Record Prices for Art and Crude Oil

Last year when I went to Beijing to get a taste of its exploding contemporary art scene, I was especially taken by the monumental and rather dramatic art installation by Qiu Anxiong in the cavernous space of the Universal Studios Gallery. In my Art Talk about the Chinese art scene, I described the dimly lit room dominated by a railroad car – not a full-scale replica, but the real thing, which I recognized immediately. I rode similar trains as a child in Soviet Russia in the 50's and 60's. At the gallery, one was invited to climb into this no-frills railroad car where every window was used as a screen for projecting black and white documentary footage of 20th century Chinese history, with special emphasis on the brutality experienced by Chinese people during WWII and the Cultural Revolution...