Lasting Impressionism

December 1, 2022 4:31 PM

Returning after a seven month sabbatical, Jason Kottke brings us, via Open Culture, a engrossing, beautiful documentary about China's Van Goghs: The Village That Paints A Thousand Fakes A Year.

"Zhao Xiaoyong is one of thousands of painters in Dafen, China who hand-paint replicas of famous paintings by the likes of Matisse, Degas, Renoir, Leonardo, and Kahlo. But a favorite artist amongst many of them, including Zhao, is Vincent van Gogh."

The documentary follows Zhao and his colleagues on a trip to the Netherlands hat becomes something like a pilgrimage, visiting the Van Gogh Museum to see the post-impressionist master's originals and the city where he lived and worked.

posted by mhoye (4 comments total)

What's old is new again. This happened in the Netherlands in the 1700's. Maybe it's a weird, but predictable phase of capitalism?

https://www.guideholland.com/hist/17-artmarket.html
posted by metametamind at 4:36 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is really good. I skimmed through it but I might actually go back and rewatch. It surprised me.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 8:32 PM on December 1, 2022

For what it’s worth, I really like Jason Kottke’s blog. Always fresh and interesting stuff from the wide world of the web. A daily check for me. It’s been hard being patient hoping he’d return to form. Glad to welcome him back to my daily feed of interesting left field drops. Also: check out his (quarterly?) media diet posts. I find his reccos and ratings can be a useful guide to current culture I may have missed.
posted by GrandPunkRailroad at 12:30 AM on December 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

The best thing about mentioning Kottke in an FPP is that the form warns you that "this link has been seen in the following five zillion previous posts" and then you have to scroll down for five minutes to see if there's anything nottke kottke on that list and get back to editing anything.
posted by mhoye at 7:47 AM on December 2, 2022