#makeartthatsells with@lillarogershttp://ow.ly/hNVbb
It makes me think about the various attitudes people have to art, and also to money and hence to the value of art.I used to watch 'The Antiques Roadshow' all the time when I was kid - stay with me, that's not quite the non-sequiteur it may seem! - sometimes you would see things that were hideous, and my mother would be declaring that she would not have it as a gift while the expert was saying that it was worth at least £50,000; other times it would something that I loved, which apparently would only set me back £20. It's interesting to note the differences, but I do realise that not everyone shares my taste and of course the expert had knowledge that I did not, such as how many were made, how often they come up for sale and what is currently 'fashionable' in the world of collectors. What seemed really strange though was those occassions when they would say that this item was a fake, but that that was a good thing because it was worth more than the original would be or when there'd be some incredibly fragile, museum-quality piece of glass which had somehow survived for 4000 years and travelled all the way from Egypt to Chipping Sodbury, and was only worth a couple of hundred pounds while the comparitively mass-produced metal lamp from the 1930s was worth three times as much. So it was clearly not as simple as rarity, skilled manufacture or survival against the odds...thinking about it now it seems a pretty good illustration of how ambiguous a concept 'value' really is.
I struggle with pricing things. I should think most artists do. I do not believe that the money you will make for it should be the most important consideration, but if you want it to be more than a hobby then you probably want to sell some of it. And that means, however pure a creative process you engage in, at some point you have to think about money. The objective costs of making something may be relatively easy to work out, but that is only a small part of the equation that places a value on artwork. I'm not sure that you can price your work according to an idea of hourly rate, but there is the undeniable fact that it took you some time and effort to create. With some things you might look at other similar items, and place yourself accordingly, but that is hard to do with art. Not only because every peice is essentially unique, but also because of factors such as how many people have heard of you, whether someone who is regarded as knowing what they are talking about has said something complimentary (or otherwise) about your work, whether you are within a particualr niche, or doing something really innovative that you can't find anyone else selling. And, of course there is the thorny issue of individual tastes. Fundamentally everything is worth what people are, or might be, willing to pay for it - there are factors which can contribute to that such as rarity, but it is hardly cut and dried. Most people, if they are buying as individuals rather than as interior decorators or agents or whatever, are only likely to pay for artwork if they love it, if it speaks to them, if they can see it in their home. And only they know how much they are willing to pay for such a thing. Which means that you can produce a beautiful work of art, which they do love and which would go beautifully in their home but which is over (or under) the price required to meet their personal, internal assessment of its value.
Of course, one way of pricing things as an artist to to consult your own, personal, interntal assessment of its value. But I am here to tell you that this is an area rife for self-doubt to rear its ugly head. If you are prone to such things anyway. You start to ask yourself whether that's too much, because after all it was you who did it. Not a 'real artist'. Or possibly you worry that you have under-charged and sent a signal out to your potential customers that even you think your work is a bit crap. So why would they pay even that tiny price for it. I suspect it is one of those no-win cases, where whichever way you go and whatever decision you make you will worry about it, if you a person inclined to worry. That being so my theory is that if I spend the time setting the price, for reasons that I have thought through, then I should be able to tell myself in the future when the worry occurs that those reasons were good then, and so they are still good now.
I do want my work to sell, obviously. But I also do not want that to be my sole motivating factor. Or the reason behinds any choices I make in the course of the creative process...it is a dilemma. Possibly one which the above-cited course will examine. Maybe I should do it, and find out.
