Yu Deyao, Indonesian patriotic overseas Chinese, entrepreneur, art philanthropist and collector, founder of the Yuz Museum, member of the Asia-Pacific and Collection Committee of the Tate Museum, uk, and recipient of the Officer of the Legion of Honor of the French Republic, died on March 18, 2022 after fighting the disease for six years.
This article is an exclusive interview with Mr. Yu in 2017, when Mr. Yu was already suffering from pancreatic cancer and was frail, but he still believed that art had, was, and would continue to expand his life.
This article was first published in Southern People Weekly
Text / Southern People Weekly reporter Ku Lehao
Yu Deyao was thinner, and his clothes were a little fluttery on his body. On this day, he was wearing a T-shirt derived from the museum's recent popular exhibition "KAWS: Beginning with the End", a large red and black mess embroidered with a large doll, and his outstretched hand was still held very hard, not like a patient.
Two days later, on August 13 at the Yuz Museum, he was awarded the Officer's Medal of the Legion of Honor of the French Republic, the highest honor conferred by the French government and one of the most famous medals in the world. The only Chinese who have received this honor are Tung Chee-hwa, Chen Zhu, and a few others. Historically, the overseas awards of this medal of honor have been awarded in consulates, meaning in the territories of France, and this time it is also an exception to move to the art museum. Everyone knows that Mr. Yu is seriously ill and wants to save his physical strength. The award at his home field can also be seen as a tribute to his achievements in the field of art over the years.
He rarely gives interviews, and the Indonesian agricultural tycoon adheres to the tradition of old-school overseas Chinese entrepreneurs, believing that doing more than saying, there is always a hint of unaccustomedness and disagreement with frequent appearances in the media. His team kept convincing him that private art museums were cultural undertakings and infancy, that exposure was important, and that the popularity of art always required people to come forward and shout—that he was interviewed by several media before and after the opening of the museum, and then it was silent.
Two years ago, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, advanced. In the past two years, in addition to cooperating with the treatment, he is in suspense: behind him, where will the museum go? Where will so many of his collections go? He searched and visited many places to find a permanent pavilion, but for various reasons he failed to do so. This prompted him to give an interview, "I'm going to speak my mind." ”
"In the whole history of Chinese contemporary art, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, I have a relatively complete collection, and this batch of things can be said to be the treasures of The history of Chinese contemporary art. At this stage of history, only two people now have a relatively complete systematic collection, the first is Mr. Hick, but he has donated to Hong Kong, and the second is me. Of course, hong Kong has also been looking for me, hoping that I can donate or borrow for a long time. But I think that in the future, if in the future, Chinese students, artists, scholars, or anyone who has a passion for art, they want to really study and study the context of the history of Chinese contemporary art, but they can't see a complete systematic display in any institution on the mainland, but want to go to Hong Kong to see it, I think it is incredible. ”
▲"Above Pop" "Hello & Thank You" by exhibiting artist Camille Onlo
Pay a full ten-year tuition fee
Born in Jakarta and raised in Singapore, Yu started out as a livestock producer and became a successful agricultural entrepreneur in Indonesia. In 2004, he began to intervene in the collection, and at first it was purely out of interest, "receiving it when it is good". This collection, based entirely on personal intuition, wasn't always correct, and he bought a lot of rotten things that he regretted afterwards, but he also quickly honed his judgment in the process.
There is a consensus in the collecting world that collectors who have accumulated years are sometimes even more professional than appraisal experts. Without him, only because they have to pay for real money and silver from their own pockets, unlike the identification experts who only need to move their tongues and do not take too much risk, the degree of authenticity is naturally lacking. Mr. Yu was still distressed until the third year of collection, and once, he chatted with Yan Peiming and complained about the injustice: You see, I also spent a lot of money, but I often can't buy good things, and I always pay tuition, why is this?
Yan Peiming smiled: Mr. Yu, ten years of cold window bitterness, you are only in the third year, and there are seven years of tuition, always have to pay.
This sentence did not make Yu Deyao anxious, but it made him relieved, since it is a necessary process, then, come on! He consciously supplemented the corresponding artistic knowledge, but also made many sincere art circles, to those scholars and curators with excellent academic character, strong interest and learning ability so that he did not take too long detours, to the fourth and fifth years, he was obviously on the right track, the vision of collection and the quality of the collection have taken a qualitative leap.
