A Cultural Revolution
China's sizzling art market has a new darling: patriotic works that mark the founding of the People's Republic.
By Alexandra A. Seno
Newsweek International
Sept. 3, 2007 issue - Revolution is sweeping China's art world. In recent months, paintings extolling the communist victory of 1949 have emerged as the hottest genre in one of the world's most exuberant art scenes. With an economy growing at some 11 percent a year and a society morphing radically day by day, fascination with the birth of modern China is growing fast. In recent years, international collectors and critics have been much taken by new Chinese pop and avant-garde works featuring such notorious emblems of communism as red stars, Mao Zedong and People's Liberation Army soldiers. But Chinese collectors and serious connoisseurs are now becoming far more interested in slightly older works surrounding the creation of the People's Republic.
Indeed, China's red-hot art market is not cooling, but its prime objects of desire are changing fast. Today's biggest draws are paintings done in the realist style between the 1930s and the 1970s, from the time of the anti-Japanese movement led by the peasant-based Red Army to the period before Deng Xiaoping's liberalizing reforms. And they are fetching record prices. Just a few years ago, Chen Yifei's 1972 "Eulogy of the Yellow River," an elegant and very large work depicting a rifle-bearing Red Army soldier on a mountain bathed in golden light, was considered dowdy and kitsch. But at auction in May, after a fierce fight among various bidders, the 297cm-by-143cm piece fetched an eye-popping $5.16 million—setting a record as the most expensive oil painting ever sold in China. By contrast, a painting of the Three Gorges dam site by fortysomething artist Liu Xiaodong set the record for contemporary avant-garde art at $2.7 million last November. "Patriotic art is a very important theme in oil paintings," says Liu Gang, director of contemporary art at China Guardian, the influential Beijing auctioneer that handled the "Yellow River" sale. "We will certainly have this kind of work at our autumn auctions. The main attraction of these works is their inspiring subjects, which reveal the artist's love of nation and the people."
While the patriotic paintings merit attention as historical objects, they are primarily beloved for the passions they arouse. With the typical age of buyers starting at about 40, Liu says the works "easily resonate among people who have experienced wars or the Cultural Revolution." They seem to be nostalgic for an idealistic old China. And they've increasingly got money to invest; nouveau riche Chinese have become highly visible at home and abroad buying all kinds of art. Evelyn Lin, Sotheby's contemporary Chinese painting expert in Hong Kong, explains that while the realist style "is not so fresh" to the Western-trained eye, Chinese highly value what it represents. "It is more emotional," she says. "We know the stories." "Put Down Your Whip," for instance, is a 1939 realist ink work by Xu Beihong that portrays a famous actress in a scene from a renowned anti-Japanese play of the same title. Xu, widely regarded as the greatest master of his generation, died in 1953, and surely never imagined that his picture would sell for $9.2 million—as it did in April at Sotheby's in Hong Kong, setting the world record for the sale of a Chinese painting. It was purchased by a non-mainland collector, though Sotheby's won't say who or where.
Technically, the works are quite accomplished. Figures appear lifelike, often cast in romantic light. European and Soviet influences are clearly discernible even when subjects were uniquely Chinese. Indeed, many of the country's biggest names trained abroad. Xu, for example, studied in France at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He and his creative peers in turn helped educate younger artists. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao's system marshaled the best artistic talents in China to serve politics. Many painters took on teaching jobs at state art institutes and lent their skills to glorifying communism, often in the form of propaganda material.
But little of it still exists as original paintings. Throughout China's history, artists and their works suffered during wars and political campaigns. In the case of modernist ink painter Lin Fengmian, soldiers ransacked his house and destroyed his works during the war with Japan in the 1930s. Then in 1966, just as the Cultural Revolution was beginning, Lin destroyed all his paintings—done on rice paper—by soaking them in water and flushing them down the toilet in an effort to avoid persecution as an intellectual; later he was jailed and tortured anyway. Surviving art from that period tends to be in notoriously poor condition, further heightening demand for the precious few that are well preserved—and jacking up prices.
The art world will be watching closely this fall, when Sotheby's Hong Kong offers two unabashedly patriotic paintings as highlights of its October auction. Xu's 1935 "Crouching Lion" uses his signature animal symbolism to convey his belief in the Chinese nation's grand destiny over foreign powers; Sotheby's predicts the painting will fetch between $230,000 and $320,000. And "Father and Daughter," a 1939 work by Jiang Zhaohe that conveys the optimism of China's youth on the eve of the country's revolution, is estimated to go for somewhere between $10,250 and $15,400.
Though Sotheby's won't say when it expects the current records for patriotic art to be broken, collectors and critics outside China are clearly catching on to the trend. Catherine Kwai, managing director of Hong Kong's Kwai Fung Art Consultants, says some of her multinational investment-bank clients have begun asking her to look out for patriotic pieces to add to their corporate collections. In addition, she is in the process of helping an Italian museum stage an exhibit next year on Chinese realist masterpieces, which will include patriotism-themed paintings. She believes these kinds of paintings are among the most exciting for Chinese art collectors right now. "Behind these paintings there is so much to tell about the history of China," she says.
