Besides appropriation art, there is no topic that enrages me more than modern art factories. Isn’t it disgusting what capitalist artists will do for profit? I guess it’s to be expected that American Corporate art CEOs will protect their bottom line. I worked for a CEO who pretended to admire Cesar Chavez while busting any attempts to unionize – the same hypocrisy that apparently drives Jeff Koons in this post from ArtFcity… http://artfcity.com/2016/07/18/jeff-koons-lays-off-workers-amidst-reports-of-impropriety/ . Long past seem to be the days of Picasso Communism and famous artists championing social justice. In my view, authentic artists just want solitude to concentrate and produce personal pieces but capitalist artists count on slave low wage labor to create and produce theirs. I hope the demise of art factories (and capitalist artist’s dependence on them) is as certain as gentrification following artist colonies. BTW let’s put to rest the myth that these factories have always existed in the art world. Artist “workshops” were originally used to train and educate artists by copying or completing their master’s works, have been discredited since Rubens and Rembrandt, and have only served to obscure and confuse the talent and reputation of the artists who utilize them in order to serve the art market. The latest entry in art factories, thanks to desperate artists in China, is ‘My DaVinci’ check out this link: http://www.mydavinci.com/artistlist.html. It feels like you may as well use an app to create art for all the creativity that comes from captivity… or exploitation. At least such sites are obvious in their commercialism, unlike ‘factories’ like Koons’ who use the same techniques to con the art world and its gullible collectors. Are such things as ‘My DaVinci’ a natural product of globalization? Western CEO’s exploiting Asian artists to produce and market classic kitch? Is this the new economic colonization? It’s all rather depressing to consider.