Mind your Ps & Qs
The importance of Pricing, Promotion and Quality sales techniques in marketing your fine art
By Dottie Carlson
A few years ago, a comedy series (I think it was "Friends") televised an episode that might not have been so funny to the artists who were watching. One of the actors played the part of a frustrated young artist. "The only time paintings are priced high enough to give an artist a decent livelihood is after he's dead," he complained to his girlfriend.
Then he had what he thought was a brilliant idea: He would announce to the world that he had died. With the help of his friends, he managed to stage his own funeral, complete with newspaper obituaries, mortuary, casket, and mourners. Of course, all the gallery owners in town were invited to attend. While the artist held his breath, they stood by his casket wondering how much they would be able to raise the prices of his paintings, now that he was no longer among the living.
Before the show ended, the artist's death had been exposed for the hoax it was, and the prices of his paintings plummeted back to their pre-death level, not enough to give him a living wage. The artists in the TV audience probably sighed in unison, sorry he had not been able to pull it off.
Only a small number of people are blessed with true artistic talent, and very few of them ever find a way to make a reasonable living from it. Ask the dean of almost any art school and you'll hear the same thing: Art has always been among the lowest paying professions, so you shouldn't count on it to support yourself and your loved ones.
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