Introduction: From here on, I will share some information about the art market with you every day, I hope it will be helpful to you.
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A magical village that relies on drawing tigers and rich armor
Wanggongzhuang is a small village located at the junction of Yulu and Lu, covering an area of 1,400 acres. Unlike most of the surrounding villages, which rely on farming to make a living, this place has a unique smell of paper and ink. The most talked about by the outside world is Wanggongzhuang's "tiger culture" business. There are no tigers in the village, but more than 700 villagers can paint tigers, and the village sells tens of thousands of paintings every year, with an income of more than 100 million. Many villagers have multiple properties, exchanged for a few private cars, and have an annual income of nearly one million.
A 28-kilometer drive from Minquan County, through a cornfield, when you see a cultural square stone monument and a magnificent exhibition hall, you will arrive at the prestigious Wanggongzhuang, "China's No. 1 Tiger Village". I saw rows of two-story houses neatly arranged, a dazzling array of calligraphy and painting signs, few people in the village wandered around, but when you opened the studios, you could see that the villagers, men and women, old and young, were quietly painting, and most of the children were reading and studying on the side, not noisy or noisy.
In the studio, many villagers painted a "hundred tigers"
There are about 1,600 villagers in Wanggongzhuang, of which more than 700 are engaged in the painting industry, and more than 300 of them can be called painters. There are husband and wife painters, father and son painters, and sister painters in the village, and there are not a few painting families with three generations in the same house, and most of the paintings are tigers. Upper Mountain Tiger, Descending Mountain Tiger, Tiger Head and Jungle Tiger, Hundred Tigers, Thousand Tigers...... The styles are not the same, but they are all remarkable and lifelike.
Draw a beard for the tiger's head
However, the most talked about by the outside world is Wanggongzhuang's painting business. In the large, medium and small painting and calligraphy markets across the country, almost all traces of Wanggongzhuang tiger paintings can be found. The authentic works of the "Tiger King" in the village can often be sold for hundreds of thousands or millions of high prices, and can be among the collection circles; The tiger paintings of ordinary painters were also snapped up by art dealers from all over the world; Even the average student's copying homework can be sold for hundreds to thousands of yuan, and is often used as a decoration in tourist attractions.
As a result, the market describes the painting tiger village as "one person paints the tiger, and the chicken and dog ascend to heaven".
The skill is actually ancestral, and the ancestors "painted the tiger according to the cat"?
The most expensive tiger painting ever sold by Wanggongzhuang is the work of Wang Jianmin, the head of the "Four Tiger Kings", and the price is as high as more than 900,000 yuan. Wang Jianmin described his tiger painting skills as mainly in the creation of tiger fur out of his own style, "elegant and thick", with some dynamics. I saw that he was holding two brushes in one hand and alternately depicting tiger hair, and his technique was very skillful.
"We didn't have formal training, and many of the techniques we saw from books used to be a master of copying and painting tigers. Wang Jianmin said that the whole Wanggongzhuang's tiger painting skills are actually inherited from the ancestors, like he followed his father and grandfather to paint the middle hall and the beams of the house in the village since he was a child, and the paintings are fish, lotus, tiger and other images with beautiful meanings.
What impressed him was that when he was a child, he followed the adults to sell Tiger New Year paintings in the market every festival, "I asked my grandfather, have you ever seen a tiger? ”
It is said that it is difficult to paint dragons and tigers, but the skill of "painting cats and tigers" in Wanggongzhuang has become a hot folk art after being passed down for several generations, benefiting to this day.
"Tiger King" Wang Jianmin and his son
By the time Wang Jianmin reached adulthood, he and the other three friends who are now known as the "Four Tiger Kings" were no longer willing to sell paintings only in the village market, and they were eager to go out and break through. They have been to the calligraphy and painting markets in Kaifeng, Luoyang and other cities in the province, and they have been scorned and often unable to make ends meet. However, after hitting a wall again and again and improving again and again, Wanggongzhuang's tiger paintings finally opened up the foreign market.
Tiger, the homonym is "Fu". The subject matter is very down-to-earth, and the common people like it very much. Gradually, they no longer painted flowers, birds, insects and fish, but focused on drawing tigers, and often went to the zoo to observe tigers up close to improve their painting skills.
They often go to the Shangqiu Zoo, which is the closest to Wanggongzhuang, to see the tigers
More than 20 years ago, Wang Jianmin's six-foot-long tiger painting was sold for a high price of 100 yuan, and the wages of workers at that time were only more than 30 yuan a month. The news that "painting tigers can make money" spread in Wanggongzhuang at once, and relatives and neighbors found Wang Jianmin to learn how to draw tigers. He recalls that from the first day of schooling, fifty or sixty apprentices popped up in the village.
Hand draw tigers, look at the market
Wang Jianmin, the 51-year-old "Tiger King", regards himself as the owner of Jiaxuan, and has set aside a room in his 300-square-meter two-story house dedicated to displaying tiger paintings. These huge tiger paintings accompanied him to more than a dozen cities across the country and overseas, and he was reluctant to sell each of them.
