Kriston responds to my earlier post on sweatshop art:
Now, I get the sense that McArdle is baiting her readers (and this writer) to deliver forth an encomium to Art and Apollo and to denounce the Chinese for this cheapest debasement of the canon. And, because I know McMegan socially, I know that she wants to stake out the counterintuitive ground here and defend these reproductions as desirable against real and perceived critics who abhor them. But the art reproductions aren't the real issue (and not just because they aren't the real deal, though I am tempted to launch into a tangent on the problem of authenticity). The fact is, insofar as the global art market is concerned, a Dafen Holbein doesn't account for any more than a Soundgarden poster—they're both examples of cheap decor you can buy at Wal-Mart.
Which is not to say that China won't or has not already had a massive impact on the market. But with regard to this story, the significant point is that economic conditions in China are such that highly skilled labor can be organized (or exploited, if you prefer) as if it were the most basic unskilled labor. I'm not the professional economist, though, so I don't know whether this collapse of categories is an unprecedented or even significant aspect of the global market. Ryan? Felix? Tyler?
I think there are multiple questions here.
1) Are the workers exploited? I tend not to be interested in that question, assuming that whatever their alternatives are are even worse. Yes, it might be nice if they were paid more money, but if I think it would be that nice, I could just send them the money; there's no particular moral reason that people who buy art at Wal-Mart should foot the bill for their higher living standards.
2) Are the reproductions a bad thing? I tend to think it's nice that Americans of moderate means can have a better grade of cheap art in their houses, at the same time that Chinese art students can have a slightly better job than whatever was previously on offer. But that is crass pecuniuary opinion. I am willing, indeed eager, to listen to an argument from Mr Capps that this is culturally or artistically a Bad Thing.
3) Is it, as one of the people interviewed for the original article argues, a tragedy that their sense of individual creativity is being stifled? That was what kicked off the original question in my mind about how different this really is from the old workshop system; I don't get the feeling that young apprentices were encouraged to express their own, special selves.
4) The broader question, which I didn't ask but Kriston did, of what this means for art markets, and potentially other markets, that China can assemble highly skilled labour into sweatshops. My sense is that it just doesn't matter for the parts of the art market that I inhabit, where pride of ownership is intimately connected to provenance . . . but I might well be kidding myself. And of course much of the art market is not adorable little galleries and Picasso sketches at auction; it's Thomas Kinkade and hotel paintings.
Update By which I do not mean to imply that I buy Picasso sketches at auction. I mean I look at them in museums, and gaze enviously at people who can afford to buy expensive art at auction.
You're going to catch some crap for (1), not because it isn't stating a fundamental truth, but because many people don't like hearing it stated in such blunt terms.
Perhaps a better way of realizing the problem is that the average American, in most cases, simply can't know where his/her Chinese-made goods came from, and even if he did and succeeded closing down an offending plant, it would merely reopen with a new business name, the same business practices, and probably a good chunk of the same workforce, in less than a month.
Such are the perils of an economy whose growth has massively outpaced the ability of the regulatory state to police it. That, and poisonous toothpaste, lead-based paint in children's toys, etc.
And as for the average Chinese worker? His or her options, before China opened up the SEZs, were most likely limited to subsistence farming, so...
With regard to 3): While the "old world masters" may have had their own sweatshops, it seems their apprentices were employed at more than just copying their master's works. For example, Leonardo da Vinci apprenticed under Verrocchio. As an apprentice, da Vinci had enough artistic freedom that he was able to greatly impress his master and quickly gained greater status and prestige. While Verrocchio told da Vinci to paint "an angel", da Vinci was doing far more that merely copying. He was able to express his talent -- within the context of a discrete task -- and his individuality.
I think that's far different from the way things work in the Chinese sweatshops. However, that doesn't mean that these young artists do not benefit from their training. They're likely to be better equipped to express their inner muse when, and if, they have the opportunity.
Ah, China, the "free market" Eden. How wonderful that they were able to go from a horrible statist economy, devoid of choice & freedom, to the current panoply of unregulated choices, from terrible jobs to really terrible jobs. And while I would love the opportunity to be a subsistence farmer (no owners/stockholders stealing the fruits of my labor) China, as evidenced by resistance among the peasantry, is taking even the subsistence farming option from its people, forcing them to the cities where their "choice" is between rag-picking & wage-slavery.
And why shouldn't people who buy paintings @ Wal-Mart pay for a higher standard of living for those who produce the paintings? After all, they have the choice of not buying said paintings, if they become too expensive.
I suppose you would also support sweatshop blogging? in fact i think you could use a few years of "apprenticeship," say, in Tbogg's basement working for pennies a day. It might help your inner muse blossom.
Saw you on CSPAN this morning. I empathize with individual illegals and 'individuals' who employ one or two. I agree we should increase immigration, many illegals are here as a result of our own disfunctional immigration department, many caught in bureaucratic mess of the last amnesty program under Reagan and his misguided foreign policies like in El Salvador. BUT I oppose largescale employment of illegals by corporatations as a pseudo slavery or reverse outsourcing effect to get around employment & human rights laws. Legalizing more immigrants and enforcing employment laws would protect these workers from abuse by employers.
However,
Shouldn't the demand result in or 'market' naturally set a higher wage for these difficult to fill seasonal & hard labor jobs such as agriculture, meat packing, or roofing instead of stagnating wages and denying young, old and poor Americans a fair wage?
And,
Without enforcement of employers who employee illegals, doesn't this unfairly tilt competition in these markets pressuring others to follow?
Isn't this similar to outsourcing as companies break our hiring laws, minimum wage & human rights laws, a pseudo slavery for illegals stealing jobs from young, old and poor Americans, reducing or stagnating wages & benefits, & competing unfairly within markets?
"There's no particular moral reason that people who buy art at Wal-Mart should foot the bill for their higher living standards."
This is a non-sequitur. The questions is not what Wal-Mart's customers should do, but what Wal-Mart's managers and investors should do. Only in the la la land of perfect information (where information is, ahem, symmetrical) do these decisions rest solely on consumers.
BTW I don't really have a problem with Wal-Mart. Heck, my wife is from China. But I don't believe in libertopia. Maybe it's because my brother-in-law is, I kid you not, a member of the CCP.
Conservative political opinion could easily be outsourced.
"I mean I look at them in museums, and gaze enviously at people who can afford to buy expensive art at auction."
Update to the Update
I mean it's not that I don't appreciate art, but I'm an econoblogger (and double-secret class warrior) after all.
Is that about right?
Conservative political opinion could easily be outsourced.
So could left-wing political opinion, and it's easier to source. Canada, the U.K. and France all come to mind as places producing more opinionated lefties than can be supported by their domestic economies.
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