The Business of Art: the Art market in Shanghai During the 1930s

Using the Shanghai art market as a point of entry, this paper explores fundamental questions about art production and consumption in modern China. Based on a large body of surviving price-lists, historical documents, and primary material, the pricing logic of the 1930s Shanghai market is reconstructed by using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of artistic field to investigate three aspects of the business of art in Republican Shanghai: selling outlets, artists’ pricing logic, and painting. It argues that despite the severe attacks from the cultural reformers, guohua (Chinese painting) gained dominance in the Shanghai art market which in turn provided financial security and social stature to artists in an uncertain social and political environment. In the early twentieth century, thanks to the rise of the new wealth, the boom of the publishing industry, and the introduction of western commercial cultures, the Shanghai art market underwent a groundbreaking process of modernization by adopting newly introduced retailing tactics, advertising concepts and exhibiting cultures, and became a battlefield for members of the art world competing for resources. Whether governed by the ‘logic of the field’ or by rules of the market, the pricing logic of the Republican era demonstrates that traditional values and aesthetics continued to play an integral role in the art market even though under severe challenges brought about by the introduction of western art. The success of the modern art market thus not only sustained the autonomy of the Shanghai art world but also ensured the survival of guohua under the social upheavals and cultural crisis.