The Marketing of Art

The city of Shanghai turned a giant steel factory in the heart of the city into a huge art producing facility called the Shanghai Sculpture Space (紅坊).  If you walk around the outskirt of the facility, you can see some truly amazing work by the artists.

This is a Mercedes Benz made with bricks:

This is a steel sculpture of Albert Einstein:

This is a steel sculpture of Deng Xiaoping:

Here is a collection of feet:

Here is a steel knight:

Here is an instrument made with a laptop and an abacus:

This robotic animal looks scary:

While most people cannot buy these sculptures and put them in their homes, what does such an art facility do to help the artists?  

This place has become a tourist attraction spot in Shanghai.  Tourists are usually compelled to look at everything in a tourist attraction spot in detail because they know that they may not come back to these places in the near future.  Unlike an art gallery or show where people may need to pay to get in, these open art facilities create a superb channel to connect the general public to the art world.

A tourist attraction spot is often a place for people to appreciate beautiful things.  Art is beautiful even though for non-artists like myself, I cannot describe why a piece of art is beautiful.  Just by look at beautiful things, I feel happy.  By combining art and tourism, it is a perfect strategy to market art without doing it in-your-face.