I assume I am not talking about just a Washington DC area phenomenon here. There are periodically advertisements for sales of oil paintings of clearly dubious quality at the local Holiday Inn or similar venue. <P> <p> I have done my share of shopping for art supplies and cannot imagine the raw materials of paint canvas and frame cost much less that the advertised price. <p> <p> Who exactly then is painting these masterpieces? I picture a Malaysian (sorry to pick on the Malaysians) sweatshop with fourteen year olds slapping on paint under the direction of a tyrannical Bob Ross. Can anyone offer some insight?
Bob Ross’ estate sale?
Bob Ross was from my hometown and strangely enough his compositions now sell for significant sums. I suppose it must be the kitsch value. All I know is I passed up on several at a yard sale ten years ago. Ah such are the vicissitudes of life.
You’re pretty close. These paintings are all mass produced, they set up a dozen canvases, first they paint all the blue skies, then all the green trees, then all the red barns, etc. The paintings are all preplanned and specifically designed for easy painting. I know a guy who did this job in NYC, an American guy, he is now a semi-famous painter and he’d kill me if I ever revealed that he used to do this work.
These paintings really don’t cost that much to make. I figure the average $40 costs under $10 in raw materials, they’re made from cheap acrylic paints, not oil colors. Oil takes too long to dry, it’s always acrylic. Some of these paintings are so cheap they probably cost about $5. Remember, they do this in BULK. I mean, paintings in quantities enough to fill a trailer.
As a working artist, I BEG people, do NOT buy from “starving artist” sales. Go find a REAL artist and buy something from them. My university has an annual sale, you can buy great works by some of the best student printmakers in the world, works fresh from the studio, some of them sell for as little as $10. Other galleries have works from “emerging artists” that are as affordable as the crap at starving artist sales, but may have hundreds of hours of work behind them. Please support real artists, don’t buy mass production schlock.
Same mass production of crap “paintings” happens here in Australia. They usually employ impoverished young British backpackers (on working holiday visas) on a sales commision to go into pubs and sell them to the drunks.
However, most drunks just see two awful paintings instead of one, so they are doubly disinclined to hand over their cash.
Just south of me is a shop in Juarez that turns out a God-awful tonnage of the black velvet paintings seen world wide (yep, Velvet Elvis included as long as there is an audience for it). The name of the game is speed.
Doug … where is the place? Next time I’m in Las Cruces, I’m gonna’ have to take a drive down. (Yes, I know my way around the Mexican Border Town That Is Pronounced Many Ways.) I want a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe cradling the baby Elvis.
They are probably left over Kincade canvases.
Another little tangent…
Back in my picture framing days we the framers would groan whenever we saw someone walking in with one of these monsters, because we knew that we would have to spend at least fourty minutes helping the customer pick out frames and liners, matching woods, doing the math and figuring sizes only to quote the price and hear:
"Three hundred dollars!? But I only paid $40 bucks for it!"
Well duh!! The things 30 x 72 inches. That’s 17 feet of oak moulding involved there, dipshit! Jesus. And with the big paintings, you just know that they’ll gravitate twards the thickest, most ornately carved hardwoods!!
Sorry. Didn’t realize how much bitterness I still had…
I’m not sure if I should mention the specific prices (maybe some guys will come in the night a break kneecap), but I’ve bought such paintings at wholesale/sold at retail. It is absolutely amazing to me, but I can buy a 24x36 oil painting for well under $10 (US).
Granted, these are not “quality” paintings by any stretch (ha!), but they do add color to a room and are not so horrible that the average person would retch upon viewing them. They typically are intended to be mimics of Impressionism, mostly to hide the real lack of detail.
The wholesale companies (the one I buy from is in Miami) have several tiers of quality (read: time needed to create them). The next level up from the sub-$10 ones are in the mid-teens.
I’ve seen the factories in Tijuana. They set up 20 easels at once and just go down the row slapping on the current color, then grab the next paint pot and go around again.
They also make very cheap frames, which are stapled instead of glued or pegged.