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By and large, the making of serious, thoughtful and occasionally valuable art has become a lonely persuasion, while the marketing of art has become a boutique operation, manipulated by fashion, self-serving art scholars and the vagaries of the auction block. (Abe Ajay)
Art isn't art until it's sold. Until then it's an obsession and a storage problem. (Anonymous)
I surround myself with subjects that I wish to paint, then I find a sales channel to market those paintings. (Kenn Backhaus)
In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times, they have to. (Bruce Barton)
Do your art and forget about marketing it. You can always find somebody else to do the marketing, but you can't find somebody else to do the art. (Theresa Bayer)
Buying is a profound pleasure. (Simone de Beauvoir)
Buy old masters; they fetch a much higher price than old mistresses. (Lord Beaverbrook)
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist. (Ludwig van Beethoven)
People don't like to admit it, but it does motivate you to make work if you're selling it. There is a drive in that. (Zoe Benbow)
commerce, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E. (Ambrose Bierce)
auctioneer, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue. (Ambrose Bierce)
The best advice for artists is to separate pride from price. (Eleanor Blair)
When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree. (William Blake)
I don't like commissions and rarely take them on because I cannot see what is in the buyer's mind and heart. What is precious to them is uninspiring to me. Paint what you love. (Linda Blondheim)
Why don't we spend less on advertising and just build a better product? (Bill Boeing)
After the sweetness of low price is gone, only the bitterness of poor quality remains. (Tom Brennan)
I, too, wondered whether I could not sell something and succeed in life... Finally the idea of inventing something insincere crossed my mind and I set to work straightaway. (Marcel Broodthaers)
We have become a society where the artist is regarded as a self-indulgent superfluity, and the person who juggles stocks and shares is an essential part of the economy. (Pam Brown)
-Naked Lunch, 1959
Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. (William S. Burroughs)
Financial success as a fine artist is largely a product of time, timing and marketing – assuming of course that good art is being produced all the while. (Ken Campbell)
Today, we need to be open to all possible ways of earning a living with our art, and selling alongside the road is one way to do it. No overhead, no restrictions, no framing costs, no middle person, gallery or agent. (Susan Canavarro)
That which costs little is less valued. (Miguel De Cervantes)
Some will tell you that you are mad, and nearly all will say, "What is the use?" For we are a nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a financial return within a year. (Apsley Cherry-Garrard)
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell. (Confucius)
Those wishing to be successful in the market can't ignore the boomer numbers, the wealth and spending power they have. (Pat Conroy)
-on selling his sketches...
I don't mind parting with the corn, but not with the field in which it was raised. (John Constable)
I hope always to earn my living by my art without having ever deviated by even a hair's breadth from my principles... to please anyone or to sell more easily. (Gustave Courbet)
Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away. (Clarence Seward Darrow)
If the work is poor, the public taste will soon do it justice. And the author, reaping neither glory nor fortune, will learn by hard experience how to correct his mistakes. (Jacques-Louis David)
There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profits... All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment. (Edgar Degas)
Don't be afraid to discount. Your work is still the same value in the long run, and people will appreciate it if you are honest. (Gil Dellinger)
Sameness is what marketers want us to want. (Thomas M. Disch)
I sometimes wish I had never had to sell a painting. Every painting you make represents the time it was made and how you were feeling and what your influences were... You are never going to feel that way again, so you can never repeat it... (Peter Doig)
I'm not opposed to commerce, even though I'm an artist. (Tracey Emin)
America has become the land of "flogging." The cheap, the no-brainer - people love to buy. (Nick Farbacher)
The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated. (B. C. Forbes)
Our currency is what we are able to make. (Robert Genn)
- Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
It is the new and different that is always most vulnerable to market research. (Malcolm Gladwell)
Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails, / And honour sinks where commerce long prevails. (Oliver Goldsmith)
I love looking for things to paint, and I love painting, and I love framing them and seeing them in a gallery, but more than anything, I love to sell them. (Jack Hambleton)
Miss Cassatt was ever ready to recommend, Mr. Havemeyer to buy, and I to find a place for the pictures in our gallery. (Louisine W. Havemeyer)
The profit driven media is the controlling motive. It's a lens that we forget we are looking through even as it dominates our lives. (Margaret Henkels)
The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller not one. (George Herbert)
Beautiful art sells. If it sells itself, it is an idolatrous commodity; if it sells anything else, it is a seductive advertisement. (Dave Hickey)
As an artist, you don't stop making art because people are not buying it. (Damien Hirst)
Commerce is the only vehicle with which we measure success. It is a shabby scale for lofty purposes. (Brenda Hofreiter)
I felt landscapes would sell more readily, and not being equipped psychologically to be a teacher or commercial artist, that was important. (E. J. Hughes)
-on a series of 20 paintings which he refused to sell separately...
