Bland, blander, blandest: Chinese knockoff sculpture alleged in CA

by Bill Davenport July 18, 2011

The Art Newspaper reports an intriguing recurrence in California of the ancient practice of making knock-offs of carved stone sculptures. California sculptor Don Wakefield was surprised to discover a copy of one of his 1992 works at a corporate headquarters in Newport Beach. Investigation revealed that the piece and two others like it had been bought at a sculpture park in Beijing during the Olympic Games in 2008, but the real mystery is why anyone would pay to copy the innocuous, but unexciting biomorph when a few variations in  bland curvature would have produced effectively the same piece, without the criminal repercussions?

Wakefield's 1992 original, left, the alleged copy, right

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