Each artist (part-timer, full-timer or “any-timer”) has a story to tell of how someone or a gallery left a smudge on their colourful journey. I have had my share of sad (or perhaps surprising) tales too and I will tell you just two here. Before I continue, I just need to lay the table for this discussion so that if you are not an artist (or not a visual artist), you may understand a few things from my (biased) artist perspective. The wheels of the art world, like those of the other domains, are oiled by the transfer of money, obviously. Not all artists want to sell their works necessarily, but for “unknown” artists – like myself – selling one’s art usually involves an agent or a gallery. Throughout the years I have been dealing with various galleries and sales people, simply because I did not have the means to showcase my own work. Selling art work online seems to be the new exciting option, but I have not had much success with that yet.
The premise on which most “higher-end” galleries operate is something like this: “We will try to sell your work, but we do not accept any responsibility for it, if it gets lost, you will suffer the loss and we will usually up the price by 100 % and then you will get 50% of that; in fact we take 60% percent of the income, because the cost of the frame you paid for, you will bear.” (This is my paraphrased interpretation of the premise, just for the sake of illustration – and I am sure not all galleries operate like this, but I am giving you some “metal” parameters.)
The painting I included below was “stolen” by the gallery. Why I say “stolen” is, because I have a friend who dealt with the same gallery and her works disappeared very conveniently too. (This post is not meant to be a malicious one at all. Just relax.) However, one gets over the bitter reality and one moves on with greater care, but one wonders sometimes where that set of paintings is. Who is enjoying them and for how much were they sold? Fortunately, not all galleries are guilty of such shady dealings. Many gallery owners have become dear friends of mine too. Selling art is not an easy matter as you can imagine, so artists and galleries need each other. Now I will address “copying” as it happened to me.
About four years ago I went to visit a company and in one of their offices I saw something which should have made my jaw drop, but I just froze for a moment. There for all to see was a very large print of one of my art works – which I did not print – and it was professionally done and professionally framed, as if it was mass-produced somewhere outside the country and it was sold as a framed unit in a décor store. I did not mention anything to anyone; no one there would have believed me and they were not knowledgeable about art (to my knowledge). It was a professional environment and I decided to see it as a compliment. Where would one start to find the person or agency who made money using your image?
At school in the art class the students would often tell me in an agitated tone, “Mr. he is copying my idea.” Then my reply always is, “If someone copies your idea or your drawing, you should actually see it as a compliment, because they are actually telling you or admitting that your idea is better than theirs”. I had to take a little of my own medicine.
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