Consider a well crafted, aesthetically pleasing object like A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child by Renaissance master painter Titian. Quoting an article from Reuters magazine written in 2011, it “was the top-priced work during a week of Old Master sales at Sotheby’s and rival Christie’s,” selling for almost 15 million euro. 

Now compare Titian’s prominent masterpiece — a work that hadn’t even been publicly shown in the past 30 years and which only changed ownership 4 times during its 450 years of existence — with Jackson Pollock’s No. 5.

Both of course are prominent painters, both now dead so no new works will ever be created, and both shared seats at the vanguard of artistic development during their lifetimes. But the Pollock, even though looking like an illustration made by a sentient liver, about how years of alcoholism must feel, sold for about 123 million euro.

Art is obviously subjective and its prices even more so, but the big question is: If Pollock’s work was more than 8 times as expensive as Titians, does that mean it’s also 8x better? And if so, better at what?

While most of us emerging or mid-career artists tend to listen to people telling us how we should shape our prices (even I have a video on the topic), the real problem may not even lay in deciding between 800€ and 2000€ or even 5000€, but the idea and intentions behind our work and the strength of our personal brand and ultimately our connections.

If anyones intentions are to sell beautiful paintings of landscapes, flowers, cars and other well crafted wall furniture as the higher ups of art might call it, the prices of course should be inline with other craftsmen and craftswomen, because the market will sincerely like quality for a reasonable price — it always does. 

But most of us can’t compete by being the IKEA of the art world, because we may lack the time and resources to do so, or just wouldn’t like our work to be commoditised into a 50€ Etsy sale, shipping included. On the other hand to everyone who is thinking about playing in the big league, such prices will never be enough to even get a parking space at the event, let alone a back row ticket to the show.

Beauty, like value, is perceived by the observer and we ought to find some answers in the art market for this seemingly impossible conundrum. We’ll start by exploring the different levels of the art market and the question of how value is created. More on this in tomorrows blog.