Michael Wolf: Real Fake Art

In front of typical Chinese urban backdrops young Chinese women and men present oil paintings by American and European artists from different epochs: Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Warhol, Ruscha, Hockney, Magritte, Hopper, Richter, Da Vinci. All pictures of a multi-million dollar industry. A production of copies of popular artworks, which are sold at giveaway prices into the whole world. Van Gogh: $75.00, Warhol: $45.00, Ruscha: $50.00. The handpainted copies mainly come from China, the buyers can almost entirely be found in the United States and Europe, the countries of origin of the unaffordable originals. Wolf photographed the Chinese copy-artists and has placed manifold relations between the pictured subject, the urban environment and the portrayed artists. Essay by Boris von Brauchitsch.