Mankind’s ingenuity knows no bounds. We have taken the act of creation to a whole new level. Even our mental capabilities have become commodities. Artificial Intelligence can be purchased to substitute for our lack of any skill under the sun. The paid and unpaid versions can transform anyone into Shakespeare’s only descendent overnight, even as one’s reality struggles with vowels. And with this, we have successfully crossed another frontier in upgrading Fake Pvt Ltd. hitherto controlled by deceitful smiles, unnaturally ageless faces, and of course, fake brands.
There has been no product and no designer worth his salt that has been able to escape counterfeits. Wherever in the world you may be, and whatever product of substance you may create, and how many ever decades it may take you to perfect your creation, you cannot protect it enough from being copied. For a wholesome shopping experience of dupes, head to China. You can come back with suitcases filled with the world’s most exclusive brands, feeling like a movie star.
If you assume that art is far removed from all this and that China wouldn’t even consider it an object worth replicating, then here are some facts that would set that record straight. There is an entire village called Dafen Artists Village in Shenzhen, China that produces almost 60% of the world’s best replicas of Western masterpieces. Founded in 1989, this village has around 1,200 businesses that employ 10,000 artists who have been painstakingly churning out millions of replications of the world’s most iconic paintings. And from these packed cubbyhole studios, emerges a story worth reading.
Many of the artists in the village have been traditionally employed to reproduce Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh’s famous paintings. Zhao Xiaoyong was one such, who lived and worked in a tiny two-room apartment, making countless copies of Van Gogh’s masterpieces with his family, day after day. Orders were huge and life left him with no time to think of originality. Sometimes, his family of four even had to complete eight canvases a day! Such was the demand. Until one day, after 20 years of making fakes, he finally saved enough to make a trip to Europe. Once there, he discovered his reproductions at a souvenir shop, selling for 10 times more than what he had earned. The biggest moment however, was when he came face-to-face with the original paintings that he had been copying for decades, in the museum there.
The experience changed him forever. His eyes were moist with emotions he could not understand. He realised that nothing he had ever painted could ever replicate the genius of the man. He even paid a visit to Van Gogh’s grave before his return. It is an irony indeed that the Dutch artist who lived and died in poverty with only one painting sold in his lifetime, now supports so many starving families living across oceans, even 135 years after his death. Zhao now makes his own paintings, besides the replicas too. For as the saying goes, ‘Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.’