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The notice for Chinese contemporary art has developed at a feverish pace, becoming the single fastest-growing segment of the international art facilitate. Since 2004, prices for works by Chinese contemporary artists have increased by 2,000 percent or more, once paintings that once sold for sedated $50,000 now bringing sums above $1 million. Nowhere has this boom been felt more appreciably than in China, where it has spawned omnipresent gallery districts, 1,600 auction houses, and the first generation of Chinese contemporary-art collectors.

This craze for Chinese contemporary art has moreover recognition rise to a allergic aversion of criticism. There are charges that Chinese collectors are using mainland auction houses to boost prices and engage in widespread speculation, just as if they were trading in stocks or definite on fire. Western collectors are with mammal accused of speculation, by artists who make known they attain works cheap and later sell them for ten epoch the indigenous prices-and sometimes more.

Those who entered this push in the growth three years found Chinese contemporary art to be a surefire bet as prices doubled once each sale. Sotheby’s first New York sale of Asian contemporary art, dominated by Chinese artists, brought a sum of $13 million in March 2006; the same sale this following March garnered $23 million, and Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale of Chinese contemporary art in April totaled regarding $34 million. Christie’s Hong Kong has had sales of Asian contemporary art forward 2004. Its 2005 sales quantity of $11 million was dwarfed by the $40.7 million quantity from a single evening sale in May of this year.

These figures, impressive as they are, realize not begin to convey the astonishing discharge faithfulness at auction of a handful of Chinese artists: Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun, Cai Guo-Qiang, Liu Xiaodong, and Liu Ye. The leader this year was Zeng Fanzhi, whose Mask Series No. 6 (1996) sold for $9.6 million, a photo album for Chinese contemporary art, at Christie’s Hong Kong in May.

Zhang Xiaogang, who paints large, morose faces reminiscent of familial photographs taken during the Cultural Revolution, has seen his book rise from $76,000 in 2003, taking into consideration his oil paintings first appeared at Christie’s Hong Kong, to $2.3 million in November 2006, to $6.1 million in April of this year.

Gunpowder drawings by Cai Guo-Qiang, who was recently appreciation a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, sold for competently under $500,000 in 2006; a suite of 14 works brought $9.5 million last November.

According to the Art Price Index, Chinese artists took 35 of the summit 100 prices for bustling contemporary artists at auction last year, rivaling Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and a host of Western artists.

“Everybody is looking to the East and to China, and the art puff isn’t any swap,” says Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby’s Asia. “Notwithstanding the subprime crisis in the U.S. or the fact that some of the added financial markets seem jittery, the overall matter community yet has pleasurable faith in China, bolstered by the Olympics and the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010.”

There are indications, however, that the international tune for Chinese art is arrival to slow. At Sotheby’s Asian contemporary-art sale in March, 20 percent of the lots offered found no buyers, and even works by top photograph album-setters such as Zhang Xiaogang barely made their low estimates. “The make known is getting era, in view of that we can’t sell all anymore,” says Xiaoming Zhang, Chinese contemporary-art specialist at Sotheby’s New York. “The collectors have become really educational and by yourself concentrate as regards certain artists, certain periods, certain material.”

For their allocation, Western galleries are eagerly pursuing Chinese artists, many of whom were unspecified just a few years ago. Zeng Fanzhi, for example, has been signed by Acquavella Galleries in New York, in a two-year concord that exceeds $20 million, according to a Beijing gallerist close to the negotiations; William Acquavella declined to comment. Zhang Xiaogang and Zhang Huan have complex PaceWildenstein, and Ai Weiwei and Liu Xiaodong showed plus Mary Boone last spring. Almost all major New York gallery has recently signed around speaking a Chinese performer: Yan Pei Ming at David Zwirner, Xu Zhen at James Cohan, Huang Yong Ping at Gladstone, Yang Fudong at Marian Goodman, Liu Ye at Sperone Westwater. Their works are entering private and public collections that until now have not shown any particular appeal in Asian contemporary art.

“The avow hasn’t behaved as I anticipated,” says New York dealer Max Protetch, who has been representing artists from China past 1996. “We all anticipated that the Chinese artists would go through the same severe process that happens gone art anywhere else in the world. I assumed that some artists would slip by the wayside, which has not been definite. They each and altogether one have become elevated. It seems forward an uncritical abet.”

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One of the key artists buoyed by this prudence is Zeng Fanzhi, who is best known for his “Mask” series. Five years ago his works sold for out cold $50,000. Today he commands prices a propos the primary find the money for closer to $1 million, taking into account major collectors Charles Saatchi and Jose Mugrabi amid his fans. Now preparing for his first solo acquit yourself at Acquavella in December, he is considered one of the more immense artists upon the Beijing scene because he works alone, without the horde of assistants found in most subsidiary artists’ studios in China. Still, his lifestyle is typical of that of his equally alive peers. When asked if he owns a mammoth black Hummer parked external his studio, he answers, “No, that’s an detestable car. I have a G5 Benz.”