why anti-art? (slightly ot ranrish)

[Celebrim]

We live in a world were art - arguably high quality art - is mass produced and consequently sold at fairly low prices. Art is everywhere today.

I am aware how much art supplies cost. I am aware how much time and effort goes into the production of a peice of art. I am aware of the cost of framing. I consequently understand why a hand made painting of a local artist must be sold for several hundred dollars if that artist is to make any money for his labor at all.

What I in general don't understand is why a local artist should expect anyone to want to pay several hundred dollars for a peice of work which has no private meaning to the buyer and is of reutine quality in a world filled with thousands of local artists - especially painters and photographers - of reasonably good quality. I mean really, as an economic decision, do you get a reprint of a work by an artist of national or world renown for $40 bucks, or do you get a painting that looks like it might have been painted by your Aunt the hobby painter (and face it there are alot of good hobby painters) for $400 dollars? Do you get a reproduction of some peice of art having alot of personal meaning to you, usually in todays world by way of popular culture, for $40 bucks or do spend $550 for something which obviously has alot of personal meaning to the artist but which doesn't mean much of anything to you? Do you hang on your walls the hobby art of your Aunt/Cousin/Brother-In-Law which at least has some shared meaning between that person and yourself (and which you likely got for free as a wedding/birthday/Christmas gift), or do you hang the professional art of a stranger which may or may not be of marginally superior quality?

And this last part is I think a critical point. In 'modern art' movements, artists are schooled to believe that the purpose of thier art is to please themselves. The problem seems particularly bad to me among painters. They are apparantly taught to personally express themselves according to thier own tastes and desires and secret meanings. That is fine - and I'm sure it is very satisfying - but, I don't understand how that relates to being successful in the profession of artist. The real artists that I admire are 'sell outs', who do work on commision intended to have great meaning to the buyer or the buyer's target audience. Historical artists of great fame were often 'sell outs', working on portraits and other works which had private meaning to the patron that employed them. Does this lesson the value or beauty of thier works? Only after an artist has proven his ability to 'sell me on something' would I be remotely interested in buying art that was about what the artist felt or wanted. First make me care, then worry about making private art.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

The problem is that art is a unnecessary luxury. Personally, I'd happily pay for an RPG with no art at all. If it does include art, cool, a freebie, but I don't want to shell out any extra cash for it. And if it does include art, I'll either praise or criticize the selections, as appropriate.

Just a friendly FYI-

In the one marketing study the hobby has had, 80% of all purchases were impulse buys (remember, EN World is a very small subset of RPGers). Almost all of those purchases were made based on the cover art.

I know some people like to say "90% of all statistics are crap", but the fact remains that buyers as a whole want great looking cover art and the distributors and vendors want great looking interior art (they see it as an indicator of follow-up sales).

So the RPG publishers really don't have much of a choice. If they sell a bound sheaf of paper with no art, they aren't going to get any sales.

 

[Umbran]

I know some people like to say "90% of all statistics are crap",

Hey, it's merely a trivial corollary to Sturgeon's Law - "90% of everything is crud"

 

[Reprisal]

Once an artist decides to sell his or her work on the open market that art is now (or at least should be) subject to market forces. As many have stated or agreed with, part of the trouble with art is that it's value is fairly subjective after we figure in the cost of labour and materials.

Barring that, I remember someone stating that a piece of art should cost materials, plus labour. This, I agree with, but at the same time, the example of a week has me somewhat skeptical. Is that a 40 hour work week? Did this particular piece take 40 hours to complete? Then it most certainly would cost [Materials + (Wage * Hours)] but I'd have to take issue with the artist on how long a particular piece takes to finish.

For example, I do not believe that the period of drying (for a painting) should be included in the price, because the artist isn't actually doing anything at this point. If we're approaching art from the standpoint of any other job, that artist should be working on another piece while the first one dries. This is simply for the sake of efficiency.

Essentially, I'm saying that if you want to work in your chosen field for a living, it should probably be a truly full-time endeavour. That means 8 hours a day and five days a week (taking things like breaks, lunch and holidays into account). To be honest, I don't see many artists doing this sort of thing -- but my experience is essentially limited, so please enlighten me if this is somehow different.

I think the question everyone should be asking is "What should the base wage rate of any given artist?"

Obviously, an artist should take as much as s/he can get without gouging the client, but barring that, what should it be? No experience and no certification? Minimum wage -- to start at least. College or University degree in Fine Arts? Probably something higher -- which would then go up.

Once the basic wage is determined, we must them subject it to the whims of the market. Commercial art is a buyer's market. If you ask too high a price, you obviously won't get many orders -- you'll get some, but probably not much to get by on. Therefore, all one really needs to do is try to determine the equilibrium price based on supply and demand.

Doing so in practice is rather difficult, but generally speaking, in order to make a living wage producing art, you need to churn it out at a rate or more than one per week, to be certain. It's like any other industry in that the winner is generally the one that can produce the most for the lower price.

Efficiency is the key. If you really want to make a living producing art, or writing fiction, or what-have-you, you need to be prepared to do your best as quickly as you can... Doing so will hopefully keep supply and demand up at an acceptable level so as to make the price of each piece affordable, but also able to support your livelihood.

Of course, it's probably much easier in theory than it is in practice. But, please, don't look down your nose at artists that have embraced this ideology. They've determined that it's better for them to produce what the people want, rather than what the High Arts Establishment decides is "Art." I personally think that these people should be commended for their industriousness, it seems that they would be the most likely to be able to live off their artistic skills (unless you win the Fine Arts lottery known as "High Art" or whatever the acceptable name for it is... Modern Art?)

Yeah, I'm a capitalist dog,

- Rep.

