It’s often thought that counterfeits and knockoffs eat into sales and demand legal attention, and people who try to limit the reach of copyright law are often said to be anti-innovation.
While counterfeits do take away from the sales of the originals they parrot, they at the same time spread awareness of the imitated brand. When knockoff versions of high-end footwear started popping up in China, Qian saw that sales of the authentic products increased by more than 60 percent—in part because people were made aware that the authentic brand is desirable enough to emulate. Spikes in sales were especially pronounced for brands that weren’t as well-known—which makes sense, because counterfeits in these cases essentially serve as free advertising.
What about art?
“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing,” said late, great Surrealist master, Salvador Dalí. Redolent of China’s ongoing challenges—and contrivances—surrounding appropriation, plagiarism and conceptualism in contemporary art.
Forged artworks from China is big business. A cursory search of Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba quickly turns up copies of works by Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang, all going for less than $500. Likely painted in one of China’s fabled artists villages, they’re convincing enough—when viewed on a laptop screen at least.
One such Chinese replica was hung in the hallowed hallways of Dulwich Picture Gallery in spring 2015, hidden there by American conceptual artist Doug Fishbone amidst the institution’s 270 displayed masterpieces. Called “Made in China,” the experiment raised issues surrounding the value we ascribe to art with regard to its authenticity and accomplishment.
Although it is unusual for forged works attributed to big-name contemporary artists to make it so far along the high-end selling process (the biggest challenge being that the artists themselves are very much alive, vocal, and vigilant), Chinese antiquities are notoriously mired in fakes. The problem has become almost farcical: In July 2015, the former chief librarian of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts admitted stealing more than 140 paintings from a gallery under his charge, replacing them with fakes he painted himself. Soon, however, Xiao Yuan noticed that his own fakes were disappearing from the gallery and being replaced by others, lending truth to the librarian’s defense: Everybody’s doing it.
Both present an uneasy satire on the now fetishized affinity between art, China, and money. It’s an ironic juncture indeed when China’s fake fairs, forged art, stylistic plagiarism, and deliberate plays on the “Made in China” stereotype reveal the country’s contemporary issues more than some of their “legitimate” peers.
