Inside The Fine Art Factories of Yiwu, China

https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to-paint-10000-paintings/

by chrischen • 10 years ago

172 77 10 years ago

princeb• 10 years ago

Yiwu? The location in the article is Dafen. The OP must have confused this city for another one mentioned in an earlier HN post.

nevertheless, fascinating article. I saw these guys on reddit a while back and the way they described the city I guessed they'd have little problem with the production capacity - only quality control and delivery.

chrischen2• 10 years ago

Hi, one of the factories pictured and visited is in Yiwu. Contrary to popular belief, not all art factories are in Dafen China, and the reality is it became more of a tourist destination than an actual factory town. This is mostly because of the rising cost of rent as Shenzhen (Dafen is really a district of Shenzhen, not a remote "village") is also a Chinese tech hub headquartered by many startups and companies including Tencent.

Here is a picture of a luxury condominium right at the entrance of Dafen "village". https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1700930/unspecified.jpeg

Many other areas where replica paintings are manufactured include Yiwu, Xiamen, and Beijing.

3chelon7• 10 years ago

It may well have been a village as recently as 20 years ago. Shenzhen is a huge conurbation that has swallowed countless towns and villages.

mads• 10 years ago

Well, many Chinese neighborhoods or residential areas contain "village" (村) in their name.

And you are right, it is not actually a village. It is just an area and another metro station in Shenzhen.

lifeisstillgood• 10 years ago

  China has economies of scale on a scale that the economists who coined the term economies of scale never imagined.

About twenty years ago this painting-from-a-photo-from_china was a thing, when you could get franchises to sell on in the UK.

TorKlingberg• 10 years ago

It may be that painting-from-a-photo is a fad that will quickly become uncool, then it takes 20 years for a new generation to grow up not knowing about it.

3chelon7• 10 years ago

At the other end of the price spectrum, albeit at a much smaller scale, Andy Warhol used this business model quite successfully. He even called his studio the Factory.

And in Damien Hirst's studio, his "assistants" (i.e. artists) churn out countless spin and dot paintings which are sold as original artworks for thousands of pounds.

sehugg• 10 years ago

Kostabi too: http://juddtully.net/articles/painting-by-the-numberspaintin...

throwaway0001q• 10 years ago

He also had a sign in his factory that read "minimum wage is a cage". Seems fitting based on this site.

6stringmerc2• 10 years ago

I think Thomas Kinkade's operation was one of the most lucrative.

staticautomatic• 10 years ago

Plenty of prominent artists have that same studio model, also including Ai Weiwei and, in a sort of satirical way-- Thierry Guetta, as depicted in the film Exit Through the Gift Shop. This "production line" type operation is a bit different thought.

3chelon7• 10 years ago

You're right, but I mention those two because I believe Warhol was the most famous early adopter, and Hirst is the most notorious, being the richest artist in the world.

jianshen• 10 years ago

Takashi Murakami [1] is doing much the same with Kaikai Kiki [2]

I think a lot of people (especially artists) don't realize or maybe don't like that in order for an artist to scale, they have to bring in help. As much as it sounds like the commercialization of a craft, I think these structures are important for the art economy to survive in this modern era of on-demand everything.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takashi_Murakami [2] https://www.wired.com/2003/11/artist/

bertiewhykovich4• 10 years ago

A valid artistic order would expel Hirst immediately. His continued celebrity is a massive indictment of the arts economy.

anigbrowl3• 10 years ago

I suspect even Hirst agrees. For the love of God strikes me as a blatant challenge to the curatoria...in fact I think it's the only interesting work he's put out in the last few years.

legodt• 10 years ago

The concept of artists having assistants or working like this being novel at all is a very new concept. Up until very recently, art was a professional practice in the western world and it was not uncommon (and very accepted) that artists would work with a team of apprentices, sharing the workload and focusing on specific details and elements with the artist applying the finishing touches and signature.

Mikeb85• 10 years ago

Good article. I'd be very interested to see these artists' original works. I imagine they have exceptional technical ability since they paint so much.