The fact that the works are straightforward and easy to understand only adds to their appeal. "Chinese still look at paintings for technique," says Kwai. "How lifelike is it? That is our training." As the mainland economy continues to prosper, novice collectors will keep rushing into the market, ensuring a bright future for the realist style. "This market will always be around," says Sotheby's Lin. "This will stay forever in China." That might be a particularly rosy prediction as tastes continue to evolve, but for now at least, patriotic art is enjoying its moment under the red, red sun.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
IHT: Jiang Wen
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/16/arts/seno.php
Jiang Wen: An actor and director with a taste for the epic
By Alexandra A. Seno
Thursday, August 16, 2007
HONG KONG: In 1970s China, Jiang Wen fell in love with epic cinema, the kind with larger-than-life heroes swept up in a changing world. "In those days, we could only watch Russian, Chinese, Albanian and Romanian films. They were mostly movies about war and anti-fascism," he said. "Those films affected me. They had a smell. The big studio films of today are very glamorous but they seem so artificial; they have no smell."
Clearly, that craving to recreate the profound cinematic experiences of his boyhood drives Jiang's career, one focused on making important statements and lasting impressions. For more than two decades, he has been the face of his country's art-house films, as a director and as China's most famous dramatic actor.
He played Gong Li's winemaking paramour in "Red Sorghum," (1987), Zhang Yimou's breathtaking first movie. In "Devils on the Doorstep," (1994) which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2000, and which Jiang directed, he played a villager caught between the Chinese Army and Japanese occupation forces.
In his latest opus, "The Sun Also Rises," which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month, he is a man dealing with his wife's infidelity. It took him three years to finish the movie, his third as director. "I never control a film. The film controls me," said Jiang, 44. "I was obsessed and involved. I was controlled by the characters."
Four related stories set in idyllic, rural China comprise "The Sun Also Rises." Three take place in the 1970s, one in the 1950s. Aside from himself, the movie features established actors like Joan Chen and Anthony Wong Chau-sang.
But the early buzz has been about the performance of Jaycee Chan, the son of the action star Jackie Chan, who is making a name for himself as a dramatic talent.
Jiang takes special pride in Jaycee's work, noting that he picked him for the lead in three of the stories and served as mentor.
The director shot what he believes will be the most memorable scenes of this $10 million movie over many weeks in the remote Yunan Province. "Making this film, I wanted a dreamlike environment," he said. He wanted to enhance this further by doing post-production in Paris, choosing the same lab that worked on "Amélie," the fantastical French hit.
Jiang epitomizes the kind of filmmaking tradition that is revered on the mainland. While in Hong Kong's predominantly commercial industry the craft is learned by working on movie sets, in China cinema is considered high culture that is nurtured in elite film institutes.
Jiang graduated in 1984 from Beijing's Central Academy of Drama, China's most important acting school. He acted in a handful of government studio films like the sweeping drama "Hisbiscus Town" before making a name for himself internationally with his powerful performance in "Red Sorghum." He directed his first film, "In the Heat of the Sun," a coming-of-age tale, in 1984.
He has remained true to his pursuit of epic stories, choosing to star in only about one a year and directing only three in more than a decade.
"Do you think it is too few?" he asked. "If you look at them, they are like 20 films. Each one is like five or six. Other people's films are like a cocktail, a little alcohol with water and juice. My films are like pure vodka."
Jiang's movies are indeed potent. "Sun" tackles life during the Cultural Revolution, a period that is still sensitive in China. He remains sanguine about the risks inherent to his kind of storytelling.
"Devils" earned Jiang the ire of censors who felt he was a little too sympathetic to the Japanese, and for months after that, he was blacklisted. Despite the movie's lack of theatrical distribution, it was very popular in China, becoming a best seller in pirated-DVD shops across the country.
"A film that doesn't get distributed is like a child that never gets married," he said. "Maybe she's having a secret affair with the audiences, but officially she still lives at home."
Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Jiang Wen: An actor and director with a taste for the epic
By Alexandra A. Seno
Thursday, August 16, 2007
HONG KONG: In 1970s China, Jiang Wen fell in love with epic cinema, the kind with larger-than-life heroes swept up in a changing world. "In those days, we could only watch Russian, Chinese, Albanian and Romanian films. They were mostly movies about war and anti-fascism," he said. "Those films affected me. They had a smell. The big studio films of today are very glamorous but they seem so artificial; they have no smell."
Clearly, that craving to recreate the profound cinematic experiences of his boyhood drives Jiang's career, one focused on making important statements and lasting impressions. For more than two decades, he has been the face of his country's art-house films, as a director and as China's most famous dramatic actor.
He played Gong Li's winemaking paramour in "Red Sorghum," (1987), Zhang Yimou's breathtaking first movie. In "Devils on the Doorstep," (1994) which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2000, and which Jiang directed, he played a villager caught between the Chinese Army and Japanese occupation forces.
