Van Gogh on Demand

China and the Readymade

Winnie Wong

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780226024899, 9780226024752
• eBook ISBN: 9780226024929
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

In a manufacturing metropolis in south China lies Dafen, an urban village that famously houses thousands of workers who paint van Goghs, Da Vincis, Warhols, and other Western masterpieces for the world market, producing an astonishing five million paintings a year. To write about work and life in Dafen, Winnie Wong infiltrated this world, first investigating the work of conceptual artists who made projects there; then working as a dealer; apprenticing as a painter; surveying wholesalers and retailers in Europe, East Asia and North America; establishing relationships with local leaders; and organizing a conceptual art exhibition for the Shanghai World Expo. The result is Van Gogh on Demand, a fascinating book about a little-known aspect of the global art world—one that sheds surprising light on the workings of art, artists, and individual genius.

 

Confronting big questions about the definition of art, the ownership of an image, and the meaning of originality and imitation, Wong describes an art world in which idealistic migrant workers, lofty propaganda makers, savvy dealers, and international artists make up a global supply chain of art and creativity. She examines how Berlin-based conceptual artist Christian Jankowski, who collaborated with Dafen's painters to reimagine the Dafen Art Museum, unwittingly appropriated the work of a Hong Kong-based photographer Michael Wolf. She recounts how Liu Ding, a Beijing-based conceptual artist, asked Dafen "assembly-line" painters to perform at the Guangzhou Triennial, neatly styling himself into a Dafen boss. Taking the Shenzhen-based photojournalist Yu Haibo's award-winning photograph from the Amsterdam's World Press Photo organization, she finds and meets the Dafen painter pictured in it and traces his paintings back to an unlikely place in Amsterdam. Through such cases, Wong shows how Dafen's painters force us to reexamine our preconceptions about creativity, and the role of Chinese workers in redefining global art.

 

Providing a valuable account of art practices in an ascendant China, Van Gogh on Demand is a rich and detailed look at the implications of a world that can offer countless copies of everything that has ever been called "art."

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

aboriginal art, 165–66, 257n49, 257n51

Abstract Expressionism, 40

abstract painting, 46, 91, 93, 141, 160, 199–200

acrylics, 54

Adebahr, Thomas, 11–14, 12, 16, 176

Adorno, Theodor, 38, 163

advertising slogans, 165, 257n45

Afragola (Italy), 7, 246n21

African scenes, 98, 251n26

Age of Extremes (Hobsbawm), 185, 259n4

Ai Weiwei, 73, 115, 221, 235

alienation, 11, 31–32, 37, 112–13, 117, 237; and Convection, 228; and craft, 164, 166, 256n43; and Expo Dafen, 216; and Half the Sky, 126, 132

alla prima. See “wet-on-wet” (alla prima) process

amateurism: and Chinese literati, 8, 67; and conceptual art, 40, 186; and Cultural Revolution, 164; and signatures, 177, 182

Amsterdam, 7–8, 29, 81, 83, 235, 246n23; Rijksmuseum, 171, 257n62; Van Gogh Museum, 170–71, 183, 257n62; and van Gogh specialists, 150, 157, 159, 170–71, 183

Andrews, Julia, 4

Anhui province, 130; Anhui Normal University, 251n31

anime, Japanese, 145

anonymity, 7, 10–11, 32, 234–37, 246n23; and artists’ villages, 118; and China Painters, 194; and Convection, 222–23, 228–29; and Dafen Lisa, 214; and Dafen painters, 22, 25, 31, 38, 93, 113; and Expo Dafen, 214; and Half the Sky, 132; and Painted Fate, 136–38, 141–42; of peasants, 41, 136–37, 142; and signatures, 177, 182; of wholesalers/dealers/retailers, 28

Appadurai, Arjun, 165–66

apprentices, 15, 22, 27; availability of, 43, 47; and China Painters, 176; and copy (gao), 18; and Dafen painters, 44, 61–62, 68, 75, 99–100; and ghost-painting, 232–34; and Half the Sky, 126; and Huang Jiang, 51–52, 54; and Luo Zhijiang, 75; and Painted Fate, 134; “painter-apprentices” (huatu), 89; in rural studios, 43–48, 54; and Shen Ruixing, 62; and signatures, 173; “student-apprentices” (xuetu), 89, 92, 250n11; and trade painting, 43–47, 44, 61–62, 72; and training centers, 89, 91, 250n11; and van...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Map
• Introduction. After the Copy
• One. Imagining the Great Painting Factory
• Two. The Conceptual Artist and the Copyist Painter
• Color Plates
• Three. True Art and True Love in the Model Bohemia
• Four. Step 18: Sign “Vincent”
• Five. Framed Authors: Conceptualism and the Dafen Readymade
• Conclusion. Conceptual Painting, China Dreams
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• List of Chinese Names
• Notes
• Sources
• Index