unexpected mineral resources, hadn't visited China in 1984 looking for exploration contracts. He struck oil in a most unlikely quarter when he was introduced to a high-ranking member of the All China Artists Association who showed him some of the work he and his colleagues were doing. Hefner, until then a very modest collector art with no pretensions to knowing anything about it, fell head over heels in love with Chinese oil paintings. Three years later he organised an exhibition in New York.
Something totally new had been born: a market for paintings in Western style by living Chinese oil painters, based almost entirely in Hong Kong, with no international critical or commercial support at all. Prices have sky-rocketed, and some of the most successful painters and some of the dealers have made millions. For four short years first Christie's and then Sotheby's, held bi-annual auctions selling an eclectic mixture of nudes, still lifes, landscapes, and portraits, mostly painted in realist style and commanding prices ranging from $20,000 to $2 million.
Critics have been saying since day one that prices were inflated and standards uneven but until last year the dealers and auction houses were too busy raking in profits to pay them much attention. But next week's spring auctions, on April 28 for Christie's and April 30 for Sotheby's, will do their best to jump start the Chinese oil painting market. Something has gone wrong.