how to initially price your art – A Handbook for Emerging Artists

Is there a formula to calculate the prices of artworks?

Most media have a way of computing the artwork’s price based on physical facts like weight, size, duration, edition size, etc. Since these metrics differ between territories (inches vs. cm, pounds vs. kilograms, etc), there isn’t really one internationally established formula. The basic idea is always similar though: to derive the price from something objective and factual (a physical attribute), instead of basing it on something subjective like alleged work quality, likeability, use of material or production time (while use of material might sound objective, its use really is a consequence of specific processes and abilities, and thus subjective).

These formulas always include a factor (sometimes called “coefficient”) that inserts the artist’s individual market standing; without it, all works with the same metrics would cost the same, independently of their creator. Understand that similar mediums might still have differing factors (eg. drawings and paintings of the same size will usually use a different factor). Prices usually rise steadily over the years, which is done by increasing the factor according to sales success (eg. from 10 to 12).

Research the price calculation formula for your medium: For paintings, the metrics-independent formula could be as follows (talk to your peers to understand what length metric is used locally):

(Height + Width) x Factor = Price
Calculate the factor for your work, based on the price range you want to be in: Once you know both the formula to use for your medium and the price you want to use for a specific artwork, you can calculate your current factor. Simply add width and height, and divide the price by it; then round the result to the next integer. For a 40 x 30 inch (or centimeter) painting, the calculation would look like this:

(40 + 30) x Factor = 800
Factor = 11

This allows you to have your work based on the economic realities of your surroundings (which influenced your pricing decision), yet also have a clear factor to communicate. You might notice that in pricing discussions, stating your factor will often result in more authority than stating a work’s price – even though both numbers are interchangeable. The factor also adds an indirection layer between the work and its price, which can be beneficial if you don’t feel comfortable with the economic aspects of your work; since you discuss a number (and not a price), it offers a degree of dissociation from monetary aspects.
Consider the following:

Memorize your factor, not each work’s price: Having a factor lets you memorize exactly one number, instead of each work’s individual price. If you raise your factor, you don’t have to memorize each work’s new price – but simply remember the new factor. Understand that since each medium will have its own factor, working in multiple mediums (drawing and sculpting, painting and performance), requires you to memorize several factors.
Use the factor when discussing prices with peers: Knowing your factor lets you easily discuss your work’s prices with peers. To prevent misunderstandings, make sure to know whether the formula is used to calculate the artwork’s price before or after taxes – both is common.

Consider reading the anatomy of art pricing, further art pricing facts and the formula to calculate art prices.

How do I price my artworks as a total newbie?

As an artist pricing their work the first time, you usually come face-to-face with two realities: the idea of commodifying your idealism, and your lack of knowledge about pricing expectations and dynamics.

Accept that your work has both artistic and monetary value

Even if your artmaking is based on idealism (searching for ways to expand a medium, to express yourself, etc), this idealism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a part of you, and thus a part of the society you’re living in. The societies that most of us live in exchange money for goods: once you start thinking about selling your work, you obviously need to attach a price tag to it. The better this price tag suits both your and the public’s expectations, the more satisfied you will usually be. But as the very first step towards pricing your work, you need to accept that your work has both artistic and monetary value. This acceptance ideally leads to a curiosity about not only the artistic, but also the monetary side of it:

Research the price ranges of local artists with similar CVs, who work in your medium: Find out where they exhibit and go there to take notes on their works’ prices. What range is it roughly in? This will help you see the realities of commodifying your work, and let you understand local price expectations – and which artists transcend them. It will help you see which artists stand where: some students are laughably expensive, while more established artists can sometimes be weirdly cheap.
Discuss pricing with your peers: Ask your fellow artists, as well as your professors and their assistants (if you’re in art school): “How would you price my work, and why?” Try to understand their reasonings, and whether they can be applied by you. You will realize that a lot of successful professionals have little knowledge about pricing: stay attentive and open-minded, but know that you’ll have to make your own decisions.
Investigate resistance: If you feel resistance about pricing your work, investigate its source: you might be worried about having a price tag for your work, since this firmly marks it in your economic surroundings. While encouraging to some, it will be unwanted by others, since it brings your art into a very specific domain of the world.
If you pursue your work as a hobby, you might never want to price it; if this is your situation, consider how pricing your work can have positive benefits for your artistic process as well: it can heighten your awareness about your work’s quality. Similar to getting started on a piece, it’s another step to making the work real; not through physical manifestation (which is part of the artmaking process), but by letting people know they can own it, and at what price. If you’re worried about pricing, could you actually be worried about the quality or finishedness of your work? Could you be worried about disinterest or about your monetary place in the world making you unhappy? Try to understand these questions to decide your path forward.

