What does it say about the art market that its rise has reached the level of making a magazine cover? This is usually the sign that something has reached a level of common knowledge and conventional wisdom that it can only go down from there.
Be that as it may, the issue has a good profile of Kehinde Wiley which tackles the issue of his Beijing workshop which produces a substantial amount of work:
Producing work in China cuts costs, but not as much as it used to, Wiley says. These days in Beijing he employs anywhere from four to ten workers, depending on the urgency, plus a studio manager, the American artist Ain Cocke. The Beijing studio began as a lark: After visiting an artist friend there and liking what he saw, he and a couple of his New York staffers flew out, rented some space, and started painting, “sort of like a retreat,” he says. One thing led to another—“another” being a five-year relationship with a Chinese D.J.—and eventually the Beijing studio became the main production hub as well as his second home. He recently bought an apartment overlooking Chaoyang Park, complete with a live-in maid and two miniature greyhounds, Xiaohui, or “Little Gray,” and Celie, named after the character in The Color Purple. […]
Outsource to China (New York Magazine)