Yu Deyao is fascinated by installation art, not only because of the volume and the ambition to match it, he feels that the strong and intuitive art form has gone beyond the scope of aesthetics, can carry the meaning of politics, philosophy, psychology, society, anthropology and other complex levels, and the views are richer and more diverse, "Installation art can be said to be three-dimensional art, it can also be four-dimensional art, or even five-dimensional art, containing time clues." Of course, many installations are difficult to collect, and not every collector is willing to collect this. ”
▲The Yuz Museum of Art, which was rebuilt from the original Longhua Airport Hangar
The 9,000-square-meter Yuz Museum can use about 6,000 square meters of space for exhibitions, and the most conservative estimate of Yu's entire collection is 20,000 square meters if displayed. Existing art galleries have no way of presenting the full picture of these works, because once they are rolled out, no other exhibitions can be made. That's why he's still looking for a permanent collection.
The financial crisis of 2008 turned out to be a bumper year for Yu's collection. That year, U.S. commodities were plummeting, and the prices of corn and soybean flour fell by half at their worst, and these were the raw material costs of The Yuz food industry, and he became the one who benefited from the economic crisis. "Everyone was in difficulty, but my income was very good, at that time the art market was very chaotic, everywhere was selling, especially foreign foundations, a lot of good things flowed out, and cheap, I took over at a very reasonable price." 」 Including the works that Ullens flowed out, he also took over from the auction in the following years.
Solo music is not as good as crowd music
In the first two years of the collection, Yu Deyao "bought a lot of messy things madly", when a friend happened to be building a shopping mall, he bought the entire top floor, 12 meters high space, 1200 square meters, spectacular and beautiful. He wanted to make a private club, put those grand installations here, and then entertain friends in an elegant artistic atmosphere, eat and drink. However, in the process of renovation, his thinking gradually changed, "You make a private thing, more than a thousand square meters, empty and no one comes to see." I think of an old Chinese saying: It is better to be happy alone than to be happy together. ”
Although I applied for a license to the art museum and it is free for people to visit, in Indonesia, the atmosphere of contemporary art is not very good, and there are few viewers. "We have been open for five or six years, and we have done a lot of very good exhibitions," he deliberately paid attention to the daily flow of people, "on the opening day, there are usually hundreds of people, and after the opening, there are thirty people and fifty people every day." ”
He was very sad, and even had a feeling that the pearl was secretly cast, feeling that such a good art was wasted, so he was determined to bring the art museum to China and bring it back to their hometown.
The selection of the art museum has been carried out, first in Songzhuang, Beijing, and later in Jiading, Shanghai. China is changing too fast, it is not easy to find a place with clear rules and peace of mind, and when he was troubled, he once lamented on Weibo: Patriotism has no way.
Sun Jiwei, then secretary of the Xuhui District Party Committee, was also the guide who took Yu Deyao to Jiading before, and saw the Microblog, because Xuhui was thinking of building a cultural and artistic block on the West Bank at that time, so he led Yu Deyao to see several places. "The first place is a piece of land next door to Longhua Temple, and I thought it was a bit strange to do contemporary art close to the temple. The other piece of land, that is, the hangar, I saw this and did not go, I fell in love with it, at first sight, the third place I did not look at. ”
Collection does not need to be done for you
The rise of Shanghai in the territory of contemporary art in recent years is not unrelated to the improvement of the entire west bund art ecology of Shanghai, and in the west bund art corridor, the Yu Deyao Art Museum and the Long Art Museum of Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei cannot be ignored. Yu feels that the West Bund has been a success story of cultural rise through top-level design, and they have had the privilege of participating in it and witnessing its rapid development.
After taking down the hangar, Yu asked the famous Japanese designer Sou Fujimoto to redesign the building. Yu deyao advocated energy conservation, and from the beginning he discussed with the architect how to use energy more environmentally. "We don't have air conditioning at all because the ventilation is done well. I used to do animal husbandry and deal with the wind every day. Heat is an engine, as long as we can channel hot air upwards, the air that people feel is one meter or two meters, as long as the air is replenished all the time, it will not feel hot. "Even when he stays in a hotel, he will turn off the lights, which is the origin of global warming."
Because I want to preserve the original appearance of the hangar as much as possible, the reconstruction is more restricted than the reconstruction, the progress is very slow, and the economic and mental pressure is relatively large. By the time it opened in May 2014, Yu's health was showing signs of bad luck. "At that time, the economy was not good, and my business in Indonesia itself was also under pressure, and I had to buy a lot of works to show my strength. And because I didn't have a business in Chinese mainland and didn't know how to deal with government officials, I took a lot of detours. In fact, at that time, my cancer had begun to grow in my body. But I didn't know it at the time, and I didn't check it. At the opening, I had more than a hundred aphthous sores on my mouth and lost seven or eight kilograms. ”
From the intervention in the collection in 2004 to the establishment of the art museum in 2014, Yan Pei explicitly said that he had paid exactly ten years of tuition.
