Assembly Line Art

Some call China the factory to the world. And now it has factories for a popular new export: art.

If someone, somewhere, at some time painted it, workers can make a copy, or a 100.

Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime. Today, his works like "Starry Night" come off the line by the dozens, reports CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen.

If you buy one of these paintings in the United States, it would cost about $500. But at the factory, if you buy in bulk, you can get them for about $60 per copy.

The factory is part of an art village whose production is all about reproduction - gallery after gallery, painter after painter, art for the masses by masses of artists.

Cheng Pei, spent four days on the "Mona Lisa," that took Leonardo Da Vinci four years to paint. Cheng will sell you his version for $36.

Asked who is the most difficult painter to replicate, Cheng says, "Rembrandt."

When it comes to landscapes, most artists paint what they see. Most of these workers have never been to the places depicted in the original pictures -- they only paint what someone else saw.

They can even take a small photo from a computer e-mail and turn it into fine art.

It was Michelangelo who said, "A man paints with his brain, not with his hands." But at the factory, it is all about hands -- the faster they paint, the more they make -- in a country that has turned the assembly line…into an art form.

[dfairfield]

Thousands of Artists have web sites. Taking images off the internet is a violation of COPYRIGHT and is ILLEGAL especially if you copy the works of another and sell them or FORGE them. This is FORGERY. Is this lost on the CBC? Canadians think this is OK ? A joke ? COPY is not the same as CREATE. Stolen movies or stolen images are STOLEN.
Traditionally and even today, China does not operate on the same legal "Rule of Law" as is the standard for all Western governments. International Law attempts to restrain this practice. The CBC supports intellectual copyright theft ?