How to Paint van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.” Photos of Zhao Xiaoyong and apprentice, eight states of two van Gogh Sunflowers, oil on canvas; 20 × 24 in.; Oct. 28–Nov. 6, 2008. Photos: Winnie Wong.

Winnie Won Yin Wong’s book Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade opens on 100 Chinese painters seated behind easels, each making a separate reproduction of Ilya Repin’s 19th-century masterpiece Portrait of the Art Critic Vladimir Stasov. This spectacle is the Dafen Painting Competition, sponsored by the local government to promote the city of Dafen as “the world’s largest production center for handmade oil paintings.” The prize is ahukou, or documentation to become a legal resident of the neighboring city of Shenzhen, with all of the legal, economic, and cultural privileges that such residency would imply.

Dafen is a suburb of Shenzhen, a sprawling metropolis just across the strait from Hong Kong. Its local economy is driven by international demand for hand-painted reproductions of Western oil paintings, and more recently, contemporary Chinese works. These works are sold to big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target, who use them to sell picture frames, and to informal networks of vendors, who pass them off as their own works in flea markets or outside of museums.

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