In his latest opus, "The Sun Also Rises," which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month, he is a man dealing with his wife's infidelity. It took him three years to finish the movie, his third as director. "I never control a film. The film controls me," said Jiang, 44. "I was obsessed and involved. I was controlled by the characters."
Four related stories set in idyllic, rural China comprise "The Sun Also Rises." Three take place in the 1970s, one in the 1950s. Aside from himself, the movie features established actors like Joan Chen and Anthony Wong Chau-sang.
But the early buzz has been about the performance of Jaycee Chan, the son of the action star Jackie Chan, who is making a name for himself as a dramatic talent.
Jiang takes special pride in Jaycee's work, noting that he picked him for the lead in three of the stories and served as mentor.
The director shot what he believes will be the most memorable scenes of this $10 million movie over many weeks in the remote Yunan Province. "Making this film, I wanted a dreamlike environment," he said. He wanted to enhance this further by doing post-production in Paris, choosing the same lab that worked on "Amélie," the fantastical French hit.
Jiang epitomizes the kind of filmmaking tradition that is revered on the mainland. While in Hong Kong's predominantly commercial industry the craft is learned by working on movie sets, in China cinema is considered high culture that is nurtured in elite film institutes.
Jiang graduated in 1984 from Beijing's Central Academy of Drama, China's most important acting school. He acted in a handful of government studio films like the sweeping drama "Hisbiscus Town" before making a name for himself internationally with his powerful performance in "Red Sorghum." He directed his first film, "In the Heat of the Sun," a coming-of-age tale, in 1984.
He has remained true to his pursuit of epic stories, choosing to star in only about one a year and directing only three in more than a decade.
"Do you think it is too few?" he asked. "If you look at them, they are like 20 films. Each one is like five or six. Other people's films are like a cocktail, a little alcohol with water and juice. My films are like pure vodka."
Jiang's movies are indeed potent. "Sun" tackles life during the Cultural Revolution, a period that is still sensitive in China. He remains sanguine about the risks inherent to his kind of storytelling.
"Devils" earned Jiang the ire of censors who felt he was a little too sympathetic to the Japanese, and for months after that, he was blacklisted. Despite the movie's lack of theatrical distribution, it was very popular in China, becoming a best seller in pirated-DVD shops across the country.
"A film that doesn't get distributed is like a child that never gets married," he said. "Maybe she's having a secret affair with the audiences, but officially she still lives at home."
Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Newsweek: Water Funds
Very Liquid Assets
Water crises are both a dark threat to the world and an increasingly bright investment opportunity.
By Alexandra A. Seno
Newsweek International
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - The new oil may be water. According to Global Water Intelligence, a U.K. consultancy, by December total assets under management in water funds could hit a record $20 billion this year, a 53 percent increase from 12 months earlier. No wonder: since 2001, shares in glob-al water companies have gone up 150 percent, according to Thomson Financial. That compares with a 50 percent rise in international blue chips.
The reason is simple: there is profit in scarcity. Buffeted by constant news of dying rivers, droughts and water shortages from China to Mexico, investors are increasingly aware that water is a threatened resource. With more and more governments handing public water systems over to the big multinationals like the U.K.'s Veolia Environnement and Thames Water, profits are rising. One of the top companies, France's Suez, saw global sales from its water unit increase 11.7 percent, helped by a 20.3 percent rise in revenue from China. These days, savvy asset-management companies have turned water-shortage anxieties into a burgeoning investment-fund business. Like the rest of the market, water stocks have fallen recently, but a lot less than, say, U.S. equities. While the Standard & Poor's index plunged by a tenth in the last few weeks, shares in global water companies are down only about 3 percent, helped by international business exposure and the view that cash-generating utilities businesses are a good defense in a downturn.
This year, much of the new money pouring into water funds is coming from Asia, where ethical investing is very new. It may also simply be that Asia is the only developing region that has a combination of remarkably acute water crises and particularly rapid growth, creating a new crop of investors who are intimately familiar with the water threat. Only seven months into 2007, there are now 27 international water funds, more than double the number compared with 2006. Of the 15 new products, nine target Asian investors in Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and Sydney. Since April, when Société Générale's Lyxor Asset Management unit began inundating Hong Kong with ads touting its new water fund, it has raised $320 million from mom-and-pop investors alone, well beyond its expectations.
The price of any company's stock reflects its estimated future earnings, and the potential to make money fixing water problems is huge. In developing markets where affluence is growing, and hundreds of millions of people are set to move from rural to urban areas, water resources are under assault. The Chinese government estimates that demand will increase by 120 percent in the next 25 years, while in India, urban water needs will rise 100 percent in the coming two decades. "We see a combination of exploding demand for water per capita, growing scarcity of supply and massive pollution,'' says Anthony Wilkinson, co-principal of the CLSA Clean Water Asia Fund, which started in May, and invests most of its money in Asia-listed companies.