TimMeade• 10 years ago

I bought a few 'copy cat' paintings on ebay from china about 8 years ago. Had them framed and people love them. Paid less than 20 each for them... That must have evolved into this.

fma• 10 years ago

I noticed in the blog: "This is why all but our largest sizes of paintings cost less than $100"

But when I go to pricing, only the smallest is $100...Mixed media has items cheaper, but still, not exactly 'all but our largest size of paintings cost less than $100'

Am I looking at the right place, or has prices tripled in a year?

chrischen2• 10 years ago

At the time mainly Mixed Media paintings were offered, and the default sizes were smaller (21x28 was set as the default "large" size). The "under $100" text links to the Mixed Media product page.

calebm• 10 years ago

"Fine art factory" is an oxymoron. It's a human-powered printing machine.

3chelon7• 10 years ago

You're absolutely right. It must still be cheaper to use human skill, but I see no technical reason this cannot be done using image processing (e.g. a Photoshop filter), robotics and/or 3D printing.

Clearly, the whole question of art as product has been endlessly addressed by Duchamp, Warhol and others - indeed, the whole Conceptual Art movement is in one sense a response to this question. But the sheer scale - and chutzpah - of this operation is staggering, and the fact it is using human skill and not automation makes it - oddly - appear quite modern and "disruptive" to Western eyes.

But... and this begs even more questions: I was talking to a well-known British painter just two days ago, and he was telling me his biggest (and most lucrative) market is China. So China is exporting cheap mass-produced art, and importing expensive, original art!

2bitencryption• 10 years ago

I would much prefer to buy something hand-painted (even mass-produced hand-painted). Because I want to know a person painted it. I want to know they put their brush in a big tin paint bin slobbered and muddy with old paint and then pushed the brush against the canvass to make the lines.

An intelligent image processing filter would be cool to, but I would want it for different reasons.

SiVal• 10 years ago

I see no technical reason this cannot be done using image processing (e.g. a Photoshop filter), robotics and/or 3D printing.

In Japan, I watched a robot paint portraits of live models. A person would sit on a bench, the robot would look at him, then dip a traditional horsehair brush in black ink and paint on paper on an easel. It was outline brushwork with different pressures creating variations in line thickness. The result was quite good--very clearly the live model in front of us.

This was in Tsukuba "Science City"... 32 years ago.

detaro2• 10 years ago

I'm not so sure it is. Just because steps of the process are "industrialized" doesn't necessarily mean something isn't fine art anymore.

Fine art photography nowadays often involves an industrial inkjet printer.

Assistants painting dots after dots still makes a Damien Hirst for some reason.

There probably is a line somewhere, but it's far from clear where, and highly depends on your definition of "fine art". That the service discussed here is not "fine art" IMHO is easier to argue, but depends a lot on how much leeway the artists actually are given, less so on how many there are or how much they paint.

3chelon7• 10 years ago

I think most artists would agree that the line is drawn when a customer gives you a picture of their pet and says "paint that, exactly like the picture."

Certainly many, many artists throughout the centuries have painted commissioned work to survive, but when the customer demands an exact copy of the photo in another medium and the artist is allowed no subjective interpretation of the subject matter it ceases to be fine art.

anigbrowl3• 10 years ago

It's not fine art because the artist isn't choosing the subject and presentation. If you commission me to do a portrait of you, that's fine art. If you hire me to make a copy of an existing image in paint, that's strictly a commercial task.

The basic aspect of art is that I as the artist make the decisions about what the painting is going to look like. Damien Hirst is a fine artist, his assistants are not (while they're working on his paintings obviously).

JasonInSeattle• 10 years ago

Right; the multiple refererences to instapainting's product as "art" really irk me. It's decorative wallhangings at best...

nkrisc3• 10 years ago

I ordered a painting of a photograph my wife took from this site about a year ago. Overall I was pleased with it. It's a faithful reproduction but not a perfect facsimile. I think it worked well because the photograph (in low light) had a very painting-like quality to it which is what made me choose it for this in the first place. I think I paid about $60 for a 12"x12" painting. It took a few weeks but I was very happy with the result. I don't think my sister's painter boyfriend was very happy when I told him about it. This one time was out of curiosity but I think I'd probably contract a local artist in the future on principle.

DanBC• 10 years ago

I don't think my sister's painter boyfriend was very happy when I told him about it.

How much would he have charged for the commission?

nkrisc3• 10 years ago

He didn't say an exact amount, just that he wouldn't have done it for $60.

jgord• 10 years ago

Im a developer, but also paint seriously in bursts when I have chunks of free time between projects and the urge takes me - some of my work on : theartispainting.com

I can say firstly that making a reasonable copy of a face or old master painting in oil on canvas takes a _lot_ of skill. It may or may not be art, thats another matter.

