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Considering China is the Mecca of mass production, it isn’t especially surprising to see even high art being produced on an industrial level.
Dafen, in the southern part of the country, is the global center of art reproduction. More than 60 percent of the world’s cheap copies of the masters are produced here. Last year alone, 5 million oil paintings were produced, and art exports touched $35 million. Barely ten percent of the art is original, and even these are of poor quality.
Spiegel Online notes:
One village of artists exports about five million paintings every year — most of them copies of famous masterpieces. The fastest workers can paint up to 30 paintings a day.
Customer’s choice rules the market — the current best seller is the Last Supper, with Van Gogh’s Sunflowers also meriting high sales. Prices can run as low as $50 a piece, and even lower with volume orders.
Laborers in Dafen who can work for as much as 12 hours a day are paid by the painting — usually sweatshop wages (surprise, surprise).