Chinese copy-painters come to Zurich

http://www.artworldsalon.com/blog/2007/07/16/chinese-copy-painters-

come-to-zurich/

Chinese copy-painters come to Zurich
Monday July 16, 2007 | 13:10 by Marc Spiegler | permalink

The art scene is slow in Zurich this time of year, like everywhere
else. But there's always room for a little controversy. Last weekend's
concerned the newly established Splügen-Gallery (all text in German),
where the business model runs thus: You give them an image of an
artwork, and they have it painted for you in Shenzhen Dafen, China, at
whatever dimensions you like. The cost? Roughly $450-$900, frame
included.

The eclectic first show features works "by" Gustav Klimt, Roy
Lichtenstein and Tamara de Lempicka. Naturally, Pro Litteris, the Swiss
artists-rights association, objects strongly, arguing that "to
reproduce an image you need permission from the artist or their
representative." The gallery's owner, Chris Rüegg, counters that he's
checked with his lawyers and it's all perfectly legal.

One thing's sure: Given the predicted vector of the Chinese
contemporary-art scene, Splügen customers might do well to inquire
precisely who painted their duped Picasso, Prince, Weischer, or Wool,
and keep that name in their bank vault. After all, Western art history
is full of people who went from doing commercial art to being canonized
artists. Just look at the recent prices for Warhol sketches from his
illustrator days.

The problem with a collector-driven market

The problem with a collector-driven market

By Jane Kallir | Posted 12 July 2007

For the past century or so, the art world has been supported by four principal pillars: artists, collectors, dealers and the art-historical establishment (critics, academics, and curators). From a wider historical perspective, the latter two entities are relative newcomers. The development of art history as an academic discipline, and of public museums, dates back only to the 19th century. Only in the 20th century did dealers evolve from passive shopkeepers to pro-active impresarios, promoting the often difficult efforts of the pioneering modernists with missionary zeal. Public resistance to modernism, coupled with the pressures of international capitalism, gave new importance to dealers and museums, both of which played key roles by superintending the distribution of new art and ratifying its seriousness. At varying points in the course of the past 100 years, the weight of the art world has shifted from one of the four pillars to another. Artists made the modernist revolution; dealers recognised and supported it before academia did; in the post-war period, critics became so dominant that Tom Wolfe lampooned their influence in his 1975 book The Painted Word. And now, it seems, collectors have taken charge.

Over the long term, art-historical value is determined by consensus among all four art-world pillars. When any one of the four entities assume disproportionate power, there is a danger that this entity’s personal preferences will cloud everyone’s short-term judgement. Put bluntly, the danger of a collector-driven art world is that money will trump knowledge. Great collectors should ideally become nearly as knowledgeable as the curators and dealers who help them build their collections. But not all of today’s collectors have the passion or the time necessary to develop this depth of knowledge. Collecting, once the pursuit of a relatively small number of driven individuals, has become far more common among far more people.

This expansion of the art market, made possible by the broader dissemination of concentrated pockets of wealth and by the globalisation of art and related information, has drawn in players who do not have the focused commitment of the traditional collector. The exponential growth of the market, and the genuine gains realised by those who got in early, inevitably fuel the tendency, justifiable or not, to view art as an asset class comparable to stocks or real estate.

Art has also become the greatest common denominator in the new global social order. Today’s rich are an international elite whose members can measure their cachet by the level of VIP services given them at Art Basel and Art Basel/Miami Beach. Anointed by the glamour that today attends the public display of great wealth, the art world has acquired the patina of trendiness that was formerly exclusive to the entertainment and fashion industries. The contemporary focus on trendiness and investment potential, each of which operates on a relatively short timeline, obscures the fact that lasting value in art accrues in the course of generations.

The corollary to a collector-driven art world is that the canon of ostensibly great artists is being largely determined by market forces. The huge prices that have been achieved lately at the top of the market are the result not only of new concentrations of wealth, but of the fact that many people are pursuing the same handful of artists and works of art. Therefore the drop-off from the peak can be steep, becalming the middle market and consigning lesser works and lesser artists to also-ran status.

This is a market with a voracious appetite for alleged masterpieces, and little patience for historical or developmental nuances. It encourages superficiality: rather than collecting a single artist or group of artists in depth, collectors now often prefer to amass scattered masterworks: here a Matisse, there a Picasso, and then perhaps a Schiele. In an overheated environment, the art-historical establishment often finds itself chasing rather than guiding the market. The press must keep up with the latest trends, and coverage of social events and record prices often takes precedence over quiet critical reflection. Museums need the support of trustees, but the most powerful collectors no longer need the imprimatur of an existing museum; they can simply open their own.

