[Previous entry: "THE SUPERBOWL OF ART"] [Next entry: "Literary and Art Book is a worthwhile venue for artist Exhibitions"]
12/07/2005: "THE CHINA SYNDROME – Counterfeit Art Creates Problems" by Barney Davey
I recently read 80% of the goods found in a typical Wal-Mart store are made in China. Whether the figure is accurate or not, it would surprise few consumers these days to read it. China has become the manufacturing floor for the world. Could there be a more telling event than venerable Big Blue, i.e., IBM, announcing earlier this year the sale of its Personal Computing Division to Lenovo Group Limited, a Chinese company?
The Chinese manufacturing skill has now risen to make them formidable in highly technical areas such as computers and chip sets. Even Nikon has cameras manufactured in China. In the art and picture framing business in recent years, Asian manufacturers have had a profound effect on moulding distributors and picture framing equipment manufacturers.
Those distributors and dealers who haven’t adjusted to lower cost Chinese manufacturers have come on hard times. Chinese manufacturers are now making high-end furniture and home accessories. It should be no surprise then that the art market is feeling the impact of Chinese imports.
You know the story is reaching critical mass when it is covered in the New York Times. Here is a quote from “Own Original Chinese Copies of Real Western Art!” in an article by the Times China business reporter, Keith Brasher:
“China's ability to turn what has long been an individual craft into a mass production industry may affect small-scale artists from Rome's Spanish Steps to the sidewalks along Santa Monica's beach in California, as well as many galleries and art colonies in between.
Artist groups in the United States are starting to express concern, questioning the originality of some Chinese paintings and whether they comply with American copyright laws.”
The November 17 broadcast of ABC World News Tonight ran this story: Chinese Counterfeits Pose Threats to U.S. Industry - Rip-Offs Include Everything From Golf Clubs to Van Gogh to Airplane Parts. It showed villages where Mona Lisa’s and Van Gogh’s are painted en masse.
So far, the competition has been in the form of oil paintings…by the pound, as some derisively refer to them. Until recently, there have been a relatively small number of Asian companies selling oil paintings to the semi-annual Decor Expo tradeshow that serves art galleries and dealers, picture framers, interior designers and the middlemen who job to big box retailers, contract designers and furniture stores.
While high profile industries such as software and entertainment have had an ongoing front-page battle over piracy issues with products being illegally manufactured in China, the relatively low-profile fine art reproduction and wall decor industry has not been immune to knock-offs. Nor is the growing threat less serious to them. For years, art publishers who produce fine art prints, art posters and giclées have sought to keep illegal copies from importers of flat oil paintings out of the tradeshows where they compete. Due to banding together to form the Art Copyright Coalition www.artcc.org, and to more vigorous individual defense of their intellectual property rights, publishers have had limited success in keeping copies of their work being displayed at shows.
According to a new item on his Website, Thomas Arvid, a popular and very successful print artist who specializes in painting wine, had knock-off works removed from the booths of offending companies at the combined Decor Expo and Artexpo Atlanta shows in September. Arvid also made news when, with the help of the U.S. Marshall’s office, he seized 146 counterfeit pieces of his work from a gallery in the resort town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. A visitor to the gallery tipped off Arvid’s office. The pieces, apparently produced in China, were selling for prices of $20 -$60. Arvid’s fine art prints typically sell between $1,000 and $2,000. His originals sell for more than $60,000.
Now as framed art sales are trending to big boxes and the Internet against a backdrop of rising Chinese manufacturing gains in markets that seemed unconceivable just a few years ago, the number of companies marketing very inexpensive oil paintings has greatly increased. The larger numbers create a growing threat to the U.S. art reproduction market.
Incredibly, these Chinese companies use an assembly line approach to creating art. The result is oil paintings produced at very low prices. In the past, a lot of this art was sold in hotel ballrooms to customers responding to shrieking television commercial pitches selling art from “starving artists.” Much of it was destined for commercial contract design orders for hotels and offices. Today it’s wending into the mainstream, where consumers want passable quality art at cheap prices, just as they like cheap apparel and electronics. For example, Fashion Square mall in Scottsdale, Arizona is home to top echelon retailers like Neiman Marcus, Gucci and upscale tony boutiques. Right along side them is Painted with Oil. A gallery selling oil paintings at great prices from Chinese sources. Galleries like this one are springing up in malls everywhere.
Reports from the recent Atlanta Decor Expo and Artexpo tradeshows (arguably the largest art and picture framing tradeshow worldwide) revealed that the art sector is experiencing dramatically increased competition from Asian companies, primarily Chinese. However woeful for their competitors, it is no surprise Chinese companies seek a larger slice of the U.S. decorative art and wall decor market. They have incredible capacity, low costs and are voracious for sales in every market. To make matters worse, the quality of the knock-offs has continued to improve.
