Helbling points out the red roofs of the Yuz Museum – the creation of Indonesian mega collector Budi Tek – and behind it the concrete curves of the Long Museum, West Bund, the contemporary exhibition space of Shanghai billionaire collector couple Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei.

Looking the other way along Shanghai's Huangpu River, I can see a group of massive, decommissioned oil tanks, which Helbling tells me are being repurposed to house the private museum of local karaoke bar and nightclub king Qiao Zhibing.

Just returned from Art Basel in Hong Kong, Helbling and I have been discussing the state of play in the long Beijing-Shanghai struggle for supremacy in China's contemporary art world.

It was not always this way. For years Beijing had no rival.

After all, Chinese contemporary art was born in the capital. Its been almost 40 years since a bunch of art school rejects calling themselves "the Stars" staged a guerilla exhibition outside the National Art Museum in Beijing in September 1979, thus launching the contemporary art movement in China.

From then on, Beijing was the place to be. As Hollywood is for wannabe actors, Beijing was for China's aspiring artists. Young hopefuls flocked to the capital, most of China's leading contemporary artists lived there, and the city became home to the majority of the important art spaces. Housed in the decommissioned military factories that make up the famous 798 Art District are heavy-calibre names like Pace Gallery and Gallery Continua, Long March Space and Platform China, as well as the pioneering private museum UCCA.

But Beijing is showing signs of nerves. For the second year in a row, its galleries came together to host Gallery Weekend last month in a bid to attract collectors and museum worthies to the capital on their way to Hong Kong's Art Basel. Some 2000 invitations went out to VIPs, and the galleries staged exceptional shows along with a series of events, talks and private tours.


In years past, Beijing would never have stooped to such needy exhibitionism. But that was then; now, rival cities have the capital under pressure. Art Basel in Hong Kong has become known as the easiest and most pleasant place to buy Chinese contemporary art in the world, while in autumn, Shanghai has cornered the mainland art fair scene with their parallel events, Art 021 and West Bund Art and Design.

More than 80,000 visitors attended Art Basel Hong Kong this year. supplied

And just at the moment that China's art planet began wobbling on its axis, Beijing started undergoing cultural climate change. For years Beijing's relentless urbanising and gentrifying has pushed artists further out of the city. Painters and sculptors who poured small fortunes into their studios have seen them demolished before their eyes as industrial and rural areas have been cleared for development. The clusters of artist spaces that once lay within easy distance of the 798 Art District are gone, and with them easy access to studios for visiting collectors.

Artists feel increasingly embattled, especially as the political mood in Beijing turns darker.

"The studio is the alpha and omega of an artist's life", Beijing gallerist Olivier Hervet of HdM Gallery observes. "If you think your studio is going to be destroyed every two years it will affect where you decide to go."

He counts off the many artists – including rising young talents like the multimedia practitioner Gao Lei and painter Cui Jie – who have recently pulled up stakes and headed for Shanghai.

The ShanghART Gallery is one of a spate of new art venues in Shanghai. Supplied

Shanghai has long been home to a small number of significant Chinese contemporary artists, including international art stars like Zhang Huan and Yang Fudong, and the iconoclastic multimedia exponent Xu Zhen, who under the rubric of the Madein Company (as in Made in China) has gathered a posse of young artists around him to realise major projects. Xu Zhen has pioneered an artists' village in the Shanghai suburb of Songjiang. With easy metro access, it promises a stable home for both local artists and "refugees" from Beijing.


This sense of stability, mixed with the enthusiasm of the Shanghai authorities for cultural projects, has changed the calculus for young artists seeking to make a splash.

Money has been poured in

Shanghai's efforts to build its art cred were a direct response to the perception that the city was culturally outgunned by other centres with richer histories. As Helbling observes, "There was no Forbidden City in Shanghai, no entombed warriors." Instead, money has been poured into cultural infrastructure and incentives for private players to set up museums to burnish Shanghai's image as a cultivated, cosmopolitan and contemporary urban centre.

Much of their effort has focused on the Shanghai waterfront. The historic Bund is known for the glamour of its colonial era buildings; the aim is to extend the allure of the Bund along the river, renovating decommissioned harbour land for museums and cultural projects and creating kilometres of waterfront boardwalks in an area newly badged as the West Bund.

ShanghArt founder Lorenz Helbling says money has been lavished on the arts in Shanghai to establish the city as a cultivated contemporary hub. Photo courtesy of ShanghART

As a long-time resident of Beijing, I consider myself a particularly hard sell, but wandering along the West Bund on a spring day it was hard not to be captivated. The boardwalk swarmed with skateboarders and roller-bladers, people picnicking and walking their dogs. Dropping into the Long Museum, I found acclaimed artist Yang Fudong realising his long-nurtured ambition to shoot a film entirely within the confines of a museum, with visitors allowed access to the sound stage as he worked.

A decade ago, no one would have suggested Shanghai to a visitor looking for a rounded experience of Chinese contemporary art. But today the city has leveraged its advantages – knock-out good looks, a supportive local government, eager investors and a constant stream of discerning visitors – to reinvent itself as the most comfortable gateway to China's vibrant art scene.

Hong Kong, meanwhile, has established itself as the easiest destination for the art buyer. Where does that leave Beijing?


It's important not to forget the power of history and tradition in China. The very fact that Beijing is the capital and the location of the most important cultural institutions in the country guarantees it will continue to attract those who aspire to be artists to live and work there. The powerful institutions and galleries of Beijing will do everything they can to exploit that advantage and ensure the capital continues to be seen as the only truly essential stop on any voyage of discovery into Chinese contemporary art.

Need to know

KEY DATES

Art Basel Hong Kong: March 29 – 31, 2019

Beijing Gallery Weekend: March, 2019. Dates to be announced

Shanghai Biennale – 10 November 2018 – 10 March 2019

VENUES TO EXPLORE IN BEIJING

Museums

Beijing Minsheng Art Museum http://www.msam.cn/mobile/en

Red Brick Art Museum http://redbrickartmuseum.org/en/

UCCA http://ucca.org.cn/en/

Galleries


The Long Museum, West Bund, is the contemporary exhibition space of Shanghai billionaire collector couple Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei. Olivia Martin-McGuire

Boers Li Gallery http://www.boersligallery.com/

HdM Gallery http://www.hdmgallery.com/en/

Long March Space http://www.longmarchspace.com/en/

Pace Gallery https://www.pacegallery.com/

Platform China http://www.platformchina.org/en/home/index

VENUES TO EXPLORE IN SHANGHAI

Museums

Long Museum, West Bund http://www.thelongmuseum.org/html/index_en.html

Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum http://www.minshengart.com/en/

Shanghai MoCA http://www.mocashanghai.org/?lang=en

Yuz Museum http://www.yuzmshanghai.org/

Galleries

A still from Yang Fudong's film during its creation at the Long Museum. supplied