CHINA SUMMER
by Summer Kumar



Shanghai’s long, stale summer may be just heating up, but the Chinese art markethas been boiling over for months already. Zhang Xiaogang’s "Bloodline" paintings are especially popular -- in March Sotheby’s New York sold one of the dour grey portraits for $2.11 million, a record price for a work from the series. Material from China’s tumultuous history is also hotly pursued, as indicated by the record sale of Xu Beihong’s subtly political World War II-era painting Put Down Your Whip (1939) for $9.2 million in Hong Kong.

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