At the opening, everyone in the circle rushed to see how many good things Mr. Yu had received, and it was said that half of the VIPs in Basel, Hong Kong, flew to Shanghai at that time. The curator of the collection exhibition is the famous University of Chicago professor and art historian Wu Hong, and everyone also wants to see Wu Hong's ideas for selecting the collection.
Zhang Huan's "Buddha's Hand", Sun Yuan & Peng Yu's "Freedom", Huang Yongping's "Snake Tower", Xu Bing's "Tobacco Project", Topless Company's "Calm", Wang Guangyi's "Garbage Truck in Beijing Hutong", Sui Jianguo's "DiZhi", Li Hui's "Door" Yang Fudong's "Miss Huang was in M Restaurant last night"... Yu also has many international collections, such as Mona Hatoum, Yoshitomo Nara or Cui Yourang, but his collection focuses on Chinese contemporary art, from shelves to photography, from installation to sculpture, the clues are very clear.
▲ "Sun Xun: The Lab of Proverbs" exhibition
He and Wu Hong had a gentleman's agreement, "I said Professor Wu, you do your curation, I will not interfere." You're going to choose any of my collections, or you're going to borrow them, and you decide, I'm not involved. But my collection, you don't want to get involved. If I buy it wrong, you have to tell me. But please let me make my own decision. Because this decision has a sense of accomplishment for me, if I have to rely on my advisors or academic friends to help me decide what to buy and what not to buy, I will not try to learn knowledge, I must maintain my own independence. Yu Deyao said that although he respects knowledge and experience, at the moment of deciding whether to collect, he still believes in the sixth sense, believes in passion and strong emotion.
Collection is like a chain, every important artist in the historical context is a link of the chain, each artist has a different stage, where a link is missing, make up, the chain is gradually complete.
He worked on a Giacometti
The battle that made The Yuz Museum famous was the "Rain House", before that, he only had a reputation in the art industry, but the public's understanding of the Yuz Museum was not sufficient. When the "Rain House" was launched, posters of the "Rain House" were posted in the subways of Shanghai, and the silhouette photos of the rainy rooms set off a whirlwind of dissemination on Weibo, and more than 200,000 people poured into the exhibition hall of the Yuz Museum on the west bank of Shanghai to see this fantastic interactive exhibition.
Another exhibition that has garnered a professional reputation for the Yuz Museum is the 2016 Giacometti Exhibition, which is a private art museum, but this exhibition is hailed as the highest level of cultural exchange between China and France. "At the beginning we decided to exhibit 50 works, and gradually increased to 100 pieces, and finally when the contract was signed in Beijing, Vice Premier Liu Yandong signed a contract with the French Foreign Minister, and at the celebration banquet in the evening, I told Catherine Greney, director of the Giacometti Foundation, that since this exhibition is already a national cultural project, can we make the world's largest Giacometti solo exhibition? After all, there are nearly 1.4 billion people in China. Catherine said yes, but the cost was high. I said, it doesn't matter, I'm willing to give. ”
In the end, Giacometti's exhibits increased from more than 100 to 250, including his sculptures, drawings, paintings, documents, and more. "Later, the director of the Tate also attended our opening ceremony. She said to me: How do you tell us to live? We're also going to do Giacometti's exhibition next summer, how can I compare it to you? ”
In addition to the high insurance cost, the Yuz Museum also invited the professional exhibition designer of the Louvre to do stage design, the large hangar remodeled hall is particularly large, and the size of Giacometti's sculptures is often very small, which puts forward high requirements for the layout of the exhibition hall. "Including the reproduction of Giacometti's studio in equal proportions, and the display of all the head sculptures and oil paintings of the head together, these original, academic ideas, the final result is very good."
This is the world's largest solo retrospective of the late sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti, and has also been named the best exhibition of the year by many media at home and abroad.
▲ The scene of the "Giacometti Retrospective"
In the end, more than 120,000 people came to see the exhibition, which is still a big gap from Yu Deyao's expectation of 300,000, but he also found that the overall quality of the audience who came to see Giacometti was very high. It is said that Liang Shaoji visited the exhibition five times before and after.
