Going to market

Visiting Edward Winkleman's blog this morning, his current post about pricing the work of emerging artists seemed to follow on nicely from what I was reading earlier on the Auckland Art Fair site

What they're willing to pay - Edward Winkleman

Winkleman's advice to emerging artists is to keep prices enticingly low, until a steady demand is established, and you can start to move the prices up in response. He's looking at the issue in light of recent, stupidly high, prices on the secondary market - notably Ron Lauder purchase of Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. He asks - and answers - some interesting questions:

"What if an artist knows that one particular piece is the best work they've ever done...should they insist its price be higher than their other work? And, conversely, just because the market goes nuts for one particular piece by an emerging artist, does that mean that the price of all subsequent work should be higher? What if that one piece is the one true gem and the later work not quite so?"