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| Wu Hung -- Yu De Yao Dialogue |
| By ArtZineChina |
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Editorial Note: The Indonesian-Chinese collector Yu Deyao started collecting contemporary Chinese art in 2004. He recently built a private museum, the Yuz Art Museum, in Jakarta, Indonesia. The first exhibition, "Lovely Blossoms and Full Moon," features work from his private collection of contemporary Chinese art works. In the following dialogue, collector Yu Deyao talked with Wu Hung, a professor at the University of Chicago, about how he became a collector, the struggle and conflicts he had in being a third generation Indonesian-Chinese, and his feelings about Indonesia and China.
 u Hung: I feel that this collection exhibition in Jakarta is an important one. In consideration of the Indonesian identity and perspective, it appears that China belongs to a larger sphere, that is, East Asia and Southeast Asia. I am very impressed by your collection in both its depth and breadth, and the tremendous commitment on your part in developing the collection.
Yu Deyao: But, still, I have not taken it far enough. There is only so much that one could do. I position this exhibition from the angle of how it may help us understand the concept and perspective underlying the collection.
Wu Hung: When did you start collecting?
Yu Deyao: The trajectory of my own thoughts and inner struggles probably form the context for this collection. I was in the prime of life when Indonesia plunged into turmoil in 1997. The economy had been thriving prior to 1997. Then in 1998, turbulence erupted. At that time, young people like us were questioning, “We have been living in the country for three generations, but why is Indonesia still unable to accept us?” There are Arabs, Indians and Javanese in Indonesia, not to mention the numerous ethnic groups in Sumatra. The Chinese probably constitute Indonesia’s second largest ethnic group.
When I was studying in Singapore, I acquainted myself with the history of the Malays as well as Chinese history. I studied how our forefathers came here. During the six hundred years of Dutch colonial rule, the Dutch treated the people of Indonesia (including indigenous Indonesians and Chinese) as coolies (that is, laborers, workers), but also pitched some to be merchants as they needed such people to trade and help them make money. As a result, three social classes came into being. The first was the ruling class. The second consisted of folks in cahoots with the ruling class – probably people with business acumen. The third class was the so-called common people. Eventually, we defeated the Dutch as well as the Japanese. With the liberation go Indonesia, and change over of power of the first freedom fighters, a new ruling class arose to supersede the Dutch overlords and become the high echelons. In the wake of the Japanese’s defeat and departure, these people received monetary compensations. They began the work of building the nation. The ethnic Chinese were good at doing business. They built factories and so on, but the common Indonesians, inclusive of numerous ethnic Chinese, continued to work as coolies. That was the situation. Possessing great wealth, many Chinese businessmen colluded with friends in high places, thereby straining interracial bonds to breaking point. Naturally, the other Indonesians came to have negative impressions of the Chinese. To them, the Chinese were their oppressors, wealthy, unlearned, uncultured, miserly and of foreign origin. “Why are they so rich?” – that was the question that people were asking.
Eventually, we became a so-called democracy. In a democracy, it is the people themselves who are truly in charge. At that time, Suharto fell from power. That was around 1998 or 1999. After the outbreak, a few presidents came and went. We had parliamentary elections. Having gone through some discord and social unrest, Indonesia gradually evolved into a true democracy. All in all, I have great admiration for this process of democratisation that Indonesia underwent. With the country being a democracy, there is a lot of equality now. Many Chinese-controlled businesses are gradually being handed over to the government. Sometimes, there are cases of insolvency, indebtedness to banks, abscondence and so on, but stability is setting in as gradual consolidation takes place. As a result, there is a more even distribution of wealth, unlike the way things used to be. But how do we eradicate the kind of sentiments Indonesians have towards the ethnic Chinese? The fact is: we are a different group of people now. the Chinese are not what you imagine us to be. The majority of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia are poor people, much like the other common folks. This is what we want to do now. I’m in a position to do this beacuase I have never received "favours" from officialdom. So I speak very candidly. I don’t need to defend certain people for the sake of protecting my own interests. Some Chinese had indeed gone overboard in the past. I remember a friend of mine whose wedding was attended by five or  ten thousand people. Imagine the lavishness of the nuptial banquet! How did it make people feel? Some people were more or less blinded by riches. But, of course, all these are history now. Presently, as we rebuild, we hope to be of use to this nation. We hope that there is a place for us ethnic Chinese in the cultural and political sphere. Our culture used to be prohibited. We were told, “You just make money. Help us make money. Just don’t touch politics. We’ll give you the economic domain.” Yet, when Indonesians became discontented with the government, the ruling class pointed at the Chinese, saying, “Settle your score with them!” Once again, anti-Chinese behavior surfaced, and did so at all levels. Ordinary Chinese folks become scapegoats. As ethnic Chinese of the new generation, we feel that in order to foster good interracial relations, we need to tell the other races that we are Indonesians too. We have, among other things, our own culture, traditions and art. We hope to share these with them.
