There is a sheep next to me, and its wool is impressively withstanding Hong Kong's humidity.
It's also being eyed up by a Chinese mainlander. No, mainlanders are not about to tussle with Highlanders for the reputation for having an ovine soft spot. This is art.
This week Hong Kong is the centre of the art world. There is a prestigious fair called Art Basel HK - part pop up museum, part Art Disneyland - which features hundreds of galleries from all over the world, all essentially trying to get rich Chinese collectors to purchase their paintings, sculpture and installations.
There is also a new satellite fair called Art Central featuring work from emerging artists. And there are local festivals, artists' open studio events and every gallery in town has a special show. It's the Basel bandwagon.
Some of the Western galleries have brought less than subtle fare to appeal to the Chinese. That sheep, for example. It's in stone and bronze - hence its humidity-defying powers- and is called Mouton Transhumant. The French artist who did it also does work featuring rhinos and gorillas. But it was Mouton that came to Basel, just after the Lunar New Year heralded the Year of the Sheep. Artistic coincidence, eh?
Yet who can blame the art world? Probably any artist starving away in a European garret is dreaming up ways to appeal to Chinese collectors. Frankly, he or she would be mad not to. If Whistler were alive, he'd be doing Whistler's Tiger Mother
The Last Supper would have been of dumplings
The Nightwatch would have had an 18 year old Chinese guard either sleeping or playing on his iPhone.
Though Van Gogh's Starry Night would have been impossible because of pollution.
But it was beside that sheep I started thinking about Scotland, possibly because I suddenly felt I was in the Edinburgh Woollen Mill. Where was Scotland in this bid to create art to appeal to the Chinese?
The signs were good as I moved onto the next aisle. The Art Basel catalogue promised a booth there featuring a painting called 'Scotch.' Surely a savvy attempt to get Chinese mainlanders to turn their fondness for investing in whisky into a fondness for investing in whisky as art. I wanted to congratulate the gallerist and then ...oh. Arriving, it turned out to be a textural piece about sticky tape, by French artist Eric Baudart.
On I went, spirits dipping. Scotland and its artists were nowhere to be seen in the Sino-savvy art stakes. No Peter Howson painting of President Xi Jinping. No Jack Vettrianos reset on famous beaches in China, say Gulangyu, which could be both artistic moneyspinners and economic revenge.
(Early Chinese manufacturing inspired complaints of low quality. Hi China, here's some Vettrianos.)
To remedy this shortfall, how about new cultural policies from our ever-innovating Scottish Government? Say, tax breaks to encourage painters to create a new body of Sino-Scottish art, ready to be freighted for next year's Art Basel HK?
If such artworks were to become hot properties and bought by the Chinese, big money could be made. And there's another couple of dividends. Pride. And an enjoyable irony. How would we describe this new source of national income? They're Scotland's oils.
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