Pricing gets easier once you get started. Developing a deeper understanding of general pricing dynamics, as well as specific knowledge about your local art scene will ultimately enhance your range of action – and gradually increase your confidence in pricing your artwork. This will allow your work to inhabit a specific place of the art world: the art market. For all its ambiguity, this will most likely help you in your progression as a professional artist: to understand the monetary aspect of your work, and to find your personal approach on it.

It might eventually be hard to remember these initial troubles, which are the consequence of a profession so deeply based on ideals of purity and idealism.

Consider reading the anatomy of art pricing, further art pricing facts, and the formula to calculate art prices.

What are further art pricing facts?

After having read the anatomy of art pricing, here are further general pricing facts:

Prices need to reflect the economic situation of your initial target audience – not your production costs, research and production time, or how much you like or are satisfied with your work. Specifically, your work’s price needs to make sure that you have access to buyers who can afford it. That’s why a piece created by you, even though it might feel to be qualitatively “better”, can be priced lower than some other artist’s piece you deem “worse”, but is exhibited at a top gallery (consider reading this post about quality): if they have a sales network that enables them to sell the work, or the artist established a brand that allows for (or expects) this kind of work, then that’s a strong fact to consider. If you ignore this reality and price your work similarly, you risk not being able to sell it; and even if you sell it, it remains unclear whether you’ll be able to sell the next work at the corresponding price level.
Outsiders to the art world (which includes younger, inexperienced artists) sometimes belittle the expensive works exhibited in galleries – especially if the work doesn’t pursue well-established craft ideals: “How can this cost so much? Anyone could do this!”. The reality is manifold: (a) not everyone could create this work – it’s usually a consequence of years of interrogation and manifestation; (b) not everyone could make a successful brand of it, and (c) not everyone would manage to establish proper sales channels to sell it.
Initial pricing requires knowledge about market access and target audience. Prices that feel too expensive to someone, will feel too cheap to someone else. This means that you can’t simply ask people to define prices for you – rather, you need to understand what target audience is within your reach, and what their financial capabilities are. If your parents are billionaires in the USA, your artwork’s initial price level will differ drastically to someone who creates the same works, but lives in the slums – simply because of the people you have access to. Don’t ignore your personal economic surroundings and market realities.
Collaborating with a gallery changes this, since they will have detailed knowledge about the financial range of their collectors.
Prices that are too high can make sales harder or impossible. Prices can be seen as statements, with negotiations challenging these statements. Overshooting price levels risks for negotiations to never happen, if buyers either don’t have enough money to even demand a discount, or do have enough money but don’t feel the price to be justified. If sales don’t happen at all, your price range is likely to be off. If they do happen (but not often), the situation gets more complex: you might sell more if your work would have a lower price tag – but this doesn’t guarantee that your annual earnings (which are a consequence of your sales quantity and your work’s price level) might be higher. Even if your sales are less frequent, you might generate the same (or more) money than with lower prices. Finding a proper balance will take time, and is challenging because the market doesn’t seem to enjoy pricing experiments. As long as you don’t have a strong market, this might not matter, but the further you progress, the less options you might have.
Prices are often interpreted to signify quality – being too low can produce distrust in the work’s quality. Art is judged differently by everyone – there’s no single, monolithic quality standard to understand an artwork’s objective value. While art is subjective, money isn’t: it’s entirely established as signifier of something’s value. Contrasting the ambiguities of art with the clarity of monetary ascriptions clearly shows the latter having extreme authority over the former; it’s hard to disassociate these two. Consider an artist who is strongly established in one territory, but not internationally. If their work is exhibited abroad (where it’s unknown), people will still see the work’s price level – and derive quality ideas about it (“This is way too expensive!” or “This price shows how good the piece is”, etc).