For major water-treatment specialists, the biggest new projects are in China. Some 1,000 wastewater plants are to be built over the next five years, as the government has pledged more than $125 billion to address the natural-resource shortage. Hundreds of billions more are expected to come from the private sector. A recent report from Macquarie, the investment bank, pegged earnings growth for Singapore-listed water-treatment companies like Epure and Hyflux, which target the China market, at between 37 and 40 percent over the next three years.
The hottest investment bets include companies engaged in desalination, recycling or infrastructure, which have the highest margins and potential profit growth. Utilities are less attractive, because water prices anywhere are usually regulated by the government and not subject to market conditions. Dieter Küffer, a senior portfolio manager with Sustainable Asset Management in Zurich—which has the second biggest water fund in the world, worth $1.6 billion—says: "We think earnings growth in water stocks overall will be 14 percent over the next five years, and Asian water-stock growth will be 50 to 100 percent.''
Investors pouring money into water funds may find, as they say in China, double happiness. The stocks themselves have had a good run. But investing in sustainability may have a larger payoff. Many economists now see environmental issues as the biggest stumbling block to continued fast growth in Asia. Already, Beijing estimates economic losses due to water shortages at $25 billion a year. Investors buying into liquid assets could help secure Asia's larger economic future.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226748/site/newsweek/
© 2007 MSNBC.com
Water crises are both a dark threat to the world and an increasingly bright investment opportunity.
By Alexandra A. Seno
Newsweek International
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - The new oil may be water. According to Global Water Intelligence, a U.K. consultancy, by December total assets under management in water funds could hit a record $20 billion this year, a 53 percent increase from 12 months earlier. No wonder: since 2001, shares in glob-al water companies have gone up 150 percent, according to Thomson Financial. That compares with a 50 percent rise in international blue chips.
The reason is simple: there is profit in scarcity. Buffeted by constant news of dying rivers, droughts and water shortages from China to Mexico, investors are increasingly aware that water is a threatened resource. With more and more governments handing public water systems over to the big multinationals like the U.K.'s Veolia Environnement and Thames Water, profits are rising. One of the top companies, France's Suez, saw global sales from its water unit increase 11.7 percent, helped by a 20.3 percent rise in revenue from China. These days, savvy asset-management companies have turned water-shortage anxieties into a burgeoning investment-fund business. Like the rest of the market, water stocks have fallen recently, but a lot less than, say, U.S. equities. While the Standard & Poor's index plunged by a tenth in the last few weeks, shares in global water companies are down only about 3 percent, helped by international business exposure and the view that cash-generating utilities businesses are a good defense in a downturn.
This year, much of the new money pouring into water funds is coming from Asia, where ethical investing is very new. It may also simply be that Asia is the only developing region that has a combination of remarkably acute water crises and particularly rapid growth, creating a new crop of investors who are intimately familiar with the water threat. Only seven months into 2007, there are now 27 international water funds, more than double the number compared with 2006. Of the 15 new products, nine target Asian investors in Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and Sydney. Since April, when Société Générale's Lyxor Asset Management unit began inundating Hong Kong with ads touting its new water fund, it has raised $320 million from mom-and-pop investors alone, well beyond its expectations.
The price of any company's stock reflects its estimated future earnings, and the potential to make money fixing water problems is huge. In developing markets where affluence is growing, and hundreds of millions of people are set to move from rural to urban areas, water resources are under assault. The Chinese government estimates that demand will increase by 120 percent in the next 25 years, while in India, urban water needs will rise 100 percent in the coming two decades. "We see a combination of exploding demand for water per capita, growing scarcity of supply and massive pollution,'' says Anthony Wilkinson, co-principal of the CLSA Clean Water Asia Fund, which started in May, and invests most of its money in Asia-listed companies.
For major water-treatment specialists, the biggest new projects are in China. Some 1,000 wastewater plants are to be built over the next five years, as the government has pledged more than $125 billion to address the natural-resource shortage. Hundreds of billions more are expected to come from the private sector. A recent report from Macquarie, the investment bank, pegged earnings growth for Singapore-listed water-treatment companies like Epure and Hyflux, which target the China market, at between 37 and 40 percent over the next three years.
The hottest investment bets include companies engaged in desalination, recycling or infrastructure, which have the highest margins and potential profit growth. Utilities are less attractive, because water prices anywhere are usually regulated by the government and not subject to market conditions. Dieter Küffer, a senior portfolio manager with Sustainable Asset Management in Zurich—which has the second biggest water fund in the world, worth $1.6 billion—says: "We think earnings growth in water stocks overall will be 14 percent over the next five years, and Asian water-stock growth will be 50 to 100 percent.''
