Standing among the glamorously attired revelers celebrating the opening of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing this month, Tokyo art dealer Sueo Mizuma had to yell to make himself heard.
"When I came to Beijing in May, I was stunned by how international the art scene was," he said. "It made Tokyo look really provincial."
Coming from the owner of the Mizuma Art Gallery in Tokyo's Naka-Meguro, who has made young Japanese artists Makoto Aida and Akira Yamaguchi famous among art crowds the world over, it was a big statement. But, looking around us at the thousands of assembled artists, museum directors and gallery owners — all with faces of different hues, and all, in some way or other, now invested in China — it was difficult to disagree with him.