Zhou Tiehai

[wushijiao]

Interesting profile and audio story of an artist who doesn't actually paint his own works.

Quote:

He would succeed by beating the art market at its own game, exposing its commercialism while exploiting it to the hilt. He would produce paintings that he hoped would be acclaimed by the same Western collectors and journalists who, in his mind, had advanced the careers of too many mediocre Chinese artists.

Quote:

Determined to make it, Mr. Zhou said, he analyzed the contemporary art scene in China. It was dominated, he said by Western-style paintings studded with patently Chinese elements, such as images of Mao or references to the Cultural Revolution that easily caught the eye (and pocketbooks) of foreign collectors.

"The way foreigners thought about Chinese art was too simple," he said. "They just thought about politics. So I thought I'd do something different."

And he did. Mr. Zhou said he decided it would not be necessary for him to do the painting himself, since, to his thinking, his competitors were not terribly skilled painters anyway. His initial subject matter was what he saw as the absurdities of the art market.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/arts/design/01zhou.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&en=8c2ad67bd4d1b2a0&ex=1146715200

[Lu]

There's a Dutch art company/group/sth that does the same thing: they photoshop the painting their costumer wants, and then send it to China, where it's painted cheaply. Zhou Tiehai has the advantage of already being in China :-)

[gato]

I wonder what's the thinking behind paying $100,000 for paintings like his. The "Flying Spaghetti Monster" is more original than "his" Joe Camel paintings.

[wushijiao]

If his whole thing is being the guy who knows who to play the art industry, one has to wonder if his works will stay that high in value once the art industry changes. It's funny, but a bit gimmicky.

[gato]

Marcel Duchamp started the conceptual/satirical art craze with his "Fountain" in 1917. Maybe it still seems fresh when the Chinese are doing it, but I don't know if it's worth more than a chuckle maybe.

http://arthist.binghamton.edu/duchamp/fountain.html