I wanted to comment to mention that, for someone who paints daily, it is most likely 8 to 20+ hours work to make a reasonable quality portrait in oil.

A tube of oil paint might cost anywhere from 7 to 40 dollars, then you have mediums, brushes, possibly studio space rental. The raw materials for cheap cotton canvas + stretcher might cost 15 dollars in the US, and a high quality linen support is much more expensive, more like 60 for a small painting. Ballpark.

For a US based artist, expect to pay something above 10hrs x $20/hr + 30 materials = $230 for circa 16x20 to 18x24 size.

So perhaps a fair baseline cost to produce a small portrait would be 250 dollars. Thats not accounting for an artist putting more time into it for his or her unique style. Some styles can be done more quickly of course. Its not going to be easy to pay rent if your doing that.. in fact its worth considering moving to a country where rent is much cheaper [ and I have done this at several times in my life ]

Reflecting on all this I'm happy that artisans and artists in china can have a reasonable standard of living doing this - we can all benefit from their work if we choose.

I have myself bought affordable violins made in china for my son, and they have been made to an exceptional standard, both playable good sound and excellent finishing. Without these chinese violin artisans we could not afford to work on playing beautiful music. Does that take away from local luthiers, perhaps not because they are likely at a much higher price level we could never afford, with brand recognition that is well deserved, and likely more time on the finer details you'd expect in a high end instrument. Its wonderful to have more playable instruments for young talented musicians.

One side effect that I don't like is the undervaluing of art and artisans in general - there are artists who live in the US and are working incredibly hard in their unique style and vision.. its a lottery, they may win and get a reputation and then earn good money for the work, but most never do. And there is such a deep pyramid of knowledge in art making, and in violin making .. I really want those dedicated people to be able to make a living.

Maybe patronage of the arts, is a tax that we self-impose when we have means, in order to keep our quality of life, preserve culture. Or perhaps it really should be covered some how by taxing very wealth companies more aggressively.

I like to think of myself as a code artisan, so I can appreciate and empathize to some extent with these violin-carving and oil-painting artisans.

yet the robots are coming ... I'm sure one day well look back on the craft of programming-by-hand with a wistful melancholy. I just hope when that day comes, we are sharing wealth and resources better among all of us.

NumberCruncher2• 10 years ago

Would you also buy a cell phone / laptop produced entirely by well paid western workers or software written entirely by well paid western developers in the future on principle? Would you be willing to pay the higher price?

nkrisc3• 10 years ago

I don't know, probably not. Art is more subjective to begin with and I have a bias towards supporting art anyway. I'm not going to try arguing the position is consistent.

6stringmerc2• 10 years ago

I'm glad the artists can make a decent wage in this model, especially when contrasting that the alternative is pretty much regurgitating other famous paintings. I'd bet that most are probably public domain by now but reproductions can be a delicate notion sometimes when it comes to whether or not they're being clearly described as such. The business model is a clever way to draw out modern service and utility from an otherwise quite dated artistic medium.

machbio2• 10 years ago

Just went through there website (instapainting) to order - why is this becoming the norm...

Can we use this as a sample? If yes, we may display this on our website as an example.

NO (+$3.00) Yes (+$0)

hx87• 10 years ago

It's free marketing for them, so it makes sense they'd charge you for its absence or give you a discount for permissions.

Better framing would be:

NO (-$0) YES (-$3.00)

machbio2• 10 years ago

you are right, as an end-user - I would not have noticed, if it was framed as above..but it would be $102 (instead of $99) for 12x12 - which would be an issue for the end-user to decide - I guess

luiscarloscb• 10 years ago

I wonder if it would be more acceptable if instead of an extra cost it was a -$3 discount on a higher-by-default price

Qwertystop• 10 years ago

Probably - but then either the default price would be the ugly $103 that makes it obvious it works the other way and stops them from saying it's <$100, or the price in general would go down to $97 and they probably pull in less money overall.

obayesshelton• 10 years ago

I wonder how you can actual get in touch directly with the factories rather than going through a third party

redthrowaway2• 10 years ago

I love instapainting's approach to SEO: produce articles like this that are genuinely interesting, post it to HN, then wait for TC and the like to pick them up and reap the link juice. They've also got a few neat little hacks hosted on www.instapainting.com which serve the same purpose. Here's a good writeup on their strategy:

https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/instapainting

quintin• 10 years ago

How do they go up so high on HN? Just by being interesting?

wastedhours• 10 years ago

That and it satisfies a variety of similar traits: stories about successful proof of concepts, outsourcing work, YC, interesting write ups of business processes, transparency.

spiderfarmer• 10 years ago

There is no fast way of doing linkbuilding these days. The effect of viral content, and the links they bring is short-lived.

Unless it's your actual product going viral, it doesn't do much for SEO. It's just a good way to get your name out there.

https://moz.com/blog/the-seo-myth-of-going-viral

redthrowaway2• 10 years ago

I suspect, though, that there isn't a ton of competition for the keywords that matter to them. So the boost you get from hitting HN/TC/whatever once a month might be enough to keep them at the top of Google's SERPs. They did say that SEO drives something like 90% of their business.

vidarh2• 10 years ago

The immediate links to the linkbuilding content itself, sure, I'll buy that. But those links create clicks, and some of those visitors will end up linking other parts of the site, including the product.

So a slower process, but still one that should be worth it as long as your viral content is actually about your product and facilitating discovery of the product.

I think that's one of the problems: People pump out content that is only marginally about the actual product, and few people go on to visit the parts of the site you want to actually get people to link to.

greglindahl2• 10 years ago

FWIW this is called "Content Marketing" in the SEO industry. Chris Chin calls it that in the article you linked. He's pretty good at it: most content marketing is terrible and uninteresting content.

SuperPaintMan2• 10 years ago

He built up his studio into a factory with 3 floors: a ground floor for packaging and shipping works of art, a second story of painting areas, and a third floor of dormitories for the painters.

As a painter [1][2] this sounds like paradise (minus the intermittent factory assembly line commercial-kitsch factor). Replace the shipping area with a framing/gallery floor and you have effectively created an amazing hub for creative output/rapid development of artistic talents. Place that building in a warehouse district and rent it out. The sheer amount of communication between a tight knit group of visual artists would lead to amazing amounts of growth. Throw in a middleman for national/regional outlets that need works of a specific subject/aesthetic at non-gallery pricing and it might be sustainable.

Startup dorm-factory when?

[1] https://theblackbox.ca

[2] https://theblackbox.ca/blog/primitive-triangles/

bertiewhykovich4• 10 years ago

Artists love producing works dictated to them by consumers for twelve hours a day in Yiwu sweatshops. They love it so much.

SuperPaintMan2• 10 years ago

I wasn't attempting to glorify the factory model, simply pointing out the space. Removing the function of mass producing art objects and looking at it as a collective studio space it's pretty awesome.

Nition2• 10 years ago

Go and read the article, it's not quite like that.

Edit to say: Although, this article is sort of an ad for Instapainting, so of course they're going to make things sound positive.

clay_to_n• 10 years ago

There's a pretty cool example of this in LA: http://breweryartwalk.com/about

It's a big complex-style area of apartments + buildings, super walkable, and twice a year they open it up for a "Brewery Art Walk". Pretty incredible work there.

Makes me feel a bit weird wondering how successful / wealthy the artists need to be to afford living there though - Yiwu is a bit more affordable.

paulgerhardt• 10 years ago

This article talks a lot about Dafen but not so much about Yiwu so I thought I would fill in.

Yiwu itself is something of an enigma. Most people in Silicon Valley haven't heard of it. It's not political like Beijing, it's not financial like Shanghai, and it's not electronics or fashion like Shenzhen/Guangdong. The land is barren so the area has focused on International Trade and Commodity Production. Most of it's goods don't even go to the US. Yiwu is the largest exporter of "petty goods" or "small commodities" in the world. What's a petty good? It's pretty much 100% of the things you would find in a dollar store and most of the things you would find in a Walmart. Cheap umbrellas, bags, metal pencil holders, hammers, hair dryers, pots, pans, artificial flowers, stock art, lawn ornaments, flashlights, hair clips, lucky cat figurines, toilet plungers, mailboxes and battery jumpers. I.e. most of the things you buy in stores that you don't eat (commodities). It's also usually the first thing that comes to mind when you hear "Made in China."

Yes, the Christmas mall is there. Yes it is an attraction. But it's not the main attraction.

There is a mall in Yiwu nick-named 'the Snake.' It's 4 miles long, 1000 feet wide and has representatives from over 100,000 companies. There's something like 50,000+ 10x10 foot stores. You could spend 6 seconds in each store and given another 3 seconds to walk between stalls you still wouldn't see the whole thing after a year. Given spaces change their stock or go out of business at least every 3 months you can't tackle this like a Sunday shopping trip.

The thing is though, all these booths? They're all wholesale. Most of the goods on display are commercial samples. Most of the clerks are representing factories or consortiums. Yes, you can go there to buy some touristy trinkets but you'll get dirty looks if you're not representing a 'Buyer' with a capital 'B'. You don't go there with a shopping cart; you go there with a business card and a promise to fill a 40 foot container every 2 weeks.

Buyers are sometimes from brand name stores looking to sell store-brand goods - those Walgreen's brand picture frame hangers? Bought at Yiwu. Pretty much anything you find at Claire's boutique. Anything you find on the check-out counter or in those cheesy glass curios at any truck stop in this country.

Most of the buyers however aren't American. They're from Brazil, they're from Africa, and in particular they're from the Middle East. After 2001 it became difficult for representatives from small business in the Middle East to get Visas for some of the US product exhibitions so they shifted their sourcing to Yiwu. These are guys that have a state level franchise like Railey's of Lebanon or Dollar Tree of Bangalore that need to fill shelves - frequently they'll buy whatever they get a good deal on if they hear the factory has excess or needs to liquidate stock because another buyer went belly-up. You go to north Dubai and you see a mirror image of the goods in Yiwu, just marked for consumer prices and packaged for individual sale.

So yeah, Yiwu has an office goods supply mall, a cabinet hardware mall, and yes, even a Christmas mall.

Stability is a good thing and seasonal goods in particular are problematic. If your company is producing something that requires very specialized tooling and training that's only in demand 1 month a year you're going to have a hard time keeping those trained workers around for the other 11 months.

The Christmas mall is a bit like this - they're open from March to May when buyers for TJMax and Tesco inspect goods and place orders. The factories are in production from June to September and then the stuff is sea-freighted out (1 month) to warehouse centers and fulfillment to prepare for the end of October, beginning of November delivery. Because of the seasonal nature, most of the prime-time work gets sub-contracted out to everybody and their auntie. This video has a pretty good look into what most of this production looks like: http://vimeo.com/92736460

For the most part, Christmas decor is low skill - just slather this plastic bit with chrome paint and sparkles. This makes it easy for factories to hire a bunch of workers on short notice and let them go again when demand drops off. Because the workers are seasonal there is little care that goes to protecting their well being. The conditions are bad, and after seeing it at the source, it's why I don't buy cheap seasonal decorations anymore.

catbird• 10 years ago

Thank you for writing this and linking the video.

At first I thought, "ugh, I'll never buy a Christmas decoration again!" But on second thought, maybe this industry is helping bring people out of poverty. Then again, all that waste is bad for the environment...

artur_makly2• 10 years ago

also to note.. they print on canvas..then paint over it.

artur_makly2• 10 years ago

and this post is duplicate of this one posted over 1 year ago: https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to...

Kiro• 10 years ago

It's the same post, not a duplicate.

Paul_S• 10 years ago

How are we not yet capable of having a robot controlled arm do this? Come on people!

tonyplee• 10 years ago

I wonder the same thing also. The SW/robot/AI should be able to take over this task soon.

leoedin• 10 years ago

We are! The problem is, the robot arm costs much more than hiring an artist.

mullen• 10 years ago

Plus, we're having the robots kill people before retiring to painting.

vdnkh• 10 years ago

The Instapainting guys already do! https://www.instapainting.com/blog/research/2015/08/23/ai-pa...

I can't corroborate this with a link but I saw the founder talk at a meetup and he said they were using it in production.

franciscop• 10 years ago

Related and quite interesting, Robotic Painter Color: https://www.instapainting.com/blog/research/2015/09/10/robot...

koga-ninja• 10 years ago

I'm glad I read this story because I find it surreal, And I read a lot. Obviously Jeff Koons and perhaps Even Damien Hirst have assistants. This apprentice Model was also there in the Renaissance, and if Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel all by himself, Then that was probably his own choice.

David Hockney is painting on an iPad these days, and I suppose printing it out on a commercial inkjet. So what is an original then. Just limiting the number of copies printed.

Inside The Fine Art Factories of Yiwu, China

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