Van Gogh on Demand

This engaging book looks at globalization and art from a perspective well beyond the conventional art world. Wong analyzes the work of artists in the Chinese "urban village" of Dafen where some five million paintings are produced a year–copies of Western masterpieces. Rather than viewing this industry condescendingly, Wong takes Dafen as a laboratory for understanding what qualities make an artist, and how creativity exists even in contexts of reproduction and replication. 

This is a stunning story of China's copycat economy represented by peasant artisans in Dafen village who paint classics of Western art -- from Monet to Warhol -- for the global market. An art historian, Wong conducted ethnographic research among the enterprising peasants whose paintings shaped a flourishing global economy in art reproduction. The Dafen case challenges a conventional art history opposition between the authentic and the copy. Wong's innovative research illuminates how creativity rests in the labor and not in the authenticity of the artistic product. Readers will learn about the peasants' adept capitalization of opportunities fueled by Western… show more.