{"id":18,"date":"2018-03-13T23:43:13","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/?p=18"},"modified":"2018-03-13T23:44:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:44:01","slug":"counterfeits-can-boost-sales-of-the-real-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/counterfeits-can-boost-sales-of-the-real-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Counterfeits Can Boost Sales of the Real Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1a_xFZXkHVg?rel=0&amp;controls=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014in 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&#8217;t as well-known\u2014which makes sense, because counterfeits in these cases essentially serve as free advertising. <\/p>\n<p>What about art?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing,\u201d said late, great Surrealist master, Salvador Dal\u00ed. Redolent of China\u2019s ongoing challenges\u2014and contrivances\u2014surrounding appropriation, plagiarism and conceptualism in contemporary art.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s fabled artists villages, they\u2019re convincing enough\u2014when viewed on a laptop screen at least. <\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 270 displayed masterpieces. Called \u201cMade in China,\u201d the experiment raised issues surrounding the value we ascribe to art with regard to its authenticity and accomplishment. <\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s defense: Everybody\u2019s doing it.<\/p>\n<p>Both present an uneasy satire on the now fetishized affinity between art, China, and money. It\u2019s an ironic juncture indeed when China\u2019s fake fairs, forged art, stylistic plagiarism, and deliberate plays on the \u201cMade in China\u201d stereotype reveal the country\u2019s contemporary issues more than some of their \u201clegitimate\u201d peers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s 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[&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20,"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artroute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}