Chinese Interpretation

I commissioned Sun Bird Arts-- a Chinese company -- to paint one of my drawings in oil, about 20 x 26 inches.  They emailed me a photo of the finished painting below (March 18, 2018).  The painting should soon be shipped to my PO Box.

My drawing 

painted in oil

by a Chinese artist

My painting arrived in the mail from China,

August, 2018

The original drawing,

after I heightened the contrast digitally

(pencil on newsprint,

less than 9  x 12 inches)

This is the first drawing in my upcoming book -- Finish my Figure Drawings.

I contacted Sun Bird Arts directly through their website, and paid with Western Union.

However, they do business through both Amazon and Ebay (update:  I notice that their Amazon link does not work anymore).

I believe that the painting was done in Xiamen.  This is a coastal city between Hong Kong and Shanghai, and apparently an up-and-coming arts city in China.

I think my drawing was first printed onto canvas in high definition, and then painted over.  But I'm not entirely sure.

"Meanwhile, cheaper and more efficient production methods have been developed. Many copies are now first printed onto canvases in high-definition, after which art workers apply just enough paint to make it appear as if they were painted by hand, a process which requires significantly less skill and produces a more consistent result."

This YouTube video also suggests that the image was first (ink jet) printed lightly on the canvas before the artist painted the lines.

Before I contracted Sun Bird Arts, I thought that I would get my drawing painted in Dafen, the arts village/district in Shenzhen, the "world's largest megalopolis."  Later I surmised that Dafen must be getting too expensive, so the artists are moving to Xiamen (which would be a familiar story of displaced artists, if  I am right).

I note that there is an artist residency in Xiamen.

*****

There are some strange and surrealistic art phenomena going on in China.

• Chinese faking their own fake paintings:

"The problem has become almost farcical: In July 2015, the former chief librarian of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts admitted stealing more than 140 paintings from a gallery under his charge, replacing them with fakes he painted himself. Soon, however, Xiao Yuan noticed that his own fakes were disappearing from the gallery and being replaced by others, lending truth to the librarian’s defense: Everybody’s doing it."

•  A French (Alexandre Ouairy) artist made up a fake Chinese alias, Tao Hongjin, to sell paintings from China:

"A French artist has revealed to surprised international buyers that the work they have been purchasing for more than a decade by a Chinese artist named  was in fact made by him."

• And then there is a Chinese Museum filled with fakes:

"Jibaozhai Museum in Hebei closes amid internet ridicule because nearly all its artefacts alleged to be forgeries."

•  Meanwhile, a real Chinese artist in New York -- Pei-Shen Qian -- faked Jackson Pollacks, Barnett Newmans, Robert Motherwells, and Richard Diebenkorns, and bilked collectors out of 80 million dollars.

• The Winterthur Museum in Delaware put on an exhibitions of fakes, including a fake Rothko by Pei-Shen Qian.

The Chinese artists who produce knock offs are derisively known as huà jiā, whereas real artists are known as yì shù jiā.  Even though most of the knock off artists are graduates of Chinese art academies.

And like American artists, they take what they can get.  And even then the rising rents are forcing painters out of the painting villages like Dafen, so the copy-art boom is now occurring in cheaper cities like Xiamen and Yiwu. Rising rents in Xiamen are pushing artists to the fringe of that island. 

In spite of the prospects, tons of Chinese try to get into art school (even if they don't care about art that much), but they only accepted 30 out  of 7000 applicants.

Because for somebody,  it's very lucrative to sell Gerhard Richters, René Magrittes, and Roy Lichtensteins, and the Chinese are very good at faking it.

• It gets even weirder. The Chinese are making fake copies of undistinguished art:

"New Jersey artist Clinton Hobart discovered counterfeits of his painting 'Three Persimmons' were for sale on a website based in China. "In a gallery, this would sell for about $450 unframed to $500 framed," Hobart says. But the counterfeit online is $23.99."

So why not turn the tables?

• About 3 years ago, a British art museum, the Dulwich picture gallery,  replaced an original Fragonard with a $200 Chinese knock-off, then challenged the public to identify the fake amongst a room of originals.  Doug Fishbone pulled this off.

• Or set up a studio in Bejing, and make a killing selling your artwork -- like Kehinde Wiley, who recently painted the official portrait of Obama.