If it sometimes seems that the art-historical establishment is missing in action, this is in part because, while the market has been aggressively constructing a new canon, academia has been busy deconstructing the old one. For several decades now, scholars have generally agreed that the white, male, Eurocentric canon that traditionally dominated Western art evolved from historical biases that are no longer morally or intellectually justifiable. Although this change in orientation has literally opened up a whole new world of aesthetic possibilities, it has discouraged academics from making qualitative judgements. Scholarship in areas that are useful to the marketplace, such as provenance and authenticity, has flourished, but overall connoisseurship has declined. Similarly, market pressures push dealers to become generalists, showcasing a hodge-podge of high-ticket items instead of specialising as they formerly did. Auctioneers, operating within a timeframe that seldom extends much beyond the next sale date, focus most of their energies on the highest priced lots. Novice collectors, justifiably wary and insecure, engage consultants who often know far less than the dealers and auctioneers. At every level of the art world, deeper knowledge and principled guidance seem to be in short supply.

The writer is co-director of Galerie St Etienne in New York

The China Painters by Jankowski

If you missed it!

CHRISTIAN JANKOWSKI: SUPER CLASSICAL

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 24th from 6-9 pm.
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, ten to six.

For The China Painters, Jankowski traveled to Dafen, a suburb of
Shenzhen, China that operates like a paintings sweatshop. There,
workshops have been for the last twenty years replicating western
masterpieces, primarily for North American and European hotel lobby's,
producing an estimated 60 percent of the world's cheap oil paintings.
An artisan recently told Spiegel Online he "wants to get into the
business of oil paintings the way McDonalds got into the business of
fast food." The Communist Party of China (CCP) has lauded the
painters' economic boom, erecting an art museum in the village center.
This massive modernist building, which Jankowski visited and
photographed, is currently without a director or a collection, despite
its impending grand opening. Jankowski interviewed artisans, asking
what they would choose for the institution to exhibit on the walls;
none of the participants had been to a museum before. They remade his
photographs of the raw museum interior, inserting their fantasy
artworks. The resulting imagery varies from landscapes to family
portraits, to traditional Chinese works and "sexy" paintings; some
impart political criticism, such as Three Leaders, of former Communist
leader Den Xiaoping in conversation with China's current President and
Vice President, or Liberty, a replica of Delacroix's Liberty Leading
the People (1830). Via Jankowski's invitation to participate in his
own artistic practice, he gives the Dafen painters a voice, and
moreover, a challenge to generate an original painting for the first
time. The project confronts professional boundaries, and highlights
the larger issue surrounding modalities of mass production in the
twenty-first century global marketplace.

Pride is a Sham(e)!

The reasons are fourfold:

i. Proclamations of pride are compensatory, acknowledgements not only that the larger community regards one’s behavior as shameful, but tacitly that one does as well. Attitudes toward behavior one regards as entirely normative are ambivalent (imagine the absurdity of a heterosexual pride day). Pride and shame exist along one axis, together forming dipoles of the same entity: narcissism. Outwardly projected self-love masks inwardly projected self-loathing. Vocalized pride is pride in sham clothing and receives its identity only from shame.

ii. Gay/straight distinctions now have little or nothing to do with sexual behavior per se. The term "gay" has detached from the referent from which it was formed (a euphemism for people who engage in homosexual acts) and now floats aimlessly through linguistic never-never land. It is not uncommon to hear talk of gay straight guys, straight gay guys, and gay porn stars secretly being "straight" – engaging in homosexual acts is not sufficient, in fact not even necessary, to warrant identification as "gay."

Whether or not any of the following people engage in homosexual acts, I do not know – they are gay, nevertheless:

Richard Simmons

The Smiths
Most male eurotrash

Inanimate Objects, Professions, and Places (which of course, cannot engage in homosexual acts) can indeed be gay as well:

Hermès Gardening Spades
Calvin Klein & 2(x)ist Undergarments
Colors named after the natural objects they resemble: i.e. salmon, camel, …
Interior Decoration
Landscape Architecture
Professional Football
Construction
Law Enforcement
Firefighting
Floristry
Fashion Design
Coiffeury
Versailles
Paris
Milan

To be gay is to embrace a sort of neo-dandyism or to react violently against that (neo-machismo – butch gays are the gayest after all), nothing more, nothing less.

iii. To define is to limit. A homosexual who identiefies as "gay" relegates himself to a series of convenient definitions… a certain socioeconomic status… a certain set of life chances. To do so with pride is to accept one’s rape and then smile and thank the heteronormative power structure responsible.

iv. A “gay” identity undermines a homosexual’s sex chances. The vast majority of homosexuals are only attracted to “straight-acting" homosexuals.

Shanghai Pride week

Here is the complete schedule of events for Shanghai Pride:
Thursday, July 5: LGBT Discussion @ PinkHome, 7PM
Thursday, July 5: LGBT Film Workshop @ PinkHome, after discussion
Saturday, July 7: Seven Deadly Sins party @ PinkHome, 9PM
Thursday, July 12: LGBT Independent Film Screening @ PinkHome, 8:30PM