Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade

Couverture
University of Chicago Press, 24 mars 2014 - 475 pages
“Unsettles contemporary art’s unspoken hierarchies and topples modernist and postmodernist assumptions about originality, authenticity, and authorship.” —caa Reviews

In a metropolis in south China lies Dafen, an urban village that 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. Winnie Wong infiltrated this world, first investigating the work of conceptual artists; 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.

Wong describes an art world in which migrant workers, propaganda makers, dealers, and international artists make up a global supply chain of art. 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, styling himself into a Dafen boss. Through such cases, Wong shows how Dafen’s painters force us to reexamine our preconceptions about the role of Chinese workers in redefining global art.

“[A] fantastically detailed exploration of a topic which touches the heart of many of the issues surrounding China's economic rise.” —South China Morning Post

 

Table des matières

After the Copy
1
Imagining the Great Painting Factory
35
The Conceptual Artist and the Copyist Painter
81
True Art and True Love in the Model Bohemia
115
Plates
126
Step 18 Sign Vincent
147
Framed Authors Conceptualism and the Dafen Readymade
185
Conceptual Painting China Dreams
209
Epilogue
231
Acknowledgments
239
Glossary
241
List of Chinese Names
243
Notes
245
Sources
263
Index
283
Droits d'auteur

Expressions et termes fréquents

À propos de l'auteur (2014)

 Winnie Wong is a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, MA, and Shanghai.

Informations bibliographiques