Import Chinese Art From China
Most recently, I found myself in need of some form of artwork in one room of my house following a serious episode of decorating. After visiting a local wholesaler, I noticed they were selling some paintings imported from China. The style was abstract symbols with lively colors, oil on canvas. I saw that they also included details of the artists and provinces in China from which they originated.
The range of prices for the paintings according to mount size was from as little as 5 GBP. I am under no illusion about the fact that these paintings are more than likely mass-produced in a factory, but the fact was I still liked the look of them. They were not listed as ‘original’, but ‘hand-painted’ Chinese art.
A result of research on the Internet, China has been mass-producing copies of famous works of art for many years, mainly to the tourist market. Copy painters will live and work in small studios, working many, many hours. They are rarely on fixed wages and are more usually paid by the finished painting.
When I browsed the Internet today, I found a number of sites advertising original Chinese art for sale, and available via online ordering. They offer works of art that are one-off and not copied, and generally retail at much more expensive prices. They advertise both oil-on-canvas and ink pictures drawn onto rice paper, making much of the fact that they are selling only original pieces and not exploiting any of the artists in anyway.
Apparently though, these sites also make a point of belittling the mass-produced copies mentioned earlier, and that probably includes the factory hand-painted canvases I had been looking at in the Wholesalers. Yet there are many department stores around the world that have display after display of prints of famous works of art, framed water color prints and photographic prints either on canvas or behind glass and within wood frames.
Prints of other artists’ works and no doubt done on assembly lines are probably produced in the thousands. So why is the hand painting of oil-on-canvas in a factory looked down upon so much? Is it the apparent exploitation of art students, or common workers used to do the paintings, the long hours that they are forced to work for minimum pay? Or is it simply the blatant copying of other works of art?
Apparently I am no art connoisseur – I cannot afford to be – and I would not knowingly buy a copy palmed off as an original, but if the design is a mass-produced abstract of original design, and is produced quickly and efficiently, and I like the way that piece of art has been done, or the way the artwork will compliment the place I want to hang it, what does it matter how much it cost or how it was produced, so long as it looks right.