January 2009

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And so I do. On a crisp morning in the basement of an anonymous concrete building in Geneva Free Port. Mr Ullens, wrapped up in winter coat and scarf, greets me, those elf-like eyes gleaming: ‘You are the very first journalist to come in here. Would you like some coffee, a croissant?’ He does not wait for an answer but throws his full attention towards 12 tall panels of an ink-on-paper landscape that fill one wall. This is Immortal Island Penglai, painted by Yuan Jiang in the 17th century. ‘I’ve hardly seen this since I bought it. It has not been researched yet.’ He compares it with the work of Yuan Jiang’s contemporary, Rubens: ‘That is so full of testosterone, but this is so full of restraint; it’s removed from reality, full of dreams.’

Mr Ullens bought the work in 2004, ‘at the end of the period when you could get this. It has risen in value so much. If this came to me today I would not buy it. It makes more sense to support contemporary.’ Lawrence Wu, a Beijing art dealer, who has helped him acquire much of his collection, found it. ‘He has enormous experience in classical art; he led me to it and made me love it. At the same time I was meeting and liking his friends who were artists. When I went to Beijing I was staying with them. This was back in ’85, ’86, ’87. He has his own taste, the cute stuff, beautifully painted. I was excited by the creative ones.’ Mr Ullens now owns about 1,300 contemporary works in addition to his 200 ancient pieces.

So we hastened down the chilly white corridors to look at some, chatting along the way. Mr Ullens has done business in China – not, he says, as successfully as elsewhere in the world – but his love of Chinese culture is more deeply rooted. His father was a diplomat there, his uncle the Belgian ambassador. And his childhood home had Chinese scrolls, screens and ‘beautiful things – there was a good aesthetic; art was part of the household and life.’ It was, however, only after a demanding business career that he had the time and wealth to buy art himself. He described his collecting method. ‘You buy what you can. I had very little time. You buy things you love. You go for something simple and suddenly you…’

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