Perhaps because I'm reading Schneider's The Art of Japanese Cloisonne Enamel, wherein is recounted the incredibly painstaking efforts of Japanese cloisonne artists to develop enamels, shapes, patterns, and innovative techniques, such contemporary Chinese cloisonne works as the jars in the picture give me heartburn.

Such an excellent example of how you should at least hire people who know how to draw - note especially the one rear leg of the boar/rhino? and the example where it looks backward and sorta floating in space all by itself. And how the archer's arms more resemble a washerwoman's chest. This isn't just a contemporary problem - in my blog post on dragons there are examples of poor drawing comprehension wherein the dragon's head appears to sever its body.

Chinese cloisonne master Zhang Lu, if I am reading the Google translations of his interviews correctly, has commented on how cloisonne artists of over 20 years' experience were turned out onto the street when the Beijing Arts & Crafts cooperative went bankrupt c2000. He re-hired as many as he could to form another studio. And now they have had to take steps to authenticate their works because of all the forgeries cranked out "in the villages."

Peter Hessler in Country Driving recounts an encounter with a Chinese woman hired to crank out cheap faux-European landscape oil paintings. She wasn't particularly interested in art or painting, but this was a job she could do, so she just does it. Peter helps her with some mis-spellings on the signs in some of the pictures.

This phenomenon isn't confined to China, of course; it's everywhere.