kingstiedye,
That you think an original painting by an unknown artist that paints in a tiki
theme is a reason to buy it over limited edition fine art print by an established,
respected, and in-demand, artist shows a complete lack of even a rudimentary understanding of
the art market and collectible fine art prints and what they are to the art world.
Your argument would support that buying an original painting of Marilyn Monroe
by an artist no one has ever heard of is better than buying
one of Warhol's limited edition serigraphs of Marilyn
that sells for upwards of tens of thousands of dollars.
You ignore the fact that:
People may actually like Warhol's style, more than they actually like Marilyn.
There is an established market and demand for Warhol's work.
I like Shag's style. I love Shag's sense of humor (most of the time),
the implied narrative, the mix of tiki and consumerism,
and his use of basic retro figural styles.
I get his work. It makes me smile.
Just because he paints tiki-themed works and some TC artists
paint tiki-themed works does not mean I like their style, too.
Some bottles of wine cost a hundred dollars or more.
Some wine comes in a box and costs a lot less.
Appreciating one does not mean appreciating the other
just because they're both wine.
That you think an original by an unknown artist
is better than buying a serigraph of an established artist
just because both have Tiki elements in there work is completely
absent of understanding how art impacts people and how someone like
Shag can take elements and put them together in a way that is almost
indefinably sublime, and another artist can take similar elements and
make a work lacking completely that appeal,
though we may not even understand why we prefer
one artist's work over another.
Also, many artists consider their prints the final originals,
because they work in woodblock, lithography, and silkscreen.
That you don't find value in prints betrays your ignorance of the subject.
Regarding pricing:
If I ever need to sell as Shag print (heaven forbid),
odds are, if I list it on eBay, I will get more for it than I paid for it.
As noted recently, a Shag print I recently bought for $450 had another one
within the same edition sell for approximately $1450 on eBay.
I may pay $300 for a Shag print,
but I can also resell it for that or more, if I have to.
The same could not be said of an artist unknown outside of TC.
One could say, buying a TC artists work, and then needing to resell it
at some point, would ultimately mean the TC artists works cost more than
the Shag because the resale value is not there for the TC artist.
The ability to recoup the purchase price is not there.
Lastly, assuming a TC artist will become well known and
have their work jump in value, is an assumption that the
post modern art world market data does not support.
The number of emerging artists who get
collected and have the value increase
is very few and far in between.
On 2008-10-17 18:39, kingstiedye wrote:
sushiman and the monitors, thank you for your replies to my question. i understand the effort these take now. however, i still think original art is the way to go. if tcers would stop buying shag prints and buy original art from our tc artists, they might become as popular as shag. and you'd have a hand painted unique piece, not a copy done by jeff wasserman.
[ Edited by: Gromit_Fan 2008-10-17 23:04 ]
