PRO TIP: It is also the most important thing you need to know before you buy art online!
My entire niche in the art market is creating disruptive fine art. It's sort of wild. Artists are pushed to create innovative and different work, but in most regards, what artists create is still supposed to fit into the retail gallery model of artwork. Because buyers are trained by popular culture to assign value to artwork in that manner: how prestigious is the gallery that is selling the work? A work of art is worth owning because of the store selling it. To get into this market, you have to attend the right schools, have the right financial connections, and be associated with “in-the-know” people, and it's only a very tiny percentage of practicing artists get into this Elite Blue Chip Club of fine art artists. Every curator, every gallerist, and every museum director will tell you behind closed doors that these Blue Chip artists are not necessarily the best or most talented artists making art in the world at the moment. There has to be a better way of collecting artwork. As a collector, how are you to know what artwork is excellent and worth purchasing if you step outside this gallery model? Isn’t anything outside of this market just an NFT scam?
How Art Lovers Think They Are Supposed to Buy Fine Art.
“Gallery Zaz has 10 Damien Hurst pieces and 3 Ashley Longshore pieces. Lily, who serves on the Metropolitan Museum of Art board, wants to buy art. She can’t decide if she wants an embalmed calf or butterflies springing out of Audrey Hepburn’s bonnet. Lily will purchase one piece of art; the price is not an issue. However, if Gallery Zaz sells Lily two pieces of art for the price of one, Lily will donate that extra work to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Being in the collection of the Met will increase the value of all of that artist’s work 10x. Does Gallery Zaz take 10x value on the remaining 1 Ashley Longshore work or the remaining 8 Damien Hurst works?”
It's important to understand that the average person can’t just walk off the street into Pace or Gagosian or any other white-walled, brand-name gallery and purchase a piece of artwork. Even if a collector has the money to pay the price of the works, those places aren’t accessible to most collectors. By the way, these places don't list their prices either because the price depends on who the person purchasing the piece is. How much a work is going to be sold for to a person serving on the board of a museum who is going to loan or donate that piece into a museum collection or recommend that artist into a museum collection is very different than the price of that same work going to someone without those connections. Galleries want to sell artwork to an important, well-connected collector; when they do, they often bundle pieces of art. Two for one, if you will. Here's this piece of art you purchased for your private collection, and on your way out, here is another work by the same artist for free if it gets donated to your museum. Galleries do this because if an artist is in a museum, the prices the gallery can then charge for other works by that artist increase exponentially. It's all business and a simple word problem in math.
The art market is sketchy! An average American citizen who likes art and wants to hang conversation pieces in his home buys into this notion of how artwork is “supposed to be purchased.” You appreciate artwork; maybe you're an artist yourself, perhaps you are affiliated with the local art community, and you want to have a private collection of art in your home. Let’s be honest; it's a status symbol. You ask yourself, how do I know what good art is? How do I know that I'm making a solid investment? How do I know the value of this work of art will increase? PRO TIP: it doesn't matter. None of those questions are the right questions. You are not in that world of elite museum donors and will never be. Listen, you’ve got to understand; there are even celebrities with tons of cash who, no matter how much they were willing to pay for some works, are denied the purchase of works because a gallery is waiting for a more prestigious collector to come along who can drive up the value of paintings and other works in their gallery. This is not a money game. It’s a status game. You cannot buy your way into this world with one or two works of art, so buying art this way does not make sense. You're buying art for yourself. If you are thinking of purchasing art because you think that purchase is an investment, a future stream of income, or a diversification of your portfolio of assets, you're mistaken.
Let's Be Honest. Fine Art Is Still Wall Art.
Artwork is a commodity for a tiny segment of the population–a very tiny sliver of the world. An artwork as a commodity for even that segment of the population is likely to cost them more than it will ever pay out. Even if that investor gets lucky on one work, they have likely lost out big on several other purchases. For everyone else, you buy artwork to hang over your couch, and MAYBE if the artwork is significant to you or your family, it's going to be passed on to your children, perhaps your grandchildren, but the likelihood of that artwork making its way into the home of a 4th or 5th generation family member is low. Most likely, the art you buy is going to end up in a thrift store or at the side of the road, or another artist is going to get their hands on it and paint over it. This notion of buying artwork as an investment is completely bogus. This is a dream that the ultra-elite and the extremely rich pilfer so that you can grade your happiness on your ability to keep up with their lifestyle as a means for keeping you permanently locked in unhappiness and mediocrity. I know that sounds extreme. But we are talking about DISRUPTIVELY fine art here.
When you're looking at a piece of artwork, stop trying to consider: is this artist’s work going to appreciate? What is this artist's CV? Where have they shown their work? Are they likely to be in a museum? Have they ever been in a museum? What art school did they attend? Who else owns their work? All of that is bullshit, and none of it matters. Stop thinking about all those things. Understand all artwork is, a trinket. We assign meaning to it. We assign emotional value to it. We assign historical significance to it, but it is a trinket. Art is an item of interior or home decor. Art is not going to have resale value. Your children are probably not going to love it. You are not going to be able to put it in an auction at Christie's or Sotheby's. No one needs to appraise it. The value of the artwork is in your appreciation of it.
Yes. But How Do I Know What A Fair Price Is?
Artists have a lot of ways of pricing. Some artists price their work by square inches. Some artists consider their time and their materials. Other artists randomly pick numbers out of the blue. For most galleries and exhibitions, an artist is going to walk into a gallery with a piece of artwork and they're going to put it for sale or on consignment. The artist will decide the price that is placed on the work of art. No secret slide rule is used to consider an artist’s standing in the art world relative to their technical expertise and the quality of the work. Outside of the elite galleries and auction houses, every price on every single piece ever sold was simply the price the artist, the gallery, and the buyer decided to attach to the work. There is no direct correlation between the quality, cultural value, or artist's reputation and the price of a work of art. A more expensive work from a gallery is not necessarily better than a less expensive work from an outdoor art fair. A piece of art has no inherent monetary value; only the social system used to quantify the work has economic value.
When I'm pricing my collections of artwork, first and foremost, I price per square inch because it's a fair and consistent way to price that I can explain to my collectors. Secondly, there are some pieces that I love. I choose to make artwork I like. I could change my aesthetic and make more popular things that would sell quickly, but I make the work I like. So to that end, once I've done the price per square inch on a piece that I love and want to hang in my own home or that has emotional significance to me, I change the price. I stop thinking about the price per square inch, my time, or my materials, and I think to myself, how much money am I willing to give this piece up for? What amount of money would someone have to offer me to make it so that I was willing to allow this artwork to leave my life forever? When I look at it that way, it's much easier to come up with my prices and justify them. My collectors know that my higher-priced works are works I love, which makes collectors more willing to pay that higher price because they know it's a work that has significance to me in my life.
How Should I Think About Buying Art?
What it all comes down to, and coming back to the title of this blog post, the number one thing you need to know before buying a piece of artwork is whether you love it. That's it. That's the question. That's all you need to think about. Anything else is trivial and meaningless because you won't donate that artwork to a museum. Your kids don't want to inherit it. The only thing that matters is, if you put this artwork over your couch, are you willing to look at it for the next 20 years for whatever price the artist assigned to it? Because that's where that artwork is going to end up.
This is one of my favorite creations ever. Her price is high because I know I will regret losing her.
That doesn't necessarily mean that artwork has to fit within your home's decor. It means that, however, it stands out, whatever obnoxious color shock or conversations it sparks in your home, do you love it? I know that when I buy artwork, I like the story. I want to tell people who look at the painting about the artist. I love buying student artwork for precisely this reason. I want to talk about the student I invested in early. I want to know where they ended up going to school. I want to know what their hopes and aspirations are. I want to know where that artwork is within their growth and development. I want to buy a piece from that student artist later in their career and put them next to each other. I want to discuss how that person grew and developed their voice and style.
I like to buy artwork that I connect to. One of the things that I found over the years is when I go on vacation, I want to purchase artwork from whatever spot I'm in. I want to talk about the last time I was at Sanibel Island and what I did there, and coincidentally here's the artwork I bought. It's my souvenir from my trip, and it's not tattooed with the location name, the hotel I stayed in, or any tourist trap I was at. I contributed to a living local artist from the area I was in, and I want to share that with people who come into my home. I want to commemorate a date or a significant event in my life or an artist I have a connection with. I want to be able to say, Look! This artist carved paint, and this is the person I learned this skill from. Isn’t her work great! Or maybe, this artist created an artwork for the first gallery or photography exhibition I curated. Those are the stories I want to remember and the stories I want to tell about the painting. When the artwork coincides with those events from my life, the artist can almost charge anything they want because, in these relationship moments, I don't care about the price. The deciding factor is my emotional connection to the work, the artist, the moment, and the space I was in. I'll pay any money I have for my memories and stories. Most people will do the same. When you look at buying artwork this way, it's less stressful, it's more accessible, and it's more meaningful. Life is all about creating meaning and memories. This is how you buy GREAT art!
But Wait! Does This Work for Digital Art, too?
Of course! Digital Art is art! It's right there in the name. Even AI Art, or artificial intelligence art!
You Have A Standing Invitation
I invite you to redefine your own art-buying experience. Set aside the chaotic and antiquated notions of art as an investment, and embrace art as enrichment for your life and space. I encourage you to value art for its emotional resonance, beauty, and ability to tell a story and evoke a memory. Make your art purchases personal, meaningful, and worth seeing daily in your home. Visit Alice Absolutely Studios to browse a diverse collection of Disruptively Fine Art, all embodying the essence of art as an expression of love, passion, and connection. Buy original art not because it's expected, for status or potential future worth, but because it speaks to you. Because, in the end, the only thing that truly matters is this: Do you love it?