 

[arwink]

Essentially, I'm saying that if you want to work in your chosen field for a living, it should probably be a truly full-time endeavour. That means 8 hours a day and five days a week (taking things like breaks, lunch and holidays into account). To be honest, I don't see many artists doing this sort of thing -- but my experience is essentially limited, so please enlighten me if this is somehow different.

Return to my first post in this thread. Yours is the predominant "not a real job" approach non-artists seem to have towards artists.

Allow me to point out - it's very, very different.

I know a lot of artists. They don't get time off. They work a lot longer hours than nearly anyone else I know. Some of them make money of their work. Had they gone into another field and worked the same kind of hours, even something as low paying as waiting or retail, they'd be making way more than they do now.

 

[WayneLigon]

because a person cannot afford a piece does not make it appropriate or polite to ciriticize their price structure. especially when it seems that most posters of this sort have absolutely no idea of the materials time and training it takes to make these pieces.

... i find it shocking that a community that contains memebers who will frequently pay $2-8 for a machine cast piece of lead or plastic ...

...point out some fo the rude things said in doc midnights thread.

I think that another poster hit it on the head with 'perceived value'. I don't think it's rude to say 'I think $50-100 is too much for what I'm seeing'. It's NICE work, too. No doubt or arguement about that. It's very nice. I wouldn't mind him doing a picture for me, but not at that price. I don't perceive it as having that level of value to me. Some others obviously feel different.

I certainly don't recommend 'giving it away', either. An artist, writer, whatever should charge what the market will bear. It's just that I won't bear it. I haven't bought a number of d20 books for that very reason. Yes, I've read posts and such about why prices are so high, etc. It's just that, for me, many products have priced themselves out of my range.

'Materials cost'. I suppose I'm too used to people who create artwork entirely online. I never think of materials cost since I assume there is none.

Then, my perception of value received for money spent is off-base anyway-- I beleive I mentioned that in the Dr. Midnight thread; I'll be 40 in about six months and I find myself continually astounded at not only the prices of some things but also that people will pay them. I know prices have gone up, all too well aware of it, but I still cannot shake the idea that somewhere, someone is fleecing me. And the idea that some people value their time way, way too highly.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

WayneLigon,

How do you feel about PDFs? To keep it on the topic of the thread, how do you feel about the artwork in PDFs? Worth it or no?

 

[Celebrim]

I think the basic problem is that there is a surplus of artists. More people become artists than the market will bear, driving the perceived value of art down below the level of the cost of producing such art. The actual number of buyers of art is probably quite small, especially so since art is often an incidental feature of some other commodity that we purchase. Books have covers with visual imagery. RPG tomes are filled with various illustrations. Every player of CCG's is a collector of art. Movies contain flashy art and imagery. Advertising is filled with art. Magazines are filled with advertising. Even the ordinary objects of life which we buy at a discount store are in some way artistic. We are surrounded with art, and it should be no surprise that the average persons need for art is satisfied by his common experience of the world arround him to the extent that he will not spend a large sum to purchase art for art's sake.

Given the constraints of my budget, I would count myself in that category. And supposing that I did have a budget of 10's of thousands of dollars to spend on original art, it would not be on the sort of art being produced by your average artist. It would be lithographs for early Sci-Fi conventions, cover art for comic books, the original paintings for certain magic cards, the original works of Ted Naismith, assorted movie and cartoon art, and so forth. In other words, peices which had significant personal meaning to me and which carried a certain prestige value amongst the people I most often choose as friends. Why I or anyone should care particularly for another oil painting of a landscape I do not recognize is beyond me.

 

[kkoie]

It doesn't matter what price artists charge. People would complain. Your average Joe just doesn't understand that when you are buying a piece of art, it is not the same thing as buying a Big Mac down the street at McDonalds. They don't understand that when they spend say $50 or $100 for a custom illustration, that they are paying for more than just the paper, paint, and time it took to create the piece. And quite frankly, to try and explain to an average joe that theres more to a piece of art than the materials and time spent making it, in more than a few sentances, is more trouble than its worth. At least for me it is.

There is no such thing as 'base market price' for a piece of art, or any formula or table one consults. The only reason why people even give a specific price for their services is because they have too, not because they consulted the 'How to Price Art fairly' book.

For example, I have art, that if someone really was interested, sure I'd put a pricetag on it. And at the same time, I have pieces of art, that I spent half the time and effort creating (not to mention materials) that I'd never part with, regardless of how much someone was willing to offer.

So instead of people asking 'gee why is it so expensive' they should ask 'do I want it?' If they do, then pay, if they don't, then clam up and move on. Whining about price isn't going to get you anywhere.

Until 'Joe' understands that, then 'Joe' is going to continue to complain.

 

[Celebrim]

kkoie: I don't think I remotely resemble 'average Joe' in either intelligence, education, culture, or life experience, but to be entirely frank - I don't understand what more that there is to art than the materials, time, and skill that went into producing it. It is ridiculous to assert that there is no such thing as a 'market price' for art. I know for a fact that there is a 'market price' for the written word - so many cents per word, so many dollars for an article of a certain length. I know for a fact that when visual art is commisioned, that rates and fees are set by the prevailing rates that are standard in the industry which hires the artist. I know that there is a market price for the cost of contracting a recording artist, or for bringing that artist to a local venue for a concert. I know for a fact that architects work according to standard rates and fees used throughout their industry. The fee paid to the artist may vary according to the demand for that artists work, but certainly there are standard fees paid to an artist for a 'gig'. Why should one particular kind of art be different not only from all other kinds of commodities, but also from all other kinds of art? Why should 'artist' be different than any other kind of tradesman?

You say yourself that there are works you have produced which you will not part with for any price. Do you think it unfair of me to think then that you are valuing your art by a personal standard having little to do with making a living as an artist?