Although China was our motherland, we are Indonesians now. We need to establish our own good will towards the people of Indonesia. Why is this museum of mine situated in Jakarta and Bali? It’s because we need to have cultural interfaces. The specific area of my personal interest is Chinese contemporary art. Through contemporary art, artists say things that diverge from politics. They have their own thoughts. So we want to deliver a message through this exhibition, which is the message of achieving cultural interfacing via art. You may not understand the Chinese language, just as many Chinese nationals find the Indonesian language unintelligible, but you can still interface by way of art. My purpose is to establish such a platform.
 Wu Hung: Having listened to you, I deduced that there are two aspects to your thinking. One is that contemporary art can help others understand China today. You regard this as a role you can play. Given your standing, and being an Indonesian, you cannot represent China as such. You are someone who is concerned about cultural matters in Indonesia, and given how Contemporary art is also about addressing many global concerns, I find your position to be a very significant one. There are also unavoidable contradictions in the midst of it all.
Yu Deyao: True. This itself is very interesting. What we are articulating now sounds plain enough, but it is a little tricky how we may integrate this. Sometimes we cannot put it so plainly, or I would have a problem.
Wu Hung: I think it is all fine given that contradictions are often inherent in contemporary art. For example, when I speak of contemporary art in America, where it is said that art has no national or cultural boundaries, given its contemporaneity. I had to say that was not necessary so. The west has its contemporary art, just as every ethnic group has its own culture, and also its tradition. Notwithstanding that there is much we need to interface, the varied cultural background remains a reality. I think the issues you raised are important. While art is not always a necessary channel in cultural exchange, you have chosen contemporary art to address social historical issues.
Yu Deyao: Well, we established an organization in Indonesia known as GANDI (Anti Discrimination Movement), with President Wahid as its Chairman and Ibu  Megawati as an avid supporter of ours. They were still commoners in those days when we banded together. We united all the ethnic groups and began to do a lot of work. There were results. For instance, the days of Chinese New Year celebration are now official public holidays in Indonesia. Confucianism has also become one of our four major religions. In addition, Confucius’ birthday is now an official public holiday too. Confucianism is presently on equal standing with Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. We were striving towards some form of equality, so that we might fulfill our responsibility to the next generation. We have completed our part of the work. Presently, it is a group of young people who are pressing forward with the endeavor.
In any case, in the subsequent years, I became impassioned about collecting. The mentality and evolution of a collector is actually quite simple. I have many friends who are collectors too. They never allow others to view their collections. However, my personality is such that I want to show others the wonderful things I have. The typical motivation for a private collection can no longer satisfy the part of me that is on an artistic quest. I hope to establish a public space, an art museum. I want to emulate the spirit of collection as seen in eminent European clans, some of which are distinguished families that have been collecting marvels for centuries. Can I not, I wonder, initiate a similar spirit myself that will pass on in my family from generation to generation and inform future collecting?
 Wu Hung: There has always been such a tradition in Euro - America. But in Asia this is rare. What you are doing is akin to starting a new tradition. The concept of the transformation of a private collection to become a public collection does not exist in China. In the usual sense of private collection, it is intended for personal ownership, and for mutual appreciation among friends. So when did you start collecting?
Yu Deyao: Taking Indonesia into account, I have been collecting contemporary art seriously for ten years. The collecting of Chinese contemporary art in any serious sense began sometime around 2004 or 2005.
Wu Hung: Hence, your consciousness in collecting the contemporary started from around 2000. At the beginning you were collecting Indonesian works. After 2004 you started collecting Chinese works. Why this transition? What were your thoughts then?
Yu Deyao: Due to the economic upheaval of that time, I had debts to pay. After clearing them, I had little on my mind. I began to take notice of the Chinese artworks collected by my friends. They were collecting works by the realists then. As things turned out, by the time I started to gain more elbowroom financially, a young man came to see me and recommended a painting to me. It was Guo Jin’s work depicting cycling. I thought it was quite good.
Wu Hung: In viewing this kind of paintings, what were your feelings? The works being different from those in other collections, were you excited? Or how else would you describe your feelings then?