The tiger painting exhibition hall in Wang Jianmin's home
When the reporter chatted with him about the tiger painting industry that is in full swing at the moment, he commented on the villagers of Wanggongzhuang with some pride, "not only painters, but also market speculators."
As early as the period when the "Four Tiger Kings" were out on the road, the Tiger Kings began to train art sellers in the village. "Not everyone is an artist, and not everyone has the ability to create", the villagers who have the talent for painting can paint with peace of mind, while the more active ones take their paintings to the market, selling paintings and bringing back the needs and information of the market to the village.
Wang Jianjin was the first agent to sell paintings in Wanggongzhuang, and in the early days, he went out single-handedly, slept in bridges and caves, and slept in the open air. Now, he has set up a brokerage company in Wanggongzhuang, and more than a dozen employees are working separately to contact the calligraphy and painting market all over the country.
The broker is the bridge between the village painters and the outside market
After contacting the outside world again and again, he led the theme of painting tigers in the village to carry out several changes, ensuring that the paintings in the village are always at the forefront of the market. From a single tiger head and body to a huge tiger picture with a background and a narrative; From a single tiger up the mountain, down the mountain, to a three-mouthed tiger, the five tigers, eight tigers, and one hundred tigers that imply blessings; From the popular Chinese and Western tiger paintings in China, to the tigers and classical beauties that sell well overseas...... To this day, there is still a picture of a thousand tigers spread out in his studio that is more than 400 meters long, and it was in order to start the fame of "the first village of painting tigers", he led several heavyweight painters in the village to design and assemble the drawings together.
"One person draws a tiger, and a chicken and dog ascend to heaven"
How vigorous is the "tiger" industry in the "Painted Tiger Village"? At present, Wang Jianhui, one of the "Four Little Tiger Kings," is the most proud apprentice in Wanggongzhuang with the largest annual sales volume and the first apprenticeship in accepting apprentices.
"Little Tiger King" Wang Jianhui has long hair over his ears, and at the age of 33, he has been painting tigers for nearly 20 years. "At the beginning, my family was poor and there were no lights, so I lit a coal fire to learn to paint. In winter, my hands are frozen and rotten, and I have to stay up until three or four o'clock at night, and in summer, my body is stuck with paper. Although he did not study well since he was a child, Wang Jianhui changed the fate of his life by painting tigers, and he is a microcosm of the development of the cultural industry in Huahu Village.
Wang Jianhui is good at drawing tiger heads
"This is to be sent to an old customer in Shandong," Wang Jianhui rolled up more than a dozen paintings, "an order of hundreds of thousands at a time is now the norm, and every corner of his four-story restaurant is decorated with my paintings." ”
"The tiger on the mountain means that you will rise step by step, and you will be promoted to become rich; Go down to the mountain and keep the tiger town house to ward off evil spirits and keep it safe; The five tigers are the five blessings; Collecting Hundred Tigers is Nabaifu......" Wang Jianhui's wife, Yang Meiju, was a painter who studied at the same time as him, and now helps manage the studio and sales business, and has become shrewd and capable. Yang Meiju recalled that from when she got married and couldn't afford to buy a motorcycle, to now her family has changed five private cars, purchased real estate, and saved savings, and she is very satisfied with her current life. "We are now paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, and millions of dollars a year. ”
Next to one of Wang Jianhui's studios is the framing shop of Zhao Qingwei and Wang Ximei. At twelve o'clock in the middle of the night, the couple was still working, and there were too many orders for paintings that needed to be framed. However, usually as long as you work hard for two days and one night, you can earn 2,000 yuan.
Zhao Qingwei's framing shop is the first in the village
"When I first got married, I borrowed five yuan and ten yuan, so I was really poor. Wang Ximei has never been in the field, so she can't help but praise Zhao Qingwei for doing the right thing in her life. The most unforgettable thing for her is to receive the first framing fee of 200 yuan from Wang Jianhui and his wife, "It turns out that framing can make money!" The excitement at that time is incomparable to the tens of thousands of yuan at a time.
Zhao Qingwei took the reporter to see the old house that had been abandoned, which he used to build with his own hands to move bricks for the whole family of seven to live in. Leaking rain in summer and cold in winter, standing in front of the house, Zhao Qingwei couldn't hide his excitement after thinking bitterly and sweetly. "I used to have no place to live, but now my dad has a set, I have a set, and I have bought a façade room, but now I can't live in it, it's true. Zhao Qingwei smiled from ear to ear.
The old house that Zhao Qingwei once built with his own hands
Because he couldn't learn to draw tigers, Zhao Qingwei, who had studied in college, thought of learning to do the business of framing, he was the first person to eat crabs in Wanggongzhuang, and more than ten years of framing business made Zhao Qingwei's family undergo earth-shaking changes. "As soon as my two-story building was built, there were several more painting shops in the village at once. ”
"In the past, the predicament was poor, and I was determined to work hard to make the world better. Entrepreneurship is hard and windy, and the rainbow is full of contentment. This poem by Zhao Qingwei is a true portrayal of his own life.