China's Art Factories: Van Gogh from the Sweatshop (2006) | Hacker News Reader

China's Art Factories: Van Gogh from the Sweatshop (2006)

spiegel.de

46 pointswallflower11 comments

Things have changed quite bit since this article was written. Here's a more recent look at Dafen: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-village-60-wor...

China's art factories produce both art and a series of articles about the production of mass-made art.

Every few weeks there is a story about this here.

Reminds me of China's van Goghs: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6013920/ (2016)

Awesome documentary

Totally agree. It recently won the LA Chinese Film Festival. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it.

For some reason, reading anything about China's mass production always makes me a little depressed, but this one hit me pretty hard. I'm an artist myself, in my free time, and the greatest joy I find is to be able to create any image I want, in my own style. It's a reflection of my subconscious, my individual perspective and taste. Reproducing another artist's work by hand I consider to be a useful exercise, maybe, in some contexts, but I could never imagine doing it for a living. I think that would kill my soul a little, not only to paint the same thing for days, but to see the original work in such a light.

The first time I encountered Van Gogh was in elementary school, and it was his Sunflowers series. It's almost like a memory-push-pin of my childhood; Sunflowers marks a page. To paint Sunflowers over and over, I can't imagine.

For some people, building electronics is a hobby they enjoy. For others, it's a job they do all day long. Same with sewing and gardening.

It's a little different. Both of your examples can be and are an artform, but it is not usually reproduction. Perhaps reproduction of another's process, but that's to develop the skills moving forward. From there, modifications are made. Taste is even applied. Best methods, a "style" if you will, for the process are refined. We have machines to reproduce electronics on a mass scale. Anyone in a workshop is not soldering as a creative pursuit. Anyone reproducing the same famous artwork weeks on end is not going to be creatively fulfilled. There's not much room for growth there, despite refining the ability to reproduce the works with more quality. But at $50 bucks a piece for such labor, what's the point?

I'm sure this kind of work is something that a portion of people would enjoy, but it's a niche to find creative fulfillment from such things, and often the reproduction artist will still modify it based on their skill level and taste.

Doing it for the money is not my issue. Doing the same thing over and over again with the same skillset, without growing in creative expression, is the issue I have.

The surest way to ruin a hobby is to do it for a living, and give others creative control over your gift.

We visited Bali and they have some beautiful paintings there. There are so many artists there. With a little training they could produce some outstanding original art but instead they are painting a lot of similar tourist friendly crap. It probably needs some capitalist with vision to make a real artistic hub.

Such beautiful places are where tourists want to go and they can naturally pick up some artwork while they are there. Instead they get the same touristy crap.

> In 2012, the median income of professional artists with art degrees in New York City was $25,000. In 2015, the chance that an artist living in the U.S. would receive a solo exhibition at MoMA was 0.0006%.