artrant

What the fuck is up with artists charging so much damn cheddar for their mediocre works of art? Today at lunch I visited the local arts council facility to pay for access to their (mediocre, but with free chemicals) darkroom, and took a spin around their gallery. They have, usually, 3-4 artists exhibiting at once for about a month at a time. 75% of it is pretty mediocre, which is fine with me, until I see that some fucktard wants me to pay $400 for their 16"x20" piece of mediocrity. Seriously, asswipe, I don't care how much you spent on oils to paint that crap, it ain't worth it. I mean, this one woman wanted you to pay $150 for a copy of one of her abstract goauche paintings. A copy. Like, a photograph of a painting that wasn't that good to being with. And someone else was charging, ahem, $800 for an 8"x10" black and white photograph that wasn't anything special. I know how much it costs to print an black and white photo that size, and it ain't $800.


It's hard to put all of the blame on the individual artist, as there seems to be a prevading bug of idiocy infecting anyone who decides to make art of any kind at any skill level, manifesting itself generally in the following thought pattern: "I have made art, therefore it must be worth at least $150." 99% of the art for sale I've seen locally, including the stuff people put up on the walls in coffeeshops, has been at least that much. And the higher the price, the less good the art seems. "Oh, that cliched nude was almost endearing until I realized the person painting it thinks its so good that they can make some poor suck pay $300 for it."

I've had an ongoing fantasy about starting a collective of folks that sells art cheap. Like, $50 max, and it better be really big or really good to charge that much. Kind of like these people, except without the cheesy manifesto and dubious claims to inventing the Cheap Art Movement.