Banks and Butterflies: UBS Art Exhibition opens at NAMOC Today

Everyone knows, though none of us can really seem to fathom it, that the world is going down the gurgler. The credit crisis, triggered by the subprime fiasco in the US, is so bad that even the president of the US is willing to admit that "this sucker could go down." It's starting to feel like we're entering some twilight zone that precedes a world depression. It's during this interim period, when no one really knows what's going on, that the inconceivable happens. September 15 was one of those days. On that day Lehman Brothers, a 158-year-old American investment bank, filed for bankruptcy protection. Over in London, auction house Sotheby's were flogging off a collection of Damien Hirst's art works for a record USD 200 million. To quote Hirst - who along with painting dots and suspending animals in formaldehyde, also likes to use butterfly wings in his works - "I guess it means that people would rather put their money into butterflies than banks." News Biscuit, an Onion-like satirical news blog, joked that the highest grossing work from the auction was a piece called "Oh Shit" featuring "a Merrill Lynch employee suspended in a tank of formaldehyde." The truth wasn't far off, the most expensive item sold that day was an installation titled "The Golden Calf" - a "gilded and crowned calf embalmed in a tank of formaldehyde." it sold for USD 18.6 million.

In Beijing, we've got our own little piece of anomalous art-meets-bank news. From today, UBS, the world's biggest manager of other people's money and Europe's second-largest bank, are exhibiting 153 works from their huge collection of modern art at NAMOC. The exhibition includes a couple of Damien Hirst pieces and also works by Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud and Roy Lichtenstein. There is also a decent line up of works from Chinese artists. Thing is, according to the International Herald Tribune and the Economist, UBS is one of the institutions hardest hit by the global financial crisis. Not only has it's chairman and CEO left the company, but this week they announced that they're laying off 5,500 employees.

So, given their fiscal situation and the high prices to be had on the international art market, we're advising fans of modern art to get down to the art gallery as quick as they can, as who knows when they'll start selling off some of the collection. About two years ago, one of our favorite pieces from the collection - Andreas Gursky's photograph "99 cents" (see image above) - sold for over USD 2 million (it was probably UBS that bought it). As even the price of goods in the 99 cent stores have now gone up, we're betting that UBS might be able inject quite a bit of liquidity into the company from just selling this one print.

Sep 29-Nov 4

Moving Horizons: the UBS Art Collection, 1960s to the present day
London-based curator Joanne Bernstein takes a chronological approach to the UBS collection, dividing the show into eight categories representing distinct art styles from the past 60 years. Everything from the Pop Art of the '50s to the Yong British Artists represented by Damien Hirst. Includes works by Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Xu Zhen, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg (yes, it’s him again), Edward Ruscha, Robert Mangold, Alighiero e Boetti, Chuck Close, Lucian Freud, Andreas Gursky and more. RMB 20, students RMB 10.
Daily 9am-5pm (last ticket sold at 4pm). National Art Museum of China (6401 2252/7076)

Links and Sources
UBS: UBS Art Collection
UBS Art Collection: Moving Horizons Exhibition
NAMOC: Moving Horizons
MOMA.org: 99 cents image
UBS Art Collection: Crying Girl image
The City Review: image of Damina Hirst's Albumin, Human, Glycated
News Biscuit: Damien Hirst sets new auction record with ‘Investment Banker in Formaldehyde’
Guardian: image of items sold at Sotheby's auction
Forbes: image of "The Golden Calf"
Sotheby's: Damien Hirst - Beautiful Inside My Head