Yu Deyao: I was truly very excited. It was a very large painting, measuring 3.5 by 2 meters. It is usually very difficult to find space for something of this size. However, my office happened to be 3.5 meters from floor to ceiling. The painting fitted in perfectly. All of a sudden, it piqued my interest as well as certain other feelings. So I began to read about Chinese contemporary art, go to auctions, learn to look at auctions catalogues, and contact galleries. I learnt a lot of costly lessons at the beginning, needless to say. Seeing that I was new to the field, some dealers shoved mediocre items on me indiscriminately. I ended up purchasing a lot of “trash” out of ignorance. I came into contact with artists themselves in the course of time. To me, talking to them is a way of learning. Even now, I still call some of my artist friends in my spare time. I clicked with these people very well. I can converse with anyone. Moreover, I’m a straightforward person, according to my friends. So they would introduce their own friends to me. Now I make friends with more and more artists.
Wu Hung: How old are you this year?
Yu Deyao: I was born in 1957. I’m 51 now. When I was 28, a company in which my family members held shares came to the verge of closing down. I bought over their shares as well as those of all the other shareholders, took a loan from the bank, and embarked on my own business. Those were extremely hard times. I was way to earnest about my career, to the point where I collapsed in exhaustion and fell ill. I remember that in the early days of my entrepreneurship, I hated weekends most, because I was always unbearably bored during weekends, stuck at home with nothing to do. Incidentally, I was acquiring a great deal of property for the purpose of building a chicken farm. So I made myself go out on weekends to look for land, just so hat I would always be on the go. Now, I’m once again driven by the same spirit of entrepreneurship that I had in those days. Like a car with broken breaks, I can’t stop. I’m always looking around and buying. I’m also learning, reading up and making friends with critics, just so that I wouldn’t buy the wrong things. I do call up independent artists to ask about their opinions sometimes when I find myself clueless. They would tell me everything they know. That’s how I learn, and I do pick things up fast. I have become acquainted with the creators of all the artworks in my collection. I have befriended them all.
Wu Hung: Indeed, this is about entering into a new realm altogether. It is not jus the artworks; there is also human factor, entering a “circle,” a societal circle. You therefore have two enterprises. First is about business, and the second, although comprising economic factor, is predominantly a cultural enterprise.
 Yu Deyao: I have this notion: any collection that does not come with some form of financial motivation is flawed and hypocritical. The Chinese contemporary art of today, as we know, will be highly valuable assets in the future. People used to think that wealth bequeathed to the next generation consists of shares, cash, real estate or a company, but I feel that leaving artworks behind would be absolutely worthwhile. As a businessman, I started out in the business of livestock farming, which is a huge business. But if my children were to ask me now, “Father, what exactly do you do?”, I will tell them, “Your father is a collector, and a great one according to some. You must understand that this greatness does not consist in collecting for the sake of collecting. Rather, it is through collecting that we seek to make more contributions of culture, so that part of our wealth may be channeled back to society at a higher level.”
Wu Hung: Having decided on an undertaking we should go the full way. Contemporary art is not just about a painting. It comprises exhibitions, forums, educational programmes, and so on. These are all relatively missing in China. The perspective you mentioned just now is significant. That is, your lofty aspiration to be a great collector. There seem to be two aspects to this ambition. One is the acute sense of Chinese tradition, coupled with concepts of contemporaneity. When you speak of this to your children, you do not just speak of assets, but of cultural capital. It is a financial issue, as well as an issue of social responsibility, in the context of broader political, economical and social concerns. Second is to take it from your perspective as an Indonesian. You are developing a line linking Beijing, Jakarta and Bali, which is akin to the concept of “family” in Han culture. So this latter aspect is one of societal dimension, from an Indonesian standpoint. I think these two aspects reinforce each other in a meaningful way.
 Yu Deyao: I feel that my wealth originated from Indonesia. It was on her soil that I became financially empowered. Yet, in the aspects of my education and sentiments, it is Han Chinese culture that attracts me more. That is very normal. The situation is similar to that of many indigenous Indonesians who went to the United States when they grew up, receiving a totally Western education there, and thereby became particularly interested in Western culture. They might be Chinese, but they knew nothing about Chinese culture – they have an affinity for Western culture instead. There is nothing terribly wrong about that. All this has very much to do with one’s background. In my case, my educational background brought me into extensive contact with Han Chinese culture. In those days, the Indonesian government took an anti - Chinese stance, closing down Chinese schools and limiting the percentage of ethnic Chinese students in universities to a minimum, say 1% or 2%. In other words, only two out of a hundred students were ethnic Chinese. The Chinese had no choice but to get out of the country. I chose Han culture at that time. I had been in Singapore and Hong Kong, engaged in Chinese-related studies. In Singapore, I enrolled in the Catholic High School, the same school as Kwok Kian Chow. It was there that I joined a choir and became exposed to folk songs from China. During that time, Singapore was just beginning to open up. Mao Zedong’s books were streaming into the country, along with movies from China, such as Liu San Jie. I took to absorbing such inputs out of a liking for all things Chinese. I went to sleep every night listening to the folk songs.
