The Grim World of Chinese Art Fakes

You can own your very own copy of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” for a mere $51—AND it’s painted by a Chinese art academy graduate! Spiegel Online reports that in the Chinese town of Dafen not far across the border from Hong Kong, between 8,000 and 10,000 painters toil in factories cranking out five million oil paintings every year. One factory owner who runs a “model company” mass-producing famous paintings aspires to create an oil painting business based on the McDonalds fast food model. Art works can be “made to order” because the motifs are based on customer suggestions—bare-breasted women, heroic horsemen, for example. You can even get a copy of Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer with the face of your girlfriend.

The business is so booming that small shops crammed into the top floors of stores have piecework painters painting 12 hours every day, working on two paintings at a time. They copy from small photographs and can crank out 20 to 30 copies a day. They’re paid by the finished painting, getting about 30 cents per copy. Think about it, though...that’s a better wage than Vincent got for HIS “Sunflowers.”