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February 15, 2015

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Faking it, all in the name of art

VISITORS to Dulwich Picture Gallery peer at the Old Masters on the walls, trying to spot the US$120 Chinese replica hung among paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and Gainsborough, on Tuesday.

“I think it’s that one. It’s just looking so pristine,” said Ian Mortimer, a 60-year-old from northwest England, pointing at a portrait from 1820 by English painter James Lonsdale.

In an audacious move, the London gallery has replaced one of the 270 paintings in its permanent collection with a work knocked up in a few weeks in a studio in southern China.

Hung among a world-class collection that also includes paintings by Van Dyck, Constable and Canaletto, the goal is to make people re-examine the artworks around them.

“It suddenly raises everything to doubt, they have to look around and look at every single picture properly,” said Xavier Bray, chief curator of the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

“When you look at an Old Masters painting you’ve got the varnishes, you’ve got the brushwork, you’ve got the type of canvas that was used, the cracking of the paint.

“This is a Chinese replica that was made in 2014, so it is pretty obvious when you find it. What’s fascinating is to see it in the museum context.”

After Mortimer recorded his choice on the gallery’s iPad, his wife Sue took her turn, picking a portrait of a woman the other side of the room — mainly “because I loathe it.”

She mused: “If nobody gets it at all, what does that say about what we are looking at?”

Not everyone was so enthusiastic. “It’s impossible,” said one regular to the gallery who looked rather downbeat at the prospect of having to choose.

“The project is going to destabilise how you feel when you look at a piece of art,” acknowledged Doug Fishbone, the American artist who came up with the idea.

He said his intention was to strip away the certainty that something is worthwhile just because it is in a gilded frame and in an art gallery.

“I’m hoping that it will throw down the gauntlet a bit in terms of giving them a challenge,” Fishbone said, adding that he also hoped it would be fun.

The idea of replicating the work of top painters is nothing new. In the time of Rubens, “if you wanted a copy of his beautiful Venus and Mars, you would just contact his studio... and order one,” Bray noted. “What we’re doing here is just showing that the practice has now moved to China.”

Millions of replicas are produced every year in China focused around the studios and workshops in the southern village of Dafen.

The Dulwich replica was ordered from Meisheng Oil Painting Manufacture Co Ltd in Xiamen, in Fujian Province.

The gallery emailed a jpeg of its chosen picture, paid US$126 and received the rolled-up replica within three weeks.

It was stretched onto the frame that normally holds the original painting and was hung in its normal place, where it will stay, unannounced, until it is revealed to the public on April 28.

Fishbone and Bray praised the quality of the replica, but insist there’s no comparison, as the public can judge when they are exhibited side by side.

“You’ll be able to compare and contrast how well the person making the replica did, and to appreciate how beautiful the original is,” Bray said.




 

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