TIME EUROPE
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Nice (Art) Work If You Can Get It
By THOMAS SANCTON Davos
The big event of the welcome lunch on Thursday was the real-time, on-stage creation of a 7.5m x 2.5m painting by the brothers Zhou, two Shanghai natives who now live in Chicago and are hot items in the modern art world. In introducing them, Forum Managing Director Claude Smadja announced that they were about to do something "absolutely fantastic": a painting representing the Forum's central theme of New Beginnings.
Whereas tortured souls like Modigliani, Van Gogh and Jackson Pollock painted in agonized solitude, Da Huang Zhou, 43, and Shan Zuo Zhou, 48, hopped on-stage looking like superannuated rock stars, clad in skin-tight black leather pants, impeccable long-sleeved white shirts and black suspenders with long black hair spilling down to their waists. Using long-handled brushes, they frenetically splashed and dabbed paint on the immense white canvas while forum participants downed their poached sandre and rack of lamb luncheon.
Twenty minutes later, the brothers stopped painting and took their bows as the audience applauded their work: a series of black, calligraphy-like squiggles with the odd dash of red, pink and gold. Apart from a blob that vaguely resembled a human form, there was no recognizable shape, and the Forum participants were left to ponder the hidden meaning of the painting. Comments at one table ranged from awestruck to dismissive. "It's too big for my living room," said one CEO. "Then you have a problem with your living room," replied his neighbor. "I love the color," said one female CEO from Texas. "What color?" said a Chicago-based executive across the table. "I wouldn't take it home," concluded a Latin American businessman. One thing is sure: at $50,000 a painting, the brothers Zhou earn an astronomical wage for 20 minutes work.
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