So, we’re following a bunny trail here, nothing to do with sales or products. The blog is titled “Random Thoughts” for a reason…..
This morning, a FB friend posted a picture of William Eggleston’s photograph, “Memphis (Tricycle)”, asking “Is this photographic art worth $578,500?”
Um, no. Not as a photographic print. However, the CONTEXT was not obvious in the post and the CONTEXT makes a significant difference in this case.
A commenter on the original post felt compelled to ask in his own blog : “how much does knowing the place of the photograph in history change the perceived value?”
That is a phenomenal question – In my opinion it changes the VALUE only to the purchaser. The monetary value of ‘Art’ is defined strictly by the purchaser. However, knowing the historical significance of the piece and something about its place in the artists portfolio as well as its place in the world of ‘art history’ changes my perception of the person who paid what I consider to be an obscene amount of money for a photographic print from ‘lunatic’ to ‘dedicated collector or curator’.
Regardless of the logic presented by the artist or the gallery owner, the price of a piece of art is a number assigned by someone who has no intention of exchanging that amount of their own money to possess it. The only fair price setting structure is the open auction where people who are willing to pay get to decide how much. That doesn’t establish any sort of universal value, though. Because even at auction, the price only goes to the point that someone is willing to pay and no one else is. The value to the penultimate bidder is lower than the value to the eventual winner.
I shot a photograph in Paris of the cityscape with the Eiffel tower lit up and the beacon glowing its wedge of light across the night sky and thought ‘Hey, that’s a pretty cool photo. I’ll bet someone would exchange actual currency for a print of it.’ It hung in the gallery as a 16″ x 20″ framed print for about 6 weeks and was admired my dozens of people who liked it but did not believe that it was worth exchanging US$225 for. Then one day a young woman came in and said ‘I just came back from Paris and none of my photos are that cool; I’d like to buy it’. So what is the actual value of that photographic print? Who the hell knows. The US$225 price was a simple multiple of the materials cost to me and was, therefore, a random assignment of value. It’s possible that had it been priced at US$195 it might have sold sooner. It’s possible that if it had been priced at US$295 the same person would have purchased it for the same reasons. It’s even possible that the same young woman could have come in to our gallery on a different day and not been compelled to make the purchase. There is simply no way to know.
Whenever we travel we tend to wind up in art galleries for some reason. We’re never actually shopping for art because we can’t even display what we already own but we never know what may wind up coming home with us because on that day OUR perception of the value of a particular piece met or exceeded the arbitrary price that was placed on it by the gallery. We see a lot of truly beautiful works that we don’t purchase because our perception of the value is lower than that arbitrary price set by the gallery.
Several years ago I saw a painting sold for well over a million dollars that could have been done by any reasonably coordinated 2nd grader in two 20 minute sessions. It was a 36″ x 48″ canvas, painted white and then the lower quarter of the canvas was painted red. To me, that’s a complete waste of an expensive canvas. The value, in my mind, is zero because it would take me time to restore the canvas to usable condition (to put an actual painting on it) and it would be more cost-effective to just go to the store and buy a new one instead. The value to someone else was obviously higher; they believed that it was worth parting with more money than the average American earns in their lifetime in order to own it. Which of us is right about the VALUE of that painting? Both? Neither? Who gets to decide?
We own some pieces that other people have said “I would NEVER pay that much for that” while I’m thinking “I would have paid twice what they were asking in order to own that piece.”
Another comment on the original post stated (in part) that “Art has nothing to deliver to recipients!”
Remarks like that remind me of the sort of people who make me glad to not be a gallery owner anymore. In the minds of many I’m not qualified to critique or even speak on art because I’m not an acclaimed Artist, nor do I possess an MFA, but there was a time when I actually had to assist artists with pricing their work, matching clients to pieces and selling the ‘value proposition’ of specific pieces for specific clients and/or environments. I love art but I surely do hate the business of art.
It is my opinion that Art exists ONLY to deliver to the recipient. With the exception of physical pieces which could be deconstructed and sold as components, ‘Art’ has no intrinsic value. A bronze sculpture is worth whatever the scrap dealer will pay for that weight of bronze only until a RECIPIENT sees the extrinsic value and wishes to trade an amount of currency in excess of that amount to gain possession of said sculpture. A painting or photographic print has virtually zero value to most of the people who will see it.
The important thing to remember here is that you, as the Artist, do not get to tell me that because I don’t think your piece is worth the price that you arbitrarily assigned to it that I must not have any true appreciation of ‘Art’. Do not confuse value with price; until somebody buys it for that price, it has no value.