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Liu Zilan

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Peter Bentley 彭达理
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« on: December 23, 2016, 07:59:41 pm »

 Hello  All

This   thread  caught my eye....

Joey  wrote :

“I can tell you where you read it - in the Preface of CIPMA (Chinese Inside Painting of the Modern Age) published in early 2006!

    That statement ("Now there are more than 40,000 persons engaging in inside painting art... annual output value ... near RMB 1 Billion."), almost caused  me to have a nervous breakdown!”


____________________________________________

At first  when I read that  quote  by Joey from CIPMA  I  thought  he must be  mistaken,  but then I checked  CIPMA  and  Joey is  correct. That's exactly  what it  says  in the  preface to  CIPMA

However,  although  it's  hardly my place to  disagree  with  whoever  wrote that  originally (it's  signed  by the   Editorial  Board  of  CIPMA)  I find it completely  at variance  with  fact  unless  the  numbers  include factory workers  and  the  general  tourist / Christmas  trinket  /  junk  IPB business .

If you  read  the  first  part of my   ICSBS  article, which you can access  in the  sidebar,  you  will see that  when I analyzed  my  DB  I found about  950 artists,  of which about 670  were  real  names  and  about  280   were  alternate art names (thus  total  about  670  real  artists, some of  whom  also  use  alternate  art names  when they signed  bottles). 

 Although  my  DB  is  far from exhaustive  (particularly regarding very minor  artists from the period 1985 - 2000 when I was not collecting) it's  now  very rare  that  I come  across a name that  I cannot eventually find  in my DB when the  exact  Pin Yin is  clarified

And when I do occasionally   come across a new  artist  it's  almost invariably a  very minor  one -  more  like a  student  who painted a  few bottles and then quickly dropped  out (If you  check Bill's  website  you  will find a lot of  junior  artists there who painted  while  Bill  was doing the bulk of his  collecting in the   early  2000s,  but  who have now  completely  vanished) 

Case  in point :  Liu Zilan as per George  =  Liu  Zhiyi as per Pin (1st correction) =  Liu  Ziyi * (Joey/ Pin  2nd  correction)

(* Pin :  It  seems to me  that  the  Liu is  in traditional   character form  but the  Yi  is  a  simplified  character - am I  correct ? )

And we  all should  know  Liu  Ziyi  (= Liu  Zhijiang =  Zhi Jiang)  because  he's  listed  big time  in New Look  and is the   father  of  Liu Yizi  !

So I  reckon that  at maximum  there  were / are  at very most   only 2,000 (maybe only  1,500 ?) real MIPB  artists who ever painted including all the students who dropped out  after painting a few bottles which they  bothered to sign (or have  had  signed  by their Master ,  e.g. Da Yong  signed  hundreds - if not thousands -   of his  students  bottles either  with  his  name  or  with  another  art name  (e.g. the   great  Liu Jianghua  scam -  over 2,500  bottles  signed  "Liu Jianghua" which were in fact  painted  by senior  students  in Hengshui.   N.B.:  that scam  is taboo in Hengshui ...... Don't  even ask !  But I  personally have the  smoking gun in my collection)  

More to the  point,  at any  one time there  were/are  only  200 - 300   artists  of  any  significance actively painting of which less than 100 were/are serious  "big names"  whose work  was/is  worth  collecting .

Whenever I have  been to big  exhibitions of  VMIPBs  in China  I have  seen  only  50 - 70  artists   exhibiting, and usually  the  same  "core"  group  of  top 30 +  artists.

So I am convinced that the  "40,000"  artists  and the  "RMB 1 billion" annual  output  includes the tourist and  trinket   trade factory workers (although I have yet to see any such factory ! )

Actually  a  simple back-of-the  envelope  calculation confirms  this. Assuming about 40,000  factory  workers  who each paint two  bottles per day  and  dividing that  into  RMB 1  billion  gives an average  price  of  RMB30 (=  about  US$5)  per bottle.   I reckon that  RMB30 / US$5 is the   sale  price  by the  time the  bottle  hits retailers  so  assuming a 3:1 mark-up between the  factory and the retail price,  the ex-factory price  is  about  RMB 10 per bottle.   2 x  bottles  per day per worker   =  60 bottles  per month  = RMB 600 per month  per  worker (not including  factory overheads ) .....  I think you can see  how the  numbers  work out  roughly.

At the  time  CIPMA  was  published  in 2006  the 116  artists  listed  were  probably  on average  selling their  bottles  to  collectors  at  about  RMB1,000 - 2,000  each and  were  painting  at the rate of about 10 - 20  bottles per year.  Assuming upper  figures : 20 bottles x RMB2,000  p.a. =   RMB40,000  p.a.  =  about  RMB4,000  p.m.  which is  roughly  what I estimated the  average  middle-ranking artist  was earning in the mid-late  2000s. (The  very few  top masters  were  of course   earning much more, but  not  significantly  more)

Assume  100 - 150  x  active  artists  @ RMB40,000  p.a. annual  output per artist  in 2006 : that  =  approx. RMB5 million  p.a.  which is  only  0.5% of the  "RMB 1  billion" total  industry. Again - these  are just  back-of-the-envelope  calculations  but you  can see  how the  numbers  make  general  sense.

Another cross-confirmation is the  fact that when  I was  seriously collecting in the period 2006 - 2010 and was still  buying  many of  my bottles  from specialist  shops (as  opposed to buying direct from artists)  I  found only  a couple of specialist  shops : one in Beijing and one  in  Shanghai.  On the other hand  there were  at least a dozen other IPB shops selling junk tourist trade bottles in each of those cities, not to mention all the hotel gift shops. (And that's only  BJ and  SH !   What about  Nanjing, Guangzhou and  other major tourist  cities ?)  Then again, at those  two specialist shops,  they each  had about  500 + bottles for sale,  but  only about  maximum 20 bottles at any one  time  by  real artists (i.e. the kind of artists whose names appeared  in CIPMA).

20  "real"  bottles  for sale among 10 shops each stocking 500  bottles =  0.4%  : same  ball-park.

Does  anyone else  have some anecdotal information  to  corroborate (or  otherwise) my  rough calculations?

Cheers

Peter

« Last Edit: December 24, 2016, 04:49:47 am by Peter Bentley 彭达理 » Report Spam   Logged

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