How does an artist price her/ his work? I get this question a lot, specifically pertaining to the market prices for illustration work. If you don't have an agent who knows the ins and outs of what is happening with the market fees for the illustration genre, and you're billing clients on your own, I suggest you get a copy of the most recent Ethical Guide to Pricing by the Graphic Arts Guild. They put out a new volume every year to keep up with the current pricing trends. Even so, you should learn that you can negotiate with clients to bump up the fees once you become more established.
For artists selling their work within any fine art venue (including conferences), the answer is a bit more complex. If you don't live in New York or some other fashionable big city where art is a serious commodity, prices that you can expect for your work will be a lot lower. And prices will be different in the US than in Europe, so be prepared to do a little homework before you put your tag on it. If you're working within a gallery setting, the owner will more than likely be able to offer you some guidance if you need help.
I want to thank collector and art sales guru, Jane Frank, for taking the time to write to me and for her generous advice on the subject of pricing and haggling. (Some of her thoughts on negotiating are loosely transcribed into the latter portion of this entry.)
Artists usually have *some* idea of what they want for a work of art, but let's face it, most artists tend to value the work from a place of sentimentality and that's precisely where there's room for haggling. Sentimental value may be as good a method as any in determining what the market will bear. If the work is of some quality and price is too low, the work will be quickly snatched up. Yet even a low price won't move "poor" quality work*. Where the work is of good quality but priced too high, there exists an opportunity for both parties. "Ugh!" you say; "I hate to have to haggle for my work!" Many artists, indeed, prefer not to discuss it at all, having a rigid take-it-or-leave-it stance. But with the right mindset, you can make a sale where you might not have otherwise, for a price that is still reasonable to both you and the buyer. I was happy to learn that this negotiating process can include fun banter --and no personal insults pertaining to the messy birth of camels on beds. It goes something like this:
Let's say that the art in question is priced at $400.
Buyer: "I don't want to pay your price. Can you do better, or is your price firm?"
Neutral Artist response: "What did you have in mind?"
Motivated Artist: "Make me a fair offer, and it's yours."
Very Motivated Artist: "Make me an offer I can't refuse."
Artist's Banter: If you want more info before committing, add - "Are you really serious about buying?" or "Are you ready to buy now? / Is there some price that would make you buy it now, on the spot?"
Jane says: You can prolong this agony as long as you like, but bear in mind, some buyers hate negotiating, and others love it and will keep you at it all day
Timid Buyer (or one just never wanting to pay retail): "I'm not sure", or "I don't know; whatever you can do." (ie. no offer)
Aggressive Buyer: "How about $250?" (40%)
Very Aggressive Buyer: "How about $200?" (half)
Yikes. What to do next?
Buyer's Banter: The buyer is sidestepping making an offer because then they could see what the artist would do, gauging how much the artist cared about the piece, prolonging the negotiations in the hope of learning more.
Assuming you are not accepting the $250 or $200:
Artist response to Timid Buyer: "I'll go as low as $360." (10%). If he's bought other pieces before, or buying more than one, $340, (15%)
To Aggressive Buyer: "Let's split the difference ($325)."
To Very Aggressive Buyer with whom you don't mind going another round: "Oh dear, that's harsh; you're killing me; wow, I wish I could," etc., etc. "How about $350?"
Jane says, NOTICE: The next natural step up for buyer is $250, and you are back to $325 on the last step, or the 'split' If you do mind going another round, you can call it quits now and "split the difference;" you get $300. Notice that you end up with less by capitulating one round short. An aggressive buyer is counting on the artist to be a 'wimp', and not go all the way for fear of losing the sale.
Jane's Point #1: Remember to never negotiate with yourself. You have no idea what the buyer's best offer would be and you're pricing blindly when you automatically lower your price to what you think the buyer would be willing to pay. Only lower your price after you've wrangled an offer from the other side first, and only to 10%. No more than that: they haven't earned it, or worked for it. You will almost always have a better chance of successfully completing a sale, or come away with more from a sale, if you force a buyer to make an offer. But even at the worst extreme, it gives you the power to either accept, counter, or walk away. While volunteering to lower the price without an offer gets you nowhere, especially when half of the time, the buyer will say "Hmm, ok; I'll think about it."
Jane's Point #2: Don't be intimidated by a slick negotiator who tells you stories about what they paid for other artists' work. Your art is your own unique product and cannot be compared price-wise. Your job is to get the buyer to pay more than he wanted to pay, all the while selling the work for less than you wanted to accept. That indefinable, exact place of pain and pleasure-- less than you thought you would get and more than you thought they would pay-- is where you want to be, every time you negotiate.