Wu Hung: When was that?
 Yu Deyao: That was the late 1970s. I was in high school. Every night I listened to Chinese folk songs broadcasted on Singapore Radio. I can still sing many of those songs now, even songs of the revolution that many Chinese nationals are unfamiliar with. Thus I came to develop a predilection fro Han or Chinese culture, with which I tend to favor in my collection system now because it is what I have been learning about since my youth.
Wu Hung: You appear to be sensitive to feelings of historical memories in some of the works in your collection.
Yu Deyao: Indeed. I am sensitive to such matters.
Wu Hung: How meaningful, you did not begin in art, nor studied art history. But you have this intuition, and your are very confident.
Yu Deyao: Actually when I was studying in the USA, I once bought paper and oil paints, and began to paint my own hand. I did that whenever I had time. The painting took a few months to complete. It really looked good. It had solid three-dimensionality. I don’t know where this painting is now.
Wu Hung: You started drawing when you were young, am I right in saying this?
 Yu Deyao: Yes. I believe in freedom. I feel that art is free. I have two separate systems of collection, one being that of the museum, and other that of the Yuz Foundation of Indonesia. The latter is very much a freewheeling collection, with which I’m undaunted by the possibility of erring. But I hope to lay out a system of collection through talking to artists and associating with curators. It is difficult to articulate verbally. The Foundation’s collection, I believe, will have little restraints. I will be free to acquire works of younger or old artists.
Wu Hung: Indeed. This requires experimentation and courage.
Yu Deyao: There must also be an art historical order. Art history is vast and long. We can patch up the gaps slowly. I want to be free to do things, and I know we might make mistakes.
Wu Hung: I think, in the course of your collecting, two approaches may emerge. At the moment you can begin with the foundation and transiting into the museum. In the future, you may have two methods of acquisition. One experimental, and the other, to fill the art historical gaps.
Yu Deyao: In fact, that is the way things work right now. Unfortunately, I don’t have the kind of opportunities that Sigg had. He acquired such excellent items at rock-bottom cost. Things cost a lot these days, so I have to proceed slowly.
Wu Hung: There were many opportunities then, which included the Guangzhou Triennial I curated, which comprised selections from the entire decade of 1990s. Recently I visited the collection exhibition of the Ullens Centre of Contemporary Art. Many of the exhibits were acquired from the Triennial and became Ullen’s collection. Never did I imagine so much was acquired, and at a very low cost then.
Yu Deyao: I have a theory about collecting. Just why are we collecting Chinese contemporary art? What does its value consist in? I’ll give you an example to illustrate my point. A friend of mine specialises in antique collection. He has always been looking for artifacts from the Five Dynasties. According to him, artworks from this particular period are very rare and valuable because of the “barbarian” culture they embody and the brevity of the Fice Dynasties (which lasted for only sixty years altogether). It is only natural that there are fewer artifacts associated with a transient epoch. Analogously, the history of  Chinese contemporary art is a very short one too. It was from the 1985 New Waves onwards did manifestations of a more rebellious nature emerge. The transition period between the age of the Communist classics to the beginnings of Chinese contemporary art in the 1985 New Waves represents, I believe, a historical phase of remarkable rarity. The reason is this: the post-1949 Mainland Chinese culture we speak of does not consist entirely of traditional political wisdom and philosophy of the Orient (China). Sixty years have gone by since 1949, during which Chinese contemporary art also came into being. Such a period is historically unprecedented and also never to be seen again. I am blessed to be living in this time and collecting pieces of this history, which may prove to be most valuable in retrospection twenty or fifty years from now.
Wu Hung: Especially in our discussion this morning on art after the 20th century which marks a special phase in history. The purpose of art is to transform what is institutional to something that is more human. Much energy in the past was suppressed and they should now be released through the individual, to become art of the individual. This in China is a great transformation. Another important point is, that in discussing modernity in Chinese art history, the approach has always been on of binary. One is westernization. The other is Sinization. There has been no end to this debate between Chinese art and western art. The official discourse in China remains so. But in contemporary art, it is hard to speak of the west or the Chinese. Artists are using varied  materials and predicating on varied feelings. You look at things like a historian. Because you have utilized the perspective of the “past-present,” as you said, to look at the present from a point fifty years down the road. This is, indeed, the “past” of the future, not the “past” of the now. So you are not perceiving something for its current value, but to use a perspective from a point in the future to “retrospect” this very moment.
