This photo essay link was passed along to us by Doug some time back, but I’ve only just remembered it. The photos depict Chinese copy artists: people who make their living by copying Western art paintings. A snippet of the blurb accompanying the photos reads:

China produces 70 percent of copies of famous masterpieces for export to North America and Europe. The fastest copy artists chug out 30 paintings a day. In his series Real Fake Art, photographer Michael Wolf took portraits of professional artisans next to the Lichtensteins, the Van Goghs and the many disproportionately giant Mona Lisas mass produced in this fascinating, multimillion industry, timeless classics and contemporary art blockbusters alike.

As we move out of the orientation phase and into the fieldwork phase of our field school, we can start applying the many questions and thoughts you all have generated to examples such as the copy artists. What kinds of tensions surrounding authenticity, creativity, or artistic practice emerge with this example? If ‘copying’ is a component of traditional artistic training (as it is in some Chinese visual arts), then how might we interpret the practice/industry of producing copies of prominent Western artists?