Where prices ideally should reflect quality, the reality is that they reflect market penetration and brand visibility. Prices signify the quality and sales expectations of the seller’s network, and shouldn’t be used to infer an artwork’s artistic quality – but in actuality, people do exactly that, most of the time. The price of something is predominantly used as a measure of value, and thus of quality and integrity – especially by those without a strong inner compass about art. When an artist decides on a low pricing level, they’re implicitly sending out signals: “This is the work of a newbie”. If they’re too low, they’ll also signal that something is fishy, and potentially bad – or even fraudulent: “This work might be sloppy, the artist might not have a strong sales network, and might not care about pursuing their passion professionally”. This can be especially true for clients who don’t trust their own quality judgements: instead of seeing a bargain, they might fear to see failure.

Prices influence the perception of art to the point that a shooting star’s work might become less noteworthy than their artwork’s unexpected price range. Extremely high price levels can also lead people to distrust the work’s quality: can any work really be that good and important? The challenge lies in understanding your target audience’s economic expectations, and work from there.
Pricing is not the only external quality signifier: Your work’s price level influences your art’s perception, but isn’t its only external quality signifier; social media following or general fame might be others. Imagine an artist without gallery representation, yet with an extremely strong social media following. While their following might not be able to buy their work at its “normal” price level, the artist could bet on sales quantity, and opt to sell at a fraction of the price. This might be better for them than to sell through galleries (which rids them of 50% revenue), especially if they dislike certain aspects of the art world (elitism, dependency on galleries, etc).
An artist like this would have external quality signifiers pointing in extremely differing directions: following, yet no gallery. Amazing art, yet priced extremely competitively. The challenge lies in understanding what kind of market access feels right, and generates enough sales. This topic is complex already because potentially existing previous collectors might see this as price dumping that loses them their investments – but it’s a dynamic that’s bound to happen more frequently, as social media progresses.
This dynamic gets more complex, the more further external quality signifiers there are:
Pricing doesn’t have to reflect your living standards or whether you could afford your own work. Never forget that for all the idealism that got you into the arts, you’ll most likely be a producer of luxury commodities: you won’t have a lot of middle-class collectors with three-kid-families, since their focus often simply lies elsewhere (to save money for emergencies, student loans, cars, hobbies and vacations).
While human culture needs the arts to thrive (film, literature, music, theater, dance, etc), buying art always is a luxury transaction. That’s why even with the purest intentions, your work will always be a luxury commodity to its buyer. Understand that while you might not live in luxury, the works you create will most likely only be affordable by people who do.
Prices for artworks are always attached to the artist, although it might be the gallery that defines them: Some represented artists benefit from galleries to manage their network and sales. This can give the impression that the gallery should define the artwork’s price level – after all, pricing is part of the economic domain, and thus better suited to a gallery (which is expected to understand economics best). While pricing obviously brings artworks very close to economic realities, an artwork’s price nevertheless isn’t ultimately attached to the gallery. In a way, it isn’t even attached to the artwork itself, but to the artist who produced it: A gallery can close down, retire or change owners, resulting in the artist to be without representation. A gallery can decide to end collaborating with you, from which point onwards your access to their network will be extremely limited.

For all these reasons, do not ever let go of pricing decisions: they are yours to make. At the same time, don’t ignore advice either: enter a dialog with anyone who wants to advise you about pricing your artwork. This lets you increase your knowledge and influence the decision, while enabling you to offer feedback. It has the added benefit of highlighting your interest in business decisions – to yourself and the gallery. This lets pricing be part of your range of action, resulting in shared responsibilities between you and the gallery. This lets you grow.

Consider reading the anatomy of art pricing, how to price your artwork as a newbie, and the formula to calculate art prices.