“Other people can paint, but no one else can do what Cai GuoQiang does”

Cwilich, a former Christie’s executive, to make Murdoch’s dream a reality. “In the current art ecosystem, if you have money, you or your art advisor buy art through a gallery or auction house. It’s very small,” says Murdoch. “We want to make art more accessible to the world—to anybody. Technology can make that happen.”

When they founded Artsy, Murdoch’s first call was to Larry Gagosian, who promptly invested. She also brought in dozens of other backers, including tech entrepreneur Joshua Kushner, Kering CEO François-henri Pinault and Eric Schmidt, who was CEO of Google at the time, as well as several major investors from China. Today, almost all leading galleries list works for sale on Artsy and the platform regularly partners with top auction houses. It facilitates sales of roughly US$20 million a month. “We now have 200 people working for Artsy based in Soho, New York,” she says. “It’s grown to a stage where we’ve hired a professional CEO, Mike Steib, who’s going to manage it. I’m very excited to see how we can make it a big, successful global platform for art.”

Murdoch also likes to shape other businesses. “When my Chinese friends come to New York, they meet my American friends,” says Murdoch. These meetings often take place over dinner at her Fifth Avenue penthouse, where Murdoch cooks jiaozi dumplings to her mother’s recipe. Sometimes Murdoch deliberately pairs entrepreneurs with potential investors at these meals, but most of the time the goal is simply to stimulate an exchange of ideas. She wants people to learn from each other, so seats business tycoons next to fashion designers, tech titans next to artists. “Cai does this too—he hosts famous lunches in his studio,” she says.

Every lunchtime, everyone in Cai’s studio, including Cai himself, takes a moment to eat together. The menu normally features traditional Chinese food: favourites include winter melon soup, stir-fried lily bulbs, fried lotus pancake and preserved duck eggs. Cai often invites guests to join these lunches and has hosted everyone from politicians to scientists at his studio table. Like Murdoch’s dinners, he sees these meals as an opportunity for people to speak freely and make connections. “He does lunch, I do dinner,” says Murdoch with a laugh.

There are other similarities between the two. They both exercise obsessively—murdoch five times a week, Cai every other day. When they first met, they discovered they lived just a few blocks apart in Soho, though Murdoch later moved uptown. They each have two daughters, who they raised speaking Mandarin. “Our children all studied Chinese together. And Cai gave my daughters painting classes,” says Murdoch.

Both Murdoch and Cai grew up in provincial cities in China; Cai in Quanzhou on the southeastern coast, Murdoch in the industrial city of Xuzhou. Both their parents were mid-level professionals: Cai’s father ran a state-owned bookshop, Murdoch’s managed a factory. At times, both families struggled. Murdoch’s childhood home had no hot water, no refrigerator, no TV and no telephone. Every day at 7pm, the building’s electricity would be shut off, plunging her family’s apartment into darkness. “When I was little, I never dreamed of the life I have today,” says Murdoch. “It’s incredible—beyond any expectations I could ever dream of.”

They are both proud of Chinese culture and return regularly to mainland China—their houses in Beijing are just a few streets apart—but their globetrotting lives have also led them to see the world as inextricably interconnected, almost borderless. “We have homes in China, we have homes in New York, we do work everywhere,” says Murdoch. “Cai gets inspiration from every country in the world. I personally invest in technology companies in China, the US and Europe. My children are half Australian, half Chinese, they speak Chinese, are educated in New York and work in China in the summers. We feel we’re citizens of the world.”

This sentiment is reflected in Cai’s upcoming exhibition in Beijing. In 2017, he launched a project he called An Individual’s Journey through Western Art History, which has seen him present solo shows of his gunpowder works on paper and canvas at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Prado Museum in Madrid, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, each inspired by a figure or movement from western art history. “I’m tracing western history from the Greco-roman time to the medieval time to the Renaissance to Baroque art to modernism and socialist realism,” says Cai. “For this project I see all the history from different cultures as my own heritage, and all the artworks of different cultures as my own heritage. One world heritage, not national heritages. This is a worldview I share with Wendi.” The show at the Palace Museum will be the culmination of this project, bringing all of Cai’s works inspired by European masterpieces back to the historic heart of Beijing. It will reflect Cai’s personal experiences of travelling and living abroad, but also, he hopes, encourage others to look to different people, cultures and countries for inspiration.

There is a similarly poetic story behind his possible show at M+ in Hong Kong. “I’ve worked all around the world, but not yet in Hong Kong,” says Cai. “Hong Kong had a huge influence on me because when I was very little a lot of people from my hometown would go to Hong Kong and bring back magazines, stories and information. And kung-fu films had a huge impact on me. I incorporated the spirit of martial arts into my work.” Before her marriage, Murdoch—who is advising Cai on the potential project at M+—lived in Hong Kong and worked as vice president for Star TV. “Hong Kong is full of smart, interesting people,” she says. “Cai’s Hong Kong project is so important.”

So, in a way, Cai and Murdoch are coming full circle. The first project brings them back to the country where they grew up; the second to a city that has inspired them both. But neither is prone to reflecting for too long on their personal histories—they’re always thinking about the future. “We challenge each other to do more,” says Murdoch. “Sky Ladder was about that—about taking on a huge challenge, something that seems impossible. We always say: what’s your next Sky Ladder?”