Yu Deyao: Presently when I look at a work of art, I always try as far as possible to place myself fifty years into the future. I have told you about this before. Our judgments tend to be clouded in the here and now, but our vision becomes clearer once we view the objects of today from the perspective of a more distant point in time. We have to ask, “What is the value of this work fifty years from now?”
Wu Hung: Mr. Yu does not look at an artwork from a singular point of view. Rather, it is based on personal experiences, coupled with having lived at different places. That is, your personal experience of dramatic ups and downs, as in the situation of the economic crisis you mentioned. The personal ups and downs have been crystallized into looking at art. I feel that the aforementioned two enterprises are significant.
Yu Deyao: I wish to tell artists – especially younger ones – about my expectations for them. I don’t interfere with their creative ideas. The main thing is to watch them all the way. I only can offer pointers, but I must not interfere with their work. If a particular artist is spiraling towards his own destruction, we can only watch him do so. By no means can we disrupt this pattern. I feel that patterns of art-making are like those of Nature. No matter how one may develop, succeed, become mediocre or fail, we can only talk about it in the background. There is no way we can intervene.
 Wu Hung: That is a stance. Now everyone is like that. Some patrons ask artists to make amendments and changes here and there. Many patrons are like that. I saw in you catalogue works of two artists who are relatively unknown. I feel that your attitude is different from many western collectors. The works of these artists are not based on common symbolisms. They are very sensitive. Whether it is the work of Li Xiaojing or Pan Jian, there is something more personal, more human, and more introspective. Some collectors go for the iconic and symbolic. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Just that what is attractive to them is different, such as exoticism. Because we are all within Chinese cultural cycle, so exoticism becomes a non-issue. This creates room for much of the traditional elements to emerge. These things will be important in time to come.
I recently curarted an exhibition entitled “Text and Chinese Contemporary Art.” Many feel that Chinese contemporary develop among western trajectories. Upon closer examination, the picture is really a lot more complex. Look at works created after the 1980s, many have to do with the concept of texts of books. This is something very Chinese. For instance, Xu Bing’s Book of Heaven and Huang Yongping’s spin washing washing of books in the washing machine. There are numerous examples. Many contemporary art works relate to books. This has to have something to do with the peculiarities of Chinese culture. I feel that we can explicate the characteristics of Chinese contemporary art in this way.
Wu Hung: Let me change the topic. Many people are asking if the Chinese contemporary art market is really a big bubble. Listening to you, you sound very confident that it is not. Am I right in saying that?
Yu Deyao: Whether or not it’s a bubble is unimportant to me. When you acquire an artwork, you are purchasing a comma or a full stop. You may be paying a lot for something good, but no one knows what can happen in the future. I have been fortunate myself in that I have not paid too much for my collection. Moreover, when you view whatever you come to collect as being you own possessions, you don’t think too much what happens out there. In  any case, going back to your query, I can make some comparisons with reference to economic theory. The highest price so far of any work of Chinese contemporary art is ten million US dollars. Ten million US dollars for Zeng Fanzhi’s Mask Series auctioned in June. A little earlier on, we had six million US dollars for Zhang Xiaogang’s works, and over four million for Yue Minjun. When it comes to Chinese contemporary art, a price of tem million US dollars is said to be incredibly high. Now let us look at Western art. How much is the costliest piece of Western art? In the domain of contemporary art, prices have gone beyond a hundred million dollars. And what about older masterpieces – say, Mona Lisa? How much would it cost in an auction? It would be priceless! So I feel that the Chinese have grossly underrated their own art. How could they feel that ten million dollars is an incredibly high figure? I cannot concur. No one can predict future developments, but they will certainly be for the better. I was present at the auction where Zhang Xiaogang’s painting was sold for six million dollars. I spoke with a foreigner in front of me, asking him, “What do you think?” He said, “Give it another ten years, you will add another zero behind it.” That’s sixty million dollars in ten year’s time. So I feel that we don’t need to consider the current circumstances. Prices rise and fall like they do in the stock market. If you want to be a true long-term shareholder, be like a certain friend of mine. He loves Apple computers the most. He bought their shares whenever their price dropped, and never sold them. He kept doing this about five or six years. All because he believes Apple’s Steve Jobs to be both an entrepreneur and an artist at heart. That’s what collecting is about.
Postscript(By Yu De Yao):
It has been a pleasure and a profound benefit for me to speak with Professor Wu Hung about views and imaginations pertaining to collecting.
Related Links:
Lovely Blossoms and Full Moon
Yu Deyao: An Indonesian-Chinese Collector Who Cannot Be Ignored 
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