Decided to explore the topic — who and how creates oil paintings for sale in hypothetical Walmarts across the USA. In particular, I can hardly imagine how to put impasto painting on a conveyor belt, but evidently, it happens.
And here’s what I found out. There is a village in China, Dafen (Dafen), a suburb of Shenzhen. It has only 8000 residents, which by Chinese standards is practically a city block. According to estimates, 60% of all cheap oil paintings in the world are produced within four square kilometers (1.5 square miles) of Dafen. Last year, local art factories exported paintings worth 28 million euros (36 million dollars). Here are some numbers — just one company, Shenzhen Artlover, supplies 300,000 paintings a year. According to some sources, about five million oil paintings are produced annually in Dafen. The workshops are staffed by 8,000 to 10,000 artists. No one knows the exact figures because this is China.
The search for artists is conducted in the form of a competition — students come and compete annually during a match of making copies from a photograph, portrait, or landscape.
“A decent copy of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ sells for 40 euros (51 dollars). If you buy 100 paintings, the price drops to €26 ($33), the gallery workers note. 100 paintings, guaranteed to be created by graduates of an art academy, are delivered within three weeks. Buyers with less stringent requirements can get their 100 paintings within one week, paying €6 ($8) each.”
“A few simple brush strokes by Wu, and a forest appears on the canvas. The small photograph he holds in his hand serves as his model. He works on a copy of an idyllic French landscape — a lavender field in the south of France. In one day, Wu can make between 20 to 30 copies. When a large order comes in, he may have to paint the same motif 1,000 times. “We do not get a fixed salary,” he says. “We are paid per finished painting.”
Huang Jiang, who first started a business in Dafen, shares that his biggest order was from Walmart – 250,000 copies. He then hired 2,000 artists to fulfill the order. So, imagine the assembly line, right? Each artist had to make 125 copies, which at a productivity rate of 20 pieces a day — just a week. Well, probably not everyone has such productivity, but 125 copies isn’t super high either. And orchestrating 2,000 painters without internet and maintaining quality control of copies… now that’s interesting. Another art factory owner, Wong Kong, talks about an order from Walmart for 100,000 copies a month, and 300,000 a month overall from different customers. Wong talks about 3,000 contractors. Both lament that it’s time to create a real conveyor belt where each artist performs only part of the work. It’s unknown whether they managed to do that or not.
Returning to Wu. He earns the equivalent of 0.30 euros per copied painting. This means he earns between 128 to 385 euros a month — barely enough to cover living expenses and send some money home. But he doesn’t complain: “In a workshop like this, it’s much better without a schedule”. Once, artists worked in a factory owned by the company, where they had a fixed workday.”
I think Midjourney/OpenAI now costs more, if you add everything up, than manual Chinese labor….
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 