Investors pouring money into water funds may find, as they say in China, double happiness. The stocks themselves have had a good run. But investing in sustainability may have a larger payoff. Many economists now see environmental issues as the biggest stumbling block to continued fast growth in Asia. Already, Beijing estimates economic losses due to water shortages at $25 billion a year. Investors buying into liquid assets could help secure Asia's larger economic future.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226748/site/newsweek/
© 2007 MSNBC.com
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Newsweek: Jaycee Chan
MSN Tracking Image
MSNBC.com
Newsweek.com
Jaycee Chan (Jackie's Son) Finds His Rhythm
Jaycee Chan, Jackie's son, is set to become a film star with 'The Drummer.' But all he wants is to play music.
By Alexandra A. Seno
Newsweek International
Aug. 6, 2007 issue - Jaycee Chan was filled with apprehension. He was in a hotel room trying to film a love scene for his new movie, "The Drummer," and it wasn't going smoothly. "'Wah, with 50 people staring, how can I do the job right?' " he recalls thinking. He had already banished his famous father, Jackie, from the set; the action star was passing the time in the bar downstairs, singing karaoke. Eventually the younger Chan found his groove and aced the scene. "At first there was a lot of pressure," he says. "Now I don't care." But audiences will: Chan, 24, gives a mesmerizing performance in "The Drummer," in which he plays a crime boss's troubled son who is transformed by Zen drumming. "I think Jaycee is going to be a very, very good actor," says Hong Kong upstart Kenneth Bi, the film's director and writer. "He's got stuff going on."
That's putting it mildly. This summer Chan stars in no fewer than three major Asian films. In addition to the independent "The Drummer"— scheduled to premiere at Switzerland's Locarno International Film Festival in August—Chan plays a Hong Kong cop in "Invisible Target," a crowd-pleasing police thriller out this month. And he shows up as a young man having an illicit love affair during the Cultural Revolution in Jiang Wen's Venice Film Festival entry, "The Sun Also Rises." "Jaycee's friends couldn't believe this is the guy that they know," says Jiang, one of mainland China's most respected directors. "He gave a wonderful performance."
Chan manages to deflect comparisons to his father mainly by avoiding martial-arts roles. In fact, his first love is music. Growing up in Hong Kong, he would start dancing any time he heard a Michael Jackson song. As a teenager attending private school and then college in the United States, he wrote his own songs, and he eventually dropped out of the College of William & Mary in Virginia to return home and pursue a music career. More than anything, Chan, who plays drums, guitar and piano, thinks of himself as an aspiring recording artist. He readily admits that he plunged into the film industry three years ago because the Asian public expects singers to make movies (and actors to release CDs). Although he is delighted with the good reviews his acting has earned, the singing-idol wanna-be sees a downside: "Sometimes I feel I may be a better actor than a singer," he says wistfully.
Chan lives with his dad, and readily acknowledges that his genealogy has opened some doors. (His Taiwanese mother, Lin Feng-jiao, was a film star in the 1970s and 1980s.) "It's pretty nice having a dad like him," says Jaycee. Jackie, who also has a minor singing career, expects his son to make his own decisions and supports him but gives him space. The younger Chan is acutely aware that he'll have to deliver the goods if he wants to make it on his own. His film career began with roles in escapist commercial fare, like 2004's "The Huadu Chronicles," an adventure story. In 2005, Chan wrote the music for and starred in the drama "2 Young," a small film about a teenage relationship that first won him notice as a serious actor.
Bi wrote the script for "The Drummer" specifically with Chan in mind. He pursued the actor relentlessly for the pivotal role, even after an initial rejection. Bi, himself the son of Hong Kong movie personalities, finally won over the young star by selling him on how the role would push his boundaries. "We made him do things he had not done before," says the director. The film is set to be his breakthrough, the first time an entire movie has rested on his acting skills. For the part of the young urban thug on the run from Hong Kong mobsters, Chan—who speaks excellent Mandarin and Cantonese as well as very good English—threw himself wholeheartedly into full days of rigorous training with drummers near Taipei.
Despite good early feedback on "The Drummer," Chan clearly cannot wait to get back to composing songs. Though critics savaged his only recording attempt so far—a self-titled CD released in Hong Kong in 2004—Chan remains undeterred. He relishes the chance to express himself musically and loves the pressure of knowing that everything depends on him: the music, the lyrics, the vocals. Chan describes his style as "Mandarin alternative folk," something that he believes most locals simply don't get. But he is firm in his faith that his sound will have a following in Taiwan and China. He acknowledges that "it is different from the music in Hong Kong," where tastes tend to favor romantic ballads and processed pop songs with catchy hooks.
