first off I think that it is necessary to at least acknowledge that these painters have some skill. Its not that easy to copy a painting. thinking of one city exporting five million paintings a year is pretty incredible. Perhaps the painters even lack talent but they do have skill. "the fastest worker produces 30 paintings a day" as a painter the idea of a person who is able to paint 30 paintings a day, even if they are all of the same thing is amazing.
It is incredible to think of that many artist all in one place. however their living and working conditions are pretty terrible by our standards.
Is a reproduction of art actually a piece of art or not? Clearly a poster of a print is not an original piece of art. However if it was the actual print it would be considered original because it would have a unique series number and all that jazz. Even if the plates are scratched out after the series is printed it seems like the distinction is fetishizing the idea of uniqueness. While the poster may not be as good quality it is still the image created by the artist and representation of an original work. However this is all just talking about mechanical reproduction. When we start thinking about someone copying a painting all the sudden the hand of the artist is put back in play... just a different artist. While these paintings are no doudbt disrupting the painting market they still represent a huge force of painting skill.
I had some ideas about projects I would do if I had the funding and time:
1. go around the world and collect reproductions of a certain famous painting. I havn't decided which painting yet, but 1,000 copy's of __________ would be amazing. Ideally I would travel to many differenty countries and buy some of the paintings at tourist traps. I would conclude my trip with a visit to Dafen, China where a five million of these paintings are produced a year. I would ship the paintings back as I made my trip. I would also photodocument the trip and the people and places I bought the paintings from.
2. Have 1000 copy's made of one of my paintings roughly 4'x5' in size
3. have two gallery spaces adjacent to one another with the reproductions and the original of my work and the famous work sorounded by the reproductions. the original will be in the center of each gallery behind glass and roped off. the reproductions will fill the wall space all around, any extra reproductions will be left in crates and scattered on the floor of the gallery space.
4. Everyday the original paintings will be switched between the galleries. on odd days the paintings will be in the gallery with their own reproductions and on even they will be sorounded by the other reproduction. the changing of the paintings will be a ceromony with rediculous formality and the originals will be transfered with armed gaurds.
so thats what i would do if i had the time resources and money. well i can alway make the time, its the resources.
check out the this article about the chinese painting factories, this is not the guy ranting about chinese paintings killing the french street painting market.
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so also thinking about reproduction, Shepard Fairey's Barack Obama campaign poster has stirred up some legal shananigans. He used an photo from the AP to design the poster and now the whole issue of who owns the image is in question. its seems almost redicoulous to argue over who owns a specific angle of Barack Obama's face. It doesn't even seem like it matters if it was created by scanning in the photo and outputting onto transparencies or if it was rendered by hand. Given that Barack Obama is a political figure all the photographer really can claim any right to is the specific angle of the shot and Obama's face. If Obama was willing to pose for me and I shot a picture from the same angle with a flag posistioned right in the back round who would own it, me or the AP? Well that would be another interesting project to do if I could get Obama to pose for me for a half hour or so.
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