A week before Giacometti's opening, Yu was still undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer in the United States, and it was the weakest time, "the pain was terrible, all kinds of painkillers were ineffective, and finally the doctor prescribed me real white powder." Despite strong opposition from his family and doctors, Yu Deyao insisted on returning to China and stood at the opening ceremony, "This exhibition is very important to me, my own life is definitely limited, but if this exhibition is not participated, I will regret it for the rest of my life." ”
Leave the collection in China forever
In addition to solo exhibitions of international masters such as "Giacometti Retrospective" and "Andy Warhol: Shadow", Yuz Museum has also done a large number of academic exhibitions aimed at promoting local artists, such as "South and North: Yang Fudong Works Exhibition", "Qin Yifeng Exhibition", Zhou Li's "White Shadow", Sun Xun's "Proverb Lab", Zhou Tiehai's "Must" and so on, "I hope that our art museum can discover and help local artists, not only other people's things." Now the art museum has a little international reputation, and the top foreign scholars, curators, and curators will come over, they used to turn a blind eye to Chinese art, and I want to force them to understand. Just like little Hans was very stimulated to see Zhou Tiehai's exhibition this time and asked a lot of questions. Including the previous Exhibition of Zhou Li, it was also a sensation. We don't choose artists who are trapped by the market and constantly copy themselves, I want to show our attention and judgment of really good artists, and silently help local artists, especially those who are seriously undervalued. ”
▲ "Andy Warhol: Shadow" scene
He often warned his subordinates that collectors could buy a bunch of wrong works, but art galleries could not do a wrong exhibition. It is very common for the collection to be impulsive and regret afterwards, but the art museum must stand up to academic scrutiny, because any exhibition involves the preparation and repeated communication of the whole team for more than two years, if it is still wrong, it is the original sin, which indicates that the art museum has a systematic bug. He did not deny that such a mistake had been made once or twice at the Yuz Museum, and it should be avoided in the future.
The Yuz Foundation has sponsored exhibitions of Chinese artists overseas for many times, and has also donated works or sponsored projects to overseas art institutions many times, such as donating important works of Ding Yi to the Pompidou Art Center, etc. If the other party does not publicize these things, Mr. Yu himself will not say a word. "If they don't report, then I'll be quiet." He said that the pleasure of art is completely different from the pleasure of being an entrepreneur before, most of the pleasure of entrepreneurs comes from data, and there are many troubles behind the data, stocks rise and fall, the mood rises and falls. But after devoting himself to art, many things made him feel good in his heart, and he didn't need to be flattered by others at all. For example, if Pompidou can settle in the West Bank one day in the future, he will feel that his work is valuable and not in vain.
China's private art museums have only a short history of more than ten years, and the corresponding regulations and policies are incomplete, and there are many pain points. "For example, funds, such as taxes, we need a lot of funds to support this art museum, if there are companies willing to sponsor our funds, they can reduce taxes abroad, there is no way to reduce taxes here, and donations cannot be done."
▲ "Zhou Tiehai: Must" Exhibition site
He has said on different occasions that many great public art galleries were formerly private art galleries, and that was his ideal for the future. For example, MOMA, V&A, these museums themselves are very well structured, although private, but they can also accept public donations, and they have councils, joint decision-making and the formulation of rules of conduct, rather than only controlled by a family, or only controlled by some unmonitored private will. Once a public art gallery becomes a public art gallery, the founder or collector family no longer has absolute authority. "The board of directors committee is elected, and this committee can decide the general policy of the art museum, including the selection of the curator and the development direction of the art museum, as if it becomes a listed company, but the shareholders of this listed company have no interests, only obligations." As a top collector in Asia, Yuz has served as a member of the Asia-Pacific Committee and the Collection Committee of the Tate Museum in the United Kingdom, and knows that this is a responsibility and honor at the same time.
But in China, this means a long road of development, and the Yuz Museum has not yet formed a corresponding framework, and Mr. Yu himself feels powerless. "Since I had this disease, people have really changed, and many times they don't think about how they are, and the days after that have been a very luxurious thing for me. I just want to do something in my limited time to make my life more complete. I can't overcome the difficulties one by one like before, and I don't have the ability anymore. I often tell my team that the future is up to you to complete. I also invested in cultivating local teams. I can only be a patriotic overseas Chinese, with my sincere heart, I hope that this art museum will continue, and I hope that my collection can remain in China forever. Contemporary art is the art of our generation. In the next few decades, we will have an account for our children and grandchildren. ”