Chan, who is known in Cantonese as Fong Jo-ming, hopes to take a break from acting in a few months to finish that long-planned second album. Meanwhile, he is also busy running a small candy company called Rio Active Mints. He started it a few months ago with two friends from outside the entertainment industry. The venture suits him perfectly. "I want to do business because I want to try new things," says the singer-actor. And with that, the budding entrepreneur produces a small tin of the candies and passes them around.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20011279/site/newsweek/
© 2007 MSNBC.com
Monday, July 23, 2007
Newsweek: Chris Roberts Q&A
MSNBC.com
Newsweek.com
Classical Music's Digital Future
The chairman of Universal's Decca classical-music label talks about how classical has bucked the recording industry’s downward trend.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Alexandra A. Seno
Newsweek International
July 30, 2007 issue - The Internet is transforming the entertainment industries. The music industry has been particularly hard hit by the illegal downloading and is struggling as sales of CDs decline. But the classical music industry appears to be benefiting from the “long tail” effect—as a niche industry, it’s been able to exploit the Internet to broaden its audience and boost its bottom line. Christopher Roberts, chairman of Decca Label Group, the classical unit of Universal—the world’s biggest music company—spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Alexandra A. Seno about how the business is evolving. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: What types of music sounds best on portable digital devices?
Christopher Roberts: Consistent dynamics and an intimate sound—that often means baroque works, early music pieces, chamber music and solo instrumental music. These types of music do better digitally than they would ordinarily on CD.
Universal Music’s classical labels have had a great deal of success using digital because it presents a new way for us to present classical music and the younger generation of artists. Helene Grimaud, Janine Jansen, Lang Lang and Anna Netrebko have all had a great deal of success in the digital medium. In addition, certain great recordings by recognized artists such as Karajan, Solti, Barenboim and others, of the most popular works (Mozart’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony) also sell extremely well online.
Furthermore, success breeds success in digital, due to the presence of the charts on iTunes and other digital services as key drivers for sales. Placement and continued strong chart positioning drive digital sales, perhaps even more than in the traditional [retail] business.
According to Nielsen SoundScan, sales of classical music rose 22 percent in 2006 versus a decline of 5 percent for total album sales. Why did this happen?
Classical is not as subject to piracy, and also not as popular for track-by-track sales digitally, which erodes full album sales in more youth-oriented genres. Many people on the Internet are browsing on iTunes and other digital services with few clear ideas of what to buy. They are open to suggestion. They are not necessarily obsessed with any one genre of music. Digital encourages experimentation. When you see Lang Lang right next to Toby Keith and 50 Cent on the main page of iTunes, all of those artists get a chance to reach the consumer. It is not so odd for people to have an interest in Beethoven concertos as well as hip-hop and alternative rock, and that can only be a good thing for the development of our society and our performing arts.
Have young, good-looking artists like pianist Lang Lang and opera singer Nicole Cabell helped create new audiences for classical?
Younger artists like Nicole Cabell, Lang Lang and others move a consumer on the edges of classical music toward purchasing, especially given how easy it is to do online, with the close proximity of these artists to those from other, more traditionally mainstream genres.
Strong images from these artists certainly help, but perhaps not in the way that many people think. The paradox of digital is that, although space is theoretically unlimited, it is harder to browse through that infinite space. People want to be guided, to [be helped in finding] what they are looking for.
It is a myth that these young artists online are really converting nonclassical listeners into rabid classical fans. Instead, they help to move the listener at the edges of classical music front and center into the genre, to take a chance and listen. If you don’t like opera, you will probably not like Nicole Cabell, Anna Netrebko or Rolando Villazon. But if you see a singer who appeals to you, never mind an opera singer, but simply a singer, then you might be moved to take a chance, and that expands our marketplace for classical in a very powerful way.
Every few years, we read about the demise of classical music. What do you think of this?
Classical music may not always be in the mainstream, but a certain audience for it always exists, and always will. Fresh waves of new talent, new artists and composers, and new musical perspectives are always flowing in continually and keep classical music invigorated. The digital medium has breathed new life into classical music by bringing in audiences who might be generally interested but not specifically knowledgeable about classical music into the fold, turning them into classical buyers by breaking down the glass walls that tended to separate the classical section from the rest of a record store.
Do you release any classical music in digital-only format?
Yes, we currently have several unique digital-only concepts and products. Our DG and Decca Concerts series uses the speed and flexibility of the Internet to give people round the world the opportunity to attend [virtual] concerts in some of the world’s best concert halls with the world’s leading orchestras.
We also engage in digital-only catalog releases that take advantage of the unique opportunities of the digital medium. We are reissuing vast amounts of our back catalog that have long been unavailable at retail—even resurrecting entire labels like Argo and L’Oiseau Lyre—with digital as a driving force due to infinite shelf space and the much-discussed promise of the “long tail.”
We are also creating album concepts such as “The Works” which would not be possible in the physical world. Together with the editor in chief of Gramophone Magazine, we have put together the most critically acclaimed performances in the DG catalog of 10 of the most popular classical works as separate “albums” of varying length and at fair prices, no matter whether they would fill an entire physical CD or not. Released last month, these albums are currently dominating the top 20 of the iTunes Classical album chart, and they are only available digitally.
Is digital classical-music marketing different than traditional classical-music marketing?
