Some Like It Fake

In the Chinese village of Dafen, you can find anything and everything: a Gerhard Richter starts at 30 euros, a small Van Gogh costs 45 euros, his Sunflowers in medium size goes for 100. Monet’s Water Lilies is 120, Rembrandt’s self-portraits are 150, and for the smile of the Mona Lisa, you have to shell out around 200 because it’s supposedly not so easy for Chinese painters to copy. The output of this forgery is gigantic: over 10 million paintings are produced here each year. Thousands of painters work day and night in cramped spaces, painting the works of the great masters, which are primarily sold in bulk orders to Europe and America. Dafen’s industrious residents live from, with, and despite the great art—children grow up between Klimt’s The Kiss and Munch’s The Scream, families sleep under Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, watched over by Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.