Hello World!

I'm using my first-ever blog to muse aloud about the amount of money people will pay for an item of "art".

After two long and satisfying non-art careers I have recently started identifying myself as an artist, and my chosen medium is photography. However I'm scratching my head about what prices to ask for my photographic images and prints.

Art can take many forms (sculpture, painting, music, photography etc.) and although you and I and our neighbors will have many different views about what art really means, we'd probably all agree that art is always the product of someone's hard work and creativity. I applaud creativity. It's one of those wonderful human abilities that distinguishes us from the other animals with which we share this fragile globe.

But I really do wonder if we artists should sell the products of our creativity at such high prices? People in the sophisticated and long established world of high art will argue that "the market rules", so the price of a piece of art may simply climb as high as the highest bidder is prepared to pay for it ... but, surely, when we look at it from a global, whole-world perspective, isn't it (the art market) badly flawed? Distorted? Twisted? Wierdly blinkered?

The obvious follow-up question in my mind is - should we ask the artist to limit the amount of money for which he or she will sell their work? Or should we insist that the art market stops prices drifting into the stratosphere?

What do you think?

Colin