I was looking through eBay today and stumbled across a painting by Calvin Liang. Funny, the ad said "From China" but that couldn't be right....but it was. The painting was Calvin Liangs but according to the auction it was painted by Liu Jian...an "original oil painting" it says. WTF? I don't know if Calvin Liang knows about his work being sold on eBay by a company from China without his signature and the auction description claiming it is the painting of Liu Jian instead....that would piss me off.
Naturally I poked around after that trying to find out just how bad Chinese art forgery has become. According to people posting on eBay forums it has ruined the eBay we knew it as 10 or 15 years ago. I used to sell art prints on there all the time...made great money but things changed in the mid 2000's. After that it was almost impossible to get people to buy on there. I've sold a few paintings there, small ones when money was tight. That worked at first but the last few times I've tried that it didn't. The economy??? Forgery causing the loss of trusted eBayers??? I'm not sure but I would believe Chinese forgery hasn't helped eBay but for the life of me I can't understand a company like eBay who puts up with it. It's pretty blatant and I'm sure they've been warned by the people getting burned by it. Then I read an article about how hard it is to go after the forgers in China....http://www.cbsnews.com/news/booming-chinese-art-forging-business-hurts-us-artists/ ....
I guess what it comes down to is people want to make money...keep their corporation going and no complaining, ripped off, whiney artist is going to mess that up. It's sad to think America has become a country that doesn't protect their own people from getting screwed by foreign countries. Heck, if we allow foreigners to cut the heads off of our people why would it bother them that some artist is getting ripped off for a painting or two....or 10,000.
When I was in the service in Germany we used to brag to each other about how awesome America was compared to other countries. I wouldn't brag at all nowadays. I can't believe that America would still allow trading to go on with China at all. Imagine all of the industry that would come back to the US if we made our own steel, built our own ships, made our own shoes and clothing. You know, we used to do that stuff and it was more expensive but most of us had jobs to afford it. Of course....I'm no expert, I'm an artist.