For those readers who have not been to a Decor Expo show; imagine flat, unmounted oil paintings on canvas stacked two feet high, side-by-side on numerous eight foot tables. In the past a handful of companies marketed flat oil paintings. This year, aisles upon aisles of these companies exhibited. They spread canvases on the floor in bazaar style for buyers to browse through the stacks. Go to www.oilpaintings.com to get an idea of the scope. Wholesale prices are low with about $60 for a 36” x 48” canvas. Stretched and nicely framed, a finished piece might wholesale for $200 and retail for $450-600. These oil painting exhibitors still make up only a fraction of the hundreds of artists, publishers, picture framing distributors and equipment manufacturers that comprise this huge show.
Traditionally, even though most publishing companies looked askance at these low-end producers, as there were relatively few of them. Publishers always were aware of piracy of their images and made mostly unsuccessful efforts to police them. Over the years, there have been many heated exhibitor-to-exhibitor exchanges and exhibitors engaging show management. Aggrieved parties were looking for an immediate cease and desist of the other company selling their copyrighted work. Most often, they were left wanting as show producers could not act as legal authority even when the knock-offs were obvious.
The dissatisfaction many publishers with the situation led to the formation of the Art Copyright Coalition, www.artcc.org. Many in this group are also members of the Art Publishers Association, http://apa.pmai.org. Firsthand accounts from this year’s Decor Expo Atlanta show repeatedly told of knock-offs this year that were most egregious. Police were called to the Georgia World Congress Center to take reports. Justifiably angry publishers and artists who saw knock-offs of their copyrighted work being openly sold at the show obviously took no consolation in the improved quality of the knock-off work.
Piracy is a considerable problem in doing trade with China. Below is a quote from an March 2005 article in Inc. magazine titled, How China Will Change Your Business: “Piracy is a problem. Foreign companies have little defense against even outright theft of their technology in China. China's failure to police intellectual property, in effect, creates a massive global subsidy worth hundreds of billions of dollars to its businesses and people. By investing in the country's manufacturing infrastructure, by providing the expertise, machines, and software
China needs to produce world-class products, the world is also helping assemble the biggest, most sophisticated, and most successful "illegal" manufacturing complex in the world.Seen another way, China's loose intellectual property rules turn the tables on the Western colonial powers and the Japanese who throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries violated China's land and people. As China grows into a great power, the wealth transferred into the country by expropriating intellectual property will propel it forward.” Download the full article at: www.inc.com/magazine/20050301/china.html
While the Decor Expo show spotlights the situation on the reproduction end of the art market, there is growing evidence that contemporary fine art by Chinese artists will continue to make a major impact on the high end of the market. Prices for top echelon Chinese artists are on the rise at shows and auction houses. Fine art shows in Sinagpore and Hong Kong are taking on increasingly global importance. Given China’s enormous population and the sheer number of art students it annually produces, it is almost a given master painters will rise from among them. Some to dominate the art scene.
It’s been said the 20th Century was the American Century and the 21st Century will be the Chinese Century. If that is true, then certainly the visual arts will feel the effect. Time will tell. In the meantime, if you are an artist, make sure your work is properly documented at: www.copyright.gov. Be as vigilant as possible in defending your intellectual property rights, but don’t let the problem eat you up either. If you are a publisher, consider joining the Art Copyright Coaltion. If you are a collector, avoid the temptation to buy the cheap oil painting reproductions. Sites like Absolute Arts are full of great original art created by deserving artists and much of it is priced quite attractively.
The Problem Worsens – this just in
The December 2 issue of the Robert Genn Twice Weekly Newsletter (I don’t know how he does it and still find time to paint as he does) had a subject line: International Theft. He tells about being informed by another artist that a Chinese company has many of his art pieces online selling giclees and photocopies for $16 - $46 apiece. Naturally, he is outraged and has contacted the Canadian authorities to get help. He offers advice and a list of artists from the offending site in his article. You can read it at: http://www.painterskeys.com/letters.asp?let=051202
The life of an artist is full of many challenges, by becoming a collector you also become a benefactor of someone who has chosen to add creativity and beauty to the world often at the cost of making a living in some other more financially rewarding pursuit. Your support is vital.
This blog is reprised in part from the November issue of my free digital newsletter, Art Print Issues that reports on all aspects of the art print market. Archived issues and free subscriptions are available at: www.artprintissues.com. I am Barney Davey and I am an art print marketing consultant, workshop leader and author of How to Profit from the Art Print Market, which can be purchased at: www.barneydavey.com. In my own efforts to combat big box pricing, I've lowered my book price to beat Amazon's and included free shipping.
