Oil Painting by David Teniers the Younger, about 1643 — Price on Request.
How To Make $1 Million Selling Fine Art That You Don’t Own? Nothing could be simpler. You’ll need at least a smartphone of some sort — an Android will do just fine in most areas of the local planet, although they work best back home, on Delta 55a. Of course they don’t work on any of the L3 levels, including 15a, because telepathics don’t tend to invent the telephone. Gosh, it hasn’t been more than a few seconds, and already I’ve wandered far off-subject…oh, yeh…selling $1 Million worth of fine art, that’s right…
So… you want to sell fine art, eh? And you wouldn’t mind making $1 Million with someone else’s fine art stockroom, too, right? And if you donate some of that $1 Million for the Ashram, you’ve got a triple-win. I’ve got the art, you’ve got the motivation and the skills, so okay, let’s get right down to basics. Here’s exactly how it’s done:
You need a client, a buyer. If you decide to sell the art as a charity fund-raiser, you can tell the client that’s what you’re doing, or not, as you prefer. Some buyers would rather buy art from a scalper than help a nonprofit, so you’ll often have to decide “on the moment”, what approach to use. Personally, I’d just as soon they think I’m a mercenary art dealer (art dealers are often confused with other “dealers”, so don’t be surprised if your customer wants to meet you in a dark alley somewhere. I prefer meeting in neutral ground, just as if you’re breaking up with or meeting a Significant Other.
Oh, gosh, I’ve left a “GOK” in that previous paragraph. “GOK” is a professional psychiatric term (I’m not kidding about this) which translates to “God Only Knows”. “Significant Other” refers to one’s boyfriend or girlfriend, and I imagine might also refer to a pet. Some folks are real lonely. Clearly, they don’t get out too often. By “out”, I of course mean “Out”.
Okay, enough chit-chat. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Oy. I just committed another editorial faux-pas (I won’t explain faux-pas — look it up). The word “Oy” is Yiddish (what some Eastern European and American Jews say instead of the slightly more common American English term, “sheesh”.
Believe me, when I started this Blog, I had no idea it would develop into a lesson in Common English Usage and Patois. Uh, oh…I’ve done it again. “Patois” is a French…oh, forget it…let’s get on with the art sales lesson.
Actually, that was the art sales lesson. I’ll explain.
When you’re presenting fine art directly to an end-user, which means you’re NOT talking to a professional decorator or interior designer, you’re talking to someone who pays others to know what they don’t want to bother to know.
Your art client will not typically really want to know anything about the artist, the art or the art market. What they want and expect from you is something on their wall (don’t even try to sell sculpture to the public — they either have no place to put it or they do, but don’t know where that might be).
That “something” on the wall must meet several expectations and requirements.
1. It makes all their friends and relatives totally jealous and envious of them.
2. The art or the artist must be instantly recognizable by anyone who walks in the door, including refrigerator repairmen, roofers, electricians, carpenters and plumbers. I know that’s asking a lot, but that’s the way it is, so you’re reduced to a half-dozen immediately recognizable Big Names.
3. The art has to be a bargain. This means you do have to introduce the fact that there’s an “art market” and that the really serious art is traded exactly like stocks, bonds, rare coins, rare books and rare antiques. In other words, there’s a “Blue Book Price” for virtually any important work of art. In the print world, that’d be Gordon’s Price Index, which every print dealer uses as a reference for price and availability (scarcity).
4. The artwork must be both unique and commonplace, meaning that it has to look like the most commonly known and appreciated form of that artist’s work. You won’t do well with Picasso prints outside the standard “Lawrence Welk” range of prints, meaning it must look like Jacqueline or sit on in a bin forever.
5. The art will be unframed when they first see it. Why? Because no two buyers like the same frame, that’s why. No point charging the customer for two frames and a double framing job, right? So “unframed” is going to mean that your customer has to try to appreciate it “in the raw”, and frankly, in my experience, they won’t. They have to see it framed AND IN PLACE on their wall, exactly where it’s going to be, and they have to have their friends exclaiming how incredible (sorry for the 20th century slip — I of course meant “awesome”, akin to the sight of two colliding galaxies) the art is, and how lucky you are, which of course means that they envy you, which is the whole idea.
6. The art must be more valuable right now than the price paid, and must show potential for great profit in the near future, perhaps even later today. This of course is not only ridiculous, but very unlikely, although accidents happen, and the artwork might somehow achieve greatness in spite of everything, and not only is it highly unlikely that you or they will guess right about the future value of the artwork, but it’s illegal to try to convince someone that you have a crystal ball into the future value of any artwork. You don’t and can’t. Public taste is like genetic sporting. You can’t outguess it; don’t even try. All the Market Mavens of the past century have been dead wrong every time they tried to call the shots for the future of any art or artist. The Greed Factor can be converted (this is the true meaning of “Conversion”) into a desire to do something for the Greater Good, to leave a legacy for future generations by assembling a collection and donating it to their favorite museum.
7. The art must be rare, but not too rare. Most folks are reluctant to own anything really important, because they have a very low self-esteem — money is no cure for that.
8. The presentation must be limited to 3 items unless it’s a collection. You have about 20 seconds to secure the sale from the time you start the pitch. If you haven’t seen a bright smile on your client’s face by then, you’ve probably lost the sale. It’s not about the art, it’s about how much the client likes and trusts you. My advice is to always be worthy of that trust.
9. The artwork should enhance the space into which it’s going. If you don’t know how to do this, you need to take my “Art Marketing Course” for professional artists and art sellers, who are sometimes both. One piece of important advice — never sell your own art. You’ll end up giving it away. Why? Because there’s no owner or boss to ask for a discount, it’s all on you, and if you say “no”, you’re automatically a rat, which is the job of the art dealer, to be a rat and insist on the full retail price or nothing. The artist is not trained for an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with a reluctant buyer, and will invariably break and run before the customer does, and some of the more brittle and aggressive buyers will know this and advantage themselves of it, and in the end, you won’t know what just happened there.
10. The sale must be quick and painless. How I handle this is I will talk about the art and the artist for about five minutes, then I’ll ask if there’s anything else they need to know about the art or artist. I’m of the Old School opinion that the best sale is made in the home with the art in place on the client’s wall, framed the way they like it and ready to show. How exactly this is accomplished is the subject of my art selling course; it takes about 48 hours of training before you can get this right.
Now comes the hard part. Where do you get $1 Million worth of art at wholesale? That’s where I come in.
Are you ready for the Big Time? You can do a lot of good and have fun and make a great living from fine art sales if you have a great sense of humor, can take rejection and apathy with a smile in your heart, and have a love for art and the transformations it can make, both in people and in the spaces in which they live, work and play.
If you’d like to try selling Great Art and you want to fund-raise for the Ashram, contact me. Watch for my postings of Great Art For Sale that YOU can sell from your own home or office! All items are subject to prior sale, so make sure you’re in good contact with me before you try to sell something we’re offering! CONTACT ME before attempting any art sales!!!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby