Jeroen de Kloet and Yiu Fai Chowglobal artistic discourse as we selected a “unique” work rather than a reproduction of a known
work.) Upon having the piece delivered to Hong Kong, the gallery owner followed up to ensure
it had arrived safely and to offer a post-sale warranty, saying that if the work turned out to be at
odds with our decor, it could always be replaced. Such an approach, in which the aesthetic value
of an artwork is directly and functionally connected to its physical context, is unthinkable in the
Western art world—where it is the artwork, and only the artwork, that is relevant. The circu-
lation of Dafen artwork thus comes with a different set of values that steer away from the pure
sacralization of the work, and towards, in our examples, the physical context and the client’s taste.
According to Liu Heping, “the market welcomes works that appeal to both elite and popular
tastes, mainly landscapes and flowers, more colorful ... The people like to see some meanings in
the work” (see Figure 15.3).
Many painter–workers also work on order for individual clients. Zhou Guohua, who came
to Dafen in 1996 from Xiamen, where he graduated from art school explained:
I work mainly on order. The clients will give me some instruction, or models, or pho-
tographs, and then I will make it according to my own demands. Finally, the client will
inspect the works. ... Such works are not really works—they are only copies. I usually
spend more than ten days to complete one.Here we detect the discourse of “original art” again. In addition, Zhou belongs to the more
“elite” group of painter–workers in Dafen who can afford to spend so much time on one work.
His statement also points to one common practice in Dafen where clients are given the opportu-
nity to change the contents of a famous work, for example, by substituting the face of the subject
Figure 15.3 Gallery in Dafen (photo by Jeroen de Kloet)