Uli
Sigg was like the Herb & Dorothy of contemporary Chinese art, but he was
always a highly respected member of the economic and political establishment. Thanks
to his special access, he was one of the first westerners to collect artists like
Ai Weiwei during his early years in China as a businessman and diplomat. It
turns out he also had a good eye for collecting. The reigning superstars of the
international art world pay tribute to their Swiss friend and patron in Michael
Schindhelm’s The Chinese Lives of Uli
Sigg (trailer
here), which has several upcoming screenings
around the country.
Ironically,
when China first opened in the early 1980s, it was more open then than it is
now. Sigg was one of handful of western businessmen allowed into the country to
form joint-ventures. Frankly, as the representative of the Schindler Group
(they manufacture elevators and escalators), Sigg wasn’t exactly sure what he
was doing in Mainland China, but he managed to acquire and renovate an
abandoned factory that became quite a profitable concern in its day.
Sigg
also kept his eyes open and made plenty of contacts, so he was a logical choice
to become Switzerland’s ambassador to China, Mongolia, and North Korea
(interestingly, Hong Kong and Taiwan were not part of his remit). Having good
diplomatic instincts, Sigg thought it would be a nice gesture if the Swiss embassy
displayed the work of contemporary Chinese artists.
Sigg
was a quick study and confident in his judgement, so he soon became a regular
visitor to the studios of Ai Weiwei, Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi, Cao Chong’en,
and his daughter Cao Fei (also an interesting filmmaker), all of whom talk to
Schindhelm at length. Today, we can barely afford to drop their names in a
review, but Sigg was able to acquire important formative works from them. Yet,
Sigg always planned to return a good portion of his collection to a museum that
would keep it on view for the Chinese people. He found the right partner in M+,
an innovative contemporary art museum currently under construction in Hong
Kong. Hey, HK is totally part of China, right? Oh, sweet irony.
Ever
the diplomat, Sigg is generally circumspect when it comes to addressing current
or even historical controversies on camera. However, it seems telling how many
artists he championed were profoundly influenced by traumatic experiences
during the Cultural Revolution. Of course, that makes perfect sense,
considering most of them were born in the early to mid-1960s, usually to middle
class families. Indeed, the mere fact Sigg is one of Teacher Ai’s confidants
says plenty.
The
bald-pated, hawk-nosed Sigg also happens to be a heck of an attention-grabbing
screen presence. The seventy-one-year-old is still razor-sharp and can remember
with crystal clarity meetings with Deng Xiaoping and just about every other
subsequently important government official.
