Searching for Pablo
IT BEGAN AS the sort of gig any arts writer would jump at: a large collection of paintings and sketches by Pablo Picasso had come to China, and were beginning a multi-city tour in Shenzhen. The pieces had never been seen in Asia, and, naturally, were priceless. A Xinhua report, although lacking details, was tantalising. The general gist was that 265 Picasso originals - plates, prints and watercolour paintings - were being displayed in Shenzhen. The invaluable collection was on loan from France's Picasso Foundation.
That all parties involved would be eager to promote the event seemed a given. But in China, things are rarely so simple, and in tracking down what should have been basic facts, I found myself on a path that led not so much through the world of art but of real estate.
Locating the art proved difficult. The sudden appearance of 265 Picasso originals in any city is a big deal, so it stood to reason that the curator of Shenzhen's He Xiangning Art Museum would know of their whereabouts. But Liu Yingjiu was able to confirm only that, although the Picassos were on display somewhere in Shenzhen, he was out of the loop. Rather than being kept at the museum or at some tightly guarded government location, the work was being displayed privately in a new real estate development called Mangrove West Coast - although they would eventually be moved to Liu's museum for public display.
With nothing more to go on than the Xinhua report and vague rumours, I headed to Shenzhen's He Xiangning Museum, figuring that visiting the place where the art was due to finish up later in the month was my best lead.
'We were approached to host the Picasso exhibit,' says Liu. 'But our contact was with an advertising company in Beijing.' This company, it seems, had obtained the right to show the paintings in Shenzhen. 'As the Mangrove sponsored the trip, they are first using the art to impress their customers. The pieces will come to our museum on December 26, before moving on to Shanghai.
'There's a tendency to see art appropriated by the new elite. While this makes Shenzhen a fertile ground for art consumption, I don't know if it makes us more appreciative of art,' Liu says. 'As for art appreciation in Shenzhen, certainly art consumption is flourishing here.'
With neither official invitation nor press credentials, I hopped into a taxi and headed to Mangrove West Coast. It was there, on the outside of a group of semi-finished luxury high-rises not far from Shenzhen's Shekou district, that I finally found Picasso - or at least his image - standing four metres high behind the iron bars separating the development from the street. His face was on a billboard, looking out wistfully over Chinese characters touting the benefits of life at Mangrove.
A guard approached me and asked if I was on the guest list. 'I might just be,' I said, handing him my business card with both hands and gravitas. 'Wait here,' he said, heading back behind the gates 'I'll tell the management you've arrived.' Ten minutes later, I was being led through the front gate and into the heart of the ultra swank development by a sharply dressed sales representative named Nicko. At last, I thought, art appreciation begins.
After relinquishing camera and cell phone to the security guards, I was taken into a small auditorium with plush couches and a huge curved monitor to view a slick videotaped presentation. The subject of the film was not Picasso, but la dolce vita, Mangrove West Coast style. As images of shining, happy urbanites drifted across the screen, a soothing voice spoke effusively about the complex in Putonghua.
I emerged with all thoughts of Picasso replaced by visions of myself leading an upwardly mobile urban lifestyle, with all the mod cons in a complex that, according to the promotional material, was 'shaped like a windmill, creating a dynamic symphony of sound'.
'Come this way, I want to show you something,' said Nicko, who guided me over to a massive circular wall with framed pictures set behind thick glass. These were not Picasso originals, but pictures, charts and graphs pertaining to design and architecture. Nicko handed me an MP3 player and instructed me to press the number corresponding to each section of the exhibit. In dreamy Putonghua, I learned that the floors of the buildings were constructed with a multi-layered design that made them virtually soundproof and that the windows were made from a space age vibration-proof glass.
Twenty minutes into my tour, and I finally got my wish to see the art. Together, Nicko and I took a silent glass elevator up to the third floor. Set up in an oval-shaped room were four felt-lined partitioning walls, and on these were hung, with the greatest care, possibly the most valuable collection of artwork ever seen in Shenzhen. Six armed guards stood at attention, and a sign in English and Chinese admonished visitors that the works were to be neither touched nor photographed.
I made my way clockwise around the makeshift gallery with my sales rep-cum-art curator by my side, pausing to gaze at the timeless works - while two floors below, an equally large display described the benefits of polymer sheetrock. The works were, indeed, exquisite, encompassing various periods in the artist's creative life: Les Tricornes, watercolours from 1920 drawn for a production of the same name; the deceptively simple line drawings from his 1949 Garmen collection; the very un-cubist naturalist works of 1942's Histoire Naturelle; and the sensual, decidedly cubist sketches of 1968's La Celestina.
I found myself wondering how the concept of connecting the works of Picasso and this real estate development came to be. Before I'd asked, Nicko answered. 'Look at the diversity!' he said. 'Picasso, you see, was an artist not merely of exceptional talent, but also of many different styles. Some people may not like one style or the other, but anybody could find among the vast body of Picasso's work a style to match their own tastes. This matches perfectly our philosophy of diversity at Mangrove West Coast: every unit custom fit to suit the styles of individual buyers.'
I wanted to spend an hour or so appreciating these works, but something about the atmosphere suggested that dallying would be considered gauche. Besides, we had yet to reach the climax of the presentation: a group tour of a fully equipped model Mangrove unit.
Afterwards, as the group was being herded out of the unit, I asked Nicko about the Picassos. After all, the whole exhibit was on short-term loan from the French Government, and would soon be turned over to the He Xiangning Museum. Would Mangrove be purchasing other priceless works of art for display in the third-floor gallery?
'Actually,' he said, 'when all the units are sold, we'll be turning the third floor into a kindergarten for the resident's children.' I collected my phone and camera, and Nicko led me back out the front gate and waited with me until a taxi came by.
As Mangrove West Coast disappeared behind me, I reflected on the bizarre twist that my search for Picasso had taken, and on the appropriateness of using the works and image of a renowned artist and lifelong communist to sell homes that only the ultra-rich could even dream of owning. More than that, it was tawdry - like a life insurance company using quotes from Chairman Mao in its ad copy. Then again, Deng Xiaoping said: 'To get rich is glorious.' And Shenzhen is Deng's town.
The Picasso Originals, He Xiangning Museum, Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town, Dec 28-Jan 23. Inquiries: (86 755) 2691 8118.