It was like a novel with so many chapters... At first there were no takers. But the paintings weren't bad, and I sold them. (Maqbool Fida Husain)
Commerce is the great civilizer. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
Our pictures began to find purchasers. (A. Y. Jackson)
The market is a fickle mistress and in order for the work to endure over the long haul or, in the best cases, advance the artistic language, there must be integrity that comes from deep connection with a compelling subject. (Cassandra James)
It's a lot easier and probably more productive to try and sell organic vegetables from an organic grocery store than from a hardware store. (Alar Jurma)
In the heart of every great merchant is a gifted artist. (D. H. Kahnweiler)
The market is the only critic that matters. (Walter Kirn)
It is not always the best artists that garner the greatest sales, but the best marketers of their art. (Brian Knowles)
As much as artists may hate hierarchies, they are themselves arranged in one... it's still a matter of people producing product and then attempting to market it to an appreciative public. (Brian Knowles)
We sell books, other people sell shoes. What's the difference? Publishing isn't the highest art. (Michael Korda)
-on Andy Warhol...
Although one of his long-standing fantasies was to open a house of prostitution, the fantasy role he chose for himself was that of cashier. (Jesse Kornbluth)
Artists of the world arise – it's time to dump your dealers. (Mark Kostabi)
What makes the production of my work so expensive? The whole installation thing - the construction, the objects, the technology. It really adds up. (Barbara Kruger)
If everything that you do is for the market, it won't work. (T. Allen Lawson)
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it. (Stephen Leacock)
People will buy anything that is one to a customer. (Sinclair Lewis)
Love gives itself; it is not bought. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
If all life is sacred, then the marketplace is of the same spiritual significance as the temple... (Harold Loukes)
-on Tom Thomson...
Yet to him, his most beautiful sketches were only paint. He placed no value on them. All he wanted was more paint, so that he could paint others. (J. M. MacCallum)
Only two sales were made. We didn't sell enough catalogues to make printing expenses. So it seems probable that we shall have to pay, as usual, for the privilege of giving the... public an art education. (J. E. H. MacDonald)
Look at our marketing methods... If we hold too tight, we squeeze the life from our efforts. (Nakona Macdonald)
Sales cannot be the only measure of accomplishment, and yet it is difficult to remain motivated when it always seems just beyond one's grasp. (Mary Jean Mailloux)
While artists fervently believe that the art marketplace was invented by the devil and remains in his henchman's hands, they have no choice but to carry long spoons and sup there. (Eric Maisel)
I don't think the advertisers have any real idea of their power, not only to reflect but to mold society. (Marya Mannes)
I was very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but Masterpieces. (Henri Matisse)
Goods are displayed by thousands of shopkeepers with a sense of beauty that finds no other outlet. (Mignon McLaughlin)
People don't buy art. Not really. But they do buy wine. (Hugh McLeod)
When you pay high for the priceless, you're getting it cheap. (Lord Duveen of Millbank)
Since rejection at the Salon, and despite my extremely modest prices, dealers and art lovers are turning their backs on me. It is, above all, very depressing to see the lack of interest shown in an art object which has no market value. (Claude Monet)
It would be asking too much to want to sell only to connoisseurs – that way starvation lies. (Claude Monet)
Canvases between 8 centimetres and 1 metre are priced around 25,000 francs. In the past I used to sell them from between 50 to 100 francs at the most. I have to say... that I feel somewhat embarrassed at this admission. (Claude Monet)
To expect sales is a set up for a letdown. What we create is a luxury item; no one needs a painting in order to exist. If you aren't in it just for the pure joy of doing it, you will have disappointment. (Larry Moore)