Great advice! Thanks again, Ms. Frank! Try out these negotiating tips next time you're at a conference or show, then write to me and let me know how well it worked.
*"Quality" standards for works of art and the subsequent valuation placed upon them are entirely dependent on the buyer / collector / genre and venue. Really.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
The Brand Cage
Several times a year, I put my work in solo or multi-artist shows. It keeps me on my toes as an incentive for generating new work outside of my commissioned illustration work. Almost without fail, somebody asks me how long it took for me to make "X" piece of art. I usually first ask whether they are a student or serious painter, but I can usually already tell. This bean-counter has a certain look about their face. I can see their brain gearing up to crunch the numbers to determine whether the price I have set is in accordance to their preconceived notions about what they think artists should make per hour or per image; it's an amount that is usually stacked against what they themselves make.
My usual response is that it took me 40 years.
In an excellent e-flux article (online art journal) about the political economy of art, contributor, Anton Vidokle, at one point writes about James Abbot McNeil Whistler's libel suit against John Ruskin. Ruskin took Whistler to task in an 1878 review, claiming that Whistler's price for his painting, Nocturne in Black and Gold, was too high a price to ask for a painting that looked so hastily done. Ruskin's argument is that art should be cheap and only reflect the actual time it took to make it. He was suggesting that artists be paid a labor wage for their work based upon an outdated mode of art production, the Guild structure. Asked by the lawyers in the libel suit why he was charging that amount for his painting, Whistler's response was singularly apt: he said that his price reflected the knowledge he had gained over a lifetime of study and practice.
Previous generations of artists who worked as craftsmen within the old European Guild structure relied upon patrons and sponsors to legitimize the work and determine its value. Whistler's libel suit was but one sign of a paradigm shift away from this hierarchical structure under which artists have traditionally labored. Bohemian artists of all kinds, no longer bound to the labor wage construct of the Guild declared a divorce from the bourgeois status quo. Artists began their own collectives and their own shows, and often held down other non-art-related jobs that paid the bills. Freed economically and ideologically from the institution of the salon, too, artists could then begin to experiment with style and content in a way that they couldn't before.
There is a modern counterpart happening in today's illustration field. The huge industry that is Publishing is faltering and shifting hard under the weight of the digital onslaught, and fees for art have gone way down. To compete with dwindling opportunities, some artists have scrambled to "brand" themselves as quickly as they can so that they look professional, as marketable, ready to hawk their product at the most competitive fees possible. With their 30-second elevator pitches memorized, brand-ready students fresh out of art programs are chomping at the bit at a chance to work for a labor wage. Do you think the "brand" as a business model is the milieu for inspiration and creativity? Do Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons spring to mind? Branding just makes it harder for artists to become untied from the corporate art industries upon which they have had to rely for their livelihoods.
However, in the next ten years the Publishing Industry (or what it was traditionally) will be gone, but the recent "branding" strategy that the Market has pushed many artists and small publishing houses into doing will remain. We can observe that the branding spree has created very segregated genres within the illustration field (ie. the very specific look of the children's market), but we can observe this very same phenomenon within the fine art markets too. I can't tell you how often I have gone to a conference or show only to think that I've seen all of the work before. The markets have their own "look" to them, and artists think that they must tailor their work to fit the market trends and not the other way around. Sadly, this is indeed, the case when it comes to these institutions: conform or be cast out. We have abandoned the bohemian mode in favor of professionalism, marketability, easy categorization, and consumability.
This branding is troubling. Once there in that pigeonhole, if you want to stretch your wings, there's no way out except via a major overhaul. Imagine having a brilliant insight into your work that dramatically changes your style or content overnight. Then what? Do you take five years to gradually shift your work so that it better reflects your ideas? The markets's tight genre structure means that you will still lose those clients/ buyers whether you do it quickly or over a period of time.
Refraining from branding just means that your cage isn't as tight. Perhaps it's time to ask whether the structure itself is at all conducive to real creativity.
My usual response is that it took me 40 years.
In an excellent e-flux article (online art journal) about the political economy of art, contributor, Anton Vidokle, at one point writes about James Abbot McNeil Whistler's libel suit against John Ruskin. Ruskin took Whistler to task in an 1878 review, claiming that Whistler's price for his painting, Nocturne in Black and Gold, was too high a price to ask for a painting that looked so hastily done. Ruskin's argument is that art should be cheap and only reflect the actual time it took to make it. He was suggesting that artists be paid a labor wage for their work based upon an outdated mode of art production, the Guild structure. Asked by the lawyers in the libel suit why he was charging that amount for his painting, Whistler's response was singularly apt: he said that his price reflected the knowledge he had gained over a lifetime of study and practice.
Previous generations of artists who worked as craftsmen within the old European Guild structure relied upon patrons and sponsors to legitimize the work and determine its value. Whistler's libel suit was but one sign of a paradigm shift away from this hierarchical structure under which artists have traditionally labored. Bohemian artists of all kinds, no longer bound to the labor wage construct of the Guild declared a divorce from the bourgeois status quo. Artists began their own collectives and their own shows, and often held down other non-art-related jobs that paid the bills. Freed economically and ideologically from the institution of the salon, too, artists could then begin to experiment with style and content in a way that they couldn't before.
There is a modern counterpart happening in today's illustration field. The huge industry that is Publishing is faltering and shifting hard under the weight of the digital onslaught, and fees for art have gone way down. To compete with dwindling opportunities, some artists have scrambled to "brand" themselves as quickly as they can so that they look professional, as marketable, ready to hawk their product at the most competitive fees possible. With their 30-second elevator pitches memorized, brand-ready students fresh out of art programs are chomping at the bit at a chance to work for a labor wage. Do you think the "brand" as a business model is the milieu for inspiration and creativity? Do Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons spring to mind? Branding just makes it harder for artists to become untied from the corporate art industries upon which they have had to rely for their livelihoods.
However, in the next ten years the Publishing Industry (or what it was traditionally) will be gone, but the recent "branding" strategy that the Market has pushed many artists and small publishing houses into doing will remain. We can observe that the branding spree has created very segregated genres within the illustration field (ie. the very specific look of the children's market), but we can observe this very same phenomenon within the fine art markets too. I can't tell you how often I have gone to a conference or show only to think that I've seen all of the work before. The markets have their own "look" to them, and artists think that they must tailor their work to fit the market trends and not the other way around. Sadly, this is indeed, the case when it comes to these institutions: conform or be cast out. We have abandoned the bohemian mode in favor of professionalism, marketability, easy categorization, and consumability.
This branding is troubling. Once there in that pigeonhole, if you want to stretch your wings, there's no way out except via a major overhaul. Imagine having a brilliant insight into your work that dramatically changes your style or content overnight. Then what? Do you take five years to gradually shift your work so that it better reflects your ideas? The markets's tight genre structure means that you will still lose those clients/ buyers whether you do it quickly or over a period of time.
Refraining from branding just means that your cage isn't as tight. Perhaps it's time to ask whether the structure itself is at all conducive to real creativity.
Nothing New Under The Sun
We've all heard it before: You must be Unique! You must be Original! If someone doesn't actually say it to our face that we're not being unique or original, we still feel the admonishment internally. Some are more blunt: I showed some recent work to some students and one slyly asked whether I was worried that what I was doing wasn't completely "unique." It's what's drilled into our artists's brains: If we can't be totally unique and original, then we're slackers, failures.
Well, I've got news for you. There are no new ideas. Really. Images can't be created that have no other contextual source. Just try doing it. What we as humans visually ingest on this planet, and can dream about, has been filtered through a brain and a consciousness that has a common DNA structure and origin. However, what can be quite new are innovative juxtapositions and connections that hadn't been made before.
You may be decried as a plagiarist if you copy someone else's style directly, but this is only something to worry about if you're selling your work "professionally" as an illustrator or fine artist. Stealing from one artist may be considered plagiarism; however, stealing from many is considered art. This method of synthesizing influences is what makes a style unique. Therefore, a student should feel free to copy, copy, and then copy some more. Take everything that inspires you and run with it. Your style will be generated where your ambitions collide with your skill level and this changes and shifts over a lifetime. So many young artists fret about "not yet having a style." You should worry more about not having any ideas.
But what about the "professional" artist? You have probably already seen these two images together: Michelangelo's Prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-1512), and Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter (May 1943 issue) for The Saturday Evening Post:
Dude looks like a lady...
Make me a sandwich...?
So does an artist ever stop "stealing" from other artists? Not really. If you want to continue to grow and make your practice sustainable, you will need to keep experimenting with new styles, foreign designs, and taking risks with new ways of thinking. So don't just borrow and skim ideas. You will really need to try them on and perhaps buy them. And then don't be afraid to break them.
Hey, just so you know, I was partially inspired to write this blog entry from the writer and artist, Austin Kleon. Buy his amazing book, Steal Like An Artist and get inspired. (:
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