No,it merely means that low ticket items need to have appropriate venues and modes of marketing. It does become a matter of the tail wagging the dog when the venues are themselves so high priced that they extend the aura of quality to anything in them. Or the reverse for low priced venues. A well known marketing strategy is to place high-priced merchandise among lower priced merchandise, not to sell the expensive stuff but to enhance the appeal and "bargains" of the lower priced stuff that often looks like the higher priced stuff. It's called the "loss leader" strategy. With artworks, the tendency is to put it all into fancy, expensive selling venues because the artwork itself can't embody monetized value and relies on associated values like expensive venues, "name" artists, and the like. Conversely, if a Rembrandt painting were to be displayed for sale at an outdoor art fair, what interest or price would it attract? Unlike almost anything else -- except religious relics perhaps, artworks have cash value only through an elaborate "smoke and mirrors" magic.
wc ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, October 22, 2010 3:31:42 AM Subject: Re: "The works of art, by being publicly exhibited and offered for sale, are becoming articles of trade, following as such the unreasoning laws of markets and fashion; and public and even private patronage is swayed by their tyrannical influence." On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 11:08 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: > One dealer once told me that he couldn't afford to put low priced prints on > his galley walls because those walls had to > earn him so much a month to cover his costs. Doesn't that indicate that capitalism raises the stakes by having the high-ticket items eventually push out the low-t. i.?