Marketing is marketing—it really doesn’t matter whether it results in a digital or physical sale. Marketing in online or offline can result in a sale online or offline. There are some differences between digital and physical marketing, mostly to do with the fundamental nature of the Internet: infinite space and limited computer-screen size. The marketing of classical music for digital sale is driven extensively by positioning with the digital services. Because visible digital space is limited by the size of your computer screen, and other choices are only a mouse click away, you need to draw the audience in quickly, to draw attention to an artist, to urge the audience to experiment, and to discover more.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19877908/site/newsweek/
© 2007 MSNBC.com
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Newsweek: The Long Tail of Classical Music
Classical Music's Digital Comeback
Digital downloads over the Internet are helping purveyors of classical music stage an encore.
By Alexandra Seno
Newsweek International
July 30, 2007 issue - Classical music hardly seems like a growth business. We're forever reading about how concert audiences are graying, and new artists must flounce around fiddling in tank tops and platform heels to get attention (think Vanessa-Mae and the gals from Bond). In fact, classical music is doing a lot better than you might think. Although total sales in all music categories (on- and offline) fell 5 percent last year, classical sales grew by a whopping 22 percent. "When I talk to people in the industry, everyone is making money," says Klaus Heymann, chairman of Naxos, the world's biggest independent classical-music company, based in Hong Kong.
So why are Heymann and his peers singing such a different tune? Because classical retailers have been the best at exploiting the potential of online revenue. The biggest companies of the classical genre are now earning about 20 percent of sales from digital music, double or triple the average for other categories. This is a tremendous advantage for them, as selling music in the digital format can be twice as profitable as it is offline. The bottom line: while this may well be one of the worst years for music sales in general since charts were started in the 1960s, most classical labels expect revenue to continue to rise.
Classical music has proved to be ideal for the digital-music era. The complex and subtle nature of the recordings makes them tough to pirate; the classical customer is technologically savvy and more likely to buy in bulk, and the viral nature of the Net has allowed the music to be heard by new audiences, fueling overall sales. "The classical-music sector has done a very good job of maximizing the opportunity of the Internet," notes Mark Mulligan, a digital music analyst at Forrester Research.
It's all part of the "Long Tail" theory of cybercommerce, in which companies do a good business selling a few units of many, many things. Many other musical genres still follow the traditional "big hits" business model: 80 percent of revenue coming from 20 percent of inventory (that's why labels generally push a few artists very hard). Classical is different—consumers like to geek out on niche recordings, reveling in different versions of the same work or finding obscure versions of well-known pieces. Of the 146,031 tracks offered by Naxos online, about half have sold only 10 units or less. Still, that was enough to push digital revenues to a quarter of the company's total $82 million in sales for 2006, increasing profitability and helping offset a decline in offline sales. Heymann, a serious classical buff who started the company 20 years ago, says, "We could live very comfortably if from tomorrow we never sold another CD."
Indies like Naxos have been the most aggressive online, but even at Decca Label Group, the classical division of Universal, the world's largest music company, the digital-music business now contributes a fifth of sales. This is in part because illegal peer-to-peer file sharing hasn't hit classical music at all, a sharp contrast to the way it has decimated the pop industry. Low-quality tracks, which are often uploaded as smaller files on networks like LimeWire and Gnutella, aren't a problem when you want to listen to relatively banal stuff like Britney. But they don't cut the mustard for complex orchestral compositions by Bach—the nuances and length of such pieces make them much tougher to share via peer-to-peer. Classical also benefits from the fact that most users want to buy an entire album, rather than a single or two. They may also want to download the liner notes, background on the artists, the recording venue, the composer, etc. A pop song can be enjoyed for 99 cents, while a piece of classical music will likely cost more than $10.
Of course, none of this will save the recording industry from its larger problems. Classical-music sales are about a fourth the size of country's, and barely 10 percent of rock's. Still, the success of companies like Naxos have provided a case study in how to optimize profits with the Long Tail. "Joan Tower: Made in America," a Naxos recording of the U.S. composer's work conducted by Leonard Slatkin of the National Symphony Orchestra, held the No. 1 slot on last month's classical charts. That meant selling merely tens of thousands of copies, but given that online production and distribution costs are so low, the recording is on its way to becoming one of this year's most profitable items.
The lesson for labels is that prepackaging global pop stars isn't the only way to profitability, and the result might be more exposure for a broader number of artists and more diversity for consumers. EMI digitalized some of its rare historical recordings by the late opera great Maria Callas, and Decca is resurrecting long-extinct labels like Argo and L'Oiseau Lyre in downloadable format.
At the same time, some industry watchers believe digital might also help create more classical megastars. Witness the rise of Lang Lang, a young, spiky-haired Chinese pianist who topped iTunes' charts in mid-May. The fact that he ended up on iTunes' main page helped push sales of his new album, "Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 4," even further into the top 15 of the general iTunes charts. "When you see Lang Lang right next to Toby Keith and 50 Cent, all of those artists get a chance to reach the consumer," notes Christopher Roberts, chairman of Decca, which produced the album.
Meanwhile, labels are working on the next big digital challenge—how to let consumers search a really, really Long Tail of recordings. Mike McGuire, vice president of Gartner Industry Advisory Research in the United States, notes that virtually all systems of organizing online music data were "designed for three-minute pop or rock songs." Finding a particular piece of Spanish piano music composed between 1850 and 1920, or looking for multiple movements that add up to a single title requires more-sophisticated technology. That's something Naxos developed for its own businesses, but is far from the current standard of popular digital-music retailers. The upside of this is that the digital revolution has given smaller labels like Naxos yet another way to level the playing field—by selling or licensing their own proprietary technology. Niche search technology is one of the hottest areas of technology development at the moment. A classical label that can score on that front may find its audience—and its sales—get a lot, lot bigger.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19887678/site/newsweek/page/0/
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Sunday, July 8, 2007
Newsweek: "Along the River During the Qingming Festival"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19650862/site/newsweek/
A Rare Look at 'China's Mona Lisa'
 MSNBC.com |
A Rare Look at 'China's Mona Lisa'
A Hong Kong exhibit offers a rare glimpse of the 12th-century masterpiece known as 'China's Mona Lisa.'
By Alexandra A. Seno
Newsweek International
July 16, 2007 issue - Even among the stuffy bureaucrats in Beijing, the Song dynasty ink-on-silk painting "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" has an affectionate nickname: "China's Mona Lisa." Though it's a landscape, not a portrait, "Qingming" has a mysterious allure that has captivated the popular imagination and spawned debate about its hidden meaning, much like da Vinci's fabled work. But unlike the "Mona Lisa," which is on view at the Louvre, "Qingming" has been seen only rarely by members of the public.
Now's their big chance. The stunning 12th-century work by the court artist Zhang Zeduan is making its first appearance outside the mainland as the star attraction of "The Pride of China," an exhibit of 32 important paintings from Beijing's Palace Museum (through Aug. 11) marking the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese control. The five-meter-long "Qingming" scroll—named after the spring holiday for honoring ancestors—features more than 800 figures, 28 boats and 170 trees in a buzzing waterside city.
It captures scenes of everyday life in finely wrought detail: traders lead camels, heavy with merchandise, through the city gate. Sedan-chair bearers balance wealthy passengers through busy streets. Children scream for attention while elders engage in chitchat. Stevedores unload sacks of food from boats. A woman's laundry hangs from a roof. " 'Qingming' is a great ambassador for Chinese culture," says Maxwell Hearn, curator of Chinese painting at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, who recently visited Hong Kong in connection with the exhibit. "It has enormous popular appeal. You don't have to understand calligraphy, brush painting, poetry or symbolism which infuses so much of Chinese art with meaning. It is about humanity."
As an imperial treasure originally meant for the pleasure of the emperor and select members of his court, "Qingming" has always been inaccessible to the masses—which has only strengthened its appeal. Since the time of its creation in the 12th century, the artwork's fame has spread mainly through stories in books and poems. Pu Yi, the last Chinese emperor, took the scroll with him when he left the Forbidden City in the 1920s. The painting was missing until it was found in a bank vault in the 1950s.
Now tea-colored with age, the scroll is considered too delicate to go on permanent exhibit. Beijing's regulations allow it to be on view for only three weeks at a time, after which it must be retired to the vault for years. But like all important Chinese works of art, it has been much replicated, ensuring that the public knows well what it looks like. In fact, one such 16th-century "fake" by Qiu Ying will take the place of the original Song piece during the second half of the Hong Kong show, beginning July 23.
In addition to its esthetic qualities, "Qingming" continues to fascinate because of what it celebrates: "a prosperous, urban state from the perspective of the working class," says University of Hong Kong art historian Yeewan Koon. The painting clearly depicts great Chinese achievements of the time—including innovations in architecture and engineering, as evidenced by a wooden bridge without piers and a variety of vessels designed to transport goods and people. "Qingming" also prominently illustrates trade in wine and grain, which were monopolies of the emperor and represent his control. The painting shows people from all strata of society thriving in a place held together by a sense of order and unseen powers. For Hong Kong, 10 years after reverting to mainland rule, that makes "China's Mona Lisa" an especially relevant guest.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19650862/site/newsweek/
Friday, July 6, 2007
Art Smart 2
Another essay on art, this time on Southeast Asian art, that is worth reading and thinking about:
http://www.aaa.org.hk/newsletter.html#dia
http://www.aaa.org.hk/newsletter.html#dia
Art Smart
Brilliant essay on the current art bubble:
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=677
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=677
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Qingming Shanghe Du
It really is an amazing artwork. Not only because it is a visual encyclopedia of life in the Northern Song Dynasty, but also since it is a fine painting with great detail and very clever use of perspective.
It is the star attraction of "The Pride of China." Worth braving a trip to the wilds of Tsim Sha Tsui.
Chinese laws restrict the exhibition of a national treasure like this to three weeks (after which it must go "rest" in the vaults of Beijing). Qingming will be on view until July 22.
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