Painted(?)Canvases?

[Emibub]

Curious phenom here in Denver...............The past couple of years I have taken in many "paintings" on canvas. They have started coming in masking taped to the back of a mat. I have never ever received a canvas like that prior. I just assumed it was the way they were displaying them at the starving artist shows. I came to realize as the clients told their stories that foreign "students" are going through office complexes and hawking this stuff as original art and they are making their way through school by selling their art. Some come with a pretty hefty price too, anywhere from $200-$400. It is all starving artist stuff for sure. I have seen many duplicates. I've seen this stuff in Decor magazine, the chubby kids playing musical instruments is a common one.

It is sad that people are being victimized by this. Although I blindly bought a frameshop I would never buy anything from somebody door to door like that. I don't want to burst anybody's dreams either. I'm not going to tell them I have one just like it in back. I figure with as much of this stuff we are framing here, eventually they will wander into someone elses home and see an exact duplicate of their masterpiece.

I had one this week that I stretched and I could hear it crack. I turned it over and discovered that the "painting" had started to lift off of the canvas. It wasn't even a painting. It appeared to be some sort of plastic that was laminated to the canvas. I doctored it up after I showed it to my client and explained what had happened. I wasn't going to let the whole thing loosen up and have her blame me. I simply told her I didn't know what art medium they had used but it was loosening up. I didn't want to tell her she had some factory produced piece of schlock.

So now not only is it bad karma art but it is causing difficulties for framing. I am just curious if anybody else out there has seen these canvases?

[Ron Eggers]

A couple of years ago there was a troop of foreign "art students" going door-to-door in downtown Appleton selling these things. I had several visitors in one day. The one that stands out in my memory was an attractive young woman with a convincing accent who claimed to be an Israeli art student. She was extremely pleasant until she realized I wasn't going to be buying anything. Then she screeched at me, "Wazza matter? You don't like ART???"

The accent deteriorated considerably as did the rest of her appeal.

[katman]

We had the Israeli crowd come through Annapolis a couple of years ago. Maybe they were genuine, and maybe we had the same "attractive" young woman. She had one of my photo lab techs running in circles. She spent a long time with him til she realized he wasn't going to buy anything.

[Adam]

I get so many of these so-called painting in the shop that it isn't funny. I'm keeping a little price tally and most of my clients drop between 100-500 bucks per piece. It is always the same story...I bought this from an art student from (pick a country) that was trying to raise money for tuition, etc. The ones I get the most are the chubby instrument players and also french street scenes with blurry people signed Burnett. Some even come painted black and white. I did go to one of those "starving artists" shows at a local hotel here in Seattle and saw some of the exact ones from $10-50 bucks. This price is ok if you think of it as buying a poster equivelant. The problem is that my poor customers think this is valuable art that will appreciate.

[rosetl]

That sales pitch is a tricky one! My research says that most of these canvas paintings originate from China and are done on a new type of production line. One guy paints several different subjects at a time with a color,then gets out the next color etc. Most are all completed by one artist--so they technically are originals....sort of copies and copy of styles....fits right in with the "art student" sales approach. (Got the info from a friend toured a plant a few years ago.)

You will note that few are signed or you can't begin to read the faux signature. Many are on a strange plastic canvas and the importers say many are oils, specifically not acrylics. And, they wholesale at various prices based on some kind of
skill level.

Don't know if or how Israel fits in the picture except as part of the very successful sales pitch.

IMHO they are today's "production line paintings" and usually sell in that type of price range---and heck, at least some of them will end up getting nicely framed at the friendly local custom frame shop!

[fttom]

They are advertised, here, at sales in some of the big motel/hotel ball rooms over a weekend, usually at one on the north and one on the south side of town at the same town. The big selling point that they advertise here is "sofa sized paintings". Now, I've been in this business a very long time. I've never seen a canvas even remotely sized as "sofa sized". They've always been "8x10", "10x12", or some other combination of numbers. I've wondered every time I've heard this commercial what a "sofa sized" painting is. If it is the size of my sofa, I can lay down on it, and I'm almost 6' tall. That's a big painting. On the other hand, my Mother has a sofa that is only a 2 seater, and about 3 1/2' long. Interesting...

[Ron Eggers]

The paintings I saw were not the same as the Carren Art Show and Starving Artist motel show paintings. They showed more style and sold for much higher prices. As Kathy said, they were taped to the back of mats and, as I recall, they were almost all one size. Different sales approach, too, and geared toward businesses.