eBay - art gallery or department store?
Cynthia Botter Houppert
vast selection of goods on its site as well as the availability of
basement bargain prices of items that enhance my personal collections.
As one who basically despises shopping malls, and all that with which
it's associated, eBay allows me to shop in a virtual department store
without all the hassles.
It is the latter that keeps taking me back to their site. One category
that has caught my attention is the number of artists using it to
replace the traditional gallery. The question to ask, is when you
visit a department store, do you expect to see Fine Art?
In replacing the art dealer, how does eBay benefit the artist? It
provides space for hanging the work, for a fee, albeit it a small one.
Do they promote the artist, locate collectors and drive collectors to
your site?
The difference in eBay and working with galleries is worthy of
examination. Take for instance one art dealer and one artist, and how
the commissions work. The artists creates permanent works, and the
standard split is 60/40. The artist, of course, tells the dealer how
much they want for the work, over the costs associated with making the
work. I mean the profit that the artist expects to make.
If there is no money to be made, there is no point in being in
business, and work without pay is tyranny. The dealer then figures
out, based on that 60 percent, how much the piece should sell for. As
an example, let's say a work sells for ten thousand dollars. That is
the low-end for paintings by contemporary artists in the gallery
trade.
Since a single full-page ad in ArtNews is $10,000.00 + for one month,
the dealer has to sell three paintings at $10,000.00 to recover the
advertising costs. That does not include the retail space, employees,
shows or numerous other expenses associated with a retail gallery.
How much does the artist profit? $6,000 per painting, and remember
that's profit times four paintings is $24,000.00. Assuming the
artist, can produce one a week, that's a very nice income. Nice
enough, to work at it full time.
Let's consider, for a moment pricing on eBay. If my assumption is
correct, that you are striving to become a professional artist, you
will need an annual income that meets the demands of your current
financial obligations.
Just for example's sake, place a painting for $100.00 on eBay. The
United States Department of Health and Human Services has determined
poverty level for a family of four at $18,400.00.
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/03poverty.htm
SOURCE: Federal Register, Vol. 68, No. 26, February 7, 2003, pp.
6456-6458
How many paintings do you have to sell over the course of a year to
even reach poverty level standards? That would be 184 paintings per
year, or fifteen and a third pictures per month or three a week. The
figures given here do not include the cost of paints, canvas, labor or
ongoing continuous costs such as rent, electricity to keep the lights
on, water for your brushes, the cost of a live model or the
advertising itself.
If your average work is $500.00 then to make poverty level, you only
have to sell 1/5 of the number or approximately 37. To reach middle
class you need to sell 74 to make $37,000. When marketing on eBay,
value to you, as an artist is
determined whether or not you can get your price within the allotted
time. In talking to other artists, paintings at that price rarely
sell.
A picture selling for $1,000.00 means the artist will have to sell
18.4 pictures a year to reach poverty level standards. With many of
the artworks mass produced now selling on eBay, the expectation of
making such sales is diminished. The lone artist can hardly be
expected to compete against mass manufacturing.
What about the jurying aspects or unveiling a work on eBay? There are
none. Collectors often shy away from venues where anyone can hang
regardless of the merit of the work as long as there is an ability to
pay. In that sense, isn't eBay equal to a cooperative?
Will eBay instill a jurying process? Probably not; that's not what
they do. They give people space to sell their wares, period.
How do the auction aspects of eBay compare in regards to Fine Art?
Surely, the artist benefits by auction at such houses as Christies,
Sotheby's, and Bonham & Butterfield, when a collector has decided to
"flip" a work that is already in the marketplace.
In that instance, the auction serves to benefit the artist by driving
up the overall intrinsic value of the artist's work if the work
remains comparable in quality. Plus, they also guarantee the
authenticity of the work and the work was juried at one point or
another.
Unveil the work on eBay? It doesn't have that capability. By defying
the traditions of the art market, in failing to understand human
nature and the reasoning behind the "unveiling" of the work, then the
Internet or any other technological venue will not change human nature
or the high-end collector's abhorrence of previously viewed works.
For thousands of years, human nature has remained the same. The
Internet, although it is as we know it, in its infancy, lacks the
ability to affect human nature; it is only a machine and as the old
saying goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Cynthia Houppert is an art consultant in Atlanta, Georgia, a Faculty
Member (Community Education) at the Atlanta College of Art and the
author of Art Gallery Safari: Bagging the Big One.
http://www.cowboyenterprises.com/id34.htm
Chris
bought everything from computer equipment to remote control electronics to
paintings and drawings and art supplies and have found it (by and large) a
good place. It's very much an open market - so you have to take care when
looking for things & checking out sellers; but most people are honest & well
intentioned.
As for selling art - I've sold a moderate amount on eBay (and I know of a
couple of people who used to post here regularly who are now doing pretty
well on eBay). Certainly no one selling there thinks of it as replacing the
high-end toney galleries, but most eBay artists aren't attracted to working
that clientele either - particularly w/r to all the AK it requires.
The market itself is generally at the lower price range, and an ideal one
for prints, drawings, and paint sketches. Most buyers prefer getting work
without frames or matting, and since there's no gallery commission to speak
of, it can be quite profitable for the artist, and attractive to the buyer
looking for art, rather than a "shopping experience".
Finally - and I think a number of other people who I know have sold on eBay
would agree - it is a good place to discover serious collectors that you
wouldn't meet in (say) a small town like Halifax. It takes work to build up
relationships with buyers when you are quite often separated by half a
continent, but it is worth doing.
Cheers;
Chris
"Cynthia Botter Houppert" <cynthia...@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:1bf7fb0a.04030...@posting.google.com...