Yue Minjun became the most expensive Chinese contemporary artist last month when  The Pope (1997) sold for $2.15 million pounds ($4.28 million) at Sotheby's in London. In his portrayal of the Pope, a Western figure depicted by Western artists like Diego Velazquez, Francis Bacon, and Maurizio Cattelan, Minjun conveys a stereotypical Western vision of Chinese people: squinty eyes; full-frontal smile; ill-fitting clothing.

The record price fetched for Minjun's The Pope, is the latest demonstration that money (aside from Charles Saatchi's) is being drawn to Chinese art. Christie's spring auctions in Hong Kong brought in $195.4 million in May, including $1.78 million for Emperor Kangxi's (1662-1722) throne, which was bought by Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho. Last week, Ho paid $5.37 million for five works of Hong Kong "reunification" art and announced his plans to donate the works to the Chinese government. The highlight of the sale was Ma Baozhong's 19 December, 1984, commemorating the date then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher transferred ownership of Hong Kong back to China from Britain in 1984. Ho paid $2.19 million for it.

A year ago April, Ho's Macau casino mogul competitor Steve Wynn, the infamous mastermind who brought Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso to Las Vegas a decade ago, paid more than $10 million for a Ming vase at Christie's Hong Kong and donated it to a Macau museum. This Wednesday, Belgian collector Baron Guy Ullens is selling his collection of 14 watercolors by J.M.W. Turner at Sotheby's in London (combined estimate: $19.7/29.55 million) as he focuses on establishing a center for Chinese contemporary art in a vast Bauhaus structure in Beijing. Ullens's Turner sale comes a year after Wynn paid a record $35.8 million for a Turner oil painting of Venice at Christie's in New York. Reminds me of the Warholian observation that Sotheby's London used as a press release logo last month: "Big time art is big time money." It's also big time publicity.

—KELLY DEVINE THOMAS