Focus

Artists help add touches of color to cultural landscape

By Cheng Yingqi (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-26 16:11

Authority looks to boost painters' enclave, reports Cheng Yingqi.

As the glare of the bright late-morning sun crept along the narrow alleyways, a young painter sat in the shadows and added the finishing touches to a portrait of Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese leader.

Above his head hung two more pictures, one of Mao Zedong, the other of United States President Barack Obama, while an unfinished Mona Lisa sat nearby on the floor.

Compared to the 10,000 or so other artists in this village, many of whom sleep well past noon, painters like this one can complete up to five pieces a day, each likely selling for about 200 yuan ($30).

This is Dafen, which is believed to be the largest mass producer of oil paintings in the world. Artists here manufacture 60 percent of the total global trade volume.

Located in the suburbs of Shenzhen, Guangdong province, the village boasts 626 galleries and 213 art-related businesses, including materials suppliers, picture-mounting stores and sculptors.

Once a fishing village with just 30,000 residents, Shenzhen, China's first special economic zone, has been transformed since the early 1980s into a city with a population of 8.9 million and GDP of 820 million yuan ($121 million). Yet, despite the city's rapid year-on-year GDP growth, its success has been tinged by its reputation as a "cultural desert".

In an attempt to shed the image, authorities have established more than 40 culture industry centers and staged six culture expos since 2002. (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization named it a City of Design in 2008.)

Dafen is also being highlighted as Shenzhen's "best urban practice" at the city's pavilion at the ongoing 2010 Shanghai Expo, something Huang Jiang said was "unthinkable" when he arrived there 21 years ago.

"Back then it was just a remote village with barely more than 100 residents," said the 65-year-old businessman, as he gazed through his office windows at the busy square named in his honor. "People led simple lives. Chicken and ducks, flocks and herds, reeds and trees were everywhere."

After finishing high school in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, in 1972, Hong Kong-born Huang spent a year working as decorator, social worker and bartender before he learned of a friend who was earning 3,000 yuan a month by selling oil paintings to foreign traders. At the time, the average monthly salary was just 30 yuan.

With money the chief motivation, Huang began studying art and opened his first gallery 12 months later in Hong Kong. He began selling hundreds of pictures every month.

However, when his house rent was increased in 1986, he moved operations to Guangzhou and later to Fujian province. He eventually settled in Dafen, which is about a five-hour drive to Hong Kong.

Huang, who hired between 20 and 60 staff depending on orders, ran his business like any other factory: Employees were organized along a row of canvases and were given just one task to perform, such as painting the sky or a person's eyes.

"We worked from about 2 pm until midnight every day," said the boss. "We had fun working together and, when we increased in numbers, we were finishing 10,000 orders a month."

Zhou Xiaohong, who moved with Huang from Fujian to work on his production line, recalled: "I was only a teenager at the time and I was not skillful at drawing. But we had fun and I earned some good money.

"For someone who had no background in painting at all, three to six months of training (with Huang) was enough to draw a picture worth selling, much more efficient than any college of fine arts," he said.

Soon after arriving in Shenzhen, however, Zhou broke away to start his own gallery. "Many of my associates opened their own stores," said Huang. "They tried to get more orders and recruited more painters, who in turn opened more galleries."

Painting pilgrimage

Art students did not hear about Dafen until much later. One of the first to arrive in 1997 was Liang Keming, who had attended an academy in his home city of Meizhou, Guangdong.

"I'd liked drawing since I was young, so I decided to learn more," said the artist, now 45. "I didn't think I'd be able to make living out of it someday. Everybody said it was a useless skill."

He now runs a business with his wife, Liu Shuling, a former waitress who had no formal art education. They have two employees.

"We sell paintings to galleries and on average we make 200 yuan a day. It varies a little, depending on orders," said Liu, who supports two children and Liang's retired mother. "Rent has surged and painting prices have dropped, so we're having a tough time of it this year," added Liang.

Another former art student is Wang Yingliang, 30, who has won dozens of awards for his works since settling permanently in Dafen. He now sells paintings from his studio and said copyright is his biggest headache. "It can take me several weeks to finish an (original) painting but when others see it they can run off 100 copies," he said.

And it is not just the painters who are feeling the pinch, so too are gallery owners. "Since Dafen shot to fame, artists from across China have come in great numbers," said Huang Weihua, who runs an art shop. "With them came people who just don't understand art."

After the Shenzhen government announced plans to develop the village in 2004, more that 182 million yuan was allocated to rebuild roads, construct a museum and set up public facilities.

Huang Weihua, who studied art at college, said he quit his job as a reporter with a Shenzhen newspaper in 2006 to "pursue the lifestyle he wanted". However, his timing was not good. By then, some 20,000 painters had flooded in and gallery owners were simply buying whatever they could find, with little thought about whether they could resell it. "It was like eating a cake," he said. "When 10 people eat the cake, everyone gets enough - but imagine 100 people coming all at once."

To make matters worse, the financial crisis slashed orders from overseas. "We lost more than one-third of our orders," said Huang Jiang, who manages a gallery that used to sell more than 100,000 yuan in mass-produced paintings every month to hotels and supermarkets in the United States, Italy, France and Australia.

He said that a copy of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait, used to sell abroad for 500 yuan but is now worth only about 200 yuan.

The company has since turned its attention towards the domestic market. However, as bulk orders were low, he has had to dispense with the production line concept.

"The domestic market is huge. We can sell paintings of fruits, flowers and animals, and we can sell them at low prices," said Huang Weihua, who has hired agents in the capital cities of more than 30 Chinese provinces and receives about 150 orders a month.

"Those companies that couldn't recognize the market direction disappeared but new businesses arrived to respond to the market," he said.