I hope all NFT art collectors and physical art collectors can read this letter from Uli Sigg, and know the ultimate goal of building an art collection that can reflect culture, not for low-level monetary pursuits.
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“A Foreword to Viewing the M+ Sigg Collection: Why I collected what I collected By Uli Sigg"
The M+ Sigg Collection consists of 1510 works. Its earliest part dates from the Cultural Revolution Period (1966-1976).
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Then follow a couple of works from the No Name Group (mid 1970s), considered by some to be precursors of Chinese contemporary art which is seen to commence in 1979 and which is covered extensively in the collection until early 2012.
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The works range across all media including painting, sculpture, photography, performance documentation, video, installation and multimedia. The M+ Sigg Collection is an extraction from the Sigg Collection.
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The selection process aimed to allow the viewer to read a coherent storyline from the inception of Chinese contemporary art, including some of its roots, to the current decade.
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I arrived in China in 1979 and followed from then on the beginnings and subsequent development of Chinese contemporary art as best I could.
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Yet I did not collect any work then, for I was looking for the forefront of contemporary art as I had studied it in the West, and for long I could not find art of this kind.
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When again analysing the state of contemporary art in the 1990s I discovered that no one - individual or institution - had been collecting Chinese contemporary art in any but a purely random manner.
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Consequently, I changed my focus from that of a private collector searching for works according to his personal taste to one an institution might have: attempting to mirror the art production of the experimental artists living in the PRC, along the time line and across all media.
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I was interested in the works created in this unpredictable milieu and in the atmosphere of a nation in total transformation. Therefore works from the Diaspora artists living outside the PRC are rather sporadic and for cross-reference.
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The M+ Sigg Collection assembles works from 320 artists and thus provides a broad spectrum. This is the main aim: to inform the impressive breadth and depth of Chinese experimental art rather than single works or single artists.
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It is intended as an encyclopedic documentation referencing Chinese experimental art production in this specific period and to form in its current state a solid base for further collecting.
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The M+ Sigg Collection invites a critical reflection on the short history of contemporary art in China and cultivates lucid insights into Chinese society in a historical period that in retrospect will be considered very important.
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The M+ Sigg Collection has not been assembled in the simple pursuit of lining up masterpieces; in contemporary art attributions as such come and go.
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The type of institutional collecting seeks to bring together works with the vision of webbing a full context of a subject matter and through their combination to create additional meaning by enabling works themselves to charge each other up.
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Just as much as identifying the so-called masterpieces, this is about finding the pieces that may go unattended or are ascribed to artists considered second tier, a categorisation that is itself subject to change over time, in order to fill the perception gaps, narrate the…
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…underlying subtexts and open up further space for the imagination of the viewer. This purpose may even suggest inclusion of a work by an artist with lesser potential, provided that this single work can document a specific phenomenon particularly well.
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Every collection is a process materialized; it is a distillate of the collector’s vision, imagination, intuition and passion, of research efforts, of the opportunities seized, of the resources made available, of hard work, and of the lack thereof.
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No collection can ever be complete, and this one is no exception. Artists are missing who deserve representation.
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Indeed collecting has its constraints: Financial means are finite, appropriate works may not be available at a given moment etc. No Chinese institution, for whatever reason, has ever publicly documented its contemporary art collection.
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The M+ Sigg Collection seems to be the first one made transparent. Today the M+ Sigg Collection is the most comprehensive known record of Chinese contemporary art. Yet it is work in progress, to be continued by M+, now in a new framework.
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In any collecting activity subjective criteria take part in the selection process, consciously or subconsciously. This is particularly complex when collecting art created in a fundamentally different culture than one’s own, which in my case happens to be European.
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One has to acknowledge, identify and overcome the blind spot that inevitably exists in such an endeavor. I am very fortunate to have had the most intense interactions with Chinese individuals, culture and society through my diverse activities in China over 33 years.
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Each activity allowed me a different access to the country: one as a business person establishing the first joint-venture company between China and the outside world in its current modernization process - this brought me into close contact with workers on the factory floor and…
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I think what Uli Sigg meant is him being the first industrial joint venture of the China with a western company (pictured). China Schindler Elevator Co.
1980年，中国第一家工业性合资企业中国迅达电梯有限公司在北京成立，1977年加入迅达的乌力·希克（Uli Sigg）促成了此次合资。
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Also the link from gov.cn
gov.cn/xinwen/2020-12/30/con…
sohu.com/a/250481993_762013
40年外资新朋旧友 见证上海开放步伐
1980年7月，中国迅达电梯有限公司上海电梯厂成立，成为上海第一家中外合资企业。
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Also listed in Baidu Baike the Wikipedia for China:
baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%…
例一：1980年瑞士Schindler电梯公司建立的中国第一家工业合资企业，2002年2月收购了其合资企业的合作伙伴，使历史悠久的中国迅达电梯有限公司成为其全资拥有的子公司；
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This one is quite detailed about Uli Sigg, he's the one I would say singlehandedly recognized Chinese contemporary artists like Ai Weiwei, Zeng Fanzhi, Fang Lijun from early on, introducing them to European collectors with his diplomatic connections.
zgmsbweb.com/home/index/deta…
Apr 27, 2022 · 1:03 AM UTC
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