A primitive artist is an amateur whose work sells. (Grandma Moses)
When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights. (Edvard Munch)
There's a prejudice against the artist who sells his own paintings – the image of a starving painter is frequently associated to him. (Sandra Nunes)
When people asked to buy my work I always said no. I'd had this rather rarefied idea that I didn't want money going through my head while I was making work. But after the car crash I realized that none of my work was owned by anyone. After that, I grew up a bit. (Cornelia Parker)
There are countless artists whose shoes I am not worthy to polish – whose prints would not pay the printer. The question of judgment is a puzzling one. (Maxfield Parrish)
You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap. (Dolly Parton)
I regard it as a waste of time to think only of selling: one forgets one's art and exaggerates one's value. (Camille Pissarro)
Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny. (Plutarch)
No picture is made to endure, nor to live with, but it is made to sell and sell quickly. (Ezra Pound)
Selling well is not selling out. (Bob Ragland)
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason. (Ayn Rand)
The only reward one should offer an artist is to buy his work. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
While the market defines demand for art, it does not define art. (Alice Rich)
If you paint to sell you are no good. Selling is a by-product. (John W. Robichaux)
The real genius to make a marketplace flourish doesn't come from the government. It comes from the individual genius of its people. (Jim Rohn)
If you make a sale, you make a living. If you make an investment of time and good service in a customer, you can make a fortune. (Jim Rohn)
Don't bring your need to the marketplace, bring your skill. (Jim Rohn)
We get paid for bringing value to the market place. (Jim Rohn)
Look, it's my misery that I have to paint this kind of painting, it's your misery that you have to love it, and the price of the misery is thirteen hundred and fifty dollars. (Mark Rothko)
A selling artist must create complicated art in order not to be a competitor with a machine. (Yaroslaw Rozputnyak)
If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. (John Ruskin)
Auctions are bizarre combinations of slave market, trading floor, theatre and burlesque... a lot of people are going to be making a lot of excuses or maintaining that they were never part of this. (Jerry Saltz)
Bear in mind that brains and learning, like muscle and physical skill, are articles of commerce. They are bought and sold. You can hire them by the year or by the hour. The only thing in the world not for sale is character. (Antonin Scalia)
He profits most who serves best. (Arthur F. Sheldon)
Confidence and enthusiasm are the greatest sales procedures in any kind of ceremony. (O. B. Smith)
Publishing is an act of commerce. (Richard Snyder)
Everyone lives by selling something. (Robert Louis Stevenson)
The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing. (Irving Stone)
But the jingling of the guinea, helps the hurt that honour feels. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Everyone is in the business of customer satisfaction. Who are your customers and how are they doing? (Brian Tracy)
Dead art sells better, and I'm not feeling well. (Ron Ukrainetz)
Auction goods stay a bargain as at least one serious bidder always misses out. (Milos Vujasinovic)
Never sell a work of which you are not proud to say "I painted that!" If you sell a "dog" it will always come back to bite you. (Robert Wade)
Success is what sells. (Andy Warhol)
Great design will not sell an inferior product, but it will enable a great product to achieve its maximum potential. (Thomas J. Watson, Sr.)
Fortunately, I had the teaching in the schools... to keep me, and I painted as I wished. Otherwise I'd have had to paint what the people wanted. (W. P. Weston)
-on pricing his work...
I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
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