'Rubber Duck' doubt

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By Xiong Yuqing (Global Times) 08:32, August 13, 2013

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Rubber Duck by Florentijn Hofman is displayed in Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong. (People's Daily Overseas Edition)

Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, the creator of the 16.5-meter-tall rubber duck that floated in Victoria Harbor in May, announced in August that he would show a taller size version during the Beijing Design Week (BDW) in September. A press conference planned to be held last Thursday to give details, however, was postponed for unknown reasons, and the site in Beijing for the giant yellow duck is still a mystery.

Hofman showed his dissatisfaction when a sequence of Rubber Duck copycats appeared in Chinese cities after his artwork displayed in Hong Kong, seeking to claim that companies that riff on or recreate the Hong Kong duck are infringing upon the artist's intellectual property.

According to artron.net, Wang Jun, an intellectual property consultant for BDW, stated that the design organization wants "to use the Rubber Duck case to drive an awareness program raising the sensibility regarding intellectual property rights around China."

However, some artists take issue with Hofman's work and doubt its original creativity. Chinese artist Xing Xin sent an e-mail to the Global Times calling it a "violation on intellectual property rights or profiteering conspiracy." Xing launched a salon with other artists and critics in Changsha, the capital city of Hunan Province, on August 6 to discuss the negative impact of Rubber Duck.

Shrinking the world

Rubber ducks predate Florentijn Hofman by many years. The first rubber ducks appeared in late 19th century as rubber manufacturing became widespread.

Hofman recalled that his first brainwave of making a huge rubber duck came to him when he was visiting a museum in 2001 and admitted that the model for his Rubber Duck was made by a Hong Kong company, Tolo Toys.

"And I went to the shops, for weeks, to find the most perfect rubber duck, and that was [it]. It's not new. For a hundred years there have been rubber ducks, but I found the best shape and that was a Tolo rubber duck," said Hofman on a conference in Chengdu last month.

In an interview with blouinartinfo.com earlier this year, Hofman described his concept of this artwork: "I always say I'm not making a big object, but I'm making the world smaller. By making [the Rubber Duck] big, I'm taking away egos."

He Peng, the chief of New Millennium Center for Contemporary Art in Hunan, told the Global Times that the Rubber Duck was exactly in the same shape as the Tolo rubber ducks. "I don't think it is a valuable artistic creation to make the larger size of an existing product. And Hofman is not the first one to come up with the idea to magnify a daily thing."

A huge inflatable rubber duck was shown in front of a McDonald's during the 17th Great Black Hills Duck Race in Rapid City in the US in 2006. "Apart from the shape, there is nothing different in the way of creating between this rubber duck and the one of Hofman. But Hofman calls it an artwork," said He Ling, an artist, curator and vice secretary-general of Hunan Youth Artists Association.