[On Painting] On Prices and Paintings

[Duane]

The first rule of business for painters: Thou Shalt Not Lower Your Prices.

Outside of the art world, I’m not aware of any other business that has such a rule. Why do we have this rule?

A few reasons:

We believe good work should have good prices and that one day a market will rise to meet our prices.

We worry that we will be unable to get our prices back up.

We worry about what a cheap price tag says to a potential collector.

We worry about the gallery math (price minus the 50% commission.)

We worry that our current collectors will be upset that their investment is losing its value and feel that they overpaid.

We worry a lot.

The problem is this: markets require flexibility or they don’t work. A typical business wouldn’t be in business for long if the owner were not permitted to lower his prices. If the economy went down, sales would go down; since he couldn’t lower prices to meet the lower demand, he’d have to either make draconian cuts in expenses or start moonlighting while he waited for the next upswing in the economy.

Since we typically don’t have much to cut in the way of expenses, we painters tend to take the moonlighting route…


I’m beginning to think that painters are harming themselves by not pricing their paintings to move. Even if the work sells for less than what we feel it is worth, I think selling a painting is always a good thing: for starters we get the satisfaction of knowing somebody is appreciating our work… and they won’t appreciate it any less just because it is affordable. Also, the painting is now in someone’s home (rather than in storage at the gallery) on a wall serving as an advertisement—an advertisement we got paid for. Lastly, and more importantly for our prices, a momentum can develop… the more we sell, the more collectors we have, the larger the mailing list gets, the bigger the openings, the more demand there is for the work. Then maybe prices start to rise again but this time the rise is based on a real, honest demand that we understand and know. The prices might even go beyond what they once were in the first place (so our collectors are happy again with their investment.)

Galleries or no galleries, I think we need to adjust our thinking about this just like we are beginning to adjust our thinking about art and the Internet.

Frankly, I’m still wrestling with many of these questions myself and would be interested to hear what you think.

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Posted by Duane to On Painting at 9/23/2006 10:08:00 PM