CONTENTS

Summary: The Rise of Asian Contemporary Art in New York

Preface by Vishakha N. Desai

1. Introduction

1.1 Background: Cultural Shifts in the United States

2. Museums and Non-Profit Organizations

2.1 Asian Artists in Exhibition Programs

2.2 Exhibitions of Significance

2.3 A Case Study: The Whitney Biennial

3. Galleries

3.1 Asian Artists in Galleries

3.2. Asian Contemporary Galleries

4. Auction Houses

4.1 Asian Artists in Auctions

4.2 Top 5 Artists in Sales: Top 10 Highest Recorded Sales of Work

Appendix 1: The Whitney Biennial in Detail

Appendix 2: Asian American Exhibitions: A National Perspective

Summary: The Rise of Asian Contemporary Art in New York

Across the three areas addressed in this report that includes museums and non-profit organizations, galleries and auction houses, we have found a marked increase in the visibility of Asian and Asian American artists over the last decade from 1992 through 2002.

In museums and non-profit organizations, we recorded a sharp increase of 78% in the number of Asian and Asian American artists included in exhibitions from 1992 to 2002. This is also reflected in the number of institutions exhibiting Asian and Asian American artists which has risen 30% over the last decade. The Whitney Biennial was used as a case study to chronicle this trend, revealing an initial increase in representation of Asian and Asian American artists in 1993 with a steady increase of Asian artists, evident in the most recent exhibition in 2002.

Galleries in New York have also been steadily expanding the number of Asian and Asian American artists in exhibitions. This growth is best documented in a comparative annual calculation between 1992 and 2001. In 1992, 238 Asian artists exhibited in galleries, and 993 artists exhibited in 2001. Another significant development in this sector has been the establishment of galleries that exclusively focus on Asian contemporary art.

Sales at auction houses have been the slowest to respond, with most activity recorded from 1997 onwards. Some of this lapse can be accounted by the secondary market, as it takes more time for the works to be sold in this forum after gallery exhibitions. In spite of this, there has been an increase in Asian modern and contemporary sales, with most of the volume dominated by South Asian art. Yet the top five artists regularly recorded in sales are Japanese, suggesting that they as individual artists are well recognized in the contemporary art field. The top ten highest recorded sales of works are consistent with this, showing mainly Japanese artists but also with the inclusion of Korean and South Asian artists.

Preface

Asia Society is pleased to present Asian Contemporary Art in New York: The Last Decade 1992-2002, A preliminary study of contemporary art trends to coincide with the inaugural Asian Contemporary Art Week (November 5-10). The findings of this report indicate that Asian and Asian American artists have benefited from increased exposure and interest across three areas: museums, galleries and auction houses.

Over the last ten years, Asia Society has played a leading role in fostering this interest. One of our first initiatives was to conduct a symposium in 1992 that included curators from Asia and the United States. Ten years later, we have seen much change, evident in the recognition of Asian and Asian American artists. In many ways, Asian Contemporary Art Week?a combined effort of museums, galleries, curators and scholars?signals a cultural shift, that such a project would not have been possible a decade ago.

Asia Society is a founding member of the Asian Contemporary Art Consortium (ACAC), the organizers of Asian Contemporary Art Week. This report provides the foundation for an assessment of the past, while also signaling future developments.

Vishakha N. Desai

Senior Vice President and

Director of the Museum

Asia Society

1. Introduction

The rationale for undertaking this report was based on the observation that there has been a recent rise in interest in Asian contemporary art. Although there is no published evidence to date, there can be no doubt that Asian and Asian American artists have gained greater recognition for their work. This report is intended as a preliminary study toward exploring the development of this trend by providing some statistical evidence. To gain a sense of these changes over the last decade, since this is principally the period that we find a sharp and identifiable interest, this report looks at three main areas that could be said to define the parameters of the art world: museums and the non-profit sector, private galleries, and sales at auction houses. It should be acknowledged that exhibitions of Asian and Asian American art have also occurred outside of New York, particularly on the West Coast, but the focus of this study is on New York. The findings in this report are an attempt to chronicle this emerging field of Asian and Asian American contemporary art.

1.1 Background: Cultural Shifts in the United States

Over the last decade there has been an enormous increase in the visibility and representation of Asian American and Asian artists. This increased awareness coincided with a broader cultural recognition of artists of color in the 1990s, evident in artists’ representation at museums and galleries and well documented in exhibitions such as The Decade Show (1990) and the 1993 Whitney Biennial. Although both exhibitions comprised a survey format with the heavy inclusion of Asian American artists in particular, other exhibitions such as Asia/America(1994) focused on the specificity of the Asian American experience. These large-scale museum shows served as platforms for Asian American artists, their inclusion the culmination of two decades of agitation through the Asian American social movement begun in the 1970s. The establishment of advocacy organizations such as the Asian American Arts Alliance, founded in 1974, and the Asian American Arts Center in 1983 consolidated these advances, while artist groups such as Epoxy or Godzilla provided further impetus for Asian American artists. In general, the recognition of Asian American artists in the United States can be identified with developments in the early 1990s while a consideration of Asian artists occurred later in the decade.

2. Museums and Non-Profit Organizations

2.1 Asian Artists in Exhibition Programs

The shift in curatorial interest away from the appraisal of traditional Asian art toward an interest in modern and contemporary art is evident in museum programs such as the large-scale initiatives undertaken by the Guggenheim Museum. Exhibitions such as A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth Century China(1998), an exhibition that assessed modern art from China, and Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (1994) that explored modern and contemporary Japanese art were significant attempts to re-evaluate Asian art from a contemporary perspective. These exhibitions based on a single-nation focus reflected an interest in China and Japan, countries that have historically dominated a consideration of Asian art in the United States. Indeed, this interest in China and Japan is reflected across the three areas of study in this report, with greater numbers of artists from both countries represented in museums and galleries as well as at auction sales.

These two Guggenheim exhibitions no doubt had a broader impact on the recognition of modern and contemporary Asian art, but the focus of this section is not so much on an assessment of national focus exhibitions but rather an account of the numbers of Asian and Asian American artists in exhibition programs. The graphs below are a gauge of the levels of inclusion of Asian and Asian American artists over the past decade. The purpose of these diagrams is to identify some of the main institutions that have played a leading role in showing Asian and Asian American artists, including Artists’s Museum New York Center, Asia Society Museum, Grey Art Gallery, International Center of Photography, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Museum of Holography, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Visual Arts Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art. Table 1 chronicles the increase in numbers of museums and non-profit galleries showing Asian and Asian American artists, as well as the actual number of artists included in exhibition programs.

Table 1 [1]

Graph 1 continues the comparative analysis between the years 1992 and 2002 by comparing the number of Asian and Asian American artists in specific institutions. A clear increase can be seen most overtly in the programs at Grey Art Gallery and Whitney Museum at Philip Morris.

Graph 1

2.2 Exhibitions of Significance

One of the most clearly identifiable indicators of trends is the exhibition. As already noted, Asian and Asian American artists have been included in more exhibitions in museums and non-profit galleries than ever before. In order to gain a sense of the curatorial interest in this subject, Table 2 provides a timeline of exhibitions of note that have contributed to the scholarship of this field. These are exhibitions that have exclusively focused on Asian and Asian American artists although there have also been a number of curated exhibitions that were not exclusively Asian and Asian American. Asian art exhibitions, specifically group-curated exhibitions, have a tendency to be organized according to a national focus such as China, Japan or Korea. This is by no means an exhaustive list but does offer some insights into the thematics of these exhibitions and key artists over the last decade.

Table 2 Selected Exhibitions

2.3 A Case Study: The Whitney Biennial

The Whitney Biennial is considered one of the premier surveys of American art. Since it is one of the long-standing periodical exhibitions of contemporary art, one could argue that its history can be used as an indicator for trends in the visual arts. The 1993 Biennial marked a significant inclusion of Asian and Asian American artists following their total exclusion in the previous exhibition in 1991. During the last decade we can also identify a fall in the inclusion of Asian American artists and a rise of Asian artists. A complete breakdown of individual artists can be found in Appendix 1.

Graph 2

3. Galleries

3.1 Asian Artists in Galleries

The representation of Asian and Asian American artists in New York galleries has grown exponentially. As evident below in Graph 3, the number of Asian and Asian American artists was calculated at 238 in 1992 compared to 993 in 2001. The shift marks a gradual rise of representation over the last ten years. Galleries such as Max Protetch, Jack Tilton and Deitch Projects should be noted as taking the lead in exhibiting a number of Chinese artists in the mid-1990s. From limited visibility to an identifiable cultural shift, there is also current evidence of the inclusion of Asian artists in some of New York’s most high profile galleries. Some examples include:

Deitch Projects shows Su-en Wong, Ravinder Reddy, Mariko Mori, Noritoshi Hirakawa and Momoyo Torimitsu.

Luhring Augustine shows Chinese artist Zhang Huan as well as Japanese artists Tatsuo Miyajima, Nobuyoshi Araki, Yasumasa Morimura.

Barbara Gladstone shows Paris-based Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping.

Lehmann Maupin shows Korean artist Do-Ho Suh.

Graph3

3.2 Asian Contemporary Galleries

In addition to the actual rise in number of Asian and Asian American artists represented by galleries, we have also seen the establishment of galleries that focus exclusively on Asian contemporary art. It is interesting to note that the majority of these galleries have a specific focus on South Asian, Vietnamese and Chinese art. Another development is the evolution of galleries that once focused exclusively on traditional art toward the inclusion of contemporary art. Notable amongst these galleries are China 2000, established in 1980 and Kaikodo established in 1996.

Table 3:
Asian Contemporary Art Galleries

4. Auction Houses

4.1 Asian Artists in Auction Sales

The main auctions of Asian contemporary art have been held by Christie’s, Phillips and Sotheby’s. The infrastructure of auction houses dictates in some ways the method of gathering information about Asian contemporary art since the sales are divided into Chinese art, Japanese art, Korean art, Indian and Southeast Asian art, contemporary art, and photography (which has been included in the assessment since some of the most prominent Asian artists practice in this medium). High sales of Chinese contemporary art have been recorded over the past year, but these have been held in Hong Kong with the other Asian sales rather than in New York. From the findings in Graph 4, Indian and Southeast Asian works have been subject to the most activity at auctions in New York.

Graph 4

4.2 Top 5 Artists

The list of five artists below records the artist’s names who were found with greatest frequency in auction reports. All of the artists have appeared primarily in the Contemporary, Post-War, and/or Photography sales. Interestingly, these artists are all Japanese reflecting to some extent the dominance of Japanese artists in assessments of Asian contemporary art in New York.

Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929)

Mariko Mori (b. 1967)

Yasumasa Morimura (b. 1951)

Isamu Noguchi (1904-1989)

Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948)

Top 10 Highest Recorded Sales of Works

The following list of top ten sales of works by Asian artists is calculated on the actual and estimated sale price of the art work. Once again this list is dominated by Japanese artists but includes Korean and South Asian artists. Although this finding is consistent with the top five list of artists as Japanese, it does conflict with the records of sales indicated in Graph 4, which shows that the greatest number of auctions are for South Asian art. One explanation for this is that a number of the works that received the highest prices were in the contemporary sales rather than exclusively Asian sales. This is best illustrated in the top three works listed below that were included in contemporary sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

1.Isamu Noguchi (1904-1989)

Cronos, 1962

Bronze, 85 x 30 x 24 inches (215 x 76 x 60 cm)

Sotheby’s Contemporary, November 2000

Estimate: $600,000 – 800,000

Actual: $580,000

2. On Kawara (b. 1933)

Today (May 1-7, 1971), series no. 23-29

Liquitex, eight cardboard boxes, and newspaper, 10 x 13 inches (25 x 33 cm)

Christie’s Contemporary, June 1998

Estimate: $200,000 – 300,000

Actual: $520,000

3. Takashi Murakami (b. 1962)

Hiropon

Oil, acrylic, fiberglass, 88 x 41 x 48 inches (223 x 104 x 122 cm)

Christie’s Contemporary, May 2002

Estimate: $80,000 – 120,000

Actual: $380,000

4. Park Soo-Keun (1914-1965)

Mother Pounding Grain, 1964

Oil on board

Sotheby’s Korean Works of Art, September 1997

Estimate: $350,000 – 400,000

5. Tyeb Mehta (b. 1925)

Celebration, 1995

Acrylic on canvas, triptych 94.5 x 202.5 inches (240 x 510 cm)

Christie’s Indian and Southeast Asian Art, September 2002

Estimate: $180,000 – 200,000

6. Mariko Mori (b. 1967)

Red Light, 1994

Set of three photographs

Phillips Contemporary, May 2002

Estimate: $80,000 – 120,000

Actual: $140,000

7. Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929)

No. Red. Q, 1960

Oil painting, 41 x 64 inches (105 x 162 cm)

Sotheby’s Contemporary, November 1998

Estimate: $60,000 – 80,000

Actual: $70,000

8. Maqbool Fida Husain (b. 1915)

Mahabali, 1964

Oil on canvas, 90 x 65 inches (228.6 x 165 cm.)

Christie’s Indian and Southeast Asian Art, September 2002

Estimate: $60,000 – 80,000

9. Shusuku Arakawa (b. 1936)

The Call of Continuity, 1977-78

Oil, graphite and color felt-tip pens on canvas

Christie’s Contemporary Art, Part II May 1994

Estimate: $50,000 – 70,000

10. Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948)

World Trade Center

Gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50 cm)

Phillips Contemporary/Photography, April 2002

Estimate: $20,000 – 30,000

Actual: $35,000

Appendix 1: The Whitney Biennial in Detail

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1991 Biennial
Curated by Richard Armstrong, John G. Hanhardt, Richard Marshall, Lisa Phillips
No Asian or Asian American artists included

1993 Biennial
Curated by Elisabeth Sussmann, Thelma Golden, John G. Hanhardt, Lisa Phillips

Included 3 Asian American artists and 4 Asian artists.
- Christine Chang (b. 1963 Seoul, Korea; lives in New York)
- Shu Lea Cheang (b. 1954 Taiwan; lives in New York)
- Byron Kim (b. 1961 La Jolla, CA; lives in New York)
- Simon Leung (b. 1964 Hong Kong; lives in New York)
- Trinh T. Minh-ha (b. 1952 Hanoi; lives in Berkeley, CA)
- Bruce Yonemoto (b. 1949 San Jose, CA), Norman Yonemoto (b. 1946 Chicago), and Timothy Martin

1995 Biennial
Curated by Klaus Kertess with John Ashberry, Gerald M. Edelman, John G. Hanhardt, and Lynne Tillman

Included 4 Asian artists.
- Hima B. (b. 1968 Calcutta; lives in San Francisco)
- Shu Lea Cheang (b. 1954 Taiwan; lives in New York)
- Toba Khedoori (b. 1964 Sydney; lives in Los Angeles)
- Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. Buenos Aires; lives in New York)

1997 Biennial
Curated by Lisa Phillips and Louise Neri

Included 3 Asian artists.
- Lara Lee (b. 1966 São Paulo; lives in New York)
- Shahzia Sikander (b. Lahore, Pakistan; lives in Houston, TX)
- Shashwati Talukdor (b. Dehra Dun, India; lives in Philadelphia)

2000 Biennial
Curated by Maxwell L. Anderson, Michael Auping, Valerie Cassel, Hugh M. Davies, Jane Farver, Andrea Miller-Keller, Lawrence R. Rinder

Included 3 Asian American artists and 6 Asian artists.
- Rina Banerjee (b. 1963 Calcutta; lives in New York)
- Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957 Quanzhou City, Fujian Province; lives in New York)
- Michael Joo (b. 1966 Ithaca, NY; lives in New York)
- Shirin Neshat (b. 1957 Qazuin, Iran; lives in New York)
- Walid Ra’ad (b. 1967 Chbanieh, Lebanon; lives in New York)
- Al Souza (b. 1944 Plymouth, MA; lives in Houston, TX)
- Sarah Sze (b. 1969 Boston; lives in New York)
- Tran, T. Kim-Trang (b. 1966 Saigon; lives in Los Angeles)
- Yukinori Yanagi (b. 1959 Fukuoka, Japan; lives in New York)

2002 Biennial
Curated by Lawrence R. Rinder, Chrissie Iles, Christiane Paul, Debra Singer

Included 6 Asian artists.
- Chan Chao (b. 1966 Kalemyo, Burma; lives in Washington, D.C.)
- Yun-Fei Ji (b. 1963 Beijing; live in New York)
- Kim Sooja (b. 1957 Taegu, Korea; live in New York)
- Walid Ra’ad / The Atlas Group (b. 1967 Chbanieh, Lebanon, live in New York)
- Stom Sogo (b. 1975 Osaka, Japan; lives in San Francisco)
- Zhang Huan (b. 1965 An Yang City, He Nan Province, China; live in New York)

Appendix 2: Asian American Exhibitions: A National Perspective
By Margo Machida

In the 1990s, an unprecedented number of group exhibitions organized by U.S.-based art museums, arts organizations, and university galleries have specifically fore-grounded work by Asian American artists, or juxtaposed contemporary Asian and Asian diasporic artists. Among them are national and regional survey exhibitions such as Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions: Asian American Artists and Abstraction 1945 - 1970 (1997); They Painted From Their Hearts: Pioneer Asian American Artists (1994); and With New Eyes: Toward an Asian American Art History in the West (1995). Concurrently, there have been exhibitions focused on specific periods in American history, such as The View from Within: Japanese American Art from the Internment Camps, 1942-1945 (1992), and Relocations and Revisions: The Japanese-American Internment Reconsidered (1992)? as well as thematic, ethnic-specific, and sociopolitical shows. They include ASIA/AMERICA: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art (1994), organized by Margo Machida for The Asia Society Galleries (1994); Across the Pacific: Contemporary Korean and Korean American Art (1993); Picturing Asia America: Communities, Culture, Difference (1994); Who’s Afraid of Freedom: Korean American Artists in California; Memories of Overdevelopment: Philippine Diaspora in Contemporary Art (1996);Uncommon Traits: Re/Locating Asia (1997-98); and At Home & Abroad: 20 Contemporary Filipino Artists (1998).

Note: Other recent group exhibitions such as Shifting Perceptions: Contemporary L.A. Visions (2000), organized by the Pacific Asia Museum, featured Los Angeles-based artists of Asian/Pacific heritage but did not explicitly highlight their ethnicities.

Selected Bibliography:

Site of Asia Site of Body: Contemporary Asian Women Artists (New York: The Taipei Gallery, 1998).

At Home & Abroad: 20 Contemporary Filipino Artists (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1998).

Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions: Asian American Artists and Abstraction 1945 - 1970, ed. Jeffrey Wechsler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in association with the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 1997).

Memories of Overdevelopment: Philippine Diaspora in Contemporary Art (Winnipeg, Canada and Irvine, California: Plug In Editions and the University of California, Irvine, Art Gallery, 1997).

Uncommon Traits: Re/Locating Asia, Parts I - III (Buffalo, New York: CEPA Gallery, 1997-98). Dates: Part I. September 13 - October 31, 1997; Part II. December 6, 1997 - January 23, 1998; Part III. February 14 - March 28, 1998.

Who’s Afraid of Freedom: Korean American Artists in California (Newport Beach, California: Newport Harbor Art Museum, 1996).

With New Eyes: Toward an Asian American Art History in the West (San Francisco: San Francisco State University, 1995).

They Painted From Their Hearts: Pioneer Asian American Artists (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994).

Picturing Asia America: Communities, Culture, Difference (Houston, Texas: Houston Center for Photography, 1994).

ASIA/AMERICA: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art (New York: The Asia Society Galleries and The New Press, 1994).

Across the Pacific: Contemporary Korean and Korean American Art (New York: The Queens Museum of Art, 1993).

The View from Within: Japanese American Art from the Internment Camps, 1942-1945, (Los Angeles: The Japanese American National Museum, the UCLA Wight Art Gallery, and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1992).

Relocations and Revisions: The Japanese-American Internment Reconsidered (Long Beach, California: Long Beach Museum of Art, 1992).

Shifting Perceptions: Contemporary L.A. Visions (Pasadena: Pacific Asia Museum, 2000).

Published on the occasion of Asian Contemporary Art Week (November 5-10, 2002)

Published by

Asia Society
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www.asiasociety.org

Contributors

Melissa Chiu is Curator, Contemporary Art at Asia Society and Museum

Miwako Tezuka is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University. She was a recipient of the Luce Foundation Museum Fellow in Asian Art at the Asia Society and her recent work includes curatorial consultation for The Legacy Project, NYC.

Linda Park is a graduate student at The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and an independent curator/writer living in New York.

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[1] Table 1 and Graph 1: Assessment based on Art in America Guide: Sourcebook